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Researching City Life
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Researching City Life
An Urban Field Methods Text Reader

First Edition
Edited by:


April 2023 | 392 pages | SAGE Publications, Inc
Researching City Life: An Urban Field Methods Text Reader examines the city from a street level perspective and provides readers with tools to conduct research on urbanism—the everyday experiences of people in cities. Contending that culture is central to understanding urbanism, editors Tyler Schafer and Michael Ian Borer address qualitative research in cities and how it provides insights unable to be captured via quantitative methods. Carefully selected and edited readings cover participant observation, interviewing, narrative analysis, visual and sensory methods, and methods for (re)presenting the city. Each section includes an introduction from the editors, an original Reflection Essay from one of the authors included in the section, and exercises that prompt hands-on experience.
Tyler S. Schafer and Michael Ian Borer
Introduction: Researching Urban People and Places
 
Introduction: Part I: Being with Others in the City
Douglas M. Robins, Clinton R. Sanders, and Spencer E. Cahill
“Pet-Facilitated Interaction in a Public Setting.”
The Setting and the Study

 
Recruiting Candidates for Inclusion

 
Becoming a Regular

 
David A. Snow, Cherylon Robinson, and Patricia L. McCall
“‘Cooling Out’ Men in Singles Bars and Nightclubs: Observations on the Interpersonal Survival Strategies of Women in Public Places.”
Procedures

 
Women’s Protective Strategies

 
Ranita Ray
“Exchange and Intimacy in the Inner City.”
Fieldwork With Urban Youth

 
Siblings as a Source of Support

 
Exchange, Intimate Ties, and Conflict

 
Reuben A. Buford May and Mary Pattillo-McCoy
“Do You See What I See? Examining a Collaborative Ethnography.”
Comparing Notes

 
The Groveland Fieldhouse

 
Do You See What I See?

 
Lisa Jean Moore and Mary Kosut
“Among the Colony: Ethnographic Fieldwork, Urban Bees and Intra-species Mindfulness.”
Bees as Actors: Our “Other” Research Subjects

 
Beekeepers: Entrée to Bees Through Human Actors

 
Hive Checks: Meeting the Bees

 
Becoming Bee-Centered

 
Ranita Ray
“Exchange and Intimacy in the Inner City: Rethinking Kinship Ties of the Urban Poor”
Group Dynamics and Allegiance

 
Intimacy, Boundaries, and Data

 
The Process and the Article

 
 
Introduction: Part II: Talking with Others in the City
Margarethe Kusenbach
“The Go-Along as Ethnographic Research Tool.”
The Go-Along Method

 
The Thematic Potential of Go-Alongs

 
Jason Patrick De Leon and Jeffrey H. Cohen
“Object and Walking Probes in Ethnographic Interviewing.”
Material Probes

 
Object Probes

 
Walking Probes

 
What Is the Usefulness of the Material Probe?

 
Jamie Suki Chang
“The Docent Method: A Grounded Theory Approach for Researching Place and Health.”
The Docent Method

 
Docent Method Procedures in the Hitt Study

 
Phil Jones and James Evans
“Rescue Geography: Place making, Affect and Regeneration.”
Capturing Affective Connections to Place: Toward Rescue Geographies

 
Placing the Personal

 
Stefano Bloch
“Place-Based Elicitation: Interviewing Graffiti Writers at the Scene of the Crime."
Narrative Disparity, Nonrepresentational Methods, and Extradiscursity

 
The Literature on Graffiti

 
Graffiti and (Il)Legality

 
Methods

 
Eliciting Embodied Responses and “Real” Reflection

 
Margarethe Kusenbach
“On the Heels of the Go-Along”
Origins and Context

 
Reception and Current Use

 
Promise and Potential

 
 
Introduction Part III: Stories from the City
Jaber F. Gubrium
“Local Culture”
Orienting to Local Culture

 
Into the Field

 
Elijah Anderson
“Going Straight: The Story of a Young Inner-City Ex-Convict.”
Timothy A. Simpson
“Streets, Sidewalks, Stores, and Stories: Narrative and Uses of Urban Space.”
Blue Chair Music and the Maintenance of a Lifestyle Enclave

 
Blue Chair as a Narrative Space

 
Alternative to What?

