Sociology of the City

Teacher(s)

Berger Mathieu ;

Language

Français

Main themes

The course is divided in four thematic sessions. Session 1. Comparison of the contribution of different socio-anthropological schools on the urban process. Session 2. Comparative approaches of urban situations (urbanisation, urban spaces and social life, analysis of European and American cities in a globalisation context). Session 3. The city as experience (to inhabit, to neighbour, to expose one self in the public space). Session 4. Comparison of urban policies put in place since 1945 starting from the analysis of the city as a place and as a flow ; analysis of the importance of the suburb or district (quartiers) as a place for political action ; debate on urban governance.

Aims

The student will master : - The contribution of Anglo-Saxon, Latin American and French urban sociology - A knowledge of the morphological situation of cities in a global world. - The history of "housing units" and its relation to architecture and town planning - The modes of analysis of inhabited spaces (theories of urbanisation, relations between inhabited spaces and urban practices of sociability, concepts related to the time-space relation) - The analysis of urban policies in different countries with as starting point the question of urban governance and democracy.

The contribution of this Teaching Unit to the development and command of the skills and learning outcomes of the programme(s) can be accessed at the end of this sheet, in the section entitled “Programmes/courses offering this Teaching Unit”.

Content

Concerning the measuring of the importance of the relations between space and modernity, the content of the course will privilege a comparative approach in each session. The relation between meaning and shape, urban experience and practices in different urban contexts will serve as a discussion thread. The teaching methods range from ex cathedra lectures, to questions-answers sessions, to reading sessions of key books on urban experience and of classical texts, to the participation of students to ongoing research conducted by the professor in charge of the course. The use of audio-visual documents is constant and the student will have at his/her disposal on-line courses on the Icampus site, as well as documents such as statistics, articles and bibliographies on the teachers' website

Other information

Pre-requisite : Courses of sociology (Bac) Evaluation : A critical, comparative reading paper (of approx. 25 pages) on one of the course sessions. This note will be presented to the other students. Course materials : Use of slides; use of audio-visual documents (news reports, presentation of key architec-ture books) ; bibliography ; text portfolio; provision of statistical information and re-search material by the teacher in charge. Recommended readings: Bibliographies and web sites (Icampus and the teacher's website) Training : Working relations with the teacher's research team (three researchers) ; proposal of supervision of "mémoires" related to the teacher's field of research; provision of relevant information for individual essays.

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