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Sociologically speaking, what kind of place is the subway? If urbanism is defined as the experience of being surrounded by strangers, then the subway is a quintessentially urban space. But social scientists remain polarized in their views of this space, alternately describing the subway as an antisocial environment, a liminal "non-place", or a space of multicultural contact. In this paper, we describe the social life of the subway, analyzing an original data-set compiled through detailed observations of the behavior of more than 4,000 passengers on the New York City subway system. We use logistic regression to model the factors that influence how passengers direct their gaze and configure their bodies while riding mass transit, and interpret our results with the help of "subway diaries" kept by 18 research subjects over the course of a week. Our findings help to reconcile conflicting images of social interaction in crowded transportation spaces: the subway is a "fourth place": a utilitarian space in which context-specific norms serve to flatten social distinctions, allowing a passive form of social contact constrained by the presence and prevalence of other passengers in the subway car. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Running counter to both theoretical expectations and the results of previous empirical studies, recent research has shown that European immigrants voted at higher rates than native-born Americans in urban areas of the United States during the beginning of the twentieth century. The explanation offered for this research finding, based on aggregate-level data, is that the numerical superiority of the immigrants in cities discouraged the native-born population from voting. However, a number of competing explanations could also be offered to account for this same finding. If this finding is valid, it could be attributable to the political machines spurring the immigrants to vote. Or this finding could be a spurious one caused by either the ecological fallacy or a census undercount of the foreign born. The authors, using both aggregate- and individual-level data, confirm that immigrants were more electorally active than the native born in one northeastern city. Their study reinforces the notion that the higher voter turnout of the immigrants was rooted more in demography than other factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the African American population of the United States remained concentrated in the South. In 1910, African Americans in Connecticut accounted for less than 2 percent of the population. Hartford's African American population then totaled 1,745, but by 1920 had increased significantly (by 143 percent) to 4,567. The Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the North and Midwest was under way. The authors illustrate the use of GIS technology, combined with individual-level census records, to study the beginning stage of the Great Migration of African Americans to one northern city--Hartford, Connecticut. The first step involved building a historical GIS map for Hartford and attaching the 1920 address ranges to each street-segment in the city. Geocoding by street address of all African Americans then living in Hartford followed. The process of geocoding involves taking each address record and matching it against the street-segment file. When a match is made, the geographical location of the address (longitude and latitude) is appended to the record, and geocoded records are then displayed as points on a digital street map. The authors address several substantive research questions. Other data used here include African American registration and voting behavior in the 1920 presidential election. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]