Social groups of New York City

general courses

Classroom

The course gives an overview of the social groups characteristic for New York City. The readings in urban sociology and ethnography, movies, popular press articles and documentaries discuss racial and ethnic groups, social classes and lifestyle groups that are crucial for understanding the city’s social history and the present. The groups are discussed in the context of social processes (sometimes historical ones) such as immigration, non-fordist industrialization, deindustrialization and changing job market in the city, cultural and socioeconomic diversity and conflict, and changing neighborhoods.

Topics (the order might be changed):

1 Introduction and overview

2 Spike Lee, 25th Hour (2002)

Then as Now — New York’s Shifting Ethnic Mosaic, NYT Jan 23, 2011 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/01/23/nyregion/20110123-nyc-ethnic-neighborhoods-map.html?_r=0

Optional: Nancy Foner, From Ellis Island to JFK. Two Great Waves of Immigration in New York City (2001), ch. Who They Are and Why They Have Come

3-4 Italians (and other white ethnics)

3 Martin Scorsese and white ethnic Catholic working class neighborhood

The City that Never Sleeps, ch. From Mean Streets to the Gangs of New York. Ethnicity and Urban Space in the Films of Martin Scorsese, pp. 77-89

Who’s That Knocking at My Door (1967)

Optional: Mean Streets (1976), Gangs of New York (2002)

Scorsese on Scorsese, ch. 2, pp. 23-28 (WTKAMD), 41-48 (MS)MS: WTKAMD

4 Robert Orsi, The Madonna of the 115th Street. Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880-1950 (2010), ch. 4 (The Domus-Centered Society) and 5 (Conflicts within the Domus), fragments

5-6 Jews

5 Woody Allen and Jewish upper middle class

Annie Hall (1977)

Richard Blake, Street Smart, ch. Woody Allen, pp. 101-114, 120-130

Optional: Manhattan (1979), Prime (2004)

6 ctnd

Brooks, Bobos in Paradise. The New Upper Class and How They Got There (2000), ch. 1 The Rise of the Educated Class

Nathan Glazer, D. Patrick Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot (1976), Introduction to the Second Edition: The Race Issue (xxiv-xxxi), A Resurgence of Ethnicity? (xxxi-xlii), The Catholics and the Jews (lvii-lxx).

Optional: Joshua Zeitz, White Ethnic New York. Jews, Catholics and the Shaping of Postwar Politics (2007)

7-8 Blacks

7 Spike Lee and socially diverse Black New York

Do the Right Thing (1989)

Jeniffer Lee, Civility in the City (2002), ch. 2 The Ghetto Merchant Yesterday and Today

Optional: ch. 7 From Civility to Conflict, Spike Lee interviews, fragments; NYM interview with SL http://nymag.com/anniversary/40th/culture/45772/

8 ctnd

Jungle Fever (1991)

Lance Freeman, Gentrification from the Ground Up (2006), ch. 1 The Evolution of Harlem and Clinton Hill, pp. 17-34

Optional: Spike Lee interviews, fragments; NYM interview with SL http://nymag.com/anniversary/40th/culture/45772/

9 Mid-term quiz

10-12 New immigrants and their children

10 Asians

Optional/presentation: Philiph Kasinitz et al., Inheriting the City. The New Second Generation Comes of Age (2008)

11 West Indians

12 Caribbean Latinos

Optional: Philiph Kasinitz et al., Inheriting the City. The New Second Generation Comes of Age (2008), ch. Forming New Families

13-14 ‘City of the rich, city of the poor’ - Socioeconomic polarization and neighborhood gentrification

13 Peter Bearman, Doormen (Fieldwork Encounters and Discoveries) (2005), ch. 1 Interpersonal Closeness and Social Distance

Optional: Gossip girl, Sex and the city

14 Gentrification – social class, ethnicity, religion

DeSena, Getrification and Inequality in Brooklyn, ch. 3, 4, 6, pp. 29-43, 59-67

Clash of the Bearded Ones, NYMagazine, 2010 http://nymag.com/realestate/neighborhoods/2010/65356/

Optional: Sharon Zukin, Naked City (2010), ch. 1 How Brooklyn Became Cool

15 conclusions

ASSIGNED READINGS:

Bearman Peter, Doormen (Fieldwork Encounters and Discoveries), Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press 2005.

Brooks David, Bobos in Paradise. The American New Upper Class and How They Got There, 2000.

Glazer Nathan and Daniel Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot. The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City, 2nd edition, Cambridge (MA), London England: The M.I.T. Press 1976.

Kasinitz Philip, John H. Mollenkopf, and Mary C. Waters (eds.), Becoming New Yorkers. Ethnographies of the New Second Generation, New York: Russell Sage Foundation Publications, 2004.

Kasinitz Philip, John H. Mollenkopf, and Mary C. Waters (eds.), Inheriting the City. The New Second Generation Comes of Age, New York: Russell Sage Foundation Publications, 2007, fragments.

Lee Jennifer, Civility in the City. Blacks, Jews and Koreans in Urban America, Cambridge (MA) and London: Harvard University Press 2002, fragments.

Masood Paula, From Mean Streets to the Gangs of New York. Ethnicity and Urban Space in the Films of Martin Scorsese[in:] Pomerance Murray, The City that Never Sleeps. New York and the Filmic Imagination, Rutgers: The State University Press, 2007.

Orsi Robert, The Madonna of the 115th Street. Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880-1950 (2010), ch. 4 (The Domus-Centered Society) and 5 (Conflicts within the Domus).

Blake Richard, Street Smart. The New York of Lumet, Allen, Scorsese and Lee, The University Press of Kentucky, 2005, fragments

Freeman Lance, There Goes the Hood. Views of Gentrification from the Ground Up, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006, ch. 1-fragments

DeSena Judith, The Getrification and Inequality in Brooklyn. New Kids on the Block, Lexington Books, 2009, fragments.

Zeitz Joshua, White Ethnic New York. Jews, Catholics and the Shaping of Postwar Politics, The University of North Carolina Press, 2007, fragments

Zukin Sharon, Naked City. The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Spaces, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2010, ch. 1

ASSIGNED MOVIES:

25th Hour

Do the Right Thing

Jungle Fever

Who's That Knocking At My Door?

Annie Hall

Students who successfully complete this course will acquire basic knowledge of the New York City social changes since the 1970s and more detailed knowledge of social classes, and racial and ethnic groups in the contemporary city and its neighborhoods.

1. Regular attendance and participation, and about 1 standard page (1800 signs) reaction paper every second week, according to schedule announced at the beginning of the course. The paper should comment on readings or social aspects of a movie and be turned in at the beginning of a class which a given reading or movie is assigned to. (25%)

2. A 60 minute quiz concerning assigned readings and movies that student has not discussed in reaction papers (20%)

3. A 15-20 minute presentation based on the assigned reading or movie. A presentation should briefly (3-5 minutes) summarize selected readings or movie, discuss them and raise questions that would trigger a discussion. (20%)

4. About 10-12 standard page essay on a New York City’s ethnic, racial, lifestyle or social group OR the city’s neighborhood and its social groups due at the last class of the course. The essay should be based on the student’s original research of the city section of the New York Times and New York Magazine, and refer extensively to assigned and recommended readings and movies. (35%)

OGUN students: regular attendance, reaction papers and a quiz OR regular attendance, reaction papers and a presentation