Ethnographic Report Summary.

The community that I have grown up in is what I choose to do my research on, simply because I want to shed light on the problems of the black community. The area I will be doing my research on specifically is two housing projects of Jamaica, Queens, that being Baisley Houses, and South Jamaica Houses. By doing research on these two communities I want to discover similarities in how the inhabitants think, dress, relate to each other and their perceptions of society. I want to uncover why it is common for people who live in developmental housing “projects” to embody certain stigmas. Those being drug and alcohol abuse, crime, teenage pregnancy and scandal, under education and poverty. I choose this community based upon the inhabitants socioeconomic status. Rapper Biggie Smalls said it best “you either slinging crack rock or got a wicked jump shot.” Based on initial observation of the housing complexes most of the residents are under privileged individuals with common beliefs and values.

“Urbanism as a way of life” Louis WIrth

Thesis: One must understand that a city is not defined by its number of inhabitants but by certain traits.

Louis Wirth wrote the essay “Urbanism as a way of Life.” It outlines how cities are defined and eludes the differences between an industrial city and a commercial one. Wirth explains that what constitutes a city is not the population but how advance the population is. “It is clear that unless density is correlated with significant social characteristics it can furnish only an arbitrary basis differentiating urban from rural communities.” A city is defined not only by population, but by culture, location and the mixture of people that inhabit the city.
Wirth goes on to explain how urbanization is a “complex of traits” that is not selectively limited to the city. A city is a place that is populated, with inhabitants of different origins. And while the inhabitants are from different cultural backgrounds living amongst one another we are forced to create a common culture amongst us. This is what becomes “urbanism.”
It is my belief that urbanism or the act of being “urban” is a culture all its own. In the essay Wirth speaks a lot about how the city is a melting pot and a heterogenous mixture. It is a belief of mine that the idea of being Chinese-American, African-American, or Italian-American is the process of being from a another country and coming to America and becoming urbanized. Urbanization in my opinion is a way of life.