MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning Course # 11.4609
BU Metropolitan Studies Program Course # MET SO 502 Urban Sociology
Urban Sociology
Spring 2016
Class meetings: Fridays, 8:30 to 11:30 AM, MCI Norfolk.
Faculty: Justin Steil, Room 9-515, steil@mit.edu, 617-253-2017.
Teaching Assistant: Aditi Mehta, Room 9-268, aditim@mit.edu, 617-571-8261
Office hours: sign up online using BookIt.
Course Description:
This seminar introduces students to core writings in the field of urban sociology and explores the
creative dialectic—and sometimes conflict—between sociology and urban policy and design.
Topics include the changing conceptions of “community,” the effects of neighborhood
characteristics on individual outcomes, the significance of social capital and networks, the
drivers of categorical inequality, and the interaction of social structure and political power. We
examine several of the key theoretical paradigms that have constituted sociology since its
founding, assess how and why they have changed over time, and discuss the implications of
these shifts for urban research and planning practice. The course has two primary aims: (1) To
give students a more critical appreciation of the contemporary, comparative, and historical
contexts in which planning skills and sensibilities have been developed and are applied; and (2)
To offer a “sociology of knowledge” approach to the field of urban sociology.
Learning Approach and Evaluation:
The seminar will take place in the Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Norfolk with half of
the class from MIT and half of the class from MCI Norfolk. The location and composition of the
class was chosen based on the belief that bringing together students of sociology and urban
studies who are incarcerated with those who are at MIT will create a unique and valuable
environment in which to generate new knowledge about our social world and the repeated
mechanisms that contribute to persistent socio-economic inequality and other pressing social
problems. Participation in the course accordingly involves a commitment to a new learning
environment and a significant dedication of time (from 7:30 am to 12:30 pm every Friday
including travel time for those coming from MIT). Students should feel free to raise questions or
concerns about the environment at any time, but should be prepared for the time commitment
and the new context.
The seminar is centered on intensive and often Socratic discussion, as well as brief lectures,
about the assigned readings and study questions. Students will be encouraged to discuss how the
theoretical and practical concerns that have preoccupied sociologists can be applied to their
individual interests and the future of planning.
Requirements and grading are as follows:
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• In-class participation (20%). Be prepared, ask questions, make arguments.
• A brief weekly response paper of roughly 500 words each (15%). These will offer a critical
assessment of the assigned material and not mere restatement of content. Nine response papers
are expected—you will not be expected to write one on the day you are presenting or on the day
we discuss the ethnographies, and will have one week of your choice off. The responses will be
graded on a √+, √, √- scale. Students enrolled at MIT will submit this paper by 5pm every
Wednesday night on Stellar. Students enrolled at Norfolk will submit this paper at the beginning
of class.
• Weekly presentation (15%). Each student should find a partner and sign up to prepare a 10-20
minute presentation of one of the week’s materials. Each presentation should reference one
current event in the presentation that is explained by the readings.
• In-class team presentation of an ethnography (10%). Students will divide themselves into
four groups, each group will pick one of the four ethnographies listed, and half of each group
will present that ethnography while the other half will present a critique of the ethnography. A
detailed assignment will be provided closer to the date. (March 4)
• Reflection paper on the learning experience (15%). A reflection, drawing on the readings
and class notes, not to exceed 1,200 words on how, if at all, your understanding of inequality has
changed thus far through the course and how, if at all, the learning environment enhanced your
understanding of key sociological readings. (MIT: Mar. 17 & BU Met Studies: Mar. 18th).
• Term paper or research proposal, not more than 3,500 words, on a topic of individual
interest (25%). (MIT: May 3 & BU Met Studies: May 6)
COURSE MATERIALS will be made available as a reader for all students.
Week 1 (February 5) – Introduction to the course at MIT and orientation at MCI Norfolk.
Recommended:
Alexander, Michelle. 2010. The New Jim Crow. New York: The New Press. (Chapters 1-3 pp. 1139; Chapter 5, pp. 178-220) (181 pages)
Pettit, Becky and Bruce Western. 2004. Mass Imprisonment and the Life Course: Race and
Class Inequality in U.S. Incarceration. American Sociological Review. 69: 151-169. (18
pages)
Garland, David. 2004. Beyond the Culture of Control. Critical Review of International Social
and Political Philosophy 7(2):160-89. (29 pages)
Travis, Jeremy, Bruce Western, and Steve Radburn. 2014. The Growth of Incarceration in the
United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences. Washington: D.C. The National
Academies Press. (Skim only Chapters 1-6 pp. 1-201, Chapters 10-13 pp. 281-357). (277
pages)
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Week 2 (February 12) – The Sociological Imagination (153 pages)
Marx, Karl. 1867. “The Commodity,” and “The Process of Exchange.” Pp. 125-177 and 178187 in Capital, Volume 1. New York: Vintage Books. (61 pages)
Durkheim, Emile. 1883. The Division of Labour in Society. (excerpts) (9 pages).
