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Claude Fischer’s (1975; 1995) urban theory is designed to explain how and why social relationships vary by size of population in settlements. According to the theory, urban life is bifurcated into public and private domains. In the public domain social relationships are typically superficial because people are usually interacting with others whom they do not know personally and may not see again. Such interactions are based mainly on the obvious roles people are playing at the time, such as bus rider, store clerk or customer, and pedestrian. Thus, the public domain, which varies directly with the size of the population, is characterized by anonymity, impersonality, tolerance, and lack of social bonding with others.
However, urbanites, even those in settlements with very large populations, have private lives characterized by interpersonal networks of friends, associates, and family, just as do people in smaller settlements. In addition, urbanites are more likely to be involved in other private networks with people who share interests that are somewhat uncommon and often unconventional. Through interaction concerning those peculiar interests, people within such networks develop distinct norms, a particular set of meanings and legitimations, status systems, and other social characteristics that distinguish them as subcultures. Thus, in their private worlds, urbanites are no less socially bonded inter-personally than people in other places and, in addition, they are more likely to be involved in subcultural networks.
Cities promote subcultural formation because their large populations make it more likely that a number of people will share a given interest even though it may be statistically rare or unconventional. Moreover, the freedom implied by an anonymous, impersonal, tolerant public domain permits urbanites with peculiar interests to locate each other and interact sufficiently to produce subcultures. Fischer uses the term critical mass to refer to a situation where there are enough people with similar but unusual interests to form a subculture. The larger the city, the greater the number of critical masses and the larger the likelihood of subcultures of many types.
Because so many and so many different kinds of subcultures blossom and grow in cities, urban dwellers become more tolerant of the peculiar behaviors or interests that various subcultural affiliates embrace. In addition, subcultural affiliation provides supportive networks, distinct normative expectations, and social controls to encourage those who participate in them to embrace the behaviors around which the subcultures are oriented.
Bibliography:
- Fischer, C. S. (1975) Toward a subcultural theory of urbanism. American Journal of Sociology 80: 1319-41.
- Fischer, C. S. (1995) The subcultural theory of urbanism: a twentieth-year assessment. American Journal of Sociology 101: 543-77.
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