TENTATIVE: Some readings will be cut or adjusted and some dates altered
Freshman Seminar FRSEM-UA 518, Sec 001
(Wednesdays 3:30 – 5:45)
Urban Objects: How things in the city ease our path, block the way, and make life possible
or (almost) impossible.
Prof. Molotch
Email: Harvey.molotch@nyu.edu
Meeting Place: Puck Building, 295 Lafayette (corner of Houston) 4th floor conference room,
NYU Sociology Department.
We will concentrate on very ordinary things: trash bins, stop signs, lampposts, turnstiles, fences,
and whatever other stuff we encounter in the course of public city life. We trace out where these
things come from, what caused them to take their specific forms and the way they cost or benefit
social groups in particular ways (e.g. women versus men, kids versus adults, rich versus poor).
Our interest is in public space, public life, and private benefits as revealed by the things we see,
touch, jump over, ignore, vandalize and use. All along, we will do readings about urban space, the
use and abuse of the city, and the role of physical objects in our lives. We will do first-hand
studies of people’s encounters with these artifacts in real time. Each student chooses one or more
objects for preliminary write-up(s) and then hones in on only One Thing for a final term paper.
Assignments count 90 percent; class participation counts 10 percent.
SCHEDULE
September 4: First Class Meeting
September 18: No meeting; class will be rescheduled for another time slot.
September 25: Focus Paper is due: Description and analysis of one urban object and the context
of its use, including results of Google-type search of object origin (20% of course grade).
Nov 27: Proposal for major course paper is due (20% of course grade)
Nov 27 – Dec 1, Thanksgiving Recess:.
Dec 4: Presentations of Projects in Class
Dec 13 (Special Meeting) Presentations of Projects in Class (continued)
Dec 17 Papers due (BOTH hard copy and by email).
12-20 pp plus charts, photos, graphs, etc. (50% of course grade)
Readings
1. City Things as Physical Objects:
Norman, Donald. 1988. The Design Challenge. The Design of Everyday Things. New
York: Doubleday. --P141-186
Petroski, Henry. 1994. Form Follows Failure. The Evolution of Useful Things. New York:
Random House. --Chapter 2 (p22-33)
Alexander Kira, The Bathroom. New York: Viking, 1976. (2 hr reserve) excerpts
2. The Social Nature of Things
Molotch, Harvey. 2003. Chapters 1, Goods, Bads, and the Lash-Ups in Between and
chapter 2, Chapter 3, Where Stuff Comes From. New York: Routledge.
3. City Backdrops:
Jane Jacobs, Death and Life of Great American Cities (excerpt)
http://www.ecoplan.org/carfreeday/EarthCFD/partners/writer-jacobs.htm
Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck, Suburban Nation: the rise of
sprawl and the decline of the American Dream. New York: North Point Press, 2000.
Website. http://209.31.179.62/charter
Ray Oldenburg, “The Problem of Place in America” pp. 3-19 in The Great Good Place.
New York: Marlowe, 1989.
4. Structures of Feeling:
Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown, and Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas.
Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press [1972], excerpts
Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (excerpts)
Le Corbusier, “A Contemporary City” from The City of Tomorrow and Its Planning
(1929) MIT Press 1979.
5. Monuments:
Wharton, Glenn. 2012. The Painted King: Art, Activism, and Authenticity in Hawai’i.
Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. –Excerpt
James Loewen, Lies Across America: see his "Ten Questions…”
http://www.uvm.edu/~jloewen/content.php?file=liesacrossamerica-tenquestions.html
6. Users:
Erving Goffman, “Performances” (pp. 17-76) in Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
New York: Doubleday, 1959.
Erving Goffman, Ch. 2, “Territories of the Self” from Relations in Public. New York:
Harper Colophon, 1971.
Mary Douglas Chap 2, “Secular Defilement” in Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the
Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. Routledge, 1966.
Riggins, Stephen. 1994. Fieldwork in the Living Room: An Autoethnographic Essay. In
S. H. Riggins, ed., The Socialness of Things: Essays on the Socio-Semiotics of Objects. Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter. --Pp. 101-147
7. Style:
Sackett, James R. 1990. Style and Ethnicity in Archaeology. In M. W. Conkey and C.
Hastorf, Eds. The Uses of Style in Archaeology., Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. -Pp. 32-43
Hodder, Ian. 1990. Style as Historical Quality. In M. Conkey and C. Hastorf, eds., The
Uses of Style in Archaeology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. --Pp. 44-51
Lechtman, Heather. 1977. Style in Technology: Some Early Thoughts. In H. Lechtman
and R. S. Merrill, eds., Material Culture: Style, Organization, and Dynamics of Technology. New
York: West Publishing --p3-20
8. Control:
Clifford Shearing and Philip Stenning, “From the Panopticon to Disney World”
Harvey Molotch, “Wrong Way Flights” from Against Security: How We Go Wrong at
Airports, Subways, and Other Sites of Ambiguous Danger. Princeton University Press, 2012.
Harvey Molotch, “Beneath the Subways” from Against Security: How We Go Wrong at
Airports, Subways, and Other Sites of Ambiguous Danger. Princeton University Press, 2012.
9. Toilets:
Clara Greed, Inclusive Urban Design: Public Toilets. Boston: Architectural Press, 2003
(pp. 3-132.) 2 hr reserve. excerpts
Harvey Molotch, “The Rest Room and Equal Opportunity.” In Sociological Forum Vol.
3, No. 1 (128-132), 1988.
Penner, Barbara. (2001b) “A World of Unmentionable Suffering: Women’s Public
Conveniences in Victorian London.” In Journal of Design History Vol. 14, (35-52).
Laud Humphries, “Patterns of Collective Action” (Ch. 4, pp 59-80) Tearoom Trade
10. Waste:
MacBride, Samantha. --Introduction (pp.1-22); Chapter 1: Rags and Bottles (pp. 23-47),
Recycling Reconsidered. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Paul Robbins, Annemarie Polderman and Trevor Birkenholtz “Lawns and Toxins: An
Ecology of the City” Cities. Vol. 18, no. 6, pp 369-380
11. Sex and Gender:
Herbert Muschamp, “The Secret History” New York Times, Jan. 8, 2006
Dolores Hayden, "What Would a Non-Sexist City Be Like? Speculations on Housing,
Urban Design, and Human Work" from Women and the American City, ed. Catherine Stimpson,
et al. University of Chicago Press, 1981 Originally published as a supplement to Signs, vol. 5,
1980 (U of Chicago Press).
12. Change and Stasis:
Becker, Howard S. 1995. The Power of Inertia. Qualitative Sociology 18: 301-310.
Arthur, W. Brian. 1988. Self-Reinforcing Mechanisms in Economics. In Philip Anderson,
et al., eds., The Economy as an Evolving Complex System. Redwood City, CA: Addison-Wesley.
(Google Book; go in through Bobst) --p9-32
Brand, Stewart. 1995. How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built. New
York: Penguin. excerpts