Weber, Max. 1922. Economy and Society. (excerpts) (16 pages)
Merton, Robert K. 1949. Social Theory and Social Structure. New York: The Free Press.
(Chapter 2, On Sociological Theories of the Middle Range, pp. 39-53 (14 pages)
Mills, Charles Wright. 1959. The Sociological Imagination. (Chapter 1, pp. 3-24) (21 pages)
Abbott, Andrew Delano. 2004. Methods of Discovery: Heuristics for the Social Sciences.
Contemporary Societies. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. (pp. 20-52) (32 pages)
Recommended
Durkheim, Emile. 1883. Rules of Sociological Method. (pp. 50-84, 119-166).
Weber, Max. 1922. Economy and Society. (Basic Sociological Terms pp. 3-62)
Rius. 1976. Marx for Beginners. New York: Pantheon Books. pp 78-141.
Week 3 (February 19) Early Urban Sociology (150 pages)
DuBois, W.E.B. 1903. The Souls of Black Folk: A Social Study. (Chapters 1-2 pp. 1-40). (40
pages)
Simmel, Georg. 1903. The Metropolis and Mental Life. (10 pages)
Park, Robert. 1915. “The City: Suggestions for the Investigations of Human Behavior in the
Urban Environment.” American Journal of Sociology 20(5): 577-612. (35 pages)
Weber, Max. 1921. The City. (Chapter 1, pp. 23-46) (23 pages)
Wirth, Louis. 1938. “Urbanism as a Way of Life.” American Journal of Sociology 44(1): 1-24.
(24 pages)
Robinson, Cedric. 2000 (1983). Historiography and the Black Radical Tradition. In Cedric
Robinson, Black Marxism, pp. 212-240, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina
Press. (28)
Recommended:
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Morris, Aldon. 2015. The Scholar Denied: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Birth of Modern
Sociology. Berkeley: University of California Press. (Chapter 3, pp. 55-99) (44 pages)
Robinson, Cedric. 2000 (1983). Historiography and the Black Radical Tradition. In Cedric
Robinson, Black Marxism, pp. 185-212, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina
Press.
Week 4 (February 26) Community and How to Study It (183 pages)
Brint, Steven. 2001. “Gemeinschaft Revisited: A Critique and Reconstruction of the Community
Concept.” Sociological Theory 19(1): 1-23. (22 pages)
Wellman, Barry. 1979. “The Community Question.” American Journal of Sociology 84:1201-31.
(30 pages)
Sampson, Robert J. 2008. What “Community” Supplies. In The Community Development
Reader, eds. James DeFillippis and Susan Saegert, 163-173. New York: Routledge. (10
pages)
Fischer, Claude. 1995. “The Subcultural Theory of Urbanism: A Twentieth-Year Assessment.”
The American Journal of Sociology. 101(3): 543-577. (34 pages)
Kelley, Robin. 1997. Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America.
Boston: Beacon Press. Chapters 1 and 2 (pp15-77). (62 pages)
Kaplan, Elaine Bell. 2013. "We Live in the Shadow" Inner-City Kids Tell Their Stories through
Photographs. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. (Chapters 1-2, pp. 3-28) (25 pages)
Week 5 (March 4) The Ethnographic Tradition
Everyone: Wilson, William Julius and Anmol Chaddha. “The Role of Theory in Ethnographic
Research.” Ethnography 10(2-3): 269-284.
Choose 1 of the following 4 ethnographies to read and present to the class as a group:
Anderson, Elijah. 1999. Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner
City. New York: W.W. Norton.
(Wacquant, Loic. 2002. Scrutinizing the Street: Poverty, Morality, and the Pitfalls of
Urban Ethnography. American Journal of Sociology 107(6): 1468-1532.
Anderson, Elijah. 2002. The Ideologically Driven Critique. American Journal of
Sociology 107(6): 1433-50.)
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Klinenberg, Eric. 2003. Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press. (skip Chapter 5)
(Duneier, Mitchell. 2006. Ethnography, the Ecological Fallacy, and the 1995 Chicago
Heat Wave. American Sociological Review, 71(4): 679-688.
