Metropolitics

An American in Marseille

Olivier Gaudin & translated by Oliver Waine — 2023-03-17T06:00:00Z

In his latest work, Marseille, Port to Port, the New York-based ethnographer William Kornblum paints a rich and vibrant sociological portrait of France's second city.
Marseille through the kaleidoscope
William Kornblum, emeritus professor at the City University of New York, is a sociologist renowned for his work in the field of urban ethnography, devoted to subjects ranging from a group of Harlem teenagers (Kornblum and Williams 1994) to, more recently, the New York subway's 7 Train, which

- Reviews / Marseille, New York, urban sociology, sociology, ethnography, urban ecology

Episodes from the Social Life of the Delhi Metro

Sneha Mandhan — 2023-01-20T06:00:00Z

What is the impact of a new metro on a large and growing city? As new metros are cropping up across Asia, Rashmi Sadana documents the changes brought to the city of Delhi by a sprawling new transportation system. She shows that the Delhi metro is both similar to other subways of the world and unique in its inscription in a distinctive cultural landscape.
Infrastructures straddle the line between large, shiny artefacts imposed on urban landscapes marking modernity, and the backdrop for scenes

- Reviews / India, Delhi, transport, public transportation, mass transit, rapid transit, metro, subway, infrastructure, ethnography, vignettes, public space

(Re)Constructing Inequality: Community Development in Public and Private

Claire Dunning — 2021-12-14T06:00:00Z

Claire Dunning reviews Jeremy R. Levine's new book, Constructing Community, an ethnographic study of community development projects in Boston.
For a book about urban poverty and redevelopment, Constructing Community recounts few protests or headline-grabbing incidents. Instead, the drama unfolds slowly over the course of a decade in poorly lit community rooms, downtown board rooms, and the backseats of cars. This is a book about the banalities of bureaucracy and governance—a fact that author

- Reviews / Boston, Massachusetts, United States, mass transit, rapid transit, transport, public transportation, community-based organizations, urban poverty, redevelopment, poverty, governance, local governance, urban governance, ethnography

Social Housing in Postcolonial Contexts

Clémence Léobal & translated by Oliver Waine — 2020-09-25T05:00:00Z

What happens when national social-housing policies developed in mainland France are transposed in overseas territories resulting from former colonies? Taking as her starting point an ethnographic study conducted among Bushinengue minorities in Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, in French Guiana, Clémence Léobal demonstrates that the administration of social housing—from the displacement of these populations to “adapted” housing in the 1980s to the occupation standards imposed in new-build dwellings—is

- From the Field / Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, French Guiana, Guyane, overseas territories, housing, public housing, social housing, ethnography

Why School Securitization Fails. Lessons from Morrill and Musheno's Navigating Conflict

Andrés Besserer Rayas — 2019-10-08T05:00:00Z

Navigating Conflict describes how pupils are able to address conflicts on their own, and how school securitization policies undermine these efforts.
“Every day when I walk into the campus, I am greeted by uneasy stares and nervous shouting reminding me to make sure I do not have keys or a belt or anything that may alert the metal detector,” a high-school student declared before the New York City Council Budget and Oversight Hearings in March of 2019 (Make the Road New York 2019). She spoke as

- Reviews / school, education, conflict, securitization, security, United States, ethnography

Masculine Sports and “Respectable” Men in Working-Class Neighborhoods

Carine Guérandel & translated by Oliver Waine — 2019-03-12T06:00:00Z

In a work rich in ethnographic material, Akim Oualhaci questions how socialization through sports contributes to the reconfiguration of masculinities in working-class neighborhoods in France and the United States.
Studies on the social construction of masculinities—a quite recent but very productive field of research—often focuses on the world of sports, considered an effective space for gender-based socialization. Akim Oualhaci's book is a continuation of this work and specifically analyzes

- Debates / sport, working classes, working-class identity, working-class neighborhoods, social class, ethnography, youth, masculinity, gender, socialization, suburbs, banlieue, ghetto, Paris region, New York, France, United States

Beneath the Surface of Chinese Cities: Abandoned Places and Contemporary Ruins

Judith Audin & translated by Oliver Waine — 2018-09-28T05:00:00Z

Urban ruins represent a marginal subject of research within the field of Chinese studies, and yet are a precious reminder of the country's rapid urban development. By approaching these abandoned spaces through urban exploration, Judith Audin makes an original contribution to the analysis of the Chinese city.
Demolition, a violent but banal process in the Chinese urban landscape of the last 40 years, has produced the most common form of contemporary ruins in China (Meyer 2008). These

- From the Field / China, demolition, ethnography, photography, medium-sized cities, ruin porn, Shanghai, urban exploration, abandoned places, ruins, Asia, Beijing

Nature's Worth: Using Human Markets to Value Ecosystems' Contributions

Anna Krol & Lisa Jean Moore — 2018-02-20T06:00:00Z

Mattijs van Maasakkers' The Creation of Markets for Ecosystem Services in the United States: The Challenge of Trading Places pulls readers into the complex relationship between environment and economy. In this multi-sited ethnography, Van Maasakkers hones in on three large-scale US conservation and restoration projects, exposing gaps in market-based approaches and the ultimate failure of the financialization of nature.
How is the value of an ecological site measured? By the numbers? The 1.35

- Reviews / environment, nature, ethnography, ecosystems, financialization, markets, ecosystem services

Snowbirds' Gift Economy in the Arizona Desert

David Frati — 2017-11-07T06:00:00Z

Each year, 200,000 retired people spend the winter in and around the small town of Quartzsite, Arizona, in the Sonoran desert. Some 50,000 of them live in informal housing: campers, tents, cars and trucks, and self-constructed cabins. In the field with the most economically marginal of these “desert snowbirds,” David Frati observes the complex gift economy that structures their social lives.
Every winter, retired snowbirds reach the small town of Quartzsite, Arizona, one of the few places in

- From the Field / camps, care, housing, alternative housing, United States, ethnography, sociabilities, poverty, assistance, informal housing, Arizona, money, resourcefulness, desert, gift economy, nomadism, retirement, snowbirds, concern for others, neighborliness

Liberty, Community and Religion: A Hispano-Moroccan Family in Andalusia

Alain Cottereau & translated by Oliver Waine — 2016-10-11T05:00:00Z

In Europe, the relationship that migrants originating from the Arab Muslim world – whether first- or second-generation – maintain with Islam is both a little-explored subject and a source of confused concern. An ethnographic study of an Andalusian family conducted by Alain Cottereau and Mokhtar Marzok sheds light on the different ways in which people relate to religion, and calls into question what is often presumed to be a binary opposition between religiousness and a return to tradition on the

- From the Field / gender, Spain, ethnography, religion, migration, citizenship, community, Islam, Muslim, Andalusia, family, identity, belonging, male–female relations, domestic life