SECRET No. 1

Preliminaries:

As with all assignments, please read through the following material.

The actual SECRET questions are at the bottom, in the yellow-highlighted area.

Basics:

First read through the assignment description carefully at http://www.marthabianco.com/Courses/Cities/Simple%20Layout11.htm.
Note that the assignment description includes a Suggested Writing Schedule, at http://www.marthabianco.com/Courses/Cities/Simple%20Layout11.htm#schedule
The SECRET questions are designed to address the UNST goals of critical thinking and inquiry, communication (writing and, if relevant, quantitative literacy), social diversity, and ethics. In most venues of "real life," one does not have unlimited time in which to make a case or present an argument. You need to address the SECRET question and the UNST goals in a manner that is succinct, deliberative, and credible. This is why you have a three-page limit. Through careful paper planning, organizational techniques, and attention to writing form and rhetorical devices, you should be able to complete the paper in three pages or less. You will not, however, be able to complete the paper in three days or less. It's impossible. Don't risk it. Start now.
It is fine to use Wikipedia and the Internet to get started with research, but I do not accept Wikipedia, online dictionaries, or similar sources as "scholarly resources." You should use Google Scholar and to obtain articles online from the PSU VIKAT Library. I will provide a brief brush-up lesson on this process in the next class session.
Answer just one question.
You must:

identify the SECRET question you are doing by including the title key words in your own title.
use a separate cover page (which would be an unnumbered Page 1) or put your title-page information on the first page of the text (in other words, a cover page is not required, but the title information is, either as a separate page or on the first page of your text; generally people use a cover page to allow them more room for the text itself)
have a Works Cited page if you referred to, quoted from, or used information from any source in your paper. Remember your first exercises about plagiarism. If something is not you own original thought, it belongs to someone else, even if you change the words. You need to provide attribution (a citation) and therefore a Works Cited page. Do not put a source in your Works Cited page if you didn't reference it in your text.
number all pages, except the cover page if it is separate, and staple them together; you may print on both sides of the page
not exceed the page limit (three pages maximum of text); this does not include a cover page and Works Cited -- they are extra. You do not need to write three pages; you may write fewer. Three is the maximum. I stop grading at the end of the third page of text.
staple your SECRET and put it in a folder and turn it in to the mentor on the due date at the beginning of class
contact me if you need help: I need help!

Choose one of the SECRET topics below to write about.

1. Title key words: Home Town Travels

For the first RAID, you did an exercise to explore your national and ethnic roots, as you attempted to identify your home town and then reported about the experience. For this SECRET, do the following exercise.

Looking at the area of and around your home town today, describe it in terms of urban density (for instance, I looked at the village in China where my daughter comes from and compared that with Guardia Lombardi -- whoa! major difference!) and environmental/natural resource conditions (my daughter's village is located near water, while Guardia Lombardi is in a forested mountain region and Reallon, France, is in the Alpes).

Research, to the best of your ability, the history of the city/town/village. For example, using Wikipedia, I typed in Guardia Lombardi, then went to Province of Avellino, then City of Avellino. There, I saw a section on History. Wikipedia -- by no means the final expert in anything -- suggests that Avellino was "probably a Samnite centre." The Samnites, according to Wikipedia, were a group of Sabellic tribes. So, I clicked on Sabellic, which is a branch of the Italic language. In Wikipedia's Sabellic entry, there is discussion of the archeological Appenine culture (inhumation), which sounded interesting, so I clicked on that. This, unfortunately, leads to a "stub," which means that no one has written an article on this for Wikipedia yet (Hmm. Maybe something for me to do later :-). I do see, though, that I can click on Bronze Age, and that leads me to a discussion of Aegean and Mediterranean Bronze Age civilization (which is the same as Neolithic -- the period in which the transition from nomadic to settled lifestyles occurred), and through further clicking, I end up looking at other links having to do with ancient Roman history.

Remember: Wikipedia is a good place to start, but do not use it as a major source to cite; I really don't even want to see it in your Works Cited page. It is just a reference (like a dictionary); it is not a scholarly resource.

Make up a likely-case story (a narrative) about the agricultural and urban revolutions (according to the Childe thesis) for your city/town/village as far back as you can go. My narrative would probably begin with the the Sabellic tribes during the Bronze Age and go on up through the period of the first and second Samnite Wars (344-340 BC). Call this Historical Period A.

Using Tönnies's Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft continuum, and drawing on pp. 132-133 from Phillips, compare the spatial-geographic, economic, sociocultural, and political characteristics of your home town during Historical Period A and the present day. In your discussion, be sure to touch on key concepts covered in Chs. 4 and 5 of Phillips.