Klinenberg, Eric. 2006. Blaming the Victims: Hearsay, Labeling, and the Hazards of
Quick-Hit Disaster Ethnography. American Sociological Review, 71(4): 689-698.)
Pattillo, Mary. 2007. Black on the Block: The Politics of Race & Class in the City. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press. (Introduction, Chapters 2, 3, 5, 6, 7)
Small, Mario Luis. 2004. Villa Victoria: The Transformation of Social Capital in a Boston
Barrio. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Week 6 (March 11) Urban Political Economy: Cities, Industrialization, Deindustrialization
(179 pages)
O’Connor, Alice. 2001. Poverty Knowledge. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
(Introduction, pp. 3-22) (19 pages).
Katznelson, Ira. 1981. City Trenches: Urban Politics and the Patterning of Class in the United
States. Chicago: Chicago University Press. (Chapters 2-3, 8; pp. 25-72, 193-218) (72
pages)
Wilson, William Julius. 1996. When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor.
New York: Knopf. (Chapters 1-2 – pp. 3-47). (44 pages)
Dawson, Michael C. 1995. Behind the Mule: Race and Class in African-American Politics.
Princeton: Princeton University Press. (Chapters 1 and 2, pp. 1-44) (44 pages)
Recommended:
Dawson, Michael C. 2013. Blacks in and Out of the Left. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
(Chapter 4: pp. 175-212).
Reflection Paper Due
MIT: Thursday, March 17th @ 5 PM
BU Met Studies: Friday, March 18th @ 8:30 AM
Week 7 (March 18) Urban Political Economy: Elites, Political Power, and Urban
Dynamics (191 pages)
Dahl, Robert. 1961. Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City. New Haven:
Yale University Press. (Chapters 19-20, 24-25; pp. 223-238, 269-281) (27 pages)
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Stone, Clarence. 1989. Regime Politics: Governing Atlanta. Lawrence: University Press of
Kansas. (Chapters 1, 9, 11, 12, pp. 3-12, 183-199, 219-245). (51 pages)
Lukes, Steven. 2005. Power: A Radical View. London: Palgrave Macmillan. (Introduction and
Chapter 1, pp. 1-59). (59 pages)
Marwell, Nicole. 2007. Bargaining for Brooklyn: Community Organizations in the
Entrepreneurial City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Chapters 1 and 3, pp. 1328, 109-148) (54 pages)
Recommended:
Scott, James C. 1990. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven:
Yale University Press. (Chapter 1, pp. 1-16) (16 pages)
Fillingham, Lydia Alix. 1993. Foucault for Beginners. New York: Writers and Readers
Publishing.
No Class March 25
2-Page Final Project Proposal Due
MIT: Thursday, March 31st @ 5 PM
BU Met Studies: Friday, April 1st @ 8:30 AM
Week 8 (April 1) Theories of Urban Inequality (172 pages)
Harvey, David. 1973. Social Justice and the City. (Chapters 1 and 6 (excerpts), pp. 9-36, 195240). (72 pages)
Tilly, Charles. 2005. Identities, Boundaries, Social Ties. Boulder: Paradigm. (Chapters 1, 2, 3,
5, 6, pp. 3-44; 71-108). (78 pages)
Marable, Manning. 2000. How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America. Boston: South End
Press. (pp. xvii-xxxix) (22 pages)
Week 9 (April 8) Identities, Boundaries and Inequality (198 pages)
Fanon, Franz. 1964. Toward the African Revolution. New York: Grove Press. (Chapter 2, pp.
31-44) (13 pages)
Young, Iris Marion. 1990. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton
University Press. (Chapter 2, pp. 39-65) (26 pages)
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Omi, Michael and Howard Winant. 1986. Racial Formation in the United States. New York:
Routledge. (Chapter 4, pp. 53-76) (23 pages)
Lopez, Ian F. 1996. White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race. New York: NYU Press.
(Chapter 1, pp. 1-26). (25 pages)
Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 1997. “Rethinking Racism: Toward a Structural Interpretation.”
American Sociological Review 62 (3): 465–80. (15 pages)
Rumbaut, Ruben G. 2009. Pigments of Our Imagination: On the Racialization and Racial
Identities of ‘Hispanics’ and ‘Latinos’. In Jose .A Cobas, Jorge Duany and Joe R. Feagin
eds. How the U.S. Racializes Latinos: White Hegemony and Its Consequences, pp. 15-36.
Paradigm Publishers. (21 pages)
Prashad, Vijay. 2001. The Karma of Brown Folk. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
(Chapter 7 (Of Antiblack Racism, pp. 157-184)) (27 pages)
Carby, Hazel. 1997. “White Woman Listen! Black Feminism and the Boundaries of Sisterhood.”
