December 7, 2006
Class notes: It’s an urban world, in ‘Metropolis’
Class title: Anthropology 469, “Metropolis: Anthropology of the Modern City,” taught by Chris Brown.
Description: (By the instructor, from the class Web page) “Proposing that there is more to a city than just a large number of people living in a relatively small space, we will investigate the effects of this particular way of living and the extent to which cities impose universal conditions on their inhabitants. … While there have certainly been concentrations of people living in close proximity dating back thousands of years, some argue that it is only recently that the specific social forms and organizations associated with contemporary urban centers have emerged. In fact it is now commonplace to observe that the metropolitan elite of, say, India and Japan may have more in common with each other than they do with the rural populations of their own respective nations. If globalization means anything, it isn’t a village — it’s a city.
“This course will approach the subject of ‘metropolis’ through explorations of quintessentially modern and inescapably urban themes: the emergence of anonymity and the crowd as a fact of daily life (and perhaps a condition of the very concept of ‘everyday life’); the consequent ascendancy of crime, secrecy, and the necessity of detection and reading; commoditization and reification of social relations; the novelty of boredom and the constant, desensitizing shocks of encounters in the urban street; tactics of adaptation, performance, and identity.”
The instructor’s view: Brown says that as an anthropologist he’s interested in the behaviors of different people and cultures. “Unfortunately, in the past I think anthropology has often focused too much on people viewed as isolated social groups, small-scale societies and people that used to be called ‘primitive.’ … I think it’s much more interesting to look at situations we can all recognize as very complex, and have a lot of evident connections to our own lives.”
Brown says the class has approached the material with two perspectives in mind. First, he says, “that there is something more or less universal called a city, or a metropolis.” And second, “That while it’s undoubtedly true that there are structural similarities between different modern cities, nonetheless the local situations are going to be unique.
“By the end of the class, (the students) will have learned that there are certain features that are likely to be relevant in any metropolis… but that conversely, there are perhaps surprisingly different ways of negotiating these common metropolitan elements, that add up to very different experiences for different situations.”
Unexpected experiences: Brown says he asked his students for a “walking ethnography,” where they strolled through downtown Seattle in the attentive manner of the “flaneur,” or gentleman of leisure mentioned by 19th century French poet Charles Baudelaire and written about in detail by literary and social critic Walter Benjamin.
Brown said he encouraged a multimedia response but even so, “I was frankly amazed at how students responded. I got back great descriptions, lots of interesting photographs — I had people who took a voice recorder around and recorded ambient sound.” He said one student shot a video, while another submitted a lyric poem about the city. “I was pleasantly surprised at the creativity an energy put into this assignment.”
Student view: Student Amy Womack wrote that in the course, “Students look at the way architecture, urban design, surveillance techniques and various other institutions shape and influence the individual who lives in the modern city.
“For instance,” she wrote, “we compared the social effects of the different security techniques employed in Sao Paulo, Los Angeles and Bandung. We looked at oppositional street culture in Harlem, as well as the methods used to segregate the poor in LA.
“I have enjoyed this class immensely. By critically examining the ways social institutions influence the interactions of heterogeneous groups of people in the city, we can see how those institutions either entrench or alleviate oppression. This is important because, as cities become home to the majority of the world’s population, their architects have the opportunity to construct them in ways that promote equality and peaceful interaction.
“Conversely, if proper thought is not given to these concerns, we have the potential to craft cities that entrench the alienation and marginalization of vulnerable segments of the population.”
Reading list: The instructor writes that the course draws from a mix of literature, film, classic sociological theory and criticism, and ethnography. Weekly units are organized around themes such as walking in the city; detectives and crime; model cities; and performance. City-specific ethnographies include Pierre Bourgois’ In Search of Respect (Cambridge U. P., 1995) and a special issue of the Journal Public Culture (16:3 2004) focusing on Johannesburg.
Assignments: Students complete four short discussion papers and an ethnographic description of walking in downtown Seattle.
To learn more: Brown also credits the work of Joshua Barker, who innovated such a class at the University of Toronto. More information on Barker’s class is available at http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~barkerj/ant_347/ANT_347Y.HTM. More information on Brown’s UW course is at http://staff.washington.edu/xtoph/anth469metro/metro.html.
Class Notes is a column devoted to interesting and offbeat classes at the UW. Compiled by Peter Kelley.
