Download Georgetown University ANTH 280-10 Fall 2015 Urban Anthropology

Georgetown University
ANTH 280-10
Fall 2015
Urban Anthropology: Cultures of the City
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 12:30-1:45 PM
Dr. Laurie King
Car Barn 201
[email protected]
“The city is the maximal expression of the human need – and capacity – for interdependence.”
~ Ulf Hannerz
“Cities are problems in organized complexity.”
~ Jane Jacobs
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course explores the city as a product of, and a
rich site for, humans’ negotiations over social and economic rights, identity,
cultural meaning, and community. Drawing on a variety of historical,
geographic, and ethnographic studies, we will ask whether urban life is
qualitatively distinct from rural life, and whether there are different types of
urban life in different places and times. The city is a site of economic and political
centralization, but also a landscape of sentiment and memory. It is a space of
ritual observance and spectacle, as well as the locus of inequality, alienation,
suffering, and dysfunction. Debates over urban planning encompass moral,
cultural, and personal concerns, not simply the planning schemes of economists,
policymakers, and architects. Throughout the course, methodological questions
regarding the city as an object of historical and ethnographic study are
highlighted. We will look at Tokyo’s fish markets, the vibrancy of Karachi, mid20th century New York City, contemporary Washington, DC, Los Angeles, and
the wounded cities of New Orleans and Beirut in order to understand the
complexity of the urban experience through a holistic and critical
anthropological lens.
We will use the process of conducting urban anthropological research—
deciding on a topic, undertaking participant observation, dealing with the
logistics and ethics of qualitative research, and writing ethnographies—as the
skeletal structure of the course.
Whether you think about it or not, you are part of this city. You participate, to
one degree or another, in the social and cultural frameworks of Washington, DC.
Although you may spend most of your time west of Wisconsin Avenue, you are
all intricately woven into the ecological, infrastructural, administrative,
socioeconomic, and imaginative systems of our nation’s capitol. In this class we
will explore the city and what it means to be in and of a city. As we will discover
in our initial readings, cities are characterized by size, density, heterogeneity, and
differences.
The “anchor” text for our course, Ulf Hannerz’s Exploring the City, notes that
cities are the “maximal expression of the human need – and capacity – for
interdependence.” Cities are also full of surprises and serendipity. As another
author, Richard Sennett, notes “Cities are places where strangers are likely to
meet.”
Cities present us with the opportunity, and the necessity, to play different roles
at different times, and to traverse spaces and get to feel at home in new places.
We shape cities, but they also shape us through our experiences and
relationships in them. The quality, not just the quantity, of human
interrelationships and interactions are what make a city a city.
How are you woven into the many systems and cultures of Washington, DC?
How do you “interdepend” with others, many of whom you have never even
met?
Two key themes in this course will be interdependence and interrelationships.
We will explore these not only through our readings and discussions in class, but
more importantly, through our explorations of the different neighborhoods of
Washington, DC. By doing ethnographic fieldwork in the city, you will be
mapping the sorts of interdependencies and interrelationships that make
Washington Washington. You will also be entering into interrelationships of
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interdependence with people in your field sites. Your own stories will be
transformed by the telling of their stories.
By the end of the semester, we will examine how Georgetown University
participates in relationships of interdependence in Washington – historical,
cultural, ecological, economical, and political. I hope you will learn not only
about the city, but about yourselves and about the connections between you and
others in this urban matrix known as Washington, DC.
COURSE GOALS:

To encourage students to engage with the principles and techniques of
anthropology as an interpretive science that accounts for cultural diversity
through the practice of ethnographic fieldwork and qualitative research in
the form of visual and written narratives.

To grasp how issues of power, justice, equality, and dignity are entailed in
our definitions and perceptions, as well as our documentation, of
difference and diversity in the city.

To encourage students to see what they don’t see, and might not even
know they don’t see, in the urban world of Washington, DC, in which
they move as citizens and students.

To encourage students to see that the ethnographer is himself or herself
the very instrument of research. Reflexivity and critical discussion of what
we know, how we know, and what we don’t know is crucial to any
ethnographic project.

To encourage students to think critically about the meanings and
implications of diversity and difference through the doing of urban
ethnography.

To question the implications of “observation.” Does anthropology imply a
focus on “the other,” “the different,” “the exotic” and “the strange”? Who
decides what is different? How do we categorize diversity?

