Sociology 163

Tonnies:
A. Social status from ascription to achievement
B. Increasing individualism
C. Sacred communal to secular
II. How people experience the city depends on large and social
variables
A. The cosmopolites: generations of urban experiences, they have
the resources/civic behaviors
B. The singles:
C. The ethnic villages:
D. The deprived:
E. The trapped:
I. Studies on the Persistence of Kin Ties
A. Evidence that the urban family is not weak and isolated.
B. Flannagan: many families maintain fairly strong emotional ties with
their kin, spend leisure time with kin, and offer assistance.
1. Child care, care of elderly parents, financial help
2. Some urban famililes maintain close family relations and other do
not. The differences reflect things such as social class, ethnicity,
religion, region, not urban life per se.
II. Studies on Neighborhoods and Neighboring
A. Contrary to the classical view, another important source of informal
and personal social relationship is the neighborhood. At the most
casual level, this involves simple neighboring. People know each
other, provide modest mutual assistance, and may get together
socially.
Neighboring interaction based on neighborhood homogeneity.
B. J. Palen: City life does not automatically destroy close personal
relationships.
1. Persons who are neighbor are likely to be raising a family.
2. People who are likely to be home during the day; retired or caring for
children.
3. The longer people have lived in the neighborhood, the greater the
likelihood of neighborhood involvement.
4. People who are older and more settled.
Why is the U.S., one of the worlds most economically advanced and
educated democracy, so religious?

I. Religion is strong in the USA. The USA is one of the top three
countries in the world with the highest degrees of religious affiliation
and belief.
A. 86% of adults claim to believe in a divine power of some kind.
B. 60% claim that they know that God exists and have no doubt about
it.
C. 56% of Americans pray at least once a day.
D. 66% believe that a prayer has been answered; prayer for healing.
E. 62% are members of a church or place of worship.
F. 40% believe the U.S. has special protection from God.
G. 45% have unfavorable view of atheist.
H. New Age focus on spirituality has become the popular since the
1960s and has become a form of religion in the modern world.
II. Magic
Americans are comfortable with practicing rituals that might be defined
as magical, superstitious, or occult. Beliefs in astrology, hexing,
charms, witchcrafts, and UFOs are quite strong in the USA.
A. 25% report seeing ghost or spirit of the dead.
B. 13% claim to have seen or been in the presence of angels.
C. 33% have had a mystical experience. Most believe it was religiously
inspired.
D. 66% have experienced dj vu or ESP, a sense of repeating an
experience, being somewhere they have never been, or sensing things
are not immediately present.
III. Possible Explanations
A. Separation of church and state in a free-market environment.
1. America is a fertile ground for religious proselytizing
2. America is fervently religious because there are so many churches
competing for members to expand their congregation.
3. People are more likely to experience an emotional religious
convergence, as oppose to uncompetitive environment where religion
is protected by state.
4. Separation of church and state helped expand religion. Protected
religion from anticlericalism.
B. Nation of Immigrants
1. Immigrants bring their culture and religion
C. Messianic movements and periodic religious revivals in American
Society

D. Georg Simmels theory of urban culture

1. Because people in modern urban setting have developed a
screening device, they have an ability to move easily between worldssecular and sacred, scientific and spiritual, earthly and divine.

Urban Ecological Perspective

Every city has a characteristic built environment, consisting of
buildings, roads, bridges, and other structures. One of the key issues of
urban sociology is how the built environment relates to the way people
live in, and use the city.
How does the built environment get form? Once formed, how does it
relate to other features of urban life? How are groups spatially divided
in cities? How do people with different ethnicity, race, and income
levels affect and are affected by the built environment?
I. Chicago School of Urban Sociology
A. During the first half of the 20th century;
The Chicago school of urban sociology had two major theoretical
components. One was, as we discussed, the development of the urban
ecology perspective that sought to explain how urban structures and
natural areas are formed and how they change over time.
The second component was to understand the nature of social life and
human relationships in the urban setting. The focus was on urbanism
as a way of life and its consequences such as alienation, anomic,
social isolation, juvenile delinquency, crime, mental illness, suicide,
family and married life.
II. Urban Ecology Principles
A. National areas: cities are like social organisms (structures)
occupying geographic locations referred to as natural areas.
B. Land/space in any city has certain structural characteristics that
make them more efficient for one particular function in specific
locations.
C. The structural characteristics of cities come into existence through
ecological processes.
III. Ecological Processes
A. Competition (between and among groups and activities)

B. Dominance of national areas

C. Invasion, succession and new dominance of natural areas
IV. Theoretical propositions from the urban ecology perspective
A. As population and transportation grows. Urban areas become
specialized, and populations are both dispersed and concentrated.
B. As urban areas become specialized, the greater the
ecological/spatial segregation of those activities and populations.
C. As urban areas become specialized, the more efficient they become
for a particular function.
D. When ecological functions change in the urban areas, land values
change, which makes it possible for new groups and human activities
to invade older ecological areas of the city.
Ecology of Fear
1. The Broken Window Theory- James Q. Wilson and George Kelling.
A. The Safe and Clean Neighborhood Program
-People felt that having officers walking makes their neighborhood
safer.
-How can a neighborhood be safer when crime rate has not gone
down?
B. The level of public order
-Neighborhoods and public spaces in communities have particular rules
of behavior
-The fear of disorderly people and strangers
-Disreputable or unpredictable people
-Foot officers elevated the public order
C. The Philip Zimbardos Experiment
D. The Broken Window Theory: Proposition
1. At the community level, disorder and fear of crime are linked in a
developmental sequence.
2. Untended behavior leads to the breakdown of community controls,
which more likely become open to criminal and deviant invasion.
3. As untended behaviors increase community disorder, people will not
feel safe and fell less confident about regulating deviant behavior
II. The Fixing Windows Perspective: Sidewalk by Mitchel Duneier
A. New Uses of Sidewalks in American Cities
1. The de-industrialization of the American Economy
2. Race relation in America and Ecology of Fear
B. Making a living and the informal life of the sidewalk
1. The book and magazine vendor
2. The men without accounts
3. The public character