South Florida Sociocultural Systems

SYD 6625

Will the Last American to Leave Miami Please Bring the Flag

Spring 2005

GC 276 first meeting

and then Labor Center 3rd Floor

Tuesdays 3:30-6:15

 

Instructor:                    Alex Stepick

                                    DM 320C

                                    Stepick@fiu.edu

              305 348-3343

Office Hours:                After Class and by appointment

 

 

I. Rationale: 

Miami and South Florida have been described as the Capital of the Caribbean and even all of Latin America. It has also been referred to as a harbinger of transformations likely to occur throughout the United States. The bumper stick quote above which became popular in the wake of the 1980 Mariel boatlift indicates that not everyone applauds these characteristics. This course provides a sociological and anthropological analysis of South Florida to provide both a basis and means for understanding contemporary South Florida, the sources and nature of these transformations and what the mean for the region and the rest of the United States.

 

II. Course Aims and Objectives: 

            Aims

This course is an area studies course. The aim is to have students understand how the South Florida area constitutes a unit of sociocultural analysis that can provide the basis not only understanding South Florida, but also the context for some specific element in the region and a framework for comparing South Florida to other regional areas.

            Objectives

1.      The course will cover the main social science literature on South Florida, focusing especially on sociology and anthropology. We will first cover the literature that gives an overview of South Florida. Students will then choose a particular topic suitable for in-depth research and review all of the literature on this topic.

2.      Students will work with U.S. Census data to construct a demographic profile of some subpopulation in South Florida. This subpopulation could be defined by ethnicity, gender, age, socioeconomic class or some other sociological variable or combination.

3.      Students will conduct a research project on a topic of their choosing relevant to the sociology and anthropology of South Florida. The research project will form the basis of

a.       An annotated bibliography on this particular research topic

b.      An oral presentation of about 20 minutes, equivalent to a presentation at a professional meeting.

c.       A final paper of approximately 20 pages that will be the basis of the oral presentation.

                             

4.      Upon completion of this course, students will have an understanding of South Florida sufficient for a thesis or dissertation and will have conducted preliminary research on a focused topic that could serve as the basis of a professional presentation and/or further graduate level research.

 

III. Format and Procedures: 

This course will be conducted in a seminar style, requiring that all students attend, participate, and read the assignments for every class. This course is also an advanced graduate research seminar, which means that the readings are substantial. Each week there are two types of readings. Core readings are read by everyone and come from the books ordered in the bookstore. Complementary readings are selected or assigned individually. It is expected that each week students will go to the library and find articles on their own relevant to that week’s topic. Those you find most relevant you will read entirely and report on. Those that appear less relevant you will still submit the bibliographic information using RefWorks via library’s web site you will save them in an account that we will create for this class. These complementary readings will be included in an extended bibliography that will be the joint production of everyone in the class.

All students will submit reading logs on Tuesday mornings by 8:00 am via email. The reading logs will consist of notes on the primary points in the reading, both core reading and the complementary ones in the syllabus plus those discovered by students on their own. You will also submit with the reading log the bibliographic information, including abstracts, for readings that you found but did not read. The readings are assigned one week, to be discussed the next week. Thus, the readings assigned January 18th will be discussed in class January 25th.

Each week two selected students will present the readings and initiate the class discussion. Each student will be responsible for leading two class discussions during the semester. Everyone should pair up with a classmate and choose the topic they’d like to present. For each presentation, the pair should be prepared to discuss the week’s core readings and supplemental readings with which they are famliar. Each presentation should last the duration of the class time, with time allotted for class discourse. This will count for 15 percent of your final grade.

 

3. Assignments and Grading:

 

            (a) Class Participation 10%

            (b) Reading Logs and Annotated Bibliography 20%

(b) Leading Class Discussions 10%

(c) Demographic Profile 15%

(d) Oral Presentation of Research Project 20%

(e) Final Paper on Research Project 25%

 

Books Ordered at Bookstore: 

            Required:

Portes and Stepick, City on the Edge. University of California Press

        ISBN: 0-520-08932-4

Stepick, Grenier, Castro, and Dunn, This Land Is Our Land. University of California Press

       ISBN: 0520233980

Sheila Croucher, Imagining Miami. University of Virginia Press

ISBN: 0813917050

Marvin Dunn. Black Miami in the Twentieth Century. University of Florida Press

ISBN: 0813015308

  

            Recommended

Alex Stepick. Pride Against Prejudice. Allyn & Bacon

ISBN:  0-205-16817-5

Grenier and Perez. The Legacy of Exile: Cubans in the United States. Allyn & Bacon

ISBN: 0-205-34090-3

Grenier and Stepick. Miami Now! University of Florida Press

ISBN: 0-8130-1155-8

Peacock, Morrow and Gladwin. Hurricane Andrew. International Hurricane Center, FIU and Routledge

ISBN: 0615118690

Deborah Dash Moore . To the Golden Cities. Harvard University Press.

