Urban Anthropology/Latin American City
ANTH 529/LATAM 545
Spring 2015
Dr. Ramona Pérez
AL 377J
perez@mail.sdsu.edu
594-1155
Office Hours: Thursday 10:00 to 12:00 and Wednesday 3:00 to 4:00
Required Texts:
Low, Setha M.1999. Theorizing the City: The New Urban
Anthropology Reader.
Herzog, Lawrence A. 2014. Global Suburbs: Urban Sprawl from
the Rio Grande to Rio de Janeiro.
Select One Book from Each Sub-category within the larger Topical Category (Social
Relations, Economics and the City, Urban Planning and Architecture). This will be
the book that you will read, create a summary that you post on Blackboard, and use
as your case study for our discussion on the topic. You will pick a total of 7 (the
Contested City and the Religious City will be combined so select one from either
category but not both).
Social Relations:
The Divided City:
Bourgois, Philippe and Jeffrey Schonberg. 2009. Righteous
Dopefiend (San Francisco)
Higgins, Michael. 2000. Streets, Bedrooms and Patios:
Ethnographic Portraits of the Urban Poor, Transvestites,
Discapacitados, and other Popular Cultures (Oaxaca).
Sampson, Robert J. 2012. Great American City: Chicago and the
Enduring Neighborhood Effect.
Perlman, Janice. 2010. Favela: Four Decades of Living on the
Edge in Rio de Janeiro.
Roy, Ananya. City Requiem, Calcutta: Gender and the Politics of
Poverty.
Brubaker, Rogers, et al. 2008. Nationalist Politics and Everyday
Ethnicity in a Transylvania Town.
The Contested City: Hansen, Thomas Blom. 2001. Wages of Violence: Naming and
Identity in Postcolonial Bombay.
Hansen, Karen Tranberg, Walter Little and Lynne Milgram, eds.
2013. Street Economies in the Urban Global South.
Goldstein, Daniel M. 2004. Spectacular City: Violence and
Performance in Urban Bolivia.
Shao, Qin. 2013. Shanghai Gone: Domicide and Defiance in a
Chinese Megacity.
Bayat, Asef. 1997. Street Politics: Poor People’s Movements in
Iran.
The Religious City:
Gaffney, Christopher Thomas. 2008. Temples of the Earthbound
Gods: Stadiums in the Cultural Landscapes of Rio de Janeiro and
Buenos Aires.
Norget, Kristin. 2006. Days of Death, Days of Life: Ritual in the
Popular Culture of Oaxaca.
Olupona, Jacob. 2011. City of 201 Gods: llé-lfè in Time, Space,
and the Imagination.
Economics and the City:
Immigration City:
Constable, Nicole. 2014. Born out of Place: Migrant Mothers and
the Politics of International Labor (Hong Kong).
Fixico, Donald L. 2000. The Urban Indian Experience in America.
Sanjek, Roger 2000 The Future of Us All: Race and Neighborhood
in New York City.
Saunders, Doug. 2011. Arrival City: How the Largest Migration in
History is Reshaping our World.
Whitehouse, Bruce. 2012. Migrants and Strangers in an African
City: Exile, Dignity and Belonging.
Gardner, Andrew M. 2010. City of Strangers: Gulf Migration and
the Indian Community in Bahrain.
The Global City:
Zhang, Li. 2001. Strangers in the City: Reconfigurations of Space,
Power, and Social Networks Within China’s Floating Population.
Wilson, Ara. 2004. The Intimate Economies of Bangkok: Tomboys,
Tycoons, and Avon Ladies in the Global City.
Dawson, Ashley and Brent Hayes Edwards, eds. 2005. Global
Cities of the South.
Kanna, Ahmed. 20 Dubai, the City as Corporation.
Weiss, Brad. 2011. Sweet Dreams and Hip Hop Barbershops:
Global Fantasy in Urban Tanzania.
Urban Planning and Architecture:
The Postmodern City: Davis, Mike. 2000. Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the US
Big City.
Long, Joshua. 2010. Weird City: Sense of Place and Creative
Resistance in Austin, Texas.
