The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life - Paperback

by Elijah Anderson (Author)

Elijah Anderson, called "one of our best urban ethnographers" by the New York Times Book Review, introduces the concept of the "cosmopolitan canopy" the urban islands of civility amid segregated ghettos, suburbs, and ethnic enclaves.

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Praise for The Cosmopolitan Canopy "The Cosmopolitan Canopy is vintage Elijah Anderson-original, creative, engaging, and thought provoking. Once I began reading this brilliant book I could not put it down. Anderson provides an incredibly rich narrative of the interactions of city dwellers from different segregated neighborhoods-ghettos, ethnic enclaves, and suburbs-in public places. By revealing hidden social and racial dynamics, Anderson not only explains the conditions that ease racial tensions and promote interracial harmony, but those that reinforce traditional racial boundaries as well. This book is a must read."-William Julius Wilson, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor. Harvard University "Elijah Anderson is a master ethnographer. Field research is a way of life for him, a medium through which unceasingly, over the course of many years, he has courageously explored the innermost recesses of life in an American city, especially the social worlds and the experiences of Black Americans. Once again, in The Cosmopolitan Canopy, he moves from one area of Philadelphia to another, exploring the patterns of social interaction and behavior in various public places. Anderson calls these urban spaces 'cosmopolitan canopies' - a concept likely to evoke lively, illuminating discussion."-Renee C. Fox, Annenberg Professor Emerita of the Social Sciences, University of Pennsylvania "This is the most important book on race relations in many years. Elijah Anderson takes us behind the statistics into the scenes of everyday life. We witness front-stage performances of integration and back-stage racial ethnocentrism, as well as the venues where interracial cosmopolitan civility is constructed. Updating E. Franklin Frazier's classic Black Bourgeoisie, The Cosmopolitan Canopy offers a gift for our pessimistic times: a book of realistic optimism."-Randall Collins, President of the American Sociological Association "The Cosmopolitan Canopy is a richly detailed account of how the public spaces we all share can either separate or help bring us together. I strongly recommend it."-Marian Wright Edelman, President, Children's Defense Fund