ISBN: 0-674-89305-0

Garcia. Havana USA. University of California Press

ISBN: 0-520-20131-0

 

VIII. Tentative Course Schedule (Readings will be updated weekly. Subjects and order may change to accommodate guest presenters & student needs)

Topics                                                    

January 11      Course Introduction and Early Miami, Before the Cubans

Core Readings on history

Dunn, Chapters 1-6

Portes and Stepick, Chapter 4

Stepick, Grenier, Castro and Dunn, Chapter 1

Mohl, R. A. (1995). "City Building in the Sunshine State:  The Urbanization of Florida." Locus 8(1): 1 -24.

Search History on Miami via FIU’s Library

 

Supplementary

Dash Moore, entire book

Lichtenstein, Alex

1998    Putting Labor's House in Order: The Transport Workers Union and Labor Anti-Communism in Miami during the 1940s. In Labor History. Vol. 39. pp. 7-23.

South Florida History (Journal in the library)

Tequesta (Journal in the library)

 

January 18      Miami Demography

  

Core Readings on Demography

Chapter 1 from Brock, T., I. Kwakye, et al. (2004). Welfare Reform in Miami: Implementation, Effects, and Experiences of Poor Families and Neighborhoods. New York, Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation. Link: http://www.mdrc.org/publications/387/full.pdf

Miami-Dade County Planning Division web site: http://www.miamidade.gov/planzone/library_census.asp

Research Institute on Social and Economic Policy, FIU web site: http://www.eluminoustechnologies.net/projects/risep/

U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics web site on Miami: http://www.bls.gov/oes/2001/oes_5000.htm

.

Supplementary

Knight Foundation

2000    Miami, Florida Community Profile. pp. 121. Miami: Knight Foundation.

Do a search in the Miami Herald and Miami New Times on Census and Miami

Boswell, Thomas, editor. South Florida : the winds of change

Boswell, Thomas D.

1994    A Demographic Profile of Cuban Americans. pp. 52. Miami, Florida: The Cuban American Policy Center.

America’s Health State Rankings web site: http://www.unitedhealthfoundation.org/shr2003/Findings.html

Kids Count web site:

            http://www.aecf.org/cgi-bin/kc.cgi?action=ranking&variable=ovr&year=2001

Mumford Center, PMSA statistics on Miami Neighborhoods:

            http://mumford1.dyndns.org/cen2000/BlackWhite/DiversityBWDataPages/5000msaBWChar.htm

There are also other “ethnic” web pages for various groups that have a presence in Florida. These can usually be found via google.

January 25 Census Files Assignment

February 1 Miami’s Economic Base

Core Readings

Nissen, Bruce

1998    The Impact of a Living Wage Ordinance on Miami-Dade County. Miami, FL: Center for Labor Research and Studies, Florida International University.

Nissen, Bruce, and Guillermo Grenier

2001    Local Union Relations with Immigrants: The Case of South Florida. Labor Studies Journal 26(1):76-97.

Nijman, Jan

1996    Ethnicity, Class, and the Economic Internationalization of Miami. In Social Polarization in Post-Industrial Metropolises. J. O'Loughlin and J. Friedrichs, eds. pp. 283-300. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter.

Nijman, Jan

1996    Breaking the Rules: Miami in the Urban Hierarchy. Urban Geography 17(1):5-22.

Nijman, Jan

1997    Globalization to a Latin Beat: The Miami Growth Machine. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 551:164-177.

Cruz, Robert David

1990    The Industry Composition of Production and the Distribution of Income by Race and Ethnicity in Miami. Miami, FL: Department of Economics, Florida International University.

Stepick, Alex

1990    Community Growth versus Simply Surviving:  The Informal Sectors of Cubans and Haitians in Miami. In Perspectives on the Informal Economy. M. E. Smith, ed. pp. 183-205. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America.

Grosfoguel, Ramon

1994    World Cities in the Caribbean: The Rise of Miami and San Juan. Review 17(3):351-381.

 

Supplementary

Lewis, Ethan

How did the Miami labor market absorb the Mariel immigrants?: Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Working Papers: 04-3.

Miami in the 1990s: "City of the Future" or "City on the Edge"?
Croucher, Sheila L, Journal of International Migration and Integration, 2002, 3, 2, spring, 223-239

Dluhy, Milan J., and Howard A. Frank

2002    The Miami fiscal crisis: Can a poor city regain prosperity? Westport, Conn. and London: Greenwood, Praeger.

Hannigan, John A.