What is diversity? How do we define it and know it? What are the
boundaries and the distinguishing characteristics? How do we see, map,
and accommodate diversity and difference? Are we different? Diversity is
a relational concept, as is identity.
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Texts (in alphabetical order)
Auge, Marc. 1995. Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity.
Davis, Mike. 2006. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (New
Edition).
Gmelch, George, Robert V. Kemper, Walter P. Zenner. 2010. Urban Life:
Readings in the Anthropology of the City.
Hannerz, Ulf. 1980. Exploring the City.
Inskeep, Steve. 2012. Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi.
Jacobs, Jane. 1992. The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
Steinberg, Phil, and Rob Shields. 2008. What Is a City?: Rethinking the Urban
after Hurricane Katrina.
All texts will be available on reserve at the Lauinger Library
On Blackboard:
Blom Hansen, Thomas and Oskar Verkaaik, “Urban Charisma: On Everyday
Mythologies in the City.”
Krieger, P. “Aesthetics and Anthropology of Megacities: A New Field of Art
Historical Research” http://actesbranly.revues.org/318#text
Pickett, Cadenasso, et al., “Urban Ecological Systems: Linking Terrestrial,
Ecological, Physical, and Socioeconomic, Components of Metropolitan
Areas.”
Selected readings on “wounded cities,” qualitative methodologies, and
thinking exercises.
COURSE EVALUATION:
Two analytical papers (5 pages), 10 points each:
Ethnography based on field research (15 pages):
Reflective essay
Weekly posting to our course blog
Attendance and active participation:
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20%
30%
15%
20%
15%
Laptop and iDevice Policy: Laptops and smart phones are to remain
unconnected to the Internet during class sessions. You may use laptops only for
taking notes and relying on readings.
Research paper: By mid-October, we will have chosen six or seven DC and/or
Northern Virginia neighborhoods or topics for group field research projects.
Each group will consist of no less than two and no more than four people. Each
person in each group will complete a research paper on a particular aspect or
dimension of the topic they are researching as part of their team. Teams will
check in with me twice: in late October and then again before our Thanksgiving
break. Students will submit their specific research topics to me for approval in
mid-October.
Attendance and participation: Students are expected to attend and actively
participate in all classes. This requirement is very important and depends on
good preparation by thoughtfully reading the assigned literature.
Both lectures and class discussions will presume that you have completed your
readings.
COURSE SCHEDULE:
Week One
o Mapping the City: Powerpoint presentation and a discussion of
maps and their various meanings and implications.
Week Two
o In-class socio-spatial mapping exercises.
o Pickett, Cadenasso, et al., “Urban Ecological Systems: Linking
Terrestrial, Ecological, Physical, and Socioeconomic, Components
of Metropolitan Areas” (Blackboard)
o Krieger, P. “Aesthetics and Anthropology of Megacities: A New Field
of Art Historical Research” http://actesbranly.revues.org/318#text
(Blackboard)
o Chapters 1 and 2 in Urban Life (Gmelch, Kemper, and Zenner).
Week Three
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TWO FIELD TRIPS
(Venues yet to be determined)
Week Four
o Chapters 4, 6, and 7 in Urban Life (Gmelch, Kemper, and Zenner).
o Chapters 1 - 4 in Exploring the City (Hannerz).
Week Five
o Chapters 4 (pp. 119-135 only), 5, 7, and Appendix: Analytical
Concepts, in Exploring the City (Hannerz).
First Paper Due October 1st
Week Six
o Chapters 9, 13, 15, and 17 in Urban Life.
o Inskeep, Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi (entire)
CHOOSE FIELD RESEARCH SITES BY OCTOBER 8th
Week Seven
o Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Chapters 1-12)
Week Eight
o The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Chapters 13-22).
Individual Research Paper Topics Due on October 15th
Weeks Nine and Ten
o Auge, Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity (entire)
o Davis, City of Quartz (entire)
o Blom Hansen, Thomas and Oskar Verkaaik, “Urban Charisma: On
Everyday Mythologies in the City.”
o Film: “Chinatown” by Roman Polanski
Second Paper due on November 12th
Week Eleven
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NO CLASSES. SPEND TIME DOING FIELD RESEARCH
Weeks Twelve and Thirteen
o Chapters 13 - 16 in Urban Life (Gmelch, Kemper, and Zenner).
o What Is a City?: Rethinking the Urban after Hurricane Katrina (entire);
o Selected readings on “wounded cities” (Beirut, Nazareth, Port au
Prince, Sarajevo).
THANKSGIVING BREAK
Week Fourteen
Putting it all together: How do you now see and define “the city” as an
anthropologist?
Final Paper and Reflective Essay Due on Friday December 4th
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