YORK UNIVERSITY
Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies
Urban Studies, Department of Social Science
SOSC 3701 3.0 Urban Analysis I: Developing a Research Proposal
Fall 2021
Course Director:
Class meetings:
Classroom:
Professor Teresa Abbruzzese
Thurs 11:30am - 2:30pm
https://eclass.yorku.ca
Prof. Teresa Abbruzzese
Office Hours: by appointment
Email:
teresa@yorku.ca
Introduction
This course explores major theoretical and methodological approaches to urban research.
Students learn about the research project as a multi-stage process, and they will take the
first steps of this process. Students will be encouraged to develop their own approach to
research and will select a topic that reflects their individual research interests. Students
will conceptualize and write a research proposal. The urban object of study is the Toronto
region (city, surrounding inner and outer suburbs, periphery/exurbs). The emphasis of the
course is on development of the skills required for urban research, in terms of research
techniques as well as critical and analytical skills. Although the course draws heavily on
texts from geography and urban studies, students will also be introduced to material from
other disciplines as well as to a wide variety of methods covering the social sciences and
humanities including both quantitative and qualitative techniques.
The course is divided into two sections:
Pre-Fieldwork: The course begins with a consideration of different approaches to urban
studies, and on students’ analysis of academic research. Prior to beginning empirical
research, the researcher needs to understand their own theoretical approach to research,
and to have a clearly defined research topic and plan of action. Class work will assist
students in choosing, defining, and refining a research topic, developing a theoretical
framework, as well as discussing and addressing ethical issues in research. Students will
begin work on designing their research proposal and developing a literature review.
Fieldwork and fieldwork techniques: The course will provide an overview of both
quantitative and qualitative methods for urban research, with an emphasis on qualitative
methods. We will start an investigation of research methods by looking at surveys as a
research method and discuss techniques for designing a questionnaire. Qualitative
methodologies reviewed will include interviewing using different interviewing styles and
techniques, visual analysis, including observation and participant observation, and
documentary analysis. The emphasis will be on choosing the method that will generate
the data best suited to both the topic and the student’s approach.
1
Lectures are divided into two parts. The first part of lecture will present a particular
theoretical and methodological approach to the urban question in critical debates and
conversations. You will be required to complete the readings under each section for each
lecture. The second part of the lecture will focus on doing urban research, which will be
informed by the course text and other readings on Reserve. The purpose of examining
theoretical perspectives from the literature is to build a conceptual and theoretical toolkit
that will help you with your own thinking about your research topic and formulating a
research question that can be empirically investigated and theoretically situated.
Learning Objectives:
Successful completion of the course will ensure that the student has had practical
experience of developing and implementing the following research components:
Objective
Understanding the relationship
between theoretical and
methodological approaches
Undertaking a literature review
on a research topic which
recognizes and critically
assesses the key arguments in a
text
Developing an original research
plan and selecting appropriate
research methods
Learning outcome
• Be able to formulate researchable social science
questions and understand how to go about
answering them
• To develop competence in describing and
commenting upon current research or equivalent
advanced scholarship
• To understand how to gain access to books and
journal articles using the on-line electronic library
catalogues and electronic journal article databases
• Become familiar with finding research material on
the Web
• To become acquainted with qualitative and
(descriptive) quantitative social science research
methods, including: archival research, surveys,
case studies, field research, interviews, focus
groups
Breakdown of marks
Pre fieldwork
Participation
Critique of an academic article: 20%
Hashtag urbanism Assignment: 25%
Research proposal:
35%
Attending lectures synchronously and
participating in class discussions: 20%
Course Text
Bryman, A. and Bell, E. (2019) Social Research Methods (5th Canadian Edition). Don
Mills: Oxford University Press. Available as an eBook through Bookstore for
purchase.
2
Class Schedule
9 Sept
Pre-Fieldwork and What is the Difference between Critical Urban
Studies and Critical Urban Theory?
A) What is Critical Urban Studies?
Davies, Jonathan S., and David L. Imbroscio. “Introduction.” In Critical
Urban Studies: New Directions, edited by Jonathan S. Davies, David L.
