One of the mainly electrifying essentials of contemporary period is the urbanisation of the globe. For sociological reasons a city is a comparatively great, crowded and lastingly community of diverse people. In metropolitan areas urban sociology is the sociological research of life, human interaction and their role in the development of society. Modern urban sociology creates from the work of sociologists such as Max Weber and Georg Simmel who put forward the economic, social and intellectual development of urbanisation and its consequences. The purpose of this essay is to explain what life is like in the ‘big metropolis’ both objectively and subjectively. It will discuss key processes and dynamics such as rationalisation, individuation, loneliness, typical figures and how they relate to each other.
Discussion
The modern world now hangs on an image of an unimportant exceptional collection of human beings with the metropolis representing the ethos of industrial capitalism. In the metropolis the division of labour is at its greatest and where individuality and individual freedom is most expanded. People are constantly striving for monetary gain. It is however, difficult for one to express ones own personality in metropolitan life and this contributes to the tension and conflict between the impersonal processes, personality and personal experience.
Max Weber was a key supporter of practical, quarrelling the learning about social achievement, Weber's major writings relate to the procedure of rationalisation and “world-weariness” connected with the growth of modernity. A city is a moderately great, lastingly and crowded society of diverse individuals for sociological motives. The ecology, the mutual association and ...
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Three thinkers form the foundations of modern-day sociological thinking. Émile Durkheim, Karl Marx, and Max Weber. Each developed different theoretical approaches to help us understand the way societies function, and how we are determined by society. This essay will focus on the contrasts and similarities of Durkheim and Weber’s thought of how we are determined by society. It will then go on to argue that Weber provides us with the best account of modern life.
Social historians in recent years have started to look at the people who made up most of the population in cities, people who are usually ignored when looking at society,
The significance in this scene can be defined by the different dynamic happening in the psyches of Freder. Unlike Maria, who goes from having a balanced mind to a mechanical mind, Freder goes from only paying attention to the id, to actually rationalizing with the id and the ego, and realizing that his society has been mistreating those in the working class. J.P. Tellote argues that “The sequence in which Freder takes the worker's place, for example, only displays the horrors of being chained to a mechanism, reduced to a function of a machine, after first illustrating the seductive power that helps keep the classes separated, each in its place” (Telotte 53). Further on in the movie, in minute 40:52 Freder yells in an exhausted manner “Father-! Father-! Will ten hours never-end--??!!”, finally empathizing with the hardships the working class has to endure in the current stratification of their society, the ego and the id finally coming to consensus.
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The argument that the “Tumult of the Metropolis” creates inner barriers between people is justified by Simmel’s social theory study of sociability (paraphrased in Frisby 1989, p.75-77). His reflective view explores the importance of sociability and its ability to transcend ones inner barriers and concerns on modern leisure within a “growing objective culture” (Frisby 1989, p.76). Simmel further suggests that the concerns raised upon the modernised culture derived from two main ideologies of objectification and reification which was dominated by production, exchange and consumption. The domination of these aspects reflects the process of commodification as what was seen as valuable had been reduced to exchangeable prices, therefore meaning that subjectivity and individuality was destroyed.
Home to a futuristic society, Metropolis (1927) by Fritz Lang, presents a city in which society has been physically divided to achieve perfection. According to Norden “With its motifs and its portrayal of workers as machinelike automatons (they even move about mechanically), 'Metropolis' unmistakably bears the mark of Futurism” (Norden 109). This society is divided into two classes: the thinkers who are the wealthy rulers of the city, and the workers, who work literally underground to provide for the city. Living in opulence, the audience is introduced to the ruler of the city Johann 'Joh' Fredersen (Alfred Abel) and his son Freder Frederson (Gustav Fröhlich). One day while indulging in his wealth at the Pleasure Garden, Freder catches sight of a beautiful women named Maria (Brigitte Helm). Freder becomes infatuated with Maria and decides to follow her into the underworld where the workers are. Freder quickly discovers that Maria is part of the working class and that she has been calling for unity between the workers and rulers of Metropolis. Enchanted by the cause, Freder attempts to help the workers, however, his father discovers the plan and attempts to sabotage it. To avoid the destruction of the tightly constructed social classes, Joh unites with an old colleague and nemesis, Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge). Together, Rotwang and Joh imprison the real Maria and they develop a robot version of Maria who encourages the workers to rebel against their ruler. The film ends with a climatic scene where Freder, in attempt to save the real Maria from Rotwang, pushes Rotwang from a cathedral roof where he falls to his death. Freder then returns to the city where he is finally able to unite the workers with the rulers, serving his purpos...
Five star general and 34th president, Dwight Eisenhower once said that, “this world of ours... must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect”. When established in 1624, New York was only a very small colony of French Huguenots from the Netherlands where everyone was seen as equal to one another. However, as New York began to develop and change, a wealth gap developed between the wealthy and those who lived in poverty. This wealth gap led to many domestic problems emerging in the city. In George Templeton Strong’s journals, he outlines what the city New York needs to do to become a healthy functioning city. In doing this, Strong is confident that New York will make the necessary changes in order to have a very bright future ahead where many more opportunities will be available for its citizens.
Urbanisation in Metropolis is accentuated through religious iconography and philosophical ideologies. The Metropolitan populace delineates an urban agglomeration where urbanisation is symbolised as the Tower of Babel. In the scene where
In conclusion, this essay has outlined an example range of ‘making and remaking’ on City Road in relation to ‘connections and disconnections’. It outlined how differences and inequalities are produced, how a person’s identity is attributed to them by other people and it is not always chosen and finally, the relationship between; society, making and remaking and connection and disconnection.
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In Jane Jacobs’s acclaimed The Life and Death of Great American Cities, she intricately articulates urban blight and the ills of metropolitan society by addressing several binaries throughout the course of the text. One of the more culturally significant binaries that Jacobs relies on in her narrative is the effectively paradoxical relationship between diversity and homogeneity in urban environments at the time. In particular, beginning in Chapter 12 throughout Chapter 13, Jacobs is concerned greatly with debunking widely held misconceptions about urban diversity.
Amateur City, a city filled with confusion and intolerable human behavior. In this detective fiction novel, Katherine Forrest demonstrates the social, sexual and power dynamic of each character which all leads to the curious homicide of Fergus Parker. In Forrest’s Amateur City there are multiple analysis regarding the characters of the “Modern Office” also including the detective Kate Delafield. Amateur City portrays a huge hierarchy of the predominant human society in which the class of race, ethnicity and gender are all divided in the image of Forrest’s characters. The social, sexual and power dynamic of the “Modern Office” provides a powerful message in Forrest’s Amateur City, which clearly magnifies the realistic and true nature of humanity. This essay will stress upon the representive of Forrest’s characters relating to the modern world.
...itner, H., Peck, J. and Sheppard, E.S. (2007) Contesting Neoliberalism Urban Frontiers, New York: Guilford press.
Simmel combines ideas from all of the three major classical writers and was influenced by Hegel and Kant. When Simmel discusses social structures, the city, money, and modern society, his analysis has some similarities to the analyses of Durkheim (problem of individual and society), Weber (effects of rationalization), and Marx (alienation). Simmel considered society to be an association of free individuals, and said that it could not be studied in the same way as the physical world, i.e. sociology is more than the discovery of natural laws that govern human interaction. "For Simmel, society is made up of the interactions between and among individuals, and the sociologist should study the patterns and forms of these associations, rather than quest after social laws." (Farganis, p. 133). This emphasis on social interaction at the individual and small group level, and viewing the study of these interactions as the primary task of sociology makes Simmel's approach different from that of the classical writers, espe...