Scribner Seminar, London FYE 2023

The Science of Global Cities 

Andrew M. Lindner, 
Associate Professor of Sociology  

London is a place of contestation and a center of cultural production. It is a globalized city that draws its citizens from all over the world and all social strata. It is a home to markets from quaint antique markets to fresh produce markets to a thriving black market to an international stock exchange. It is also a place that sells Britishness to unceasing waves of tourists and is a city where residents go about their daily lives. London is an astonishingly wealthy city and a profoundly unequal one where a global elite reside alongside enduring poverty. In this course, students use London as a social laboratory to explore what life is like for urban dwellers in global cities, a distinctive type of city, which acts as a hub for markets, politics, and culture. In this interdisciplinary course, we consider how global cities organize marketplaces and tourism, social stratification, and cultural diversity. At the same time, students investigate city dwellers’ wide variety of lived experiences of urbanism using extensive social scientific methods of observation and interview. 

Andrew M. Lindner is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Skidmore College and a Skidmore alumnus. He teaches courses on mass media, political sociology, and quantitative research methods. His research examines the intersection of politics and culture, including mass media and sports. He has played on the Faculty-Staff team in Skidmore intramural soccer for nine years and is an enthusiastic pedestrian.