Imbroscio, and Clarence N. Stone. New York: State University of New
York Press (2010): 1-5. Ebook
Marcuse, Peter and David Imbroscio (2014). Critical Urban Theory versus
Critical Urban Studies: A Review Debate. International Journal of Urban
and Regional Research 38.5: 1904-17. EJournal
B) What is Critical Urban Theory?
Brenner, Neil. 2009. What is Critical Urban Theory. City 13(2-3): 195204. EJournal
Jayne, Mark and Kevin Ward (2017). “A Twenty-First Century
Introduction to Urban Theory.” In Urban Theory: New Critical
Perspectives, edited by Mark Jayne and Kevin Ward. Abingdon and New
York: Routledge (2017): 1-18. Reserve
Stone, Clarence N. “Foreword.” In Critical Urban Studies: New
Directions, edited by Jonathan S. Davies, David L. Imbroscio, and
Clarence N. Stone. New York: State University of New York Press
(2010): vii-xi. Ebook
C) Doing Urban Research: Researching the Urban World (discussion)
Bryman Guide to the Book and Ch. 14 Course Text
Theoretical and Conceptual Toolkit: urban studies, critical theory,
critical urban theory, Henri Lefebvre, Karl Marx
16 Sept
Approaches to the City and the Urban Question
A) What is the Urban? What is the City?
Wyly, Elvin. City. In Critical Urban Studies: New Directions, edited by
Jonathan S. Davies, David L. Imbroscio, and Clarence N. Stone. New
York: State University of New York Press (2010): 9-22. Ebook
Sidney, Mara S. Critical Perspectives on the City: Constructivist,
Interpretive Analysis of Urban Politics. In Critical Urban Studies: New
3
Directions, edited by Jonathan S. Davies, David L. Imbroscio, and
Clarence N. Stone. New York: State University of New York Press
(2010): 23-40. Ebook
Suggested Readings
Boudreau et.al., Ch. 1 “Canada Urbana: Perspectives of urban research”
Hubbard, Ch. 1 “Urban Theory, modern and postmodern” Reserve
Hubbard, Ch. 12 “Urban Theory, modern and postmodern” Reserve
B) A New Epistemology of the Urban and Urbanity
Brenner, Neil and Christian Schmid (2015). Towards a new epistemology
of the urban? City 19 (203): 151-182. EJournal
Boudreau, Julie-Anne. Reflections on Urbanity as an Object of Study and
a Critical Epistemology. In Critical Urban Studies: New Directions, edited
by Jonathan S. Davies, David L. Imbroscio, and Clarence N. Stone. New
York: State University of New York Press (2010): 1-5. Ebook
C) Urban Research: Developing Research Ideas
Bryman Ch. 1, Ch. 16, pp. 360-372. Course Text
Theoretical and Conceptual Toolkit: urban, city, urbanity, urbanism,
Epistemology, ontology, inductive and deductive approaches
23 Sept
Library Session---Dana Craig (Research) and Rosa Orlandini (Maps)
How to create a research topic and find sources online
30 Sept
Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to the Urban Question:
Poststructural Urban Theory
A) Assemblage, Practices, and Spaces
McCann, Eugene and Kevin Ward (2011). “Introduction. Urban
Assemblages: Territories, Relations, Practices and Power.” In Mobile
Urbanism: Cities and Policymaking in the Global Age, edited by Eugene
McCann, Kevin Ward, and Allan Cochrane. Minnesota: University of
Minnesota Press, xiii-xxxv. Ebook
Robinson, Jennifer (2011). “The Spaces of Circulating Knowledge: City
Strategies and Global Urban Governmentality.” In Mobile Urbanism:
Cities and Policymaking in the Global Age, edited by Eugene McCann,
Kevin Ward, and Allan Cochrane. Minnesota: University of Minnesota
Press, 15-40. Ebook
B) Digital Methodologies and Discourse Analysis
Kim, Soochul (2010). Moving Around Seoul. Cultural Studies, Critical
Methodologies 10(3): 199-207. EJournal
4
Postill, John and Sarah Pink. “Social Media Ethnography: The Digital
Researcher in a Messy Web.” MIA (Media International Australia) 145
(2009): 123-134. EJournal
Suggested Reading
Whitehead, Neil L., and Michael Wesch, eds. Human No More: Digital
Subjectivities, Unhuman Subjects, and the End of Anthropology. Boulder,
CO: University of Colorado Press, 2012 Scott Stacks GN 33 H944 2012
C) Urban Research: Quantitative Methods
Surveys and Sampling
Bryman Chs. 4, 7, and 8 Course Text
Questionnaire Design
Bryman Chs. 5 and 6 Course Text
Writing up Quantitative Research
Bryman Ch. 15 Course Text
Questionnaire design resources
http://onlineqda.hud.ac.uk/movies/SRM/Questionnaires.php
SurveyMonkey: Free online survey software & questionnaire
tool https://www.surveymonkey.com/
Create and publish online surveys in minutes, and view results
graphically and in real time. SurveyMonkey provides free online
questionnaire and survey
Discourse and Textual Analysis
McCann, Eugene.”‘Best Places’: Interurban Competition, Quality of Life
and Popular Media Discourse.” Urban Studies, 41 (2004): 1909–1929.
