Transcript OAD313 Computer Applications in Business II: Introduction

SOC3073 Sociology of
Community:
Urban Life-Styles
Saturday, July 18,
2015
© 1999-2003 by Ronald Keith
Bolender
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Devotions
At that time Joshua pronounced this solemn
oath: “Curse before the Lord is the man
who undertakes to rebuild this city,
Jericho: At the cost of his firstborn son
will he lay its foundations; at the cost of
his youngest will he set up its gates.”
Joshua 6:26 (NIV)
Only Rahab the prostitute and her family were spared from
the destruction of Jericho.
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Urban Life-Styles
References
Fischer, Claude. 1975. “Toward a Subcultural Theory of Urbanism.” American
Journal of Sociology 80:1319-1341.
Fischer, Claude. 1984. The Urban Experience. San Diego: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich.
Gans, Herbert J. 1962. The Urban Village. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
Gans, Herbert. 1972. “Urbanism and Suburbanism as Ways of Life: A Reevaluation of Definitions.” Pp. 185-186? In Urban America, edited by J.
John Palen and Karl Flaming. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Palen, J. John. 2002. The Urban World. 6th ed. New York: The McGraw-Hill
Companies. Incorporated.
Wirth, Louis. 1938. “Urbanism as a Way of Life.” American Journal of Sociology
44(10):8.
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Urban Life-Styles
Characteristics of Urban Populations
Age
Urban populations are younger than rural populations
This is an American trend--but this trend is even
stronger in Less-Developed Countries (LDCs)
City populations are younger not because of a higher
birthrate--but because of migration--the migration of
young adults
Cities have smaller proportions of children and
elderly
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Urban Life-Styles
Gender
Gender population in developed countries
Higher proportion of women--women are more
likely to leave the rural areas and migrate to the
cities in search of a career
Gender population in LDCs
Higher proportion of men--young men come to
the city to find work--leaving the women behind to
care for the farms
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Urban Life-Styles
Race, Ethnicity, and Religion
Cities are more racially, ethnically, and
religiously heterogeneous than the
countryside.
This ethnic, racial, and religious mosaic led
Louis Wirth to describe heterogeneity (along
with size and density) as one of the basic
characteristics of the city (Wirth 1938).
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Urban Life-Styles
Claude Fisher argues that urban places
actually foster heterogeneity beyond race,
ethnicity, and religion since only with urban
concentrations can smaller groups achieve a
“critical” mass and thus become active
subcultures in their own right. Urban places
thus not only tolerate diversity, they create it
(Fisher 1984).
A new phenomenon is creating and increasing
Internet
© 1999-2003 by Ronald Keith
this level of diversity--the
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Urban Life-Styles
Socioeconomic Status
The city is a place of extremes, a site of both
extreme wealth and poverty
Cities in the United States have been losing
middle-class residents for decades
In urban areas, socioeconomic-status criteria such as
income, education, and occupation tend to supplant
family, ethnicity, religion, and the other more
traditional ways of ordering people used in rural
areas and small towns.
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Urban Life-Styles
Social Psychology of Urban Life
Durkheim, Tonnies, Simmel, Weber, and
Marx all shared an implicit time frame in
which rural areas represented the past-sometimes in a glorified form (the “good
old days”)--and the city represented the
future, with its technology and division of
labor.
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Urban Life-Styles
Emile Durkheim
Mechanical Solidarity and Organic Solidarity
Ferdinand Tonnies
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft
Georg Simmel
Urban life caused overstimulation and
anonymity
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Urban Life-Styles
Max Weber
Traditional society and rational society-bureaucracy was developed out of rational
society
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Urban Life-Styles
Karl Marx
Emergence of urban-based capitalism meant
destruction of the the older agrarian-based
social order
Market-based relations replaced feudal
relationships
Industrial capitalism exploited and alienated the
urban worker
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Urban Life-Styles
“Urbanism as a Way of Life”
Simmel’s work influenced Louis Wirth’s
research in urbanism
The city creates a distinct way of life that
influences
Dress and speech
Beliefs about the social world
What is worth achieving
Career choices
Motivations for interaction with other people
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Urban Life-Styles
Components of urbanism
Size
Density
Heterogeneity
These components are independent variables that
determine urbanism, that is, urban behavior and
life-styles (dependent variables).