Del Rio, Vicente and William Simbieda, eds. 2009. Contemporary
Urbanism in Brazil: Beyond Brasília.
Murray, Martin J. 2008. Taming the Disorderly City: The Spatial
Landscape of Johannesburg after Apartheid.
Friedman, John. 2005. China’s Urban Transition.
Gandolfo, Daniella. 2009. The City at Its Limits: Taboo,
Transgression, and Urban Renewal in Lima.
The Fortress City:
Caldeira, Theresa P.R. 2001. City of Walls: Crime, Segregation
and Citizenship in São Paolo.
Sub-Urbia:
Neuwirth, Rober 2004. Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New
Urban World.
O’Neill, Kevin and Kedron Thomas, eds. 2011. Securing the City:
Neoliberalism, Space, and Insecurity in Postwar Guatemala.
Singer, Simon I. 2014. America’s Safest City: Delinquency and
Modernity in Suburbia.
Low, Setha. 2003. Behind the Gates: Life, Security, and the
Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America.
Zhang, Li. 2011. In Search of Paradise: Middle-class Living in a
Chinese Metropolis.
Goals and Objectives: The primary goal of this course is to provide you with a
foundation for understanding the histories and theories of urbanization using
anthropology as our primary perspective. The course will move through theoretical
discussions of urban life, allowing you to develop a platform for your own interpretations
of the ethnographies and analyses that follow. Issues such as rural to urban migrations,
re-creation of community within urban centers, loss of personal relationships and
invention of alternative social networks, modified identities, globalized labor, segregation
and community borders, architecture and symbolic structures, and other such
phenomenon will form the basis of our explorations. We will use Low’s reader,
Theorizing the City, as a framework for exploring a series of ethnographic works on
urban life. We will do this by following the three major themes of anthropological
investigation set up by Low: Social Relations, Economic Forces, and Urban Planning and
Architecture. You will be offered the opportunity to select readings from within each area
to discuss in class. This structure leads to the second goal of the course; aiding you in the
development of your skills as academics and scholars. This will be accomplished
through exercises that will require you to flesh out the theoretical paradigms of the
ethnographers, extrapolate methodological frameworks where they are not explicit,
summarize the intended arguments of the ethnographers or researchers, and lead
discussions, hold debates, and defend your opinions with your colleagues.
Grading: Grading will be based on summaries of your readings and a final project. You
will write weekly summaries for the shared readings of Low and Herzog and more
extensive summaries that frame your chosen text from the lists above. These summaries
should be written in a manner that helps you facilitate discussion. You will also have
brief worksheet summaries for the two films we will watch together. You will also have a
final project focused on the San Diego/Tijuana area.
The entire class will read two assigned texts, as noted above, Low and Herzog. I will
facilitate these discussions. Your weekly summaries on Low and Herzog should be
overviews of the readings that allow you to engage in discussion, ask questions that help
clarify the material, and summarize the key issues or points about that particular topic.
These notes are for you so I have no particular structure in mind; however, I will use
these to verify that you have done the readings and to determine the degree to which you
understand the material. You will hand these in at the end of each class period. Feel free
to make notes as we hold discussion on your weekly summaries; this allows me to see
where your questions may have been answered in class or where you might have
additional ones that result from our conversations. They are worth ten points each (5 @
10 = 50 points). I will provide you a worksheet that has some questions for you to think
about as you watch the films. You should complete these and hand them in before leaving
class. Feel free to include our discussions as part of your responses.
Each class member will also read seven additional texts that are chosen from the
categories listed above (7 @ 10 = 70 points). Because not everyone will be reading the
same texts, you will be writing a summary of the texts you selected and will post them on
Blackboard for your colleagues and me. In this way, we can all be prepared to discuss the
relevance and argument of each of these texts as we debate the larger issues they frame
within the theoretical paradigms outlined by Low. Included in these summaries should be
three key points you would like to discuss in class about your text and its relationship to
the larger topic. The weekly summaries are worth 10 points each. I reserve the right to
deduct points from your ten point score if you fail to adequately participate, defend, or
make explicit your opinions based on your written work. I will be comparing your
discussion of the key points to your written reviews in order to assure that you are fully
participating. This is fair for two reasons: one, it assures me that you understood what
you wrote and did not simply summarize a cursory reading and the outside reviews of
others; and two, it follows up on the objectives of the course in aiding you in developing
your skills in debate and discussion. The intent of the exercise is to get you thinking and
analyzing on your own while employing the various paradigms anthropologists use when
looking at the social outcomes of urbanized space.
