Gated Community

            The gated community was meant to help the people that is trying to live off a better life without being scared. Low interviewed the people of New York City that actually live in a gated community. Due to the changes that was occurring to the previous community the interviewees, made them move to a gated community. The gated community was known to be a quiet and safe place so there is no problems like Dover Square. The gated community is made for the people that wants quiet and want safety.

            In Merry’s article, how there was so many crimes in Dover Square, so many people was so cautious and scared of where they lived. This brought Low to talk about a community that is closed by a gate and looked after by security guards. Places like the gated community is a place for the rich and the middle class, but there are families that lived in a community that was high in crime that moved to the gated community. There was one interviewee that said, “ When Bloomingdales moved out and Kmart moved in, it just brought in a different group of people. And it wasn’t safe place that was all” (Low 136). One little difference can make an impact to families and citizens living in the neighborhood.

            The gated community is to keep the people safe and prevent anything to happen. It’s a good thing that there are such places, but trying to isolate from the community is not the best thing. There are a lot of families that moved in because they have experience their things getting stolen.

            I believe that there is going to be crime no matter where anyone lives, a gated community sounds safe fro a lot of families that has enough of the crime. I see it as if the gated community is not a good idea cause it seems like families are confined by ad gate and preventing themselves from associating with the world. Crimes will get us as people to be alert to what’s going on around us. It seems to me that the people are in refinement camp just that they can leave the place.            

Crimes and danger in the urban

            There is always trouble and everywhere in an urban city such as New York City. Like Wirth Merry believed that people that how Wirth talked about having the city in disorder where everyone is indulged to himself or herself. Merry believes that what Wirth wrote does not point to the entire urban city but just a part of it. Merry backs up her statement by a study she did in Dover Square, there she observe how the people in a diverse neighborhood gets along. Merry believed that the neighborhood was diverse enough that there is no trust between different ethnics group.

            Merry saw how the criminal rates in Dover Square was so high and there was no one that is stopping it. Everyone that lived in the neighborhood was so cautious to his or her surroundings especially at night. For example, “a middle- aged black women sneaked surreptitiously from her home at 6:00 AM to do her laundry before the neighborhood youths gathered in the Laundromat” (Merry 123). In a neighborhood full of violence and crime the people living there have to be in high alert. That’s why there is no trust among different ethnic backgrounds.

            All the crimes that happen, there are no way of saying how the crimes started and which race holds the highest rate in the crimes around Dover Square. Due to the crimes there is no trust among the diverse neighborhood. No one dare trust people that are not their own kind. Making Wirth’s statement true of how the people don’t go outside their comfort zone and associate with other ethnicity.

            I believe that being cautious does not mean that there should be no trust among the neighborhood. I am not saying that the people being scared for their life is wrong but in a way that there is segregation is ridiculous. It shows how split one neighborhood is and that’s can make a situation even worse. I believe that living in a neighborhood full of different people is a good thing, there are things that different people can enlighten and help out.

Urbanism is a way of life?

When Wirth wrote his essay about urbanism and how the city is brought up to shape ones attitude and personality. He emphasized that there are many people lives based on where they live. In the city where it’s busy and a high populated, citizens live their life according to how everyone else in society lives. In a city like New Your City, everyone live their everyday lives in a fast pace. There is little time to actually stop and associate with other people from another part of the city. Hence people only associate with the people that are close to them, people don’t go out of their horizons. Instead everyone in the city only sees everyone else as strangers and their normal response is to ignore them. People have been affected when they move to the city, their attitudes and personality is shaped by the city. Many people would not get themselves involved unless there is a circumstance which he or she is involved.

Wirth believed that there is no need to associate with people unless you want something from the other person. When there is a high populated city there is a limit to the closeness a person would have. In his writing, Wirth wrote that,

Place of residence, place and character of employment, income, and interests fluctuate, and the task of holding organizations together and maintaining and promoting intimate and lasting acquaintanceship between the members is difficult (Wirth 111)

As Wirth said if we bring different people together and ask for them to be friends is a difficult task. People from different status would not talk to people that is different from them, their normal response is to ignore and move on.

            There are parts of the urban society that can create something that can bring the different people all over the urban city together. There is something that can stop the people in their busy life and take the time to participate activities that can be offered from their neighborhood. Wirth said that, “in the view of the ineffectiveness of actual kinship ties we create fictional kinship groups” (Wirth 116). In a way there are some short of way which people can communicate outside their comfort zone. There are activities that bring different kind of people together allowing people to get to another person.