• The relationship between variables is linear: The larger,
denser, and more heterogeneous the city, the more
prevalent is urbanism as a way of life.
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Urban Life-Styles
Urbanism is economically successful but socially
destructive
The distinctive features of the urban mode of life
have often been described sociologically as consisting
of substitution of secondary for primary contacts, the
weakening of bonds of kinship, the declining social
significance of the family, the disappearance of the
neighborhood, and the undermining of the traditional
basis of social solidarity. All of these phenomena can
be substantially verified through objective indices
(Wirth 1938).
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Urban Life-Styles
Characteristics of the urban way of life
An extensive and complex division of labor
replacing the artisan who participated in every
phase of manufacture.
Emphasis on success, achievement, and social
mobility as morally praiseworthy. Behavior
becomes more rational, utilitarian, and goaloriented.
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Urban Life-Styles
Decline of the family (increased divorce) and
weakening bonds of kinship, with previous family
functions transferred to specialized outside
agencies (schools, health and welfare agencies,
commercial recreation).
Breakdown of primary groups and ties
(neighborhood) and substitution of large formal
secondary-group control mechanisms (police,
courts). Traditional bases of social solidarity and
organization are undermined, leading to social
disorganization.
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Urban Life-Styles
Relation to others as players of segmented
roles (bus driver, shop clerk) rather than as
whole persons; i.e., there is a high degree of
role specialization. Utilitarian rather than
affective relationships with others. Superficial
sophistication as a substitute for meaningful
relationships leading to alienation.
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Urban Life-Styles
Decline of cultural homogeneity, and an
increasing diversity of values, views, and
opinions. The emergence of subcultures
(ethnic, criminal, sexual) that are at variance
with the larger society. Greater freedom and
tolerance, but also decline in the sense of
common community.
Spatial segregation into disparate sections on
the basis of income, status, race, ethnicity,
religion, and so on.
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Urban Life-Styles
Counter Opinions of Wirth’s Urbanism
Herbert Gans questions Wirth’s diagnosis
of the city as producing anomic, goaloriented, segmented role relationships on
three grounds
Wirth tended to confuse urbanization with
general modernization of the society (since all
of society is now urban)
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Urban Life-Styles
Gans believes that there is not enough
evidence either to prove or to deny the
posited relationship among size, density,
heterogeneity, and social disorganization.
Although, there is evidence now that indicates
that urbanism increases tolerance for unpopular
ideas and interests
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Urban Life-Styles
Even if the causal relationship exists between
the urbanism variables, many city dwellers
are effectively isolated from it.
Mental health was one concern of the earlier
theorists---it appears that there is an opposite
effect
• Mental health appears to be better in urban than in rural
areas. The claim that urbanism impairs mental health is
unfounded.
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Urban Life-Styles
Compositional Theory (Herbert Gans)
There is some social disorganization in the
urban life--but the composition of the group
is very important--not all groups experience
social disorganization
More important to the individual than the
size, density, or heterogeneity of the larger
population is the nature of his or her local
community and primary groups
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(Gans 1972)
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Urban Life-Styles
Rather than living in the city per se, people
actually live in what the early Chicago school
called a “mosaic of social worlds”
Some of these local social worlds, far from
producing alienation act to protect their
members from negative outside influences
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2015
© 1999-2003 by Ronald Keith
Bolender
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Urban Life-Styles
Subcultural Theory (Claude Fischer)
Urban areas do shape social life
Urbanism does not destroy social groups, but
rather strengthens and intensifies subcultural
groups
Large cities allow subcultural groups to
emerge
The city does not produce alienation and
normlessness--rather it promotes new
subcultures © 1999-2003 by Ronald Keith
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Urban Life-Styles
The effect of the city is greatest for the
smallest groups, who would not find enough
members other than in large cities.
Example---how many collectors of pre-electric
Victrolas exist in Knox Country? How many would
exist in New York City?
(Fischer 1975)
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Urban Life-Styles
ICA: Positives of Urbanism
Step One
Spend 5 minutes completing the worksheet
Step Two
Break into groups and spend 5 minutes
sharing responses from the worksheet
Step Three
General class discussion of worksheet
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Urban Life-Styles
Diverse Life-styles
Some groups thrive in central-city locations.
