Krista E. Paulsen

History repeats itself, but how? City character, urban tradition, and the accomplishment of place

This study shows how places, and by implication other societal units as well, achieve and reproduce distinctiveness. It does this by specifying how actors in two California urban areas, over approximately 100 years, responded differently to the same exogenous forces. Each place is examined to determine how unlike elements conjoin to produce a particular character at any given moment and how this character travels through time to constitute a local tradition. Borrowing from advances in analyses of structure and agency, this study displays character and tradition as accomplished interaction and helps make an elusive process empirically evident and accessible for study

Making Character Concrete: Empirical Strategies for Studying Place Distinction

Actors orient themselves toward places based not only on major distinctions—coastal versus inland, large city versus small town—but based on a subtler and seemingly ineffable set of qualities, including meanings associated with place and patterns in local life. This article suggests that to understand how locality matters, we must not merely describe place in broad terms, but come to understand how material and symbolic aspects of place work together to direct activity on the ground. Place character is offered as a conceptual tool for understanding how qualities of place combine and influence local patterns in meaning and action. This article outlines strategies that can aid in uncovering just what constitutes a places character by identifying understandings associated with specific locales and the social and material realities that provide the bases for these understandings. It also suggests approaches that reveal how character works to shape local action. Classic and contemporary studies are called on to elaborate the precedents and stakes of conducting this research and illustrate how the four research strategies presented here can be used. Concluding remarks suggest how researching place character might advance substantive understandings of situated social action.

Ethnography of the ephemeral: studying temporary scenes through individual and collective approaches

Ethnographic research is an iterative process in which layers of knowledge gradually accumulate as we spend time in a setting. The information that presents itself most immediately may be fascinating, but is rarely the type of truth that distinguishes good scholarship. How, then, do we come to understand settings and interactions that are of short durations, where our first-hand observations may be limited to a few hours or days? I present three challenges associated with studying short-term events, and potential solutions to each: gaining entrée and finding a productive position from which to observe the scene; the hazards posed by immediately available informants and pre-existing roles; and finally the effect of short, intense field seasons on the refinement of research questions and analysis of data. Insights are drawn from an independent, multi-year study on county fairs, and a collaborative study of the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada – a four-day event that draws over 100,000 attendees. Concluding remarks contrast the two approaches and reflect on lessons learned from each.