![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I'm currently reading Paris In The Middle Ages by Simone Roux, which I'm finding to be an interesting book on the social aspects of that city in medieval/early renaissance times. I read non-fiction books like this because they occasionally spark 'other thoughts' which might lead to fictional work or give me little scenes which will fit into the current work-in-process.
But sometimes they just spark thoughts... Roux talks about how being a large city led people to shed their differences and blend into a more cosmopolitan mix -- that this was the characteristic of all large cities: go there, and you become a "Parisian" or a "Londoner" or a "Venetian", shedding your former habits and identifications.
That strikes me as true enough in the past. You come to the big city as a rural dweller, a villager, or a foreigner, and you are assimilated into the greater whole that is the community of the city. In the city, it was nearly impossible to escape that larger identity and retain your previous one. But...
What struck me as a potential theory is that while this was true for cities in the past, it may no longer be the case. When Paris had a population of a few hundred thousand, no, you couldn't easily retain your old identity and customs, because you came into contact with all these other people all the time as you walked about the city. You were thrown into the social cauldron, and the spice of your own life was added to the general blend of what was already there.
But now cities are behemoths with populations of millions that spread over huge areas of land... and thus it is now possible to find an enclave within the city with people like you. It is possible to retain your customs and your self-identity as "other" because there are enough "others" just like you to sustain that. You can continue to speak your own language if you like; you can keep to the old habits because the city has a microcosm of your old place there within it. You don't have to enter the greater cauldron if you don't wish to do so.
Rather than a melting pot, the new Great Cities are instead patchwork quilts, where neighborhoods remain separate and never quite blend. It's a function of size: once the cities reaches a certain critical population (probably in the region between 500,000 and a million) the dynamics begin to shift, and cities no longer subsume the 'foreign' but only contain it.
Any sociologists/anthropologist out there? Does this sound reasonable? Untenable? What do you think?
But sometimes they just spark thoughts... Roux talks about how being a large city led people to shed their differences and blend into a more cosmopolitan mix -- that this was the characteristic of all large cities: go there, and you become a "Parisian" or a "Londoner" or a "Venetian", shedding your former habits and identifications.
That strikes me as true enough in the past. You come to the big city as a rural dweller, a villager, or a foreigner, and you are assimilated into the greater whole that is the community of the city. In the city, it was nearly impossible to escape that larger identity and retain your previous one. But...
What struck me as a potential theory is that while this was true for cities in the past, it may no longer be the case. When Paris had a population of a few hundred thousand, no, you couldn't easily retain your old identity and customs, because you came into contact with all these other people all the time as you walked about the city. You were thrown into the social cauldron, and the spice of your own life was added to the general blend of what was already there.
But now cities are behemoths with populations of millions that spread over huge areas of land... and thus it is now possible to find an enclave within the city with people like you. It is possible to retain your customs and your self-identity as "other" because there are enough "others" just like you to sustain that. You can continue to speak your own language if you like; you can keep to the old habits because the city has a microcosm of your old place there within it. You don't have to enter the greater cauldron if you don't wish to do so.
Rather than a melting pot, the new Great Cities are instead patchwork quilts, where neighborhoods remain separate and never quite blend. It's a function of size: once the cities reaches a certain critical population (probably in the region between 500,000 and a million) the dynamics begin to shift, and cities no longer subsume the 'foreign' but only contain it.
Any sociologists/anthropologist out there? Does this sound reasonable? Untenable? What do you think?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
I think that to some extent, still, immigrants to a city become "City-ians of X descent." Certainly if one looks at, say, the ChinaTown of San Francisco and compares it to the ChinaTown of New York, the residents still speak their native language, but they also have many characteristics of anyone who lives in the target city that the other group doesn't. In a generation, the "City-ian" characteristics will outweigh the "X descent" characteristics. Certain ethnic groups (Jews in particular) have fought this tendency, and have managed to retain a cultural identity despite living in metropolitan areas. Other groups have been less dedicated, and while there is a definite ethnic flavor to certain second-generation neighborhoods, the children are citizens of the city first, and members of the descendant ethnic group second. It takes real work for an immigrant population to maintain an ethnic identity separate from the greater city around them, and chances are that their children will marry someone from outside the ethnic group anyway.
I think you're wrong about the neighborhoods remaining fixed and separate and not blending. A given neighborhood is lucky if it retains an ethnic identity for more than a couple of decades, and it takes some pointed effort on the part of neighborhood members to achieve that. They have to convince their children to stay in the area. They have to assert a "pro-ethnicism" (for lack of a better term) that is frankly out of style. The most dedicated ethnic neighborhood still winds up having McDonald's, Taco Bell and a Chinese take-out place. Drill down, and one typically finds that the given area in fact barely has a majority of the naming ethnic group living there.
And it all tends to boil down to a human instinct to hang with "People like me", which first sorts by ethnic heritage, but that breaks down, and the individuals find that common interests will outweigh the ethnic component.
From:
no subject
My grandparents' generation (Irish immigrants fleeing the Troubles after WWI) settled in the South Bronx.
As their fortunes improved, many of them moved to the neighborhoods of northern Queens, just over the bridges. Well, Astoria eventually went Greek, so much so that people now tend to think of it as having always been a Greek neighborhood. Flushing went pan-Asian (mostly Chinese, Korean, and Indian), though Auburndale (the eastern edge of Flushing) has an enclave of Greeks. Bayside has been steadily becoming more Korean each year.
Where have the Irish descendants gone? Moved up and moved to other neighborhoods, perhaps out of NY altogether. No one was fleeing--they were taking jobs, or getting married, or any of the hundred reasons people have for not living next door to their parents. I have no doubt that the same will happen to the subsequent generations of the Greek and Asian families.