The field of urban sociology has been significantly linked to particular cities, with cities such... more The field of urban sociology has been significantly linked to particular cities, with cities such as Chicago (il), Los Angeles (ca), and New York City (ny) have become hallmarks reflecting both the possibilities and the limitations of the urban sociological imagination. Using what have been three major foci in American urban sociology – 1) Organization of the City, 2) Ethnography and 3) Neighborhoods – using a comparative assessment of the field this paper seeks to apprehend the larger understandings, trends and methods in the field. Comparing urban sociological methods and theories through sections focusing on the three aforementioned themes, this article underscores paths taken in the field whilst highlighting potential new directions.
Drawing on shared research and educational trajectories, the authors illustrate the importance an... more Drawing on shared research and educational trajectories, the authors illustrate the importance and challenge of tracing Black gay social life in urban ethnography. This chapter investigates the ephemeral nature of Black gay geographies using live experience and data collection from Los Angeles. Guided by Joseph Beam's (1984) key sociological insight, we offer and amplify a new warrant for urban ethnography emergent from the study of Black and LGBTQ life, visibility is survival. In so doing, we aim to underscore the importance of ethnographic inquiry to understand the spatial and communal navigation of cities by Black gay people. In examining the unique Black gay maps of a rapidly changing Los Angeles, we articulate the multitude of ways that ethnographic inquiry serves as a correction to the record and a form of documenting threatened histories and everyday realities of Black LGBTQ life.
The article recovers two pathways emergent from an assets-based approach to the study of black li... more The article recovers two pathways emergent from an assets-based approach to the study of black life using qualitative methods generally and ethnography, specifically, (1) racial recalibration and (2) black time. Arguing that our conventional timelines for black histories and contemporary realities tend to calibrate against white notions of time and history, this article reveals a persistent, specious practice in the study of black lifeworlds. Extending from assertions of the theoretical and analytic power of everyday black wisdom, and Stuart Hall's emphasis on storytelling and the popular imagination, this article demonstrates how black perspectives, measured and apprehended using race conscious and assets-based frames, generate and innovate questions providing new ways to revisit long-debated issues in the field.
This brief essay animates two signature features of Stuart Hall’s sociology,
diaspora and culture... more This brief essay animates two signature features of Stuart Hall’s sociology, diaspora and culture, to draw attention to not only the paradigms manifest in his work but also how they point to fruitful paths to guide the future of the field. To do so, I will combine Hall’s autobiographic account with key passages from his path-breaking essay ‘What is this “Black” in Black Popular Culture?’. Here, then, the intention is to amplify Stuart Hall’s place as a crucial innovator of sociological thought and research, while also drawing our attention to the path forward his work provides.
Beginning with W.E.B. Du Bois's The Philadelphia Negro and Ida B. Wells's Southern Horrors, this ... more Beginning with W.E.B. Du Bois's The Philadelphia Negro and Ida B. Wells's Southern Horrors, this review revisits and examines sociological research on urban Black Americans from the late nineteenth century to the present. Focusing on the approaches, frameworks, and sociological insights that emerged over this period, we examine this scholarship within two broad frames: the deficit frame and the asset frame. The deficit frame includes scholarship emphasizing both the structures that negatively affect Black urban life (e.g., disappearance of work, residential segregation, poor education, urban poverty) and the cultural " deficits " that either are adaptations to those structural realities or (as some deficit scholars argue) are the cause of urban Black hardships. The asset frame includes scholarship focusing on the agency and cultural contributions of urban Black Americans. Detailing the historical origins and contemporary use of these frames, we demonstrate how the sociology of urban Black America remains a reflection of the possibilities and problems of the broader discipline. The review concludes by outlining new conceptual opportunities offered by what we refer to as chocolate city sociology.
Using Chicago as our case, this article puts forth a notion of black placemaking that privileges ... more Using Chicago as our case, this article puts forth a notion of black placemaking that privileges the creative, celebratory, playful, pleasurable, and poetic experiences of being black and being around other black people in the city. Black placemaking refers to the ways that urban black Americans create sites of endurance, belonging, and resistance through social interaction. Our framework offers a corrective to existing accounts that depict urban blacks as bounded, plagued by violence, victims and perpetrators , unproductive, and isolated from one another and the city writ large. While ignoring neither the external assaults on black spaces nor the internal dangers that can make everyday life difficult, we highlight how black people make places in spite of those realities. Our four cases – the black digital commons, black public housing reunions, black lesbian and gay nightlife, and black Little League baseball – elucidate the matter of black lives across genders, sexualities, ages, classes, and politics.
The field of urban sociology has been significantly linked to particular cities, with cities such... more The field of urban sociology has been significantly linked to particular cities, with cities such as Chicago (il), Los Angeles (ca), and New York City (ny) have become hallmarks reflecting both the possibilities and the limitations of the urban sociological imagination. Using what have been three major foci in American urban sociology – 1) Organization of the City, 2) Ethnography and 3) Neighborhoods – using a comparative assessment of the field this paper seeks to apprehend the larger understandings, trends and methods in the field. Comparing urban sociological methods and theories through sections focusing on the three aforementioned themes, this article underscores paths taken in the field whilst highlighting potential new directions.
