Sociological studies of culture provide three basic conceptualizations that help us understand the meaning of participation in culture for artificial intelligence. In this position paper, we argue that human-machine collaboration in culture is limited until a machine has the capacity for artificial intelligibility; otherwise, we risk confusing and conflating the use of a tool for cultivation and the use of a tool for rationalization in which art becomes disenchanted from its own purposes.

Food startups, small-scale artisanal food preparation enterprises, have proliferated in many global cities since the 2008-2009 financial crisis. In the United States, specialty food sales in 2019 had a 10.7 percent increase since 2017 (Specialty Food Association, 2020). In New York City, food manufacturing added 3,753 jobs or a 27 percent increase during the period between 2005 and 2015, providing opportunities for small-scale entrepreneurs (Center for an Urban Future, 2016; Evergreen, 2015; Schrock et al 2019). Mass layoffs in the 2008 economic crisis sped up the sector’s development, which provided a way for a diverse group of business founders including immigrants, expats, and recent college graduates to capitalize on their knowledge, skills, and networks. The current COVID-19 pandemic, a global public health crisis, has put a pause to this decade-long development, sheds lights on precarious conditions that food entrepreneurs face, and shows the important role that the city government plays in supporting this group.

In A Place to Call Home: Immigrant Exclusion and Urban Belonging in New York, Paris, and Barcelona, Ernesto Castañeda explores how immigrant incorporation and sense of belonging are shaped by social processes in different cities. The author explores city-level differences by drawing on original data including ethnography, interviews, and surveys, which he collected through years of research in sending and receiving countries. A comparative study of New York, Paris, and Barcelona and two groups, Latin Americans and North Africans, it contributes to the growing literature that compares how policies and contexts of migration affect immigrants’ and their descendants’ long-term settlement experiences on both sides of the Atlantic.

In Uberland, Alex Rosenblat takes readers on a journey through the ride-hailing work culture of Uber drivers: how they work, communicate, and form communities. The author combines interviews, digital ethnography, and participant observation to show how technology, specifically algorithmic management, categorizes workers as consumers of technology yet manages them as workers, changing what it means to be employed in the twenty-first century.

This assignment asks students to use the ubiquitous cellphone to take pictures of their neighborhoods, where they live, work, study and play. Then they engage with the pictures in a sociologically critical way. It encourages critical thinking and analysis and promotes a better understanding of urban processes.