EJournal
Theoretical and Conceptual Toolkit: urban assemblage, fast policy
transfer, mobile urbanism, Foucault, global urban governmentality, mobile
media, movements, periambulatory, social space, performed space
7 Oct
Critical Ethnography and Reflexivity
A) Critical Ethnography
Conquergood, Dwight (1991). Rethinking Ethnography: Towards a
5
Critical Cultural Politics. Communication Monographs 58: 179-194.
EJournal
B) Situated Knowledge
Haraway Donna (1988). Situated knowledges: The science question in
feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies 14(3):
575–599. EJournal
C) Urban Research
Ethnographic Research Methods
Bryman, pgs. 11, 42, 45, 163, 172, 179-96, 219-22, 287, 291-2, 345-8
Course Text
Research Ethics
Bryman Ch. 3 Course Text
Read the Ethics Review Requirements from the Office of Research Ethics:
https://www.yorku.ca/research/wpcontent/uploads/sites/39/2020/07/Ethics-Review-Requirements-CourseRelated-Research-8.15.17-1-1.pdf
I also strongly recommend that you visit the Tri Council site on Research
Ethics and that you consider doing the tutorial (TCPS 2):
https://ethics.gc.ca/eng/home.html
https://ethics.gc.ca/eng/education_tutorial-didacticiel.html
NB: You will need to create an account to complete the tutorial.
Participatory Action Research
Evans, Mike, Rachelle hole, Lawrence D. Berg, Peter Hutchinson, Dixon
Sookraj (2009). Toward a Fusion of Indigenous Methodologies,
Participatory Action Research, and White Studies in an Aboriginal
Research Agenda. Qualitative Inquiry 15.5: 893-910. EJournal
Suggested Reading
Lawson, Hal A., James C. Caringi, Loretta Pyles, and Janine M.
Jurkowski, Christine T. Bozlak. Participatory Action Research. Oxford
and New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. Scott Stacks H 62 L334
2015
Theoretical and Conceptual Toolkit: critical ethnography, participatory
action research, situated knowledge, research ethics, Indigenous
methodologies, white studies
14 Oct
FALL READING DAY - NO CLASS
6
21 Oct
Zoom meetings with Teresa regarding individual research topics
28 Oct
Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to the Urban Question:
Decolonizing Research and Practices of Representation
A) Postcolonial Urban Theory
Robinson, Jennifer (2011). Cities in a World of Cities: The Comparative
Gesture. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 35.1:
1-23. EJournal
Robinson, Jennifer (2014). “New Geographies of Theorizing the Urban:
Putting Comparison to Work for Global Urban Studies.” In the Routledge
Handbook on Cities of the Global South, edited by S. Parnell and S.
Oldfield, 57-70. New York: Routledge. Ebook
Roy, Ananya (2015). Who’s Afraid of Postcolonial Theory? International
Journal of Urban and Regional Research 40.1: 200-09. EJournal
Roy, Ananya (2014). “Worlding the South: Towards a Post-Colonial
Urban Theory.” In The Routledge Handbook on Cities of the Global
South, edited by S. Parnell and S. Oldfield, 9-20. New York: Routledge.
