R.A.I.D.
(Read And Initiate Discussion)

UNST 220C: Understanding Communities

Dr. Martha J. Bianco

Spring 2006

RAID No. 1
due in Mentor Session Week of 24 April 2006

General Instructions:

Next week you will be doing your first RAID in mentor session.  

We will practice a RAID in the main session of class on Tuesday, as well.  The practice RAID will not be drawn from the questions below, but will be based on the reading notes you bring to class.

Read the guidelines for doing a RAID at  http://www.marthabianco.com/Courses/Cities/RAID.html.  Be prepared to be randomly selected to lead and/or actively participate in discussion about any one of the questions during your mentor session.  

As for main session, the practice RAIDs will be led by the E-G people who are leading the current panels.  DO NOT WORRY:  this is practice.  

I find that students really like the RAIDs.

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In the "real" RAIDs (those in mentor sessions), if you are a leader, you will be graded on how prepared you were to lead the discussion, how well you succinctly presented your responses and arguments, how professionally you handled the process of facilitating group discussion, and your overall response to the question.

If you are a participant, you will be graded on how attentive and responsible you were during the leader's initial presentation, how well (extent of preparedness, ability to respond, etc.) you engaged in dialogue about the topic after the leader finished, how professionally you participated in discussion (not taking up too much time or interrupting), and your overall grasp of the subject matter.  

Each student will also be graded on the written RAID response: MLA format, content, thoughtfulness, professionalism, etc.

Please include each question (you can just copy and paste from here) or a short (paraphrased) version.  Your discussion points for each question should not be much longer than one page (per question).  Remember a Works Cited page and MLA format if you paraphrase, cite, or refer to material to substantiate your assertions.  

Though not required, it is usually best to type up your RAID as discussion points or an outline, rather than in narrative text format.

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THE QUESTIONS

I.    Having just begun our ethnography, you may be feeling unsure about what to focus on.  Review Ch. 3 ("Posing the Question") in Phillips to address the following with respect to your neighborhood cluster:

1. Why is the minority population so high in these neighborhoods? (research question)
2. The percentage of minority population is positively correlated with the percentage of residents below the poverty level, the percent who qualify for free lunches, and the percent who rent (rather than own) their homes. (hypothesis)
3. How does neighborhood design and architecture reflect residents' sense of community? (research question)
4. People who live in neighborhoods with tree-lined "walkable" sidewalks, on-street parking, houses with shallow setbacks (not too far from the sidewalk) and porches have a stronger sense of community than people who live in neighborhoods without these characteristics. (hypothesis)

1. How might your own values and biases affect what you choose to observe and how you choose to interpret any findings?
2. What sorts of questions regarding "community" seem to you to be underexamined, and how might you address some of those in your research?
3. So what?  Are you going to be looking at something that will be interesting and meaningful? (I once had a student do a report that consisted of counting trucks that crossed a bridge; with some context, that could have been interesting, but as it was -- not so much :-)

II.  Most of us have at least two different national/ethnic/racial backgrounds.  For example, I am half Italian and half French.  However, I clearly identify most strongly with my Italian side.  I know the villages in both Italy and France where my family comes from.  In France, we come from Réallon, which is in the Alsace region in Southern France.  In Italy, we come from a town called Guardia Lombardi, which is in the province of Avellino in the Campania region of Southern Italy.  

• your best guess as to the place you were adopted from
• your best guess as to the place your people, if slaves, came from (probably Western Africa)
• your best guess as to the place your ancestors first settled here in the U.S.

• Where, exactly, is your home town?

• I used http://www.multimap.com to find out where Guardia Lombardi is.
• I downloaded and installed GoogleEarth from http://earth.google.com/ to get a satellite image of the town.  This resulted in something that is just too cool to describe.  If you do this, be sure to play with the zoom and tilt devices.  (Your computer will probably need a pretty fast processor in order for this to work.)
• You can print out an image. 

• In addition (optional), if your ancestors came in through Ellis Island, try to find the ship and the manifest and the actual line that lists your ancestor.  Go to http://www.ellisisland.org/.  To do an ancestor search, you need to be a member (which is free, although for $45 you can get the "full membership"), so sign up at https://www.ellisisland.org/membership/wme_3.asp?login_targ=none.  

III.    Pick one of the following concepts we've been discussing or reading about and discuss aspects about it that you find the most interesting.

• competing theories of urbanization (Childe, Jacob, Mumford)
• Sjoberg's preindustrial-industrial classification
• walking cities versus streetcar suburbs
• Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft continuum
• Louis Wirth's idea regarding "urbanism as a way of life" -- that large size, high density, and heterogeneity -- combine in an urban setting in such a way as to have dramatic results

IV.    Check out this news story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060421/ap_on_re_us/foiled_plot.  What aspects of this story do you find the most interesting with respect to any topic related to our course (either that we've covered or that we will cover)?