Pub Date : 2019-10-22DOI: 10.1108/s1047-004220190000016011
Karyn R. Lacy
Since ethnographers tend to study poor, urban black communities most often, it is not surprise that the methodological literature contains a wealth of information designed to help scholars do this kind of work. Far less is known about the challenges ethnographers face when “studying up,” that is exploring middle and upper-middle-class communities. Less is know too about the challenges of working in a suburb versus an urban community. This chapter helps to fill that void. By chronicling the challenges I faced in the field while collecting the data for Blue-Chip Black, my book about the identity options of middle and upper-middle-class suburban blacks, I show that the strategies ethnographers of the urban poor employ in their work are not necessarily transferable to studies of the upper classes. I identify a set of methodological tools appropriate for analysis of the upper classes. I then turn to the theoretical contributions of my study as a way of showing the kinds of insights that can be gleaned from a study of those near the top of the class ladder.
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Pub Date : 2019-10-22DOI: 10.1108/s1047-004220190000016003
Victoria Reyes
The Chicago School of Sociology heralded a new age: that of the rise and establishment of sociology as an academic discipline in the US. It also spurred on an intellectual tradition in ethnography that focuses on a wide array of methodological tools and empirical data with a focus on the specificity of place that continues to live on in contemporary urban sociology. Yet, its traditions have also been extensively criticized. Burawoy (2000) is one preeminent scholar, who has denounced the Chicago School as being parochial, ahistorical, and decontextualized from the national and international processes that shape cities. Instead, he calls for a move toward “global ethnography,” one that focuses on “global processes, connections, and imaginations” (Burawoy et al., 2000). Increasingly, US urban sociologists study research sites that are located outside the US and pay attention to how global actors and/or transnational connections influence US dynamics. Given this trend, what, if any lessons can global and urban sociologists take away from the Chicago School? In this chapter, I highlight three such lessons: (1) the global is central to city life; (2) rooting our work in the specificities of place helps extend and build theory; and (3) the School still provides useful conceptual and methodological tools to study the global. In doing so, I argue that scholars should recognize the plurality of approaches to global ethnography and how each approach can further our understanding of how the global shapes social life.
芝加哥社会学学派预示着一个新时代的到来:社会学在美国兴起并确立为一门学科。它也激发了民族志的一种知识传统，它关注于广泛的方法工具和经验数据，并关注于地方的特殊性，这在当代城市社会学中继续存在。然而，它的传统也受到了广泛的批评。Burawoy(2000)是一位杰出的学者，他谴责芝加哥学派是狭隘的、非历史的，并且脱离了塑造城市的国家和国际进程。相反，他呼吁转向“全球人种学”，关注“全球过程、联系和想象”(Burawoy et al.， 2000)。美国城市社会学家越来越多地研究位于美国以外的研究地点，并关注全球行动者和/或跨国联系如何影响美国的动态。考虑到这一趋势，全球和城市社会学家能从芝加哥学派中学到什么?在本章中，我强调了三个这样的教训:(1)全球是城市生活的中心;(2)将我们的工作扎根于地点的特殊性有助于扩展和构建理论;(3)该学院仍然为研究全球金融危机提供有用的概念和方法工具。在此过程中，我认为学者们应该认识到全球民族志研究方法的多元性，以及每种方法如何能够进一步理解全球如何塑造社会生活。
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