Syllabus

Required Readings

Course requirements

25% of final grade		midterm examination 
25% of final grade		final examination 
25% of final grade		problem sets 
25% of final grade		term paper 

All work submitted is expected to be the individual and original effort of the student(s) submitting it. Plagiarism from published sources or unauthorized collaborations on written work will result in an automatic failure in this course.

Students in GSAS or SIPA who wish to enroll in this course for graduate credit should consult with me individually.

Term paper requirements

Your paper should examine a specific aspect of urbanism in two specific cities or two specific cultures/societies.

Topically, you should focus on some particular feature of urbanism--the social and cultural patterns which characterize city life within a given society or culture. Examples include: the effects of urban migration on patterns of kinship and household formation; the role of voluntary associations in assimilating recent urban migrants into city life; how urban dwellers react to the density of their built environment: the creation and maintenance of ethnic identities in cities; how (and why) communities maintain boundaries in the city; the role of cities in establishing fashions (in education, in clothing, in entertainment, etc.) that permeate an entire society; or, the ways in which a city's class structure creates and perpetuates particular subcultures. In other words, your paper should incorporate anthropological perspectives on urbanism, by utilizing one or more of the issues or debates set forth in the assigned readings and/or lectures.

Pick two cities--London, Havana, Port au Prince, Hyderabad, Rangoon, Paris, Tashkent, Lima, Nairobi, Siena, Medan, Wuhan, Cardiff, Bangkok, Ibadan, Lvov, Ciudad Juarez, Mombasa, Kanazawa, Carthage, Timbuctoo, Porto Alegre, Hobart, Pyongyang, Machu Picchu, Johannesburg, Pusan, Samarkand, Benares, Palermo, Managua, Ouagadougou, Cairo, Tokyo, Helsinki, Lhasa, Seville, Herat, Soweto, Port Moresby, Angkor, Novosibirsk, Recife, Xian, Riga, Hong Kong, Santiago, Manila, Ho Chi Minh Ville, or any other of your favorite cities. They don't have to be large and famous; they can be small and obscure (though-not too obscure, since you need to find written material about theme. They can be new cities created by mid-20th century industrialization, or old ones that flourished as important trading centers in the 14th century, or even perhaps now-vanished cities (but not so vanished that nothing is written about them).

You should pick your cities (and your societies) with some care to ensure that they are both appropriate to the topical} theme you are interested in (and that there is sufficiently focused literature on the subject), and also to ensure that the comparison of the two cities makes sense. For example, I would require a good deal of convincing that pre-conquest Machu Picchu and late 20th century Helsinki are a natural for meaningful comparison .

A preliminary statement about your paper is due by October 17. This should include two or three paragraphs that identify the cities or societies you intend to focus on and the issues you will be examining. It should also include a brief annotated biblioiography identifying some of the major sources that you have located on your topic. Feel free to consult with me about topics and sources.

Preparation and submission of the final paper--Your paper should be roughly 20 typed, double-spaced pages (do not use erasable paper; minor handwritten corrections on the typed copy are acceptable), with footnotes and bibliographic citations handled in a standard academic format. No fancy covers, please. Your paper is due no later than the class meeting on December 5. Papers submitted late will be marked down a half grade for each day late.

PROBLEM SETS

Several problem sets, generally involving your own observations of and ethnographic investigations into urban phenomena around you, will be assigned during the semester. Each student will be responsible for completing two of these. You may work on them individually or in small groups (groups work will be graded collectively).

Problem sets this semester will include:

1. how "traditional" holidays/customs are observed in an urban context -- the ethnography of Halloween
2. voluntary associations and adaptation to campus life
3. socio-linguistic markers of class and ethnicity in New York City
4. guess who's coming to dinner -- kinship and Thanksgiving
5. demarcating public and private space -- observations of plazas, sidewalks, and subways

COURSE SCHEDULE AND READINGS

You are responsible for two of the assigned ethnographies.

