Summary Two

“Student Fieldworkers in Villager and City” by Gmelch and Gmelch

                Anthropologists must face various adversities when gathering fieldwork. No matter where they venture, adversity will exist. In the article “Student Fieldworkers in Villager and City” by Gmelch and Gmelch, the various adversities are mentioned. The article differentiates between fieldwork in the city and in a village. Fieldwork is both areas are challenging, neither can be deemed easier than the other.  The area in which fieldwork is conducted has both negative and positives, but the main similarity that exists is a student’s ability to gain knowledge from interacting with others.

                The difference between fieldwork in cities and villages is blatant. The first blaring difference is home stays. The families in Barbados were working class and freed slaves. In Tasmania the people were middle classed, living in the suburbs. The differences between the families kept piling up. In Barbados, everyone in the village knew everyone else. They shared a common history and socialized with each other through work, church, and play. The people of the village seemed warm and willing to share amongst each other. However, there were draw backs to being so close knit. “Students also discovered to their dismay that they were sometimes the object of local gossip.” [Gmlech and Gmelch, 86] Students must face the blackening of their names within the village. The reputations that they try so hard to build can be tarnished within seconds. The people of small villages are nosey and do no respect boundaries.

                The negatives of fieldwork in the city seem to outweigh the negatives in the village. In the city students rarely encounter people in which they can gather research when walking around the neighborhood. While in the village, the students are not limited because there is always someone to speak with. However, it is not impossible to gain information through scheduled interviews. “Even by the end of the semester, few students know their host family’s immediate neighbors, and many of these people were probably unaware of their presence.” [Gmlech and Gmelch, 87] The one positive that can be seen through the negative is the fact that reputations are not tarnished. Many would happily work in a city where gathering information is slightly difficult, but not unattainable so they wouldn’t have to face that type of problem. ‘Both projects were well executed and produced some interesting findings.” [Gmlech and Gmelch, 89] The advantage of working in a village does not mean that students working in a city cannot produce work that is up to par.

                I believe that no matter where someone goes there will always be difficulties. Whether it be rumors or the fact that neighbors in a city ignore you. Anthropologists must work against the odds to gain information. Cities and villages have their ups and downs, but there will always be knowledge gained from the experience.

“Urbanism As a Way of Life” by Louis Wirth

In “Urbanism As a Way of Life” by Louis Wirth, the characteristics of a city is taken into consideration. What truly defines a city? What impact does a city have on the behaviors of the people? The negativity within the article is distasteful, but some accusations cannot be argued with. As a city dweller, it opened my eyes to how extremely impersonal living in a city can be. A city is a complex place, defined by many things, and affecting those that dwell in its confines.

A city cannot be defined by one aspect such as population, density, or heterogeneity. A city can be well defined, but not perfectly defined by considering all three characteristics. The size, movement, and mixture of people are what make a city a city. In the article it is considered “arbitrary” to consider an area to be a city just because one of these elements exists. A city can be considered “a small struggling town or a thriving metropolitan center.” [Wirth, 104] Every city has a different set of characteristics that affect social life.

Wirth believes that living in a city has affected our ways of communicating with each other. He considers city dwellers to be strangers sharing the same living area. The larger the amount of people living in the area, the harder it is to create relations, in Wirth’s point of view. “The contacts of the city may indeed be fact-to-face, but they are nevertheless impersonal, superficial, transitory, and segmental.” [Wirth, 108] The people of a city just don’t interact with the people that they see on a day to day basis. The people that travel on the train with them will remain strangers. Throughout the article, Wirth puts an emphasis on how impersonal it is living in a city.

When reading this article, I couldn’t disagree with a lot of things. However, not everything about the cities affect on social life is so negative. I have made friends with many different people outside of my race. However, I do not know my neighbors personally. Sometimes I see people in my building and I have no idea who they are. The city has its negatives and positives, like everything else in life.

“In Urban Danger” by Sally Engle Merry

“In Urban Danger” by Sally Engle Merry, she addresses crimes within an urban neighborhood. In the beginning she addresses Wirth’s article and in a way proves a point mentioned within his piece. “A city is a place of strangers.” [Merry. 199] This statement is only true because people make it true. By holding preconceptions, people make an urban neighborhood as dangerous or as safe as they want it. Perception of fear has a huge impact on how a person lives their life in a high crime urban neighborhood.

In Merry’s fieldwork, she made sure to question victims and criminals. That way she’d have opinions from both points of view.  The thing that stuck out was a person’s perception of danger. Who they thought was dangerous and where they thought was dangerous. Some residents feared for their lives while others walked around without fear. The Chinese residents believed that all the blacks living in the area were criminals which are the reason they lived their lives in fear. While, the blacks were able to single out who was dangerous and who wasn’t. That is the reason they felt little fear walking around the neighborhood at night. If people weren’t strangers towards one other, they would be able to live a somewhat peaceful life. It is hard because everyone holds preconceptions and they find it difficult to look past that.

This article proved to be very helpful because it helped me pick a topic for my ethnographic project. I want to focus on a well off area with a multiracial community in which most of the inhabitants believe that they are safe. I want to find out why they believe their area is so safe and if they would venture to other neighborhoods.