- Between weeks 8 and 14, each student should provide a weekly reflection (500 words) on the data you have collected to date.
- What data did you collect?
- What is your initial impression of the data?
- How have the data you have collected this week changed/progressed your thinking about your research project?
- What challenges did you encounter while collecting the data?
- What are your next steps?
2 thoughts on “Progress Notes: Week 11”
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This week, I managed to make a fair amount of progress with my project, although I am not really all the way where I want to be. After deciding that I do not want to do a documentary, I settled on a making a website to convey my information. I visited David Isreal to make me a WordPress page and after trying to organize the layout for a few days, I opted to use Google Pages. Professor Greene gave me this idea, citing that it is a simpler layout. I have been able to spend some time on Google Pages and I agree. The website, as I have it planned currently, is a digital exploration. Users will be able to look through photo slideshows of different neighborhoods and answer questions about safety. I plan on dividing the website into key sections: History of the term”Public Safety”, Race and Public Safety, Geography and Public Safety, and Politics and Public Safety. Each category will feature key scholars on the subject, in addition to a bit of data that I collected from Bowdoin students. It is not a lot of data, with a very small sample size, so I will make sure to preface my methods with that.
Journey,
I like the fact that you have shifted to creating a Google Site that explores the dynamics and perceptions of public safety. Your presentation raised an important question that I hope does not get lost in your evidence: how do we shape notions of public safety? I agree with your hypothesis that conceptualizations of safety are “context-dependent.” I liked the way you thought about the Bronx as “safe” while Mainers think of the city as “dangerous.” Again, this is tied intimately to the perceptions of the city itself, and the media perpetuate this through how they display the evidence. I think there are some great opportunities to draw attention to these paradoxes, and in doing so, offer a really important intervention on how safety and sense of safety persist as social constructions. You might find our course materials on crime from Cities and Society helpful. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.