Ebook
Roy, Ananya (2011). Slumdog Cities: Rethinking Subaltern Urbanism.
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 35.2: 223-238.
EJournal
Suggested Reading
Roy, Ananya and Aihwa. Ong. Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and
the Art of Being Global. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. 2011. Scott Stacks
HT 151 S272 2012
B) Antiracist, Anticolonial, Indigenous Approaches
Simpson, Michael and Jen Bagelman (2018). Decolonizing Urban Political
Ecologies: The Production of Nature in Settler Colonial Cities. Annals of
the American Association of Geographers 108.2: 558-568. EJournal
Suggested Readings
Denzin, Norman K., Yvonna S. Lincoln, and Linda Tuhiwai Smith.
Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies. Thousand Oaks:
Sage Publications, 2008. Ebook
Sefa Dei, George J. and Gurpreet Singh Johal. Critical Issues in AntiRacist Research Methodologies. New York: Peter Lang, 2005. Scott
Stacks: HT 1521 C75 2005.
7
Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and
Indigenous Peoples. London: Zed Books, 2012. Ebook
Theoretical and Conceptual Toolkit: postcolonial urban theory;
subjugated knowledge, subaltern, racialized disposession
C) Urban Research:
Formulating a Research Question
What is a Literature Review?
Bryman Ch 16 pp.363-365 Course Text
Suggested
Please review the University of Toronto site and at least one more of the
following sites:
http://researchguides.library.yorku.ca/awg
(AWG = Academic Writing Guide) (required)
http://www.writing.utoronto.ca/advice/specific-types-of-writing/literaturereview (required)
http://library.ucsc.edu/ref/howto/literaturereview.html
4 Nov
Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to the Urban Question:
Capitalist Urbanization (Urban, Feminist, and Queer Approaches)
A) Political Economy and Political Ecology
Harvey, David. 2004. “The ‘New’ Imperialism: Accumulation by
Dispossession.” Socialist Register 40: 63–87. Available Online
http://socialistregister.com/index.php/srv/article/view/5811#.U3j6Vy9BzN
s
Nik Heynen, Maria Kaika and Erik Swyngedouw (2006). “Urban Political
Ecology: Politicizing the Production of Urban Natures.” In The Nature of
Cities: Urban Political Ecology and the Politics of Urban Metabolism,
edited by Nik Heynen, Maria Kaika, and Eric Swyngedouw, 1-19. New
York: Routledge, 2006. Ebook
B) Feminist Urban Theory and Feminist & Queer Political Ecology
Heynen, Nik (2017). Urban Political Ecology III: The feminist and queer
century. Progress in Human Geography 1-7. Available Online:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0309132517693336
8
Peake, Linda (2016). The Twenty-First Century Quest For Feminism and
the Global Urban. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research
40.1 (2016): 219-227. EJournal
Parker, Brenda (2016). Feminist Forays in the City Imbalance and
Intervention in Urban Research Methods. Antipode 48.5:1337-1358.
EJournal
Shillington, Laura J. and Ann Marie F. Murnaghan (2016). Urban Political
Ecologies and Children’s Geographies: Queering Urban Ecologies of
Childhood. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 40.5:
1017-1035. EJournal
Suggested Readings
Abbruzzese, Teresa (2011). Gendered Spaces of Activism in Exurbia:
Politicizing an Ethic of Care from the Household to the Region (with
Gerda R. Wekerle). Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 32(2): 186231. EJournal
Theoretical and Conceptual Toolkit: Political Economy, Capitalist
urbanization, political ecology, accumulation by dispossession, placemaking, queer urban ecology, feminist urban ecology, feminist urban
theory, black feminist theory, intersectionality, social reproduction,
embodiment, subjectivities, subaltern spaces
C) Urban Research: Choosing a Research Topic
Suggested Reading
Ward, Kevin. “Introduction” & “Designing and Urban Research Project.”
In Researching the City, p. 1-25. London: Sage, 2020. Moodle.
