Harvey, Park, Simmel and Urban Communities

As a born and raised Manhattanite, the pieces from Simmel, Park, and Harvery all struck a familiar chord with me. What I found interesting were their similarities and differences when it came to their opinions of urban communities. Harvey was adamant in his approach to point out the capitalistic qualities of cities and their dependency on a “coalition of class forces" (pg. 229). Park favored the size of urban communities, citing it was beneficial to the inhabitants in various sorts of ways. Simmel quite overtly displayed keenness to metropolitan people, stating that their "intellectualistic quality" gave them a leg up against "that of the small town which rests more on feelings and emotional relationships" (pg. 325-6).
Personally, I agreed with much of what the authors said in terms of how urban communities function. People seem to be driven by capital, and the number of different types of people in a city tend to blur the racial and ethnic differences but push them rather into classification based on earning power. This is just a little bit of what I've observed as a New Yorker and studying sociologist.

W.E.B. du Bois

Since we are reading some du Bois for today, I thought I would point you in the direction of this blog by Amy Hillier at UPenn. Hillier is less interested in du Bois as a theorist than as an empirical sociologist, who sought to map the social structure of African Americans living in areas of Philadelphia during the latter part of the nineteenth century. Take a look!

A Different Definition for a Paradigm Shift

I thought it was very interesting the way that Abbot analyzes Kuhn's definition of a paradigm shift in this weeks reading Methods of Discovery. In chapter three, on page 89 is where I'm talking about. He gives an example of a paradigm in the 2nd paragraph, "it means tearing the old building down and building a new one with the leftovers, the anomolies, and some new materials". so not only can one build off of old studies, but the mistakes and errors can be used to build new ideas as well. This is what he describes as a paradigm shift. I know that i was very confused on what a paradigm meant, but i think that this definition and the rest of the page really helps interpret the meaning in a much easier way than the other readings have done for me.