For Tuesday, 12/4 (SOC 1102)

Prep

• Ruth Glass, ‘Introduction: Aspects of Change’, in London: Aspects of Change, ed. Centre for Urban Studies (London, 1964: MacKibbon and Kee), pp. xiii-xlii

In Class

• Loose Ends: Moses v. Jacobs
• Jane’s Block:
  • ‘Eyes on the Street’ and ‘Broken Windows’ theory
  • Jacobs’ Vision of Urbanity
  • Preservation vs. Affordable Housing?
  • Jane Jacobs, Gentrifier? (See, e.g., Benjamin Schwarz, ‘Gentrification and the City’, The Atlantic [2010])
• Review of the Midterm
• Keywords: Gentrification

For Next Time

• Tom Slater, ‘Gentrification of the City’, in Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson, eds., The New Blackwell Companion to the City (Blackwell, 2011)

For Thursday, 11/29 (SOC 1102)

We didn’t really get into Robert Caro’s profile of NYC’s master planner Robert Moses, so we’ll cover a few points there; try to review this reading before class. But your main focus should be the Jane Jacobs essay. (Reminder: Both the Caro and Jacobs essays are open for pecha kuchas tomorrow. If you want to do one, let me know ASAP!)

Less than half the class was in the room before the start of class. Let me emphasise that punctuality is a prerequisite for good class participation — be on time!

Prep

• Jane Jacobs, ‘Downtown Is for People’, Fortune Magazine (1958)
  • By the way, here’s that piece I mentioned last time on the dilemmas facing new pedestrian plazas in our fair city. It’s an interesting read in conjunction with the Jacobs essay, but it also has an obvious connection to the right to the city theme we’ve touched on with regard to Berlin’s urban land squats.
  • And here’s an old friend with an appreciation of Jacobs’ legacy
    • Saskia Sassen, ‘How Jane Jacobs Changed the Way We Look at Cities’, Guardian (4 May 2016)

In Class

• A Quick Look Around the ‘Siebensprung’ Wagenburg
• Robert Moses: a Brief History (Review of Robert Caro, ‘The City Shaper’ [1998])

• Discussion: The Urban Planning Fight of the Century
• Review of the Midterm
  • (We’ll begin with this on Tuesday if we run out of time.)

For Next Time

• TBA

For Tuesday, 12/4 (SOC 227)

Prep

• Hammond and Cheney (2016), ‘Parenting’
• Kristen Ghodsee, ‘What to Expect When You’re Expecting Exploitation: On Motherhood’, Ch. 2 of Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence (Hachette, 2018)

And in case you’re wondering why in hell anyone would think that women have better sex under socialism, here’s the Op-Ed that started it all (note: this reading is entirely optional):

• Kristen Ghodsee,  ‘Why Women Had Better Sex Under Socialism’,  New York Times (12 August 2017)

In Class

• Parenting and the Feminist Critique of Motherhood
• BREAK
• Review of the Midterm Exam

For Next Time

• Hammond and Cheney (2016), ‘Divorce’
• Writing Workshop/Review for Final

For Tuesday, 11/27 (SOC 227)

Many differences between the right and left in this country have to do with the politics of family (and thus make sociology’s empirical investigations practically relevant). For instance, here’s Bobby Jindal, the former governor of Louisiana, in a recent editorial:

Liberals have championed the sexual revolution to overturn traditional mores around ethics and marriage, and to promote freedom from restraint as the ultimate sexual—though not economic—good. Pursuing pleasure and abandoning restraint make for popular bumper stickers, song lyrics and movie plots. Yet the benefits of monogamy and fidelity, for both adults and the children they bring into the world, have been demonstrated repeatedly. Marriage and intact families are correlated with higher incomes, stronger economic growth, upward mobility, higher workforce-participation rates, decreased child poverty and lower dropout rates.

This is an example of how a traditionalist might respond to the ideas and phenomena discussed in my ‘Pride and Prejudices’ post — but where is the documentation for the correlations described by Jindal? This is an example of the kind of generic and unsubstantiated argumentation that I criticised in some of your exams.

Notice also that Jindal is conflating a number of different claims: as the philosopher Clare Chambers might point out, he references data on the positive effects of marriage and ‘intact families’ together, whereas Chambers would argue that most of those positive effects can be attributed to intact families — married or unmarried.

Notice also that he sees the positive effects of ‘marriage and intact families’ as proof of the benefits of ‘monogamy and fidelity’ — but it doesn’t necessarily follow that couples who have stayed together have been sexually exclusive, or have avoided cheating (open marriages, remember, are not sexually exclusive, but don’t necessarily involve cheating either).

Prep

• Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813), Vols. III
  • Please also check out these related audiovisual links. They are, in order, 8:04,  4:09, and 18:54 minutes long.
• Hammond & Cheney (2016), ‘Family Strengths’

In Class

• Discussion: Pride and Prejudice, Vol. III 
• Pride and Prejudices
• Review of the Midterm

For Next Time

• Hammond & Cheney (2016), ‘Parenting’
• Kristen Ghodsee, ‘What to Expect When You’re Expecting Exploitation: On Motherhood’, Ch. 2 of Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence (Hachette, 2018)

For Tuesday, 11/27 (SOC 1102)

Happy Thanksgiving! Obviously there’s no class on Thursday, so our next class is next week.

