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Urban Ethnography (urban + ethnography)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences100%

Selected Abstracts

Urban Ethnographies in the United States

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN AND REGIONAL RESEARCH, Issue 1 2002
Hilary Silver
Books reviewed in this article: Gamm, Gerald, Urban Exodus: why the Jews left Boston and the Catholics stayed Pattillo-McCoy, Mary, Black picket fences: privilege and peril among the black middle class [source]

Urban Ethnography of the 1920s Working Girl

GENDER, WORK & ORGANISATION, Issue 3 2007
Jaber F. Gubrium
The 1920s was the era of the city. The urban population of the USA for the first time exceeded the population of rural areas and the nascent institutions of city life were flourishing. This article discusses the urban ethnography of the era with a focus on the way women and work was conceptualized, especially how ,the city' figured in explanation. Three ethnographies are examined ,Frances Donovan'sThe Woman Who Waits (1920) and The Saleslady (1929) and Paul Cressey'sThe Taxi-Dance Hall (1932). Donovan and Cressey presented their empirical material to show that the so-called working girl faced a multifaceted world of opportunity in employment, not of disadvantage, as commonly emphasized in today's ethnographic studies of women and work. The conclusion reflects on the past, present and future in terms of the city's explanatory prominence in various eras. [source]

Of Heroes and Polemics: "The Policeman" in Urban Ethnography

POLAR: POLITICAL AND LEGAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW, Issue 2010
Kevin G. Karpiak
Cities have long been characterized as lonely, alienating places in literature and the social sciences. This article tracks the theme of urban alienation through both detective fiction and urban ethnography, demonstrating that these literatures also share a focus on two key figures: the Hero and the Policeman. Within an important variant of the genre, the Policeman performs a crucial role, becoming the mechanism through which alienation is enforced. In this regard the Policeman stands in contrast to the Hero, battling over the very soul of modernity. On the other hand, there is a variant of the genre of police fiction which is known as noir. Within this genre, the ethical stakes are configured somewhat differently. I will argue that this is the location in which we find the potential for reconceptualizing anthropology's ethical stakes vis-à-vis questions of power and violence in the contemporary world. [source]

Herbert Gans and the Politics of Urban Ethnography in the (Continued) Age of the Underclass

CITY & COMMUNITY, Issue 1 2007
Alford A. Young Jr.
In his criticism of scholarly and public utilization of the term underclass, Herbert Gans helped to initiate new and more complex thinking about both the kinds of people that constitute America's most disenfranchised urban constituency and the ways in which more privileged Americans have striven to make sense of them. In forwarding his criticism of the term, Gans helped establish a template for ethnographic and qualitative explorations of America's urban poor that breaks with a rigid and vulgar social problems framing and, instead, invites more provocative and more accurate assessments of the agency of such people. In doing so, he has encouraged recent efforts to offer new framings of this population, which have facilitated new cultural projects in qualitative studies of the African American urban poor. This article briefly reviews Gans's criticism of the term underclass, and then elucidates how that criticism relates to some contemporary scholarly efforts to consider people who would be characterized as underclass as more complex cultural actors,and, indeed, who often are more complicated social beings,than is implied by the label underclass. [source]

Urban Ethnography's "Saloon Problem" and Its Challenge to Public Sociology

CITY & COMMUNITY, Issue 2 2007
Greggor Mattson
This essay assesses the legacy of urban ethnography's (UE) early engagement with the "saloon problem." Early sociologists (1880,1915) intervened in the national debate on alcohol on the basis of their long-term, in-depth understanding of the urban poor. Ethnographers highlighted the role of the saloon as a haven for maintaining social ties while socializing immigrants to American norms. Instead of prohibition or temperance, sociologists advocated replacing the saloon's positive functions with more democratic institutions, especially an egalitarian domestic sphere. This position was shared by both academic and settlement house sociologists whose saloon investigations offer a coherent sociological research paradigm that antedates the Chicago School. The activism of early sociologists exemplifies the characteristics of Michael Burawoy's recent call for public sociology. Yet the early sociologists failed to redeem the saloon amongst Progressives, who increasingly rallied around the National Anti-Saloon League and constitutional Prohibition. By only investigating alcohol in its public manifestations, sociologists failed to challenge the way the social problem was framed and may even have contributed to the stigmatization of the saloon. This voyeuristic opportunism has plagued the American tradition of urban ethnography, the ineffective legacy of which poses a challenge to a contemporary revival of public sociology. [source]

Urban Ethnography of the 1920s Working Girl

GENDER, WORK & ORGANISATION, Issue 3 2007
Jaber F. Gubrium
The 1920s was the era of the city. The urban population of the USA for the first time exceeded the population of rural areas and the nascent institutions of city life were flourishing. This article discusses the urban ethnography of the era with a focus on the way women and work was conceptualized, especially how ,the city' figured in explanation. Three ethnographies are examined ,Frances Donovan'sThe Woman Who Waits (1920) and The Saleslady (1929) and Paul Cressey'sThe Taxi-Dance Hall (1932). Donovan and Cressey presented their empirical material to show that the so-called working girl faced a multifaceted world of opportunity in employment, not of disadvantage, as commonly emphasized in today's ethnographic studies of women and work. The conclusion reflects on the past, present and future in terms of the city's explanatory prominence in various eras. [source]

Of Heroes and Polemics: "The Policeman" in Urban Ethnography

POLAR: POLITICAL AND LEGAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW, Issue 2010
Kevin G. Karpiak
Cities have long been characterized as lonely, alienating places in literature and the social sciences. This article tracks the theme of urban alienation through both detective fiction and urban ethnography, demonstrating that these literatures also share a focus on two key figures: the Hero and the Policeman. Within an important variant of the genre, the Policeman performs a crucial role, becoming the mechanism through which alienation is enforced. In this regard the Policeman stands in contrast to the Hero, battling over the very soul of modernity. On the other hand, there is a variant of the genre of police fiction which is known as noir. Within this genre, the ethical stakes are configured somewhat differently. I will argue that this is the location in which we find the potential for reconceptualizing anthropology's ethical stakes vis-à-vis questions of power and violence in the contemporary world. [source]

Urban Ethnography's "Saloon Problem" and Its Challenge to Public Sociology

CITY & COMMUNITY, Issue 2 2007
Greggor Mattson
This essay assesses the legacy of urban ethnography's (UE) early engagement with the "saloon problem." Early sociologists (1880,1915) intervened in the national debate on alcohol on the basis of their long-term, in-depth understanding of the urban poor. Ethnographers highlighted the role of the saloon as a haven for maintaining social ties while socializing immigrants to American norms. Instead of prohibition or temperance, sociologists advocated replacing the saloon's positive functions with more democratic institutions, especially an egalitarian domestic sphere. This position was shared by both academic and settlement house sociologists whose saloon investigations offer a coherent sociological research paradigm that antedates the Chicago School. The activism of early sociologists exemplifies the characteristics of Michael Burawoy's recent call for public sociology. Yet the early sociologists failed to redeem the saloon amongst Progressives, who increasingly rallied around the National Anti-Saloon League and constitutional Prohibition. By only investigating alcohol in its public manifestations, sociologists failed to challenge the way the social problem was framed and may even have contributed to the stigmatization of the saloon. This voyeuristic opportunism has plagued the American tradition of urban ethnography, the ineffective legacy of which poses a challenge to a contemporary revival of public sociology. [source]