Citation

Joe Schlichtman J, Patch J. City Community 2008; 7(3): 273-293.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, Section on Community and Urban Sociology, American Sociological Association, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1540-6040.2008.00261.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This article suggests a research tool, the temporal map, for ethnographers to employ in supplementing the accounts of urban change provided by local informants. Such a map, created using city business directories, can provide an external validity check to ethnographic research. The authors' tool allows urban ethnographers to extend contemporary ethnographic accounts backward to a period prior to the beginning of fieldwork. It provides a geo-temporal contextualization by fitting fragmented, geographically and historically specific ethnographic accounts into a broader area and across a broader period of time. The authors show how two ethnographic case studies were enhanced by such temporal maps. Their cases involve a redeveloped central business district in North Carolina and a gentrified neighborhood in New York City.