In Houston A. Baker Jr. and Manthia Diawara eds. Black British Cultural Studies: A
Reader: 61-85. (Chapter 2, pp. 61-85) (24 pages)
Nash, Jennifer C. 2013. Practicing Love: Black Feminism, Love-Politics, and PostIntersectionality. Meridians 11(2): 1-24. (24 pages)
Recommended:
Wyrick, Deborah. 1998. Fanon for Beginners. New York: Writers and Readers Publishing.
Week 10 (April 15) Social Capital and Social Networks (153 pages)
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1986. “The Forms of Capital.” In Handbook of Theory and Research for the
Sociology of Education, edited by John Richardson, 46–58. New York: Greenwood. (12
pages)
Coleman, James S. 1988. “Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital.” American Journal
of Sociology 94 (January): 95–120. (25 pages)
Lin, Nan. 1999. “Building a Network Theory of Social Capital.” Connections 22 (1): 28–51. (23
pages)
Burt, Ronald S. 2004. “Structural Holes and Good Ideas.” American Journal of Sociology 110
(2): 349–99. (50 pages)
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Small, Mario. 2009. Unanticipated Gains: The Origins of Network Inequality in Everyday
Life. New York: Oxford University Press. (Chapters 1 and 7, pp. 3-27, 157-176). (43
pages)
Week 11 (April 22) Neighborhood Effects: Order, Disorder, and Collective Efficacy (142
pages)
Sampson, Robert. 2012. Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Chapters 1, 2, and 7; pp. 3-49, 149-178) (74
pages)
Sharkey, Patrick. 2013. Stuck in Place: Urban Neighborhoods and the End of Progress toward
Racial Equality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Chapters 1 and 3; pp. 1-23; 4790) (65 pages)
Chetty, Raj, Nathaniel Hendren, Patrick Kline, and Emmanuel Saez. 2014. Where Is the Land of
Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States.
Working Paper 19843. National Bureau of Economic Research.
http://www.nber.org/papers/w19843. (executive summary http://www.equality-ofopportunity.org/files/Geography%20Executive%20Summary%20and%20Memo%20Janu
ary%202014.pdf) (3 pages)
Pattillo, Mary, Sherrilyn Ifill, Rucker Johnson, Pat Sharkey. Why Integration? Available at:
http://furmancenter.org/research/iri/discussion1
Week 12 (April 29) Social Origins of Violence (125 pages)
Sampson, Robert J, Stephen Raudenbush, and Felton Earls. 1997. “Neighborhoods and Violent
Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy.” Science 277: 918-924. (6 pages)
Gould, Roger. 2003. Collision of Wills: How Ambiguity about Social Rank Breeds Conflict.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Chapters 1 and5, pp. 1-26, 147-166) (45)
Collins, Randall. 2009. Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory. Princeton: Princeton University
Press. (Chapter 1, pp. 1-35) (35 pages)
Goffman, Alice. 2009. On the Run: Wanted Men in a Philadelphia Ghetto. American
Sociological Review 74: 339-357. (19 pages)
Stoudt, Brett G. and Maria Elena Torre. 2014. The Morris Justice Project: Participatory Action
Research. In Sage Research Methods Cases. London: Sage. (20 pages)
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Final Project Due
MIT: Tuesday, May 3rd @ 8:30 PM
BU Met Studies: Friday, May 6th @ 8:30 AM
Week 13 (May 6) Collective Action (184 pages)
Olson, Mancur. 1965. The Logic of Collective Action. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. (pp.
9-16) (7 pages).
McAdam, Doug, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly. 2001. Dynamics of Contention. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. (Chapter 2, pp. 38-72). (34 pages)
McAdam, Doug. 1982. Political Process and the Development of the Civil Rights Movement
1930-1970. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Introduction, Chapters 3 and 6, pp.
vii-xxxviii 36-64, 117-145) (87 pages).
Gould, Roger V. 1991. “Multiple Networks and Mobilization in the Paris Commune, 1871.”
American Sociological Review 56(6): 716-729. (13 pages).
Ransby, Barbara. 2003. Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic
Vision. Chapel Hill: UNC Press. (Chapter 12, pp. 357-74) (17 pages).
Fernandez, Johanna. 2003. Community Organizing in New York City. In Jeanne F. Theoharis
and Komozi Woodward eds. Freedom North: Black Freedom Struggles Outside the
South 1940-1980: 255-277 (22 pages).
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