Researching City Life: An Urban Field Methods Text Reader

Researching City Life: An Urban Field Methods Text-Reader examines the city from a street level perspective and provides readers with tools to conduct research on urbanism―the everyday experiences of people in cities. Contending that culture is central to understanding urbanism, editors Tyler Schafer and Michael Ian Borer address qualitative research in cities and how it provides insights unable to be captured via quantitative methods. Carefully selected and edited readings cover participant observation, interviewing, narrative analysis, visual and sensory methods, and methods for (re)presenting the city. Each section includes an introduction from the editors, a Reflection Essay from one of the authors, and exercises that prompt hands-on experience.

Tyler Schafer is an Associate Professor of Sociology at California State University, Stanislaus. He is the author of Community Gardening in an Unlikely City: The Struggle to Grow Together in Las Vegas (Lexington Books 2021). His work has been published in Sociology Compass, Qualitative Sociology Review, and the Journal of Religion & Media.

Michael Ian Borer is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is author of Faithful to Fenway: Believing in Boston, Baseball, and America’s Most Beloved Ballpark (NYU Press 2008) and Vegas Brews: Craft Beer and the Birth of a Local Scene (NYU Press 2019). He also co-authored Urban People and Places: The Sociology of Cities, Suburbs, and Towns (SAGE 2014) and Sociology in Everyday Life (Waveland 2016). Borer served as the 2021-2022 President of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction.