Schedule

September
October
November
December

 

September 1

First day of class.

 

IMAGINING CITIES AFTER SOCIETY

September 8

Reading:

Florida, Who's Your City?

Richard Florida on America's class structure.

Residential mobility of Americans, 1947-1948 to 1998-1999, by distance.

Examples of multiple residences across different life stages.

 

SOCIETY-CENTRIC URBANISM

September 15

Reading:

David Ricardo, "On Foreign Trade." In On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. John Murray, 1821.

Robert E. Park, "The Mind of the Hobo: Reflections upon the Relation between Mentality and Locomotion." Pp. 156-160 in The City, edited by R.E. Park and E.W. Burgess. University of Chicago Press, 1925.

Robert E. Park, "Human Migration and the Marginal Man." American Journal of Sociology 33 (1928): 881-893.

Jackson Toby, "Parsons' Theory of Societal Evolution." Pp. 1-23 in The Evolution of Societies, edited by J. Toby. Prentice-Hall, 1977. [Download in two parts: part 1 and part 2]

L.S. Bourne, "Urban Systems: Concepts and Empirical Background." Pp. 11-39 in Urban Systems: Strategies for Regulation. Clarendon Press, 1975.

Neil Brenner, "Hidden Geographies and the Epistemology of State Centrism." Pp. 37-43 in New State Spaces. Oxford University Press, 2004.

A template for interpreting the 'sociologies' of urban theory.

The Chicago School perspective on "the anatomy of the city."

 

GLOBAL CITIES

September 22

Reading:

Sassen, Cities in a World Economy, chaps. 1-2, 4-5.

 

CITIES AND GLOBAL CONTRADICTIONS

September 29

Reading:

Sassen, Cities in a World Economy, chap. 6.

Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Times.

Leonard Nevarez, "Spaces of Lifestyle." Pp. 53-79 in New Money, Nice Town. Routledge, 2003.

 

INDIVIDUALIZATION

October 6

Baynard Bailey demonstrates Moodle wiki in first 10 minutes of class.

Reading:

Ulrich Beck, "Beyond Status and Class?" Pp. 91-102 in Risk Society. Sage, 1992.

Ulrich Beck and Elizabeth Beck-Gernsheim, "Losing the Traditional: Individualization and 'Precarious Freedoms'." Pp. 1-21 in Individualization. Sage, 2002.

Ulrich Beck, "The Reinvention of Politics: Towards a Theory of Reflexive Modernization." Pp. 1-55 in Reflexive Modernization, edited by U. Beck, A. Giddens and S. Lash. Stanford University Press, 1994.

Sassen, Cities in a World Economy, chap. 7.

Ulrich Beck's historical-social theory.

 

STUDENTS' CHOICE: IMMIGRATION

October 13

First collaborative memo due.

Readings:

Robert J. Sampson, "Rethinking Crime and Immigration." Contexts 7 (2008): 28-33.

Laurie Olsen, "Learning English and Learning America: Immigrants in the Center of a Storm." Theory into Practice 39 (2000): 196-202.

 

October 19-23: FALL BREAK

 

DIASPORA: THE "OVERSEAS CHINESE"

October 27

Reading:

Sassen, Cities in a World Economy, pp. 71-76.

Lawrence J.C. Ma, "Space, Place, and Transnationalism in the Chinese Diaspora." Pp. 1-49 in The Chinese Diaspora: Space, Place, Mobility, and Identity, edited by L.J.C. Ma and C. Cartier. Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.

Aihwa Ong, "The Pacific Shuttle: Family, Citizenship, and Capital Circuits." Pp. 110-136 in Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Duke University Press, 1999.

Maggi W.H. Leung, "Rethinking 'Home' in Diaspora: A Family Transnationalized? A Place of Nostalgia? A Commodity for Sale?" Pp. 210-233 in Beyond Chinatown: New Chinese Migration and the Global Expansion of China, edited by M. Thune. NIAS Press, 2006.