            I believe we live in a society that does not allow us to associate other people we call strangers. When we see a stranger we would either look the other way or blast our music, as a citizen it’s our job to only care about ourselves. We don’t have the time to stop and get to know a person, we are living in a fast, enabling to stop society that there is no point to get to know a stranger. We would usually ignore the people that is not of concern to us, and why would there be we were brought up learning how to associate with people in our comfort zone and ignore everyone else.

Student and fieldwork

The Students who go out into the anthropological field have that deal with the different environment and get accustom to what the native people do. There were two destinations that the students were able to go. One was the rural part of Barbados and the other is more urban called Hobart. Either place there is a difference to how the natives were being interviewed.

            The students that lived in the village have found out more that differs themselves from the natives. The natives were more closed off from the rest of the student as Gmelch describes,

Compared warmth and friendliness, and frequent sharing of food and other resources in a village with the impersonality, individualism, and detachment of life the suburb or city in which they grew up. (Gmelch 85)

Eventually the natives in the village were aware of the students and eventually remembered their names.

            In the suburban places there are many people there and so the chances of getting to know the people was little. It requires the student to make an interview with questions ready if they want to know something from the people. As Gmelch said, “ Heavy reliance on formal interviews by students in the city means they do not often see their subjects in natural social settings” (Gmelch 89).  With having an interview, the information gained might not entirely be the truth.

I believed that when the students were in the village they were gaining more access to how the people lived. There was no need of an interview since the students was examining how the people were living each day. There is a benefit to researching in a small and disclosed area; there will never be something that can distract their daily lives. Unlike the rural parts the suburb is busier, there are things to be done and not enough time to spare. I believe that the rural area gives us a better understanding to what their culture and customs all about. 

Japans adventure

            Bestor was impressed to how he got along with the residents in the neighborhood. When he was in grad school and associating with other graduate students, they told him, “ choose a network, not a neighborhood” (Bestor 22) They were right about that since Bestor didn’t only make an effort to learn how the traditions were in a neighborhood, but also made an effort to find a person and find out more about a culture. When Bestor met Mr. Kuroda, a shopkeeper that helped with local events and knows the way around the neighborhood.

            Another thing that Bestor did was figure out how to draw a map of a place called Tsukiji. He made a distinction with signs indicating the corporation that the people in the marketplace are selling for. There is a lot to how one sign can tell about the people, Bestor used his time to look at the signs. It was important to where the produce is from that’s why the name of the concession is important. For instance Tskiji is a big fish trading company and is well known and its important to display their name on the market place.

            I thought how the all the big names like the Tsukiji is displaying their name so they are shown to have power. It would attract the people the most if their products is displayed along with a poster or sign to where the produce is coming from. I agree that in order to get field work done is to not only by looking at the neighborhood alone, also by choosing a piece of the neighborhood like a person and continue from him. That’s how you can truly learn about a neighborhood and their customs.

Anthropological Fieldworks in Cities

It was not until after World War II that anthropology began to be noticed in the field of science. It’s not like other sciences with experiments, hypothesis and conclusions. Urban anthropology was fieldwork, which allowed researchers to gain a connection and a better understanding of culture and lives of the local people. The first person to introduce Anthropology to social science was Bronislaw Malinowski based on some findings in his trip to Trobriand Islands. He had brought other anthropologists like Margaret Mead to be in the field of a specific community. Anthropology did not get to be noticed until later in the nineteenth century and eventually began to grow in urban societies. Unfortunately there was a dispute to whether on how studies are going to be made.

Anthropology wasn’t as recognized in the social science field, it was mistake for the Sociology, but it was more than talking about society. Anthropology was getting involved with one specific part of the community and researching through interviews and understanding ones culture and beliefs. It wasn’t until the 1900 where one anthropologist by the name of Bronislaw Malinowski introduced the fieldwork of anthropology.  In the Anthropological Fieldwork in Cities Kemper explained, “Wherever they worked, field researchers were not foreigners; they were simply in parts of the Commonwealth where the societies were more exotic than at the home”(Kemper 8). With the fieldworks, anthropology began to be noticed and brought the attention of other anthropologists.

            Fieldwork was an important way of how anthropologists research a specific community. There was a problem to studying the people rural places; the people in the rural areas usually disperse.  Kemper said, “anthropologists face one insurmountable problem; defining a population in the holistic context taken for granted in rural fieldwork”(Kemper 12). There will always be residents moving and some could be living poorly in a cramped up apartment. There will also be some that live quite well in a house with their family.

            I thought it’s a good thing that anthropology was getting noticed because it is a big help for history, and help one understand the customs, ritual, traditions and values of a certain community. I believe there is more than what the eyes see, in our mind we already have a picture to how a community would look like. A specific group like the Samoa, we have a picture to what they would do and who they are but there is more to that.