11 Nov
Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to the Urban Question:
The Cultural Turn
A) Cultural Studies
Fraser, Benjamin. “Why Urban Cultural Studies? Why Henri Lefebvre?”
In Toward an Urban Cultural Studies: Henri Lefebvre and the
Humanities, 19-42. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Reserve
González, Sara (2006). Scalar Narratives in Bilbao: A Cultural Politics of
Scales Approach to the Study of Urban Policy. International Journal of
Urban and Regional Research 30.4: 836-57. EJournal
B) Relational Urbanism, Affect, Emotion, and Embodiment
9
McCann, Eugene and Kevin Ward (2010). Relationality/territoriality:
Toward a Conceptualization of Cities in the World. Geoforum 41:
175-184. EJournal
Hall, Edward and Robert Wilton (2017). Towards a Relational Geography
of Disability. Progress in Human Geography 41.6: 727-744. EJournal
Thien, Deborah. "After or beyond feeling? A consideration of affect and
emotion in geography." Area 37.4 (2005): 450-454. EJournal
C) Urban Research: Qualitative Methods
Interviewing and focus groups
Bryman Chs. 9 and 11 Course Text
Writing up Qualitative Research
Bryman Ch. 15
Cultural Texts (coding/decoding, semiotics)
Bryman Ch. 12 Course Text
Soundscapes
Cado, Mike and Teresa Abbruzzese (2010). Tracking Place and Identity in
Bruce Springsteen’s Tracks. In Reading the Boss: Interdisciplinary
Approaches to the Works of Bruce Springsteen, edited by Roxanne Harde
and Irwin Streight, 95-118. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Reserve
Fraser, Benjamin. “Listening to Urban Rhythms: Soundscapes in Popular
Music.” In Toward an Urban Cultural Studies: Henri Lefebvre and the
Humanities. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Reserve
Theoretical and Conceptual Toolkit: affect, emotion, embodiment,
body, relational urbanism, soundscapes, performance, rhythm, text
18 Nov
Theoretical and Methodological Considerations of the Urban
Question: Postmodernism
A) Postmetropolis: Geographical Imaginations
Queirós, Margarida (2016). Edward Soja: Geographical Imaginations from
the Margins to the Core. Planning Theory & Practice 17.1: 154-160.
EJournal
Smith, Michael Peter (1992). Postmodernism, urban ethnography, and the
new social space of ethnic identity. Theory and Society 21: 493-531.
EJournal
B) Writing the City Spatially
10
Soja, Edward W. (2003). Writing the City Spatially. City 7.3: 269-80.
C) Urban Research:
Observation, Participant Observation, Writing
Bryman Ch. 10 and 15 Course Text
Archives, Documents and Images
Bryman Ch. 12 Course Text
Theoretical and Conceptual Toolkit: Postmodern urbanism,
postmetropolis, writing the city, Edward Soja, Michael Peter Smith
25 Nov
Presentations of research ideas (2 minutes each)
2 Dec
Presentations of research ideas (2 minutes each)
11
Methodology, Research Design &
Research Ethics
3701: Urban Analysis
October 7, 2021
Starting your research
Main element of your research:
Narrow the focus of your study: one or two things that
distinguish your research from others
By framing your study within these set of questions, you
ensure that your project has some degree of originality
What is the specific objective of my research project?
Why am I doing a project on this subject?
Who will potentially be affected by the research project?
Who will potentially benefit?
What things might change as a result?