1995    The Postmodern City: A New Urbanization? Current Sociology/La Sociologie Contemporaine 43(1):151-217.

 

February 8 Miami: The Environment

Core Readings

FIU Library Resources on the Everglades

            Everglades Restoration: Interactions of Population and Environment
Kranzer, Bonnie, Population and Environment, 2003, 24, 6, July, 455-484

Weisskoff, Richard

2000    Missing Pieces in Ecosystem Restoration: The Case of the Florida Everglades. In Economic Systems Research. Vol. 12. pp. 271-303.

 

Supplementary

Peacock, et al. Hurricane Andrew

Vogel, Richard

1998    The Impact of Natural Disaster on Urban Economic Structure. In Review of Radical Political Economics. Vol. 30. pp. 114-22.

 

February 15 Blacks: African Americans and Bahamians

Core Readings

Marvin Dunn. Black Miami, Chapters 7-10 and Epilogue

 

Supplementary

Mohl, Raymond A.

1999    "South of the South?" Jews, Blacks, and the Civil Rights Movement in Miami, 1945-1960. Journal of American Ethnic History 18(2):3-36.

Mohl, Raymond A.

1996    Making the Second Ghetto in Metropolitan Miami, 1940-1960. THE NEW AFRICAN AMERICAN URBAN HISTORY, Goings, Kenneth W., & Mohl, Raymond A.[Eds], Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage:pp 266-298.

Mohl, R. A. (2003). "The Second Ghetto Thesis and the Power of History." Journal of Urban History 29(3): 243-256.

Mohl, R. A. (1987). "Black Immigrants:  Bahamians in Early Twentieth-Century Miami." Florida Historical Quarterly 65(January): 271-297.

Mohl, R. A. (1987). "Trouble in Paradise:  Race and Housing in Miami During the New Deal Era." Prologue 19: 7-21.

February 22 Recent Black Immigrants: Haitians, West Indians

Core Readings

City on the Edge, Chapter 8

Stepick, A. (1998). Pride Against Prejudice: Haitians in the United States. Boston, Allyn & Bacon.

Osborne, B. L. (2001). "Clash of Identities in South Florida: An Examination of the Complexity of Racial and National Identity and Their Impact on Ethnic Solidarity between Black Americans and Jamaicans." Ph. D. Dissertation in Comparative Sociology, Florida International University.

Supplementary

March 1   Cubans

Core Readings

City on the Edge, Chapters 2,4,5 & 6

This Land Is Our Land, Chapters 2 & 3

 

Supplementary

Thomas D. Boswell, James R. Curtis. The Cuban-American experience : culture, images, and perspectives.

Grenier and Pérez.

 

March 8 Cubans, Part 2: The enclave debate

Core Readings

City on the Edge

Supplementary

Ethnic Economies in Metropolitan Regions: Miami and Beyond. Logan, John R; Alba, Richard D; McNulty, Thomas L.

Social Forces, 1994, 72, 3, Mar, 691-724

 

Sanders, Jimy M; Nee, Victor. American Sociological Review, 1987, 52, 6, Dec, 745-767 Enclaves and Entrepreneurs: Assessing the Payoff for Immigrants and Minorities

Logan, John R; Alba, Richard D; Stults, Brian J, International Migration Review, 2003, 37, 2(142), summer, 344-388

Ethnic Boundaries and Identity in Plural Societies. Sanders, Jimy M, Annual Review of Sociology, 2002, 28, 327-357

March 15 Other Latinos: Nicas, Colombians, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, et al

Core Readings

Chapter 7, City on the Edge

Rodriguez, M. (2000). "Different Paths, Same Destination: U.S.-Bound Nicaraguan and Cuban Migration in a Comparative Perspective." Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Miami.

Konczal, L. (2001). The Academic Orientation of First and Second Generation Nicaraguan Immigrant Adolescents. Ph.D. Dissertation in Comparative Sociology. Miami, FL, Florida International University.

 

Supplementary

March 22 Spring Break

March 29 Inter-Ethnic Relations.

Core Readings

Stepick, Grenier, Castro and Dunn. Chapters 2, 3 & 5

Grenier, Guillermo J., and Max Castro

2001    Blacks and Cubans in Miami: The Negative Consequences of the Cuban Enclave on Ethnic Relations. In Governing American cities: Interethnic coalitions, competition, and conflict. pp. 137-57. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Mohl, Raymond A.

1996    Review Essay:  Ethnic Transformations in Late-Twentieth-Century Florida. Journal of American Ethnic History 15(Winter):60 - 78.

Hansen, Niles

2000    Miami: Multicultural Gateway of the Americas. In Gateways to the global economy. pp. 124-46. Cheltenham, U.K. and Northampton, Mass.: Elgar; distributed by American International Distribution Corporation, Williston, Vt.

