SO4029 Sociology of the City

1. SO4029 Sociology of the City Cities, Selfhood & ‘Imagined’ Community

2. City, Selfhood and Community Last Week – Simmel, Wirth, (Gans), Putnam– The ‘Community Lost’ Argument - Anonymity, Isolation, Privatisation, Atomization, Erosion of Strong Social Identities – but ‘Individual Freedom’ This Week – A ‘Community Transformed’ argument - The Urban Individual –, Individual Experience, Transformation of Identity, Privacy, ‘Civilization’ and New Forms of ‘Community’?

3. New Forms of Selfhood • Traditional/Rural : Ascribed - Fixed -Simple Identity • Modern/Urban – Achieved – Flexible – Complex Identity • Simmel (Multiple IDs) • Cooley’s ‘Looking Glass Self’ & Expansion of Roles, Meanings & Interactions

4. The Dominance of the Visual: Individualism & Self Presentation • Simmel • ‘The Gaze’ • Embodiment & Self Expression • Erving Goffman • Thorstein Veblen • The City as Theatre of Social Action

5. The Consuming City: Consumption & Urban Identity • Department Stores – from mid 19th C. (1838- Paris; 1848 – NY; 1867 – London) • Shopping Centre – based on medieval piazza • Late 19th C – ‘Streetcar Suburbs’ • Mid 20th onwards – The Shopping Mall • Late 20th - Sprawl, Mall & Megastore

6. The Consuming City: Consumption & Urban Identity • Exoticism • ‘Distinction’ • Distraction

7. Walter Benjamin • ‘City Sketches’: • Impermanence • Staging • Class domination & resistance • ‘Arcades Project’: • The Flâneur • Idleness • Experience • Time

8. The Transformation of Time:Night Life • ‘Night as Frontier’ (Melbin, 1987) • The ‘24 Hour Society’ • ‘Nightscapes’ (Chatterton & Hollands, 2003) • Hedonism & Play • ‘Edgework’ • Privacy • Gender & Sexuality

9. The City as a site of Civilisation & Self Control? • Communal/External Control → Internal Self Control • Norbert Elias – Internalised Control • Foucault – Discourse & Governmentality • Bourdieu - Habitus

10. The Urban ‘Imagined Community’? • Mass Society (Kornhauser, 1960) • Imagined Community (Anderson, 1983) • Self Evident - Family, Education, Work • Mass Media and consumer culture as the ‘social glue’ of contemporary urban mass society

11. Mass Media & The Urban ‘Imagined Community’? • Celebrity Lifestyles, Television & Gossip • ‘Moral Panics’ (Cohen 1980) • Urban Myths

12. Mass Media & The Urban ‘Imagined Community’? • Media Reception: • ‘Hypodermic’ & ‘Active Models’ • Urban ‘atomization’, mass culture & hegemony (Gramsci, Adorno, Horkheimer) • Cultural Imperialism? (Young) • Discourse (Foucault) • Empowerment (Fiske) & ‘Grounded Aesthetic’ (Willis)

13. New Forms of Community?: Contemporary Urban Subcultures • Fischer (1982; 1995) Re-appraisal of Wirth – the proliferation of sub-cultures • Bellah (1990) • ‘The Lifestyle Enclave’

14. Maffesoli ‘The Time of the Tribes’ (1996) • ‘The Decline of Individualism in Mass Society’ • ‘Tribus’ – ‘heterogeneous fragments of mass consumer society distinguished by shared lifestyle and tastes’ • Limited Longevity & Fixity • ‘our contemporary social life is marked by membership in a multiplicity of overlapping groups in which the roles one plays become sources of identity which, like masks, provide temporary identifications’