Linking theory and practice
Theory is to be taken as a set of explanatory concepts that
can be useful for explaining a particular phenomenon,
situation or activity
These concepts offer certain ways of looking at the world
and are essential in defining a research problem
The theoretical framework will influence the questions you
want to ask (i.e. assessing the validity of a theory or exposing
the unequal structures in society)
Deductive (testing a theory) or Inductive (construct a theory
or build on a theory)
Your reading of the literature helps you build your critical
lens and give you some firm ideas about a topic. These
ideas then will be formulated into a theory that you test or
that you construct through research
Conceptual Model
-
Mapping research
-
It outlines processes, concepts and relationships
-
Sketching out ideas to make these connections can help
with your thinking processes
-
Information is filtered through the researcher’s value
system
Methodology: A bridge between
theory and method
Theory and method together have an important relationship with
the research process
It is in methodology that theory and method come together in order
to create a guide to your research design from question
formulation, to analysis and representation
Methodology can be altered during research to the extent that the
researcher’s epistemological beliefs allow for modification and
adjustments
A researcher’s conception of objectivity and subjectivity within the
research process will influence whether or not they will be open to
revising their methodology once data gathering has begun
To read more please refer to:
Hesse-Biber, Sharlen and Patricia Leavy. “The Craft of Qualitative Research: A
Holistic Approach” from the Practice of Qualitative Research, Sage
Publications, 2005.
Qualitative Perspectives
Qualitative research is generally conducted from an
inductive approach and aims at extracting social
meaning, understanding social processes and generating
theory
However there are many perspectives from which
qualitative research is conducted
These approaches vary and offer social scholars a range
of ways to engage in qualitative research as diverse ways
to think about the production of knowledge
Critical Theory
A unitary concept that brings together many perspectives and
interests
Committed to unveiling the political dimensions of cultural
practices (research and scholarly practices being a part of this)
Critical theory politicizes science and knowledge
Disagreements and tensions arise between science/knowledge
and politics
Empiricists are dedicated to the eviction of politics from science,
but critical theorists are interested in the political underpinnings
of all modes of representation
Postpositivism
-
Qualitative research is associated with interpretive, feminist, and
critical perspectives and not the positivist or postpositivist
perspectives from which quantitative researchers operate.
However at times, qualitative researchers can work from positivist
and postpositivist approaches in qualitative practice
-
Postpositivism is similar to positivism, but it recognizes that
researchers cannot be absolutely positive about their knowledge
claims
-
Moves away from positivist idea of proving causal relationships,
postpositivists build evidence to support a pre-existing theory
-
Relies on deductive logic and hypothesis testing like positivists, but
postpositivists attempt to create evidence that will confirm or refute
a theory
Phenomenology
-
has its roots in the 18th century as a critique of positivism
-
phenomenologists were critical of the natural sciences for assuming an “objective”
reality independent of individual consciousness
-
Phenomenologists is not only a philosophy (how consciousness is experienced), but
also a research method that aims at understanding the lived experience of
individuals
-
Possible questions phenomenologists are interested in:
-
How do individuals experience dying?
How does one experience depression?
How does one experience divorce?
-
For phenomenologists, there is no “one reality” to how these events are experienced
(experience is perceived along a variety of dimensions: how experience is lived in
time and space, relationship with others, and our bodily experience)
-
Use a variety of methods: observation, in-depth interviewing, and examining written
accounts of experience (i.e. diaries and blogs)
Feminist Perspectives
-
Developed as a way to address the concerns and life
experiences of women who have been excluded from
knowledge construction both as researchers and subjects
due to male-centered bias in research
-
Many feminists began to question the nature of knowledge
construction, highlighting that new substantive concerns
and related research questions (women-centered)
necessitated new ways of thinking about and engaging in
research unraveling the dominant positivist paradigm
-
Some feminists (Halpin 1989) link traditional scientific
objectivity with the general process of othering and
hierarchical thinking in which women, people of color, and
sexual minorities have been deemed “other” and treated as
inferior to the traditional white heterosexual male scientist
Feminism has offered new and interesting ways to think
about objectivity
Many researchers do not aim to abandon objectivity but
rather transform it to “feminist objectivity”
Feminist objectivity means situated knowledge (Haraway
1989, p.581), whereby feminists seek to engage with pure
objectivity while acknowledging its impossibility, based
on the one fact that all research is produced in a social
context. It’s about limited location and situated
knowledge
Reflexivity- the ongoing questioning of one’s place and
power relations within the research process, which leads
to justification as to how research subjects were sampled
or selected, methods, measurement tools, etc.