Remember to do some additional research (a good place to start is Google Scholar; once you find an article there, you can access it from the PSU library online -- ask me how if you need help).

You also need to work from a thesis, which is unlikely to emerge until you do the research.

For example, I might find, after doing research, that Tönnies's Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft continuum does not really apply very well to my home town of Guardia Lombardi, because that location has remained a village. Even though it has modern-day technology and economic systems, the huge gap that Tönnies seems to postulate just isn't there. Why? I might argue that the reason for that Guardia Lombardi has retained many Gemeinschaft characteristics is because its population, density, and heterogeneity never really changed (see Louis Wirth's Urbanism as a Way of Life).

I need help!

2. Title key words: Germantown Avenue

As Anderson takes us along the walk down Germantown Avenue, we may feel like we are traversing yet another type of continuum -- this one ranging from "decent" at one end to "street" on the other. I think that one reason that scholars tend to reject Tönnies's Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft continuum is because it does not appear to be relevant to or explain differences in the experience of community and the city even along this one avenue. But is this entirely true? Do you see Gemeinschaft existing in some form (different forms?) along Germantown Avenue? Do you see elements of Gesellschaft existing more dominantly in some sections of Germantown than others?

I also think that Louis Wirth's Urbanism as a Way of Life is a very relevant theory when it comes to explaining alienation in the industrial and postindustrial era. Wirth attributes alienation and antisocial shifts in emotional, moral, and even political responses to an almost lethal combination of three variables: large population, high density, and heterogeneity (all by-products of the Industrial Revolution). Wirth argues that when these variables converge, "[h]uman interaction becomes 'impersonal, superficial, transitory, and segmental'" (Phillips 127). He also argues that when the economy becomes based on monetary transactions, everything begins to revolve around money (which is a representation of value, not the actual value itself). This is also a product of the Industrial Revolution. Wirth refers to the centrality of money as the "pecuniary nexus." We can also think of the pecuniary nexus as a theoretical point at which money and power converge.

How do you see these concepts (alienation, antisocial nonconformity, superficiality, transitional and segmental relationships, "pecuniary nexus" of money and power, etc.) manifested along Germantown Avenue? In other words, assuming Wirth's theory still has some relevance (and if you believe it does not, then you should make a case for why it does not), how do you see it in action along Germantown Avenue?

I need help!

3. Title key words: Urban Theory and the Decline of "Community"

Ferdinand Tönnies and Louis Wirth were not the last urbanists to consider the loss of some sort of "traditional" community as a result of the Industrial Revolution. As I've noted, some scholars question the continued relevancy of their theories, while others insist that the underlying essential elements still help explain changes in how people express and experience community.

In recent years, Robert Putnam (a political scientist and professor) has also offered up explanations regarding shifts in how we experience and express community in the postindustrial/technological era. His most important work, first published as the article "Bowling Alone" was very influential -- but some scholars have criticized his theories regarding shifts in community and civic engagement in modern society.

Consider the arguments about the "decline" or "shift" in community and civic engagement, ranging from Tönnies (and any other theorists of interest to you in Ch. 5 of Phillips) to Putnam, and discuss the extent to which you think they are mostly right or mostly wrong with respect to modern urban life. It is important here not to simply draw on your own observations and experiences, but to bring in literature from other sources. You should begin with Reading Nos. 5-10 in the Online Readings for Module I, as well as Phillips.

I need help!

4. Title key words: Ethnography, Community, and the "Urban Village"

For our ethnography project, I have purposely selected some neighborhood clusters that have higher-than-average percentages of racial minorities, Spanish-speaking households, or recent immigrants (which can usually be identified by researching language spoken at home). On the other hand, some of the neighborhood clusters we are looking at are marked by having higher Caucasian percentages and higher-than-average incomes.

Herbert Gans highlights the notion of the "ethnic enclave" in his famous book The Urban Villagers. Your InfoTrac article, "Diversity, Democracy, and Self-Determination in an Urban Neighborhood: The East Village of Manhattan," argues that the ethnographic case study approach to learning about subcommunities is not as common as it used to be, leaving us less informed about the existence and nature of subcommunities within a larger urban society. Perhaps, even, such lack of information leads us to the conclusion that community (or Gemeinschaft) has disappeared when, in fact, it has not.

Drawing on the InfoTrac article (Reading No. 13 from Module I) and other relevant readings for the module (e.g., Nos. 5-10), as well as what you've read so far in Anderson and what you have learned so far about your neighborhood cluster, discuss the extent to which you believe the ethnographic case study may (or may not) be useful in understanding subcommunities -- particularly minority or new immigrant subcommunities -- and how this type of study can help us update classical community theory (Tönnies, Wirth, and others).

I need help!