Researching City Life

An Urban Field Methods Text Reader

Tyler Schafer, Michael Ian Borer

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9781506355436
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781506355443
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

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, a Reflection Essay from one of the authors, and exercises that prompt hands-on experience.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Brief Contents
• Detailed Contents
• About the Editors
• About the Contributors
• Introduction Researching Urban People and Places
• Part I Being With Others in the City
• 1 Pet-Facilitated Interaction in a Public Setting
• 2 “Cooling Out” Men in Singles Bars and Nightclubs Observations on the Interpersonal Survival Strategies of Women in Public Places
• 3 Exchange and Intimacy in the Inner City
• 4 Do You See What I See? Examining a Collaborative Ethnography
• 5 Among the Colony Ethnographic Fieldwork, Urban Bees, and Intrapecies Mindfulness
• 6 Reflection Essay Thoughts on Exchange and Intimacy in the Inner City: Rethinking Kinship Ties of the Urban Poor
• Part II Talking With Others in the City
• 7 The Go-Along as Ethnographic Research Tool
• 8 Object and Walking Probes in Ethnographic Interviewing
• 9 The Docent Method A Grounded Theory Approach for Researching Place and Health
• 10 Rescue Geography Place Making, Affect, and Regeneration
• 11 Place-Based Elicitation Interviewing Graffiti Writers at the Scene of the Crime
• 12 Reflection Essay On the Heels of the Go-Along
• Part III Stories FROM the City
• 13 Local Culture
• 14 Going Straight The Story of a Young Inner-City Ex-Convict
• 15 Streets, Sidewalks, Stores, and Stories Narrative and Uses of Urban Space
• 16 Narratives in the Old Neighborhood An Ethnographic Study of an Urban Neighborhood’s Stories
• 17 From Apple to Orange Narratives of Small City Migration and Settlement Among the Urban Middle Class
• 18 The Hobo to Doormen The Characters of Qualitative Analysis, Past and Present
• 19 Reflection Essay Thoughts on “The Hobo to Doormen: The Characters of Qualitative Analysis, Past and Present”
• Part IV Visualizing the City
• 20 Ways of Seeing, Knowing, and Showing
• 21 “The Camera Rolls” Using Third-Party Video in Field Research
• 22 Visualizing Gendered Sports Fandom
• 23 Researching Urban Space, Reflecting on Advertising A Photo Essay
• 24 Reflection Essay Thoughts on Visualizing Gendered Sports Fandom
• Part V Sensing the City
• 25 The Sensuous City Sensory Methodologies in Urban Ethnographic Research
• 26 An Urban Tour The Sensory Sociality of Ethnographic Place-Making
• 27 Bringing Bodies Into Planning Visceral Methods, Fear, and Gender Violence
• 28 Vibrational Affect Sound Theory and Practice in Qualitative Research
• 29 My Music, My World Using the MP3 Player to Shape Experience in London
• 30 Reflection Essay Reflections on an Urban Tour
• Part VI Representing the City
• 31 Putting on a Public Face
• 32 Social Cinema Scenes
• 33 Dramatizing Data A Primer
• 34 Augmented Fotonovelas Creating New Media as Pedagogical and Social Justice Tools
• 35 Teaching a Hip-Hop Ecology
• 36 Reflection Essay Reflections on “Social Cinema Scenes”
• Index