Drawing on shared research and educational trajectories, the authors illustrate the importance an... more Drawing on shared research and educational trajectories, the authors illustrate the importance and challenge of tracing Black gay social life in urban ethnography. This chapter investigates the ephemeral nature of Black gay geographies using live experience and data collection from Los Angeles. Guided by Joseph Beam's (1984) key sociological insight, we offer and amplify a new warrant for urban ethnography emergent from the study of Black and LGBTQ life, visibility is survival. In so doing, we aim to underscore the importance of ethnographic inquiry to understand the spatial and communal navigation of cities by Black gay people. In examining the unique Black gay maps of a rapidly changing Los Angeles, we articulate the multitude of ways that ethnographic inquiry serves as a correction to the record and a form of documenting threatened histories and everyday realities of Black LGBTQ life.
The article recovers two pathways emergent from an assets-based approach to the study of black li... more The article recovers two pathways emergent from an assets-based approach to the study of black life using qualitative methods generally and ethnography, specifically, (1) racial recalibration and (2) black time. Arguing that our conventional timelines for black histories and contemporary realities tend to calibrate against white notions of time and history, this article reveals a persistent, specious practice in the study of black lifeworlds. Extending from assertions of the theoretical and analytic power of everyday black wisdom, and Stuart Hall's emphasis on storytelling and the popular imagination, this article demonstrates how black perspectives, measured and apprehended using race conscious and assets-based frames, generate and innovate questions providing new ways to revisit long-debated issues in the field.
This brief essay animates two signature features of Stuart Hall’s sociology,
diaspora and culture... more This brief essay animates two signature features of Stuart Hall’s sociology, diaspora and culture, to draw attention to not only the paradigms manifest in his work but also how they point to fruitful paths to guide the future of the field. To do so, I will combine Hall’s autobiographic account with key passages from his path-breaking essay ‘What is this “Black” in Black Popular Culture?’. Here, then, the intention is to amplify Stuart Hall’s place as a crucial innovator of sociological thought and research, while also drawing our attention to the path forward his work provides.
Beginning with W.E.B. Du Bois's The Philadelphia Negro and Ida B. Wells's Southern Horrors, this ... more Beginning with W.E.B. Du Bois's The Philadelphia Negro and Ida B. Wells's Southern Horrors, this review revisits and examines sociological research on urban Black Americans from the late nineteenth century to the present. Focusing on the approaches, frameworks, and sociological insights that emerged over this period, we examine this scholarship within two broad frames: the deficit frame and the asset frame. The deficit frame includes scholarship emphasizing both the structures that negatively affect Black urban life (e.g., disappearance of work, residential segregation, poor education, urban poverty) and the cultural " deficits " that either are adaptations to those structural realities or (as some deficit scholars argue) are the cause of urban Black hardships. The asset frame includes scholarship focusing on the agency and cultural contributions of urban Black Americans. Detailing the historical origins and contemporary use of these frames, we demonstrate how the sociology of urban Black America remains a reflection of the possibilities and problems of the broader discipline. The review concludes by outlining new conceptual opportunities offered by what we refer to as chocolate city sociology.
Using Chicago as our case, this article puts forth a notion of black placemaking that privileges ... more Using Chicago as our case, this article puts forth a notion of black placemaking that privileges the creative, celebratory, playful, pleasurable, and poetic experiences of being black and being around other black people in the city. Black placemaking refers to the ways that urban black Americans create sites of endurance, belonging, and resistance through social interaction. Our framework offers a corrective to existing accounts that depict urban blacks as bounded, plagued by violence, victims and perpetrators , unproductive, and isolated from one another and the city writ large. While ignoring neither the external assaults on black spaces nor the internal dangers that can make everyday life difficult, we highlight how black people make places in spite of those realities. Our four cases – the black digital commons, black public housing reunions, black lesbian and gay nightlife, and black Little League baseball – elucidate the matter of black lives across genders, sexualities, ages, classes, and politics.
Uploads
diaspora and culture, to draw attention to not only the paradigms manifest in his work but also how they point to fruitful paths to guide the future of the field. To do so, I will combine Hall’s autobiographic account with key passages from his path-breaking essay ‘What is this “Black” in Black Popular Culture?’. Here, then, the intention is to amplify Stuart Hall’s place as a crucial innovator of sociological thought and research, while also drawing our attention to the path forward his work provides.
diaspora and culture, to draw attention to not only the paradigms manifest in his work but also how they point to fruitful paths to guide the future of the field. To do so, I will combine Hall’s autobiographic account with key passages from his path-breaking essay ‘What is this “Black” in Black Popular Culture?’. Here, then, the intention is to amplify Stuart Hall’s place as a crucial innovator of sociological thought and research, while also drawing our attention to the path forward his work provides.