Week I.  Introduction

Week II.  Rise of Cities

• Childe "Urban Revolution"
• Byland "Origin and Nature" in GZ

• Sjoberg "Preindustrial City" in GZ
• Redfield & Singer "Cultural Role" in PS
• Fox "Cultural Roles & Primal Types" in PS

Weeks III-IV.  Sociological Perspectives on Urbanism

• Simmel "Metropolis and Mental Life" in PS
• Wirth "Urbanism as a Way of Life" in GZ
• Bascom "Urbanization Among the Yoruba" in PS

Ethnography: Miner

• Anderson "Chinese Crowding"
• Merry "Urban Danger" in GZ

Weeks V-VI.  Anthropological Research in Cities

Part Two of GZ

• Part Three in GZ
• Little, "Voluntary Associations" in PS
• Doughty, Peruvian Migrant Identity

Ethnography: Watson Ethnography: Gmelch

Weeks VII-VIII.  Kinship and Urbaniation

• Part Four in GZ
• Vogel, "Kinship & Migration"
• Goode, "World Changes in Family Patterns"

Ethnography: Young & Wilmott

• Hannerz, ch. 5

Weeks IX-X.  Urban Ethicity

• Part Five in GZ
• Cohen, "Ethnicity and Stratification," in PS
• Hannerz, "Ethnicity and Opportunity"

Weeks XI-XII.  Class, Community, and Identity

Ethnography: Whyte and Parish Ethnography: Bestor

Nov. 23 Thanksgiving Holiday

Weeks XIII-XIV.  Slums and the Culture of Poverty

• Part Five in GZ
• Mangin, "Squatter Settlements, in PS

December 5 Papers due

Week XV.  Conclusions

Materials on reserve in Butler Library:

• Anderson -- Some Chinese Methods of Dealing with Crowding
• Childe -- The Urban Revolution
• Vogel -- Kinship Structure, Migration to the City, and Modernization

Chapters in books on reserve

• Doughty -- "Peruvian Migrant Identity in the Urban Milieu," in Thomas Weaver and Douglas White, eds., THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF URBAN ENVIRONMENTS. See Washington, D.C., Society for Applied Anthropology, 1972.
• Goode -- "World Changes in Family Patterns," in Goode, WORLD REVOLUTION IN FAMILY PATTERNS
• Hannerz -- "Ethnicity and Opportunity in Urban America," in Abner Cohen, ed. URBAN ETHNICITY (London, New York: Tavistock Publications) [Distributed in the USA by Harper & Row Publishers, Barnes & Noble Import Division, 1974]

Books on reserve

• Belmonte, THE BROKEN FOUNTAIN
  (see above)
• Bestor, NEIGHBORHOOD TOKYO
  (see above)
• Cohen, CUSTOM AND POLITICS IN URBAN AFRICA
  (see above)
• Cohen, URBAN ETHNICITY
  (see above)
• George M. Foster & Robert V. Kemper, eds., ANTHROPOLOGISTS IN CITIES
  Boston: Little, Brown, 1974.
• Jonathan L. Freedman, CROWDING AND BEHAVIOR.
  San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1975.
• Gmelch, IRISH TINKERS
  (see above)
• Goode, WORLD REVOLUTION IN FAMILY PATTERNS
  (New York: Free Press, 1970)
• Edward T. Hall, THE HIDDEN DIMENSION.
  Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1982
• Ulf Hannerz, EXPLORING THE CITY: INQUIRIES TOWARD AN URBAN ANTHROPOLOGY
  (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980)Jacobson, ITINERANT TOWNSMEN
  (see above)
• Philip Mayer (with contributions by Iona Mayer), TOWNSMEN OR TRIBESMEN:
• CONSERVATISM AND THE PROCESS OF URBANIZATION IN A SOUTH AFRICAN CITY
  2nd ed. (Cape Town, New York: Oxford U. Press, 1971)
• Miner, THE PRIMITIVE CITY OF TIMBUCTOO
  (see above)
• Irwin Press & M. Estellie Smith, ed. URBAN PLACE AND PROCESS: READINGS IN THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF CITIES
  (New York: Macmillan, 1980)
• Aidan Southall, ed. URBAN ANTHROPOLOGY: CROSS-CULTURAL STUDIES OF URBANIZATION
  (New York: Oxford U. Press, 1973)
  (Chiefly papers resulting from a seminar held at Burg Wartenstein, Austria, Sept. 1964; sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.)
• Watson, EMIGRATION AND THE CHINESE LINEAGE: THE MANS IN HONG KONG AND LONDON
  (see above)
• Weaver and White, THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF URBAN ENVIRONMENTS
  (see above)
• Whyte & Parish, URBAN LIFE IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA
  (see above)
• Young & Wilmott, FAMILY AND KINSHIP IN EAST LONDON
  (see above)