In feminist research, such as ethnography, emotional
relationships may be an important aspect of the research
design
Ethics of caring– political dimensions of engaged feminist
research as well as being concerned with the
marginalized and silencing of voices by the dominant
order. Thus value-free research is irrelevant
Standpoint Epistemology- based on the assumption that
in a hierarchically structured world we are all positioned
along lines of economic, social, political, ethno-racial,
national, sexual orientation differences, and thus different
standpoints are produced. Different experiences…
Critical Perspectives
-
There are many approaches
-
General overview of the key beliefs is that critical theorists reject the
main tenets of positivism and that the historical practice of this
epistemological position has maintained radically unequal power
relations
-
Way of notions of absolute truth
-
The traditional scientific method ultimately creates knowledge to
maintain the status quo
-
Critical theorists seek to to access subjugated knowledges and
often the micro-politics of power to challenge dominant ideology
-
Interested in creating transformational knowledge rather than
producing knowledge that feeds the system
Postcolonial perspective
Focus on cities and lived realities beyond the west and
embraces the global south as the epicentre of urbanism
(not Europe or North America)
Emphasizes the importance of multiple genealogies of
knowledge production, and diverse entry points into
conversations that do not privilege academics
Political aim: to realign urban studies by bringing in
urbanization process and experiences from the Global South
Critical urbanism: the macro and micro forces that shape
cities and global regional economic dyanmics
Decolonizing Research
Research is arguably linked to imperialism and colonialism
The word “research” is problematic and conjures up colonial
encounters and scientific racism which was a systematic
approach to measuring one’s faculties by comparing the size of
skulls
Knowledge of Indigenous peoples was collected, classified and
then represented in particular ways back to the West, what
Edward Said referred to as Western discourse about the Other
supported by language, institutions, imagery, doctrines and
colonial bureaucracies
Imagined construction of the “Orient”
Decolonizing research is the process of rethinking knowledge
production, hierarchies, and institutions
Radical compassion that reaches out and seeks collaboration
Research Design
Case Study Design
Most likely what you will be employing for your own
research project
Entails a detailed and intensive analysis of a single case
Examples include: a single community, a family, an
organization, a person, a single event, a province, a city, a
neighbourhood
Methods in the qualitative paradigm generally entail
participant observation, unstructured interviewing
For Quantitative research, survey research is conducted on
a single case with a view to revealing important features
about its nature
Research Ethics
-
What are the principles adopted by the Tri-Council around the
ethical treatment of human participants?
-
What approval processes are required or recommended within the
university setting and external to the university?
-
How does this research benefit the participants involved and how
does it benefit researchers?
-
How do I respect the work and the personal experiences of others?
-
How do I stay objective when conducting research on family or
someone I know personally?
-
Link to Purdue Online Writing Lab
-
“Ethical Considerations in Primary Research”
-
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/conducting_research/conducting_primary_
research/research_ethics.html
The Tri-Council Policy Statement:
Ethical Conduct for Research
Involving Humans (TCPS)
The online tutorial TCPS 2: CORE (Course on Research Ethics) is an
introduction to the 2nd Edition of the Tri-Council Policy Statement
guiding all research regardless of discipline or methodology. It
consists of 8 modules.
Please go to this link to complete the tutorial and the certificate
of completion needs to be submitted with your proposal in
December.
https://tcps2core.ca/welcome
Click on Institutional Access, and register an account to sign in.
You cannot start your research without completing this
certificate.
Hashtag urbanism: Digital discourse reflection paper (25% of final grade)
For this assignment you need to use Twitter. If you do not have an account, please create
one for the purpose of this assignment. You are asked to choose one specific urbanism (i.e. anti-
black racism, pandemic, austerity, smart, green, resilient, climate, neoliberal, etc.) from the
course syllabus, or any other urbanism that interests you and follow the related hashtags.
Observe, read, and write down words that are used in these networked discussions. Who are the
digital agents propelling and influencing these conversations? Are ideas connected to global best
practices, urban models, theories? Whose perspectives are included in these conversations?
Whose perspectives are excluded? Are there any gaps in the discourse? How popular is the
urbanism you chose versus other hashtag urbanisms? Follow these hashtag conversations for
about two weeks or more and write a reflection responding to the questions above. The word
limit is 1000 words, and it is due gth of November.
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