There is no final exam per se. In order to demonstrate your ability to approach research in
urban spaces and among urban people, I would like you to select one of the three
overarching themes (social relations, economic forces, or urban planning and
architecture) and address an issue in the San Diego/Tijuana area as a proposed research
question. Treat this as a research proposal and be sure to have an explicit research
question, short literature review and discussion of existing work on the topic, and then the
methodology you would employ to address the research question. This should be
approximately five pages for undergraduate students and ten pages for graduate students,
excluding bibliography. The project is due May 7th and is worth 60 points. If you would
like me to review a preliminary draft, you must have the draft to me no later than 3/30.
Send it to me electronically so that I may edit onto your draft and email it back to you
over spring break.
Style Guides and other resources are available on the Department of Anthropology
website at: http://anthropology.sdsu.edu/resources.html
Course Outline: This outline serves as a guide for you and me during this class. I
reserve the right to modify it to suit our needs and will provide appropriate advance
notice if any changes are made.
Week One, 1/22:
Week Two, 1/29:
Week Three, 2/5:
Film: Roger and Me (DVD 1933). Worksheet due at end of class.
Low, pp. 1-107. Summary must be posted by 1/28.
Divided City. Summary must be posted by 2/4.
Week Four, 2/12:
Week Five, 2/19:
Week Six, 2/26:
Week Seven, 3/5:
Week Eight, 3/12:
Week Nine, 3/19:
Week Ten, 3/26:
Low, pp. 111-165. Summary must be posted by 2/11.
Contested or Religious City. Summary must be posted by 2/18.
Low, pp. 169-314. Summary must be posted by 2/25.
Immigration City. Summary must be posted by 3/4.
Low, pp. 317-399. Summary must be posted by 3/11.
Global City. Summary must be posted by 3/18.
Born into Brothels (DVD 1792 or 4991). Worksheet due at end of
class.
Week Eleven, 4/2:
Spring break
Week Twelve, 4/9: Postmodern City. Summary must be posted by 4/8.
Week Thirteen, 4/16: Fortress City. Summary must be posted by 4/15.
Week Fourteen, 4/23: Herzog, pp. 1-241. Summary must be posted by 4/22.
Week Fifteen, 4/30: SubUrbia. Summary must be posted by 4/29.
Week Sixteen, 5/7: Project due and last day to turn in any late work.
Attendance:
Your participation in class discussions is imperative to your grade. Failure to attend class
will result in a failing grade on your discussion points. If you miss class on the day of
your presentation you will receive a zero. Always try and notify me ahead of time if you
are going to miss any class and make sure you email me your assignments.
Class Etiquette:
First and foremost, each student will respect other students (as well as the instructor) at
all times. As a discipline, anthropology challenges each of us to rethink values and ideas
that we have held as truths. As such, disagreements, questions, and deep conversation
tend to occur. You will not agree with everything that transpires in the class but you will
respect the rights of others to have these opinions, ideas, and the opportunity to express
them. Part of this respect is making sure your phone does not go off in class and that you
do not use it during our time together. Should an emergency occur, you will excuse
yourself and go outside. If you must leave, you need to notify me first.
Plagiarism:
I follow University policy on plagiarism: make sure you are familiar with it because I
will fail you if you plagiarize or cheat. For more information see Student Conduct on
page 477 of the 2014-2015 General Catalog.
Additional Resources:
If you are a student with a disability and believe you will need accommodations for this
class, it is your responsibility to contact Student Disability Services at (619) 5946473. To avoid any delay in the receipt of your accommodations, you should contact
Student Disability Services as soon as possible. Please note that accommodations are not
retroactive, and that I cannot provide accommodations based upon disability until I have
received an accommodation letter from Student Disability Services. Your cooperation is
appreciated.