James Clifford, "Traveling Cultures." Pp. 96-112 in Cultural Studies, edited by L. Grossberg, C. Nelson and P. Treichler. Routledge, 1992.

Origins of Immigrants (Vancouver Technical Secondary).

David Byrne, "New York State of Mind" (September 21, 2009, The Huffington Post).

 

MOBILITIES

November 3

Reading:

Urry, Mobilities, chaps. 3-4, 8-9, 11-12.

 

STUDENTS' CHOICE: COSMOPOLITANISM

November 10

Second collaborative memo due.

Readings:

Anthony Appiah on Cosmopolitanism (Philosophy Bites podcast).

Kwame Anthony Appiah, "The Case for Contamination" (New York Times Magazine, January 1, 2006).

Robert Bellah et al. on "values."

 

RESCALING THE STATE: THE EUROPEAN UNION

November 17

1-page term paper proposal due.

Readings:

European Union, "Working for the Regions: EU Regional Policy 2007-2013."

Daniela Antonescu and Maria Ghisa-Silea, "Cities and their Place in the European Union Urban Policy." Romanian Journal for Economic Forecasting 4 (2007): 57-68.

Neil Brenner, "Globalisation as Reterritorialisation: The Re-Scaling of Urban Governance in the European Union." Urban Studies 36 (1999): 431-451.

Gerard Delanty, "The Resurgence of the City in Europe? The Spaces of European Citizenship." Pp. 79-92 in Democracy, Citizenship and the Global City, edited by E.F. Isin. Routledge, 2000.

Helga Leitner and Eric Sheppard, "'The City is Dead, Long Live the Net': Harnessing European Interurban Networks for a Neoliberal Agenda." Antipode 34 (2002): 495-518.

Recommended readings:

Bastiaan van Apeldoorn, "The Struggle over European Order: Transnational Class Agency in the Making of 'Embedded Neo-Liberalism'." Pp. 147-164 in State/Space, edited by N. Brenner, B. Jessop, M. Jones and G. Macleod. Blackwell, 2003.

Gary Marks and Doug McAdams, "Social Movements and the Changing Structure of Political Opportunity in the European Union." West European Politics 19 (1996): 249-278.

Eligible areas in the EU under the Convergence Objective and the European Competitiveness and Employment Objective.

"Economy Shows Cracks in European Union" (New York Times, June 8, 2009).

 

COSMOPOLITANISM: TEHRAN & THE 2009 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

November 24

Reading:

Jürgen Habermas, "The Public Sphere." Pp. 143-145 in Philosophy and the City, edited by S.M. Meagher. SUNY Press, 2008.

Blog posts on The Lede, New York Times (2009):

[Read these in chronological order, starting with the first post at the bottom of each page.]

John Urry, "Citizenships." Pp. 161-187 in Sociology Beyond Societies. Routledge, 2000.

Nancy Fraser, "Transnationalizing the Public Sphere: On the Legitimacy and Efficacy of Public Opinion in a Post-Westphalian World." Theory Culture & Society 24, 4 (2007): 7-30.

Ulrich Beck, "The Cosmopolitan Perspective: Sociology of the Second Age of Modernity." British Journal of Sociology 51 (2000): 79-105.

"Iran Expanding Effort to Stifle the Opposition" (New York Times, November 23, 2009).

 

STUDENTS' CHOICE: HUMAN RIGHTS

December 1

Last day of course.

Reading:

Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, "The Women's Crusade." New York Times Magazine, August 17, 2009.

Carol C. Gould, "Negotiating the Global and the Local: Situating Transnational Democracy and Human Rights." Pp. 71-89 in Democracy in a Global World: Human Rights and Political Participation in 21st Century, edited by D. Chatterjee. Rowman & Littlefield, 2008.

"Frontline: A Death in Tehran" (PBS, 2009).

 

December 4

Third collaborative memo due.

 

December 8

[No class: treated as a Thursday on the Academic Calendar.]

 

December 14

Term paper due.

 

Main Page
Description
Requirements
Texts
Moodle