A theme of this course is urban ethnography. Students are required to devote an hour per week observing social behavior in an urban environment and writing field notes describing what you have observed. Assemble a portfolio of your field notes. Field notes should address at least 7 of the following situations:

1. Observe public open space. What features encourage people to gather? What discourages them from gathering? Would you consider this a cosmopolitan canopy?

2. Find a neighborhood hangout. Would you describe the atmosphere as more Gemeinschaft or Gesellschaft. Why?

3. Simmel believed that urban people are so over-stimulated by all that is happening in the city, that people shut themselves down emotionally and close themselves off from what is happening around them. Do your observations support this idea? How?

4. Spend a day walking around a city. See if you can identify the natural areas of the city as discussed by Park.5. 5

5. Observe encounters between people of different ethnic groups in the city. What generalizations can you draw?6. 6

6. Observe several neighborhoods. Where do children play? Is it in the spaces designated for this? Can their parents keep an eye on them?7.

7. Observe illegal street activity. (Be careful.) How is it organized?

8. Observe homeless people. How do they adapt to the urban environment to survive?

9. Observe encounters between people of different social classes in the city. How would you characterize them?

10. Find a bohemian neighborhood. Describe the characteristics which make it bohemian.

. The portfolio must contain the following elements:

1. An introduction explaining why you chose the things you chose to include in your portfolio.

2. Ten pages of field notes.. These may include writings of different lengths (10 one page essays, 5 two pagers, 3 three page +1 one page etc. Do not include one long paper.) These should be done throughout the semester. They should address at least 7 of the settings described above

3. .A conclusion describing what you learned about urban sociology by doing these observations.

Rubric

Outcomes Rubric for Instructor use only