INTRODUCTION: Doing Urban Research
Introduction
In Cuba, you are going to spend much of time undertaking urban research using a range of qualitative methods. It is easy to end up simply looking at the landscape and the landmarks of Havana describing what you see without developing any ‘insights’. In order to develop such ‘insights’, you need to think more generally about how geographers do urban research and remember than all your analysis should be theoretically informed that is, you need to do more than ‘look-see’. It is important to develop your ideas by reading and interpreting the literature in a critical way (see Lees, 2003) . In your tour, you will need to justify your interpretations and be able to answer questions about ‘methods’ as well as ‘content’.
Qualitative Methods
Widely used in Human Geography where quantification is inappropriate. You need to think imaginatively about how you can use qualitative methods when you are in Havana. Mike Crang (2002) reviews a range of different qualitative methods in his paper in Progress in Human Geography. [view paper] .
Reading the city
Textual analyses of landscape have a long history in geography. Recent attention in the discipline to textual deconstruction and the importance of language in structuring the urban environment has extended our concern to making sense of place through readings of landscapes. Recently, work has focused on how cities can be ‘read’. This technique involves interpreting the built environment in terms of the values, views, attitudes and power embodied in the physical infrastructure. Jacobs (1993) outlines how new ways of thinking about and interpreting the city have accompanied changes in the organisation of cities. This deconstructionist technique demands that we move beyond the superficial and consider meanings of the many landscapes within the city.
When we are in Cuba, one of the main ways in which we will ask you to think about the city is as a text. In particular, you will be asked to reflect on how buildings, spaces, places and monuments can be ‘read’ in order to develop an understanding of culture, politics, power and geographies of Havana. You will need to think about what or whose values are embodied in the built environment, and to consider the multiple and contested ways that we can read the city.
Ethnographic takes on the city
As part of the turn towards more qualitative techniques, from the-mid 1980s onwards, ethnographic research enjoyed a renaissance in social geography. In a review paper, Peter Jackson (1985: 157) set out how the traditional methods of the ethnographer were being used by others in the social sciences, as a means of understanding the everyday practices of urban residents. Ethnography relies on the analysis of everyday lives of individuals. In order to use this technique to explore change in the organisation of the city, geographers have inserted this attention to the ‘local’ within its broader context. This means, situating the material generated through the observations of interaction, negotiation, dispute etc within changes in the layout of cities, the political-economic context, etc.
References:
Jackson P (1985) Urban ethnography. Progress in Human Geography 9: 157-177.
Jacobs J (1993) The city unbound: Qualitative approaches to the city. Urban Studies 30: 827-848.