Inner-city working-class ethnic groups, for
instance, lives that, far from being
disorganized, are probably more
organized and integrated than those of
other city dwellers.
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Urban Life-Styles
Ethnic Villagers (Palen, 2002)
or
“Urban Villagers” “Urban Provincials”
Herbert J. Gans
 Those living in organized inner-city neighborhoods.
 Such names are used to suggest that they are in, but
not of, the city; they are urban in their residential
patterns but not in their thought processes--”gemeinschaft” orientation.
(Gans 1962)
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Urban Life-Styles
Examples:
•
•
•
•
•
•
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Irish in South Boston
Italian in South Philadelphia
Polish in Chicago and Detroit
Hungarian in Cleveland
Cuban in Miami
Small scale examples in Houston, Texas
– Iranian
– Vietnamese
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Urban Life-Styles
It is often conjectured that ethnic urban
neighborhoods are part of the
“evolutionary” process of the “melting
pot” within the United States. Maybe that
concept will be true in the future when a
300 to 500 year span of amalgamation is
reviewed---but currently, many of those
neighborhoods are not shrinking, but
growing.
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2015
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Urban Life-Styles
Sometimes these areas are mislabeled as “slum”
because when driving by, the buildings look
deteriorated. Contrary to appearances, often the
“social fabric” of ethnic urban neighborhoods
are in very good shape---there is a “high” level
of social “integration” or “solidarity.” If the entire
neighborhood could be transplanted instantly to
a suburban area---most residents would gladly
go----but the type of “social interactions” is
more important than new housing.
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Urban Life-Styles
ICA: Mental Urban Maps
Step One
Spend 15 minutes drawing a map of your mental
image of MVNU in the form of a map
Step Two
Break into groups and spend 5 minutes sharing
“Mental Urban Maps”
Step Three
General class discussion of “Mental Urban Maps”
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© 1999-2003 by Ronald Keith
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Urban Life-Styles
Neighborhood Characteristics
Territoriality
Mental maps
• It is not unusual for “ethnic villagers” to spend most of
their lives in a city and never go into many
sections/areas of that city.
• IMPORTANT!!! Those of you who are going to be
involved in inner-city law enforcement, ministry, or
community development-------need to immediately learn
the “mental map” of the group(s) you are working with--this will allow you to learn how they “view” their world--a world within the larger world of the city.
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Urban Life-Styles
Ordered Segmentation
Each ethnic group carefully and specifically defines its
territory
Peer-Group Orientation
The primary integrative mechanism of stable
inner-city ethnic neighborhoods is the peergroup--that is, a group made up of members
of the same age and sex who are at the same
stage of the life cycle.
It usually goes beyond adolescence (Gans 1962)
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© 1999-2003 by Ronald Keith
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Urban Life-Styles
Family Norms
Family life in middle-class families is childoriented, but in settled ethnic working-class
areas it is generally adult-oriented.
Once out of infancy, children are expected to accommodate
and adjust themselves to a world run by adults.
The child is not the center of the family as in many middleclass and upper-middle class families, where everything is
adjusted to avoid conflict with the child’s needs, schedule,
and general “development.”
The role of children is to stay out of the way and behave.
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Urban Life-Styles
Husband and wife are not expected to be as
close or to communicate as extensively as in
the middle-class family model.
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Urban Life-Styles
Housing
Housing often does not have the same meaning in
established ethnic working-class neighborhoods that
it has in suburban middle-class areas.
Middle-class
• How one decorates one’s home is viewed as an
extension of one’s personality. Materialism is openly
displayed.
Ethnic working-class
• Homes are comfortable, not status symbols--outside not
in the best repair---clean and orderly inside. Materialism
is intentionally not displayed.
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Urban Life-Styles
Imagery and Vulnerability
Ethnic working-class people do not feel connected
nor trust the “urban institutions.”
Similar to small-town dweller’s feelings about
large urban institutions
IMPORATANT!!! Except in cases where a powerful
community-wide ethnic church exists, there is no
large-scale organization that has the power both to
organize and to speak for the neighborhood in its
dealings with the larger city.
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