Paper City: Examining Urban Bureaucracies Ethnographically

Catalog description

In this advanced humanities course students will acquire a geographical foundation of the mundane public policies established by the urban bureaucracies as responsible for giving material and symbolic form to the power of the modern state. There has been an influx of digital platforms, such as ArcGIS in the realm of city management, which are set to alter the vulnerabilities among marginalized populations governed by the state. Through a combination of qualitative and quantitative techniques, we will interrogate the ways in which technologies of government have influenced urban policy making in metropolitan regions of the world. The final projects of this class will require students to build on ethnographic engagement with “fields” of their choosing, and use a visualization technology of their choosing to begin to rethink the neoliberal city. Prerequisite: At least one courses in HUMN-SHU, SOCS-SHU, or HIST-SHU Fulfillment: Humanities Advanced Interdisciplinary course or other Advanced course; Social Science Focus Urban studies/Anthropology 300 level course.