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The Detroit Entrepreneurship Project: An Ethnographical Study of Economic Revival, Michigan (US) - Institute for Field Research
Location: Detroit, Michigan, United States
Season:
June 30, 2019 to July 28, 2019
Application Deadline:
Friday, April 5, 2019
Deadline Type:
Rolling
Flyer:
syllabus-us-mi-prosperus-2019.pdf
Program Type
Field school
RPA certified
no
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, ProsperUS Detroit, Featherstone Moments, Connecticut College, Institute for Field Research
Project Director:
Dr. William Lopez, John Doering-White
Project Description
After decades of disinvestment and white flight, the idea of Detroit as a place of opportunity is resurgent; but whose conditions are improving, and on what terms? This ethnographic field school takes entrepreneurship as a lens for understanding how low-income people of color and immigrant residents of the city have experienced and responded to uneven urban “revitalization.” Throughout July of 2019, we will undertake a collaborative ethnography in partnership with ProsperUS Detroit, an organization that offers entrepreneurship training, ongoing support, and small business loans to people who have otherwise been marginalized from formal economic and social service institutions. Students will collect oral histories, facilitate digital storytelling, and gather ethnographic data alongside ProsperUS participants and staff. During the field school, students will live collectively and travel in teams to conduct fieldwork throughout Detroit’s neighborhoods. We will also meet with individuals and organizations across the city doing similar work. We will write up and present a program evaluation that ProsperUS and similar organizations can use to document the organization’s impact and improve future programming. Broader analysis of the data we gather will contribute to academic conversations around immigration, urban inequality, public health, and community organizing.
Project size:
1-24 participants
Minimum Length of Stay for Volunteers: Participants must stay entire duration of the field school.
Minimum age:
18
Experience required:
No prior experience is required to participate in this field school.
Room and Board Arrangements
Students will live in a large Victorian house that has been remodeled to accommodate groups of 15. Breakfast and lunch will be prepared communally by the lab manager. Students will be responsible for their own dinners, which can be prepared in the house or purchased at nearby restaurants. Vegetarian and vegan meals can be provided.
Cost:
Room and board is included in the tuition of the field school.
Academic Credit
Name of institution offering credit:
Connecticut College
Tuition:
$4,060
Location
Recommended Bibliography:
Doering-White, John, Lopez, William 2018. IRB Proposal for Detroit Entrepreneurship Project.
Boyce, Geoffrey Alan 2018 Appearing ‘out of Place’: Automobility and the Everyday Policing of Threat and Suspicion on the US/Canada Frontier. Political Geography 64: 1–12.
Delgado, Melvin (selections) 2011 Latino Small Businesses and the American Dream: Community Social Work Practice and Economic and Social Development. Columbia University Press.
Doering-White, John, Pilar Horner, Laura Sanders, et al. 2016 Testimonial Engagement: Undocumented Latina Mothers Navigating a Gendered Deportation Regime. Journal of International Migration and Integration 17(2): 325–340.
Emerson, Robert M., Rachel I. Fretz, and Linda L. Shaw (selections) 2011 Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes. Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing, xxiii, 289 p. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Graham, Louis F., Armando Matiz Reyes, William Lopez, et al. 2013 Addressing Economic Devastation and Built Environment Degradation to Prevent Violence: A Photovoice Project of Detroit Youth Passages. Community Literacy Journal 8(1): 41–52.
Lassiter, Luke Eric 2005 The Chicago Guide to Collaborative Ethnography. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Longhofer, Jeffrey L., Jerry. Floersch, and Janet. Hoy 2013 Qualitative Methods for Practice Research. Pocket Guides to Social Work Research Methods, xviii, 197 p. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press.
Lopez, William D., Louis F. Graham, Caitlin Reardon, et al. 2012 “No Jobs, More Crime. More Jobs, Less Crime”: Structural Fators Affecting the Health of Latino Men in Detroit. Journal of Men’s Health 9(4): 255–260.
Portes, Alejandro, and Jessica Yiu 2013 Entrepreneurship, Transnationalism, and Development. Migration Studies 1(1): 75–95.
Reynolds, Joanna 2017 ‘Missing out’: Reflections on the Positioning of Ethnographic Research within an Evaluative Framing. Ethnography 18(3): 345–365.
Schuster, Caroline E. (selections) 2014 The Social Unit of Debt: Gender and Creditworthiness in Paraguayan Microfinance. American Ethnologist 41(3): 563–578.
Stuesse, Angela, and Mathew Coleman 2014 Automobility, Immobility, and Altermobility: Surviving and Resisting the Intensification of Immigrant Policing. City and Society 26(1): 51–72.
Wherry, Frederick F. 2011 The Philadelphia Barrio: The Arts, Branding, and Neighborhood Transformation. University of Chicago Press.
RECOMMENDED READINGS
Harklau, Linda, and Rachel Norwood 2005 Negotiating Researcher Roles in Ethnographic Program Evaluation: A Postmodern Lens. Anthropology and Education Quarterly 36(33): 278–288.
Graeber, David 2014 Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Melville House.
Mauss, Marcel 1954 The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. London: Routledge.
Miles, Tiya 2017 The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits. New York ; London: The New Press.
Munn, Nancy 1986 The Fame of Gawa: A Symbolic Study of Value Transformation in a Massim (Papa New Guinea) Society. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Ralph, Laurence 2014 Renegade Dreams: Living through Injury in Gangland Chicago. , xx, 250 pages. Chicago ; London: University of Chicago Press.
Ryzewski, Krysta 2016 Reclaiming Detroit: Decolonizing Archaeology in the Postindustrial City | Savage Minds. /2016/07/05/reclaiming-detroit-decolonizing-archaeology-in-the-postindustrial-city/, accessed August 6, 2018.
Safransky, Sara 2016 Rethinking Land Struggle in the Postindustrial City. Antipode 0(0): 1–22.
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