November 11 The Built City: features considered are parks, cemeteries, suburbs, zoos, skyscrapers, department stores, supermarkets, and amusement parks

                                Fall 2013

The Heart of the City:  Learning about Urban Studies  Social Science Sleuths

November          11           The Built City:  features considered are parks, cemeteries, suburbs, zoos, skyscrapers, department stores, supermarkets, and amusement parks.

We’ll share our findings on these.   Remember to-

BRING YOUR PICTURES!

Getting ready for next time-

The Cultural City:  What kinds of music, art, sports, education, entertainment, religion, media outlets , food, languages, transportation can you find in the city?

Culture is a broad concept used in anthropology (another social science) to describe the characteristics that hold a group of people together.  You can talk about lots of categories that are part of culture.  Here are some of them as found on a page on Texas A&M’s website 

CULTURE  -SOME DEFINITIONS

·         experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions   

·         Culture is the systems of knowledge shared by a relatively large group of people.

·         Culture is communication, communication is culture.

·         behavior through social learning.

·         A culture is a way of life of a group of people--the behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next.   

                                                                        (http://www.tamu.edu/faculty/choudhury/culture.html)

Here are some cultural categories.  Using four of these answer the questions and share what you find out for our next session.  You can bring pictures or things to show what you found.

1.       Sports  (local or regional teams that people follow)

2.       Beliefs  (includes religion and faith practices)

3.       Media outlets (where do people get their news)

4.       Spatial relationships  (how close do people stand to each other, does it matter who the person is)

5.       Music  (what do you hear on the radio, what kinds of music can you can hear performed live)

6.       What kinds of visual art is around?  Where do you see it?

7.       What kinds of food do people eat?  Where can you go to eat this way?

8.       What languages can you hear spoken?  On the radio?  In person?  Can you worship in other languages?  Can you conduct business in another language? 

9.       How do people dress?  Do you see different styles of dress in the city depending on where  you are or who is wearing the clothes?

10. How do people travel?  Can you see people using multiple ways to get around?  What do you see most often?

11.   A category you want to investigate for yourself that isn’t listed here._____________________________