Chapters on Miami in Lamphere, L., A. Stepick, et al., Eds. (1994). Newcomers in the Workplace:  Immigrants and the Restructuring of the U.S. Economy. Philadelphia, PA, Temple University Press.

 

Supplementary

Little, Cheryl

1999    InterGroup Coalitions and Immigration Politics: The Haitian Experience in Florida. University of Miami Law Review 53(4):717-741.

Lavender, Abraham D.

1993    Sephardic Political Identity: Jewish and Cuban Interaction in Miami Beach. Contemporary Jewry 14(1):116-132.

Morawska, Ewa

2001    Immigrant-Black Dissensions in American Cities: An Argument for Multiple Explanations. Problem Of The Century: Racial Stratification In The United States, Anderson, Elijah, & Massey, Douglas S.[Eds], New York: Russell Sage:pp 47-96.

 

April 5 Politics and Power in Miami

Core Readings

Croucher. Entire Book

Supplementary

Martinez, Ramiro, Jr

1999    Imagining Miami: Ethnic Politics in a Postmodern World. Contemporary Sociology 28(3):329-330.

Croucher, Sheila L.

2002    Miami in the 1990s: "City of the Future" or "City on the Edge"? Journal of International Migration and Integration 3(2):223-239.

Croucher, Sheila L.

1996    The Success of the Cuban Success Story: Ethnicity, Power, and Politics. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 2(4):351-384.

Portes, Alejandro

2003    The Cuban-US Political Machine: Reflections on Its Origin and Permanence. Foro Internacional 43(3):608-626.

Castro, Max

1992    The Politics of Language. In Miami Now! G. Grenier and A. Stepick, eds. pp. 109-132. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.

Mohl, Raymond

1989    Ethnic Politics in Miami, 1960-1986. In Shades of the South:  Essays on Ethnicity, Race, and the Urban South. R. M. Miller and G. E. Pozzetta, eds. Boca Raton, FL: Florida Atlantic Press.

Stack, John F., Jr., and Christopher L. Warren

1990    Ethnicity and the Politics of Symbolism in Miami's Cuban Community. Cuban Studies 20:11-28.

Warren, Christopher L., and John F. Stack, Jr.

1986    Immigration and the Politics of Ethnicity and Class in Metropolitan Miami. In The Primordial Challenge:  Ethnicity in the Modern World. J. F. Stack, Jr., ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Warren, Christopher L.

1997    Hispanic Incorporation and Structural Reform in Miami. In Racial Politics in American Cities. D. R. M. Rufus P. Browning, and David H. Tabb, ed. pp. 223-246. New York: Longman.

Stack, John, and Christopher Warren

1992    The Reform Tradition and Ethnic Politics: Metropolitan Miami Confronts the 1990s. In Miami Now! Immigration,  Ethnicity and Social Change. G. Grenier and A. Stepick, eds. pp. 160-185. Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press.

Grenier, Guillermo, and Max J. Castro

1999    Triadic Politics: Ethnicity, Race, and Politics in Miami, 1959-1998. Pacific Historical Review 68(2, Special Issue: Orange Empires):273-292.

O'Connor, Anne-Marie

1992    Trying to Set the Agenda in Miami. Columbia Journalism Review 31(1).

Moreno, Dario

1997    Cuban-American Political Empowerment. In Pursuing Power: Latinos and the Political System. F. C. Garcia, ed. pp. 208-226. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press.

Lizza, Ryan

2000    The Miami Herald's Cuban Problem: Between the Lines. In The New Republic Online.

McQueen, Mike

2000    In the Cauldron. American Journalism Review (December 4).

Jones-Correa, Michael

2001    Governing American Cities: Inter-Ethnic Coalitions, Competition, and Conflict. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Mohl, R. A. (1982). "Miami Metro, Charter Revisions, and the Politics of the Eighties." Florida Environmental Urban Issues 10(October): 9-13, 21-31.

 

 

April 12 The Next Generation

Core Readings

Chapter 4, This Land Is Our Land

Chapters on Miami from Ethnicities, eds. Rumbaut and Portes

Fernández-Kelly, M. P. and R. Schauffler (1994). "Divided Fates: Immigrant Children in a Restructured U.S. Economy." International Migration Review 28(xxvii): 662-689.

 

Supplementary

Orfield, Myron, Anne Discher, and Tom Luce

2003    Economic and Racial Segregation in Greater Miami’s Elementary Schools: Trends Shaping Metropolitan Growth. In The Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy. Washington D.C.: The Brookings Institution.

Diaz Fernandez, Marta

2001    Intergenerational Dynamics in the Cuban Community in Southern Florida: Identity and Politics in the Second Generation. Cuban Studies 31:76-101.

 

April 19 Research Presentations

 

April 26 Final Paper Due