Comments on: A Sociologist of Cities on Las Vegas

By: acelaces

acelaces — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 23:33:00 +0000

that’s what i don’t get, just because you didnt have fun there and can’t imagine other people are but they seem to be, doesn’t mean they just /think/ they’re having fun…they just are, they let go for a while and enjoyed being milked for money with the knowledge that was what they were doin. My family spends all its time bein budget conscious, we poor, but god id’ like to go there an feel surrounded by plenty and excess, phoney and light-up like a theme park. and i’d pay for that feelin.

By: Idle Ethnographer

Idle Ethnographer — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 10:48:00 +0000

Los Angeles is by no standard a normal city, it’s a vast quasi-urban sprawl which does not have any kind of common identity…
There’s a couple of excellent books about LA, i.e. City of Quartz by Mike Davis.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 10:22:00 +0000

I went to Las Vegas and it was fun, but it was a lot more artificial-appearing then I had imagined. There is The Strip, which is kind of hokey and artificial as could be expected, but beyond that there didn’t appear to be much going on. It almost seemed like a huge resort in the middle of a small town in the desert versus a major city of the United States. Like someone mentioned, it is like Disney World for adults, though when I went, there were probably as many kids there as adults!

By: Hubby

Hubby — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 02:19:00 +0000

Congratulations Prof. zukin, for not actually letting “sheeple” come out of your mouth for an entire 1:42…..

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 22:51:00 +0000

Because the image we’re often presented as “real cities” tend to only focus on a few cities: New York, London, Paris MAYBE Los Angeles or Tokyo, everything else is either “quaint” or “fake.” And, as many said, she’s basing her “hate” on a one-mile long stretch of city; if you judged New York only based on Times Square, a million raging people from Williamsburg would rip you into pieces, but it seems like people think it’s normal to base assumptions on huge populations/areas of land on a miniscule chunk of the city, or even stuff that is just NEAR the city (I’ve heard people judge Reno, NV on Las Vegas, and as a native Chicagoan, I hear enough people say they “hate” Chicago because they once visited their aunt in Hinsdale).

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 20:43:00 +0000

Then you might ask what a city is. I recently went on vacation in Crete, where part of the coastline seems to ssutain itself mainly on tourism, and a friend of mine went to Houston, saying that she didn’t like it because it felt too calculated, “not a real city”. We seem to have this idea of a city being formed after the old model, a small settlement growing and adding new industries and facilities as the needs gets voiced and time goes by. But obviously peopel are living their lives in cities or communities that don’t fit into this mold, like Las Vegas, Houston and communities lika Agia Marina. It really looks like an arbitrary way of ranknig ways of building a community.

By: ShermanMetro

ShermanMetro — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 11:31:00 +0000

@d5675763f416c8510b44858ed9f656a8:disqus that’s a good point and one that another video in the series points out: http://www.youtube.com/nortonsoc#p/c/117543344E3BE8DB/3/EKyNzLbt6MI

By: Famousblueraincoat

Famousblueraincoat — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 10:35:00 +0000

Its very difficult to judge someone on a two minute clip, she was being asked her opinion on Las Vegas at no stage did she say she was speaking for every sociologist who attended the conference.

I have never been to Vegas so I do not really have much to contribute here, it does have extremely high suicide rates in comparison with the rest of the US which I think I think is relevant to this discussion.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 04:22:00 +0000

yeah, ’cause there were no unhappy women. *sarcasm

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 02:40:00 +0000

Regardless, she isn’t critiquing it in the right way. She’s not criticizing the tendency of Western culture (ALL of it, not just one neighborhood in one city, as much as she’d hate to admit because then it might reflect poorly on her too as she’s just as much a member of our society as the gawking gawkers are) to promote consumerism as inherently fun and good, or businesses using ridiculous or shady tactics to get money, or even all the questionable objectification of women that goes on a lot in Vegas (not necessarily more than anywhere else, but much more openly), which she doesn’t even mention in passing. Instead, she snidely sneers down her nose at the stupid peons who “think” they’re having fun, only because they’re so incredibly stupid as to think something she personally doesn’t like is fun. It’s an attitude I’d expect more from a teenager dabbling in alt-subcultures more than a middle aged woman who presumably has a mass of education and life experience under her belt. I mean, come on, I heard enough of this “such and such is so, like, totally fake n stuff” and “I can’t believe those sheep are so, like, you know, stupid what with their common activities n junk” nonsense in high school. This is sociology, teach me something new.

By: Kc8799

Kc8799 — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 02:35:00 +0000

She lost me with her opening statement, “I hate Las Vegas.” That comment made this analysis personal, not academic. Shame on Norton for even recording it. If she personally dislikes the city, fine say that when the camera is off, but give your audience an erudite thought, not your some half-baked opinion.

By: allburningup

allburningup — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 02:13:00 +0000

Cool, I would love to hear your thoughts on Las Vegas.

By: Djjrjr

Djjrjr — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 01:36:00 +0000

Yeah, it’s interesting when sociologists will “charge” others with false consciousness and when they decide instead that they represent authentic voices that must be listened to…

By: hry

hry — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 01:27:00 +0000

Her video is the embodiment of elitist narcissism.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 23:54:00 +0000

I think this comic is appropriate.

http://xkcd.com/359/