Dr. Marina
Urban Sociology
Spring 2011 Midterm Exam Part II
Pick 7 of 10 (10 points each):
1. What kind of urban dwellers live in the city? Use the ideas of Herberts Gans who identifies
five types of urban dwellers. Explain how Gans focuses on the lifestyle of the city-dweller as
much as the demographic background.
2. Use the ideas of Massey and Denton to explain racial segregation in St. Louis. Historically,
how have cities become segregated? Explain the concept of hypersegregation. How does the
creation of the black ghetto undermine the American ideology of getting ahead though hard work
and education? Explain. How are spatial barriers also barriers to social mobility?
3. Explain the difference between gemeinschaft (community) and Gesellschaft (society). Include
in your discussion the differences between natural will (wesenville) characteristic in
gemeinschaft and rational will (Kurville) characteristic in Gesellschaft. How laws and moral are
upheld within each type these two types of social life? What is the role of the state and its
potential for danger? Explain.
4. Compare the psychological conditions that exist in city and rural life. What does Simmel mean
when he speaks of the intensification of nervous stimulation that occurs in the metropolis? What
is this idea of the blasé attitude? Why and how does Simmel argue that metropolitan man reacts
with his head instead of heart developing a protective organ from the external environment? In
your discussion, explain the relationship between the money economy and the dominance of the
intellect. Also include in your discussion: faceless interactions, matter-of-factness, rationality,
qualitative and qualitative values, objective and subjective spirit and what all this might have to
do with pocket watches and clocks in Berlin.
5. Explain Wirth's concept of the city as a mosaic of social worlds composed of individuals with
as “schizoid” character constructing the urban personality. Explain the idea of segmental roles
(and segmentalization in general) and how this changes the nature of human relationships. What
does this have to do with how the individual develops a state of both freedom and anomie living
the urban life? How does individuality become threatened in the urban world? In your
discussion, explain the relationship between rationality, mass production, division of labor,
standardization, money economy, and depersonalization.
6. According to Dear in his “Los Angeles and the Chicago School: invitation to a debate”, how
was the Chicago School a modernist analytical paradigm? Explain three of the following
characteristics of the postmodern metropolis: a. Edge City; b. Privatopia; c. Cultures of
Heteropolis; d. City as Theme Park; e. Fortified City; f. Interdictory Spaces. How is the Los
Angeles School distinguishable from the Chicago School?
7. Describe Concentric Zone Model and each of its zones. Describe social disorganization theory
and its consequences. How is disorganization “normal?” Why is zone two an area of transition?
In your discussion, give an example of invasion, dominance, and succession.
8. Using Wacquant’s “Urban Outcasts: Stigma and Division in the Black American Ghetto and
the French Urban Periphery,” explain the kinds of stigma associated with living in a publicly
recognized “dumping ground” in the United States and the cites of the French urban periphery?
Describe some of the presumptions associated with living in the American Ghetto. Do American
urban ghettos have “micro-locales” where members distinguish themselves from other sections
of the community? Explain some of the social taint of living in the cite? How does this impact
life chances? Why is it difficult for black residents of the American ghetto to “consciousness
switch” and to easily shed stigma? What does Wacquant claim that cite and ghetto residents over
stress to regain dignity and reaffirm status?
9. Using Gilbert’s “Race,' Space, and Power: The Survival Strategies of Working Poor Women,”
explain some of the problems poor women face in ghetto life along with the strategies they
develop to survive? How about single women with children? Explain how the spatial entrapment
thesis affects women. Explain some of the limitations of this thesis, especially in relation to
African American women? What suggestions does the author offer? In your discussion, explain
how rootedness is both a resource and constraint. How do poor women use rootedness in the
construction of their survival strategies?
10. Using Adler and Brenner’s “Gender and Space: Lesbians and Gay Men in the City,” explain
the author's method of data collection and some of the problems faced. Explain some of the
characteristics of the lesbian neighborhood and the counter-cultural institutions used as
identifiers? What are some possible reasons that might explain why, if true, lesbians have yet to
take the steps necessary to make a distinct lesbian neighborhood? According to the authors, what
are the differences between gay men and lesbians in their relationship to urban space and
politics?