 
Making Sure the Scene Is Seen: Observation and Display as Modes of Enclave Identity Work

 
Remembering the Seen

 
Leaving Blue Chair

 
Robin Patric Clair
“Narratives in the Old Neighborhood: An Ethnographic Study of an Urban Neighborhood’s Stories.”
Methodological Background

 
The Covington Tragedy of March 4, 1908

 
The Tragedy of June 12, 1980

 
A Sequestered Story Challenges the Community

 
The Narrative Package: A Conclusion

 
Richard E. Ocejo
“From Apple to Orange: Narratives of Small City Migration and Settlement Among the Urban Middle Class.”
The Case

 
Migration Narratives

 
Settlement Narratives

 
Jonathan R. Wynn
“The Hobo to Doormen: The Characters of Qualitative Analysis, Past and Present.”
Emphases in the Study of Characters

 
The Limits and Possibilities of the Character

 
Jonathan R. Wynn
“Thoughts on “The Hobo to Doormen: The Characters of Qualitative Analysis, Past and Present”
 
Introduction Part IV: Visualizing the City
Sarah Pink
“Ways of Seeing, Knowing, and Showing”
Ethnography and Ethnographic Images

 
Nikki Jones and Geoffrey Raymond
“ ‘The Camera Rolls’: Using Third-Party Video in Field Research.”
Key Questions

 
Defining Third-Party Video

 
Considering the Camera’s Influence on Interaction

 
The Problems and Potential of a Third-Party Perspective

 
Institutional Ethics and Third-Party Video

 
Michael Ian Borer
“Visualizing Gendered Sports Fandom.”
Anne M. Cronin
“Researching Urban Space, Reflecting on Advertising: A Photo Essay.”
 
Introduction Part V: Sensing the City
Kelvin E.Y. Low
“The Sensuous City: Sensory Methodologies in Urban Ethnographic Research.”
Sensory Methodologies

 
Concluding Remarks

 
Sarah Pink
“An Urban Tour: The Sensory Sociality of Ethnographic Place-Making.”
Ethnography as Place-Making

 
A Tour of Mold

 
After the “Event”

 
Ethnography Slow

 
Making Ethnographic Places

 
Elizabeth L. Sweet and Sara Ortiz Escalante
“Bringing Bodies Into Planning: Visceral Methods, Fear and Gender Violence.”
Exploring Visceral Methods of Planners

 
Shared Sensory Spatial Experiences: Bodies Appropriating Space in

 
Medellín and Barcelona

 
Walter S. Gershon
“Vibrational Affect: Sound Theory and Practice in Qualitative Research.”
Sound Theory: Resonance and Knowledge

 
Sound Method

 
Sounds Beyond Data

 
Sound/Work and Sonic Resonances

 
Miriam Simun
“My Music, My World: Using the MP3 Player to Shape Experience in London.”
Methodology

 
Analyzing Experiences

 
Implications

 
Sarah Pink
“Reflections on an Urban Tour”
 
Introduction Part VI: Representing the City
Stephanie Coontz
“Putting on a Public Face.”
Nirmal Puwar
“Social Cinema Scenes.”
Social Scenes in Cinema Studies

 
Scoping Happenings

 
Looking Back

 
The Exhibition Space

 
Johnny Saldaña
“Dramatizing Data: A Primer.”
Plotting: The Conceptual Framework of Ethnodrama

 
Participants as Characters in Ethnodrama

 
Monologues and Dialogues: Dramatizing the Data

 
A Call for Collaboration and Quality in Ethnotheatre

 
LeighAnna Hidalgo
“Augmented Fotonovelas: Creating New Media as Pedagogical and Social Justice Tools.”
Introduction

 
Conclusion

 
Michael J. Cermak
“Teaching a Hip-Hop Ecology.”
Nirmal Puwar
“Reflections on ‘Social Cinema Scenes’”

Cities often are challenging to assess due to multitudinal criteria and attributes. This book is a critical addition to the reading list for those students wanting to go beyond a general approach to research city.

Dr Quazi Zaman
Scott Sutherland School of Architecture & Built Environment , Robert Gordon University
September 26, 2024

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