• Robert Caro, ‘The City Shaper’, The New Yorker (5 January 1998; you’ll need flash in order to view this document)

In Class

• Recap: Take-Aways from van Schipstal and Nichols, ‘Rights to the Neoliberal City’
• Review: The Community Question
• Q&A: Robert Moses

For Next Time

• Jane Jacobs, ‘Downtown Is for People’, Fortune Magazine (1958)

For Saturday, 12/1 (SOC 1102 CN)

I will fix the link to the Caro profile shortly. Sean and Samantha/Amanda (as a team) have expressed interest in doing pecha kuchas for the readings below, so we just need to sort out who will be presenting on what.

Prep

• Robert Caro, ‘The City Shaper’, The New Yorker (5 January 1998; you’ll need flash in order to view this document)
  • Pecha Kucha: Amanda & Samantha
• Jane Jacobs, ‘Downtown Is for People’, Fortune Magazine (1958)
  • Pecha Kucha: Sean Clara

In Class

• PK: Amanda & Samantha on Robert Caro
• PK: Sean Clara on Jane Jacobs
• BREAK
• Review of the Midterm

For Next Time

• Ruth Glass, ‘Introduction: Aspects of Change’, in London: Aspects of Change, ed. Centre for Urban Studies (London, 1964: MacKibbon and Kee), pp. xiii-xlii
• Andres Duany, ‘Three Cheers for Gentrification’, American Enterprise Magazine Vol. 12, Issue 3 (April/May 2001), pp. 40-42

Pride and Prejudices

Pride and Prejudice is a wonderful novel, and I agree with the director Whit Stillman that it’s much more than a simple love story. But even as a love story, we can note that there are a number of assumptions about love and marriage that it seems to take for granted, namely:

1. Marriage is sexually exclusive.
2. Marriage involves one man and one woman.
3. Marriage is the ultimate expression of love between two people, and deserves legal privileges that have accrued to it.

Below are a few audio and video clips that illustrate the ways in which people have begun to challenge or question these assumptions, or examples of ways of life that fly in the face of them. Please make sure you’ve viewed/listened to these before class; they’re the kind of thing you can mull over while washing the dishes or taking a shower.

1. Marriage should be sexually exclusive.

https://graphics8.nytimes.com/video/players/offsite/index.html?videoId=100000005087630

2. Marriage should only involve one man and one woman.

3. Marriage is the ultimate expression of love between two people, and deserves legal privileges that have accrued to it.

• Interview with Philosopher Clare Chambers

Further Reading/Notes Toward a Future Canon

Chambers, Clare. 2017.  Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-Free State. New York: Oxford University Press.

For Tuesday, 11/20 (SOC 1102)

Prep

• Inge L.M. van Schipstal and Walter J. Nichols, ‘Rights to the Neoliberal City: The Case of Urban Land Squatting in “Creative” Berlin’ (2014). We looked at what life is like in the Wagenburgen, the urban land squats that are the subject of the article, and we talked about why anyone might want to live like that in the first place; we didn’t get a chance to discuss the authors’ actual argument re. the significance of such squats, or how these squats seek to survive when urban policy is all about the ‘creative city’. So we’ll do that Tuesday (note: you can still do a pecha kucha on the article if you let me know ASAP!). Be prepared to discuss the following basic questions:
  • What is neoliberalism?
  • What is distinctive about the ‘neoliberal city’, and how does it seem to differ from the city the authors would like to inhabit?
  • What are some other keywords in this text, and how would you gloss them in your own words?

By the way, here’s the brief news doc we screened in class:

In Class

• Reminder: Pecha Kuchas
• Q&A: Urban Land Squats and ‘Creative’ Berlin

For Next Time

• Marit Rosol, ‘Public Participation in Post‐Fordist Urban Green Space Governance: The Case of Community Gardens in Berlin’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (2010). You should be able to view the full article from this link if you’re on campus (or logged in to the campus library website), but otherwise, you can find the download HERE.

For Tuesday, 11/20 (SOC 227)

Prep

• Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813), Vols. I & II

I know this is a lot of reading for some of you, but you all were supposed to have finished Vol. I last week. Do the best you can to get the overall gist of the story, even if you remain fuzzy on some of the finer details. Remember to write up a Google Doc for the Jane Austen reading exercise; I’ll create a page on Blackboard where you can submit it presently.

In Class

• HW Review: Casting Pride and Prejudice

Prep

• Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813), Vols. III

For Thursday, 11/15 (SOC 1102)

Prep

• Inge L.M. van Schipstal and Walter J. Nichols, ‘Rights to the Neoliberal City: The Case of Urban Land Squatting in “Creative” Berlin’ (2014). Be prepared to discuss the following basic questions:
  • What is neoliberalism?
  • What is distinctive about the ‘neoliberal city’, and how does it seem to differ from the city the authors would like to inhabit?
  • What are some other keywords in this text, and how would you gloss them in your own words?

In Class

• Introduction: Berliner Wagenburgen
• Q&A: Keywords
• The Right to the City

For Next Time

• Robert Caro, ‘The City Shaper’, The New Yorker (5 January 1998)
• Jane Jacobs, ‘Downtown Is for People’, Fortune Magazine (1958)
• Andrej Holm and Armin Kuhn, ‘Squatting and Urban Renewal: The Interaction of Squatter Movements and Strategies of Urban Restructuring in Berlin’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (2011)
• Marit Rosol, ‘Public Participation in Post‐Fordist Urban Green Space Governance: The Case of Community Gardens in Berlin’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (2010)

We will only read one or two from this list; I just want to wait until we’ve discussed the van Schipstal and Nichols article in class to decide which one(s) would follow best from that discussion.