The Street as Locus of Collective Memory

10.1068/d55j ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 581-596 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Hebbert
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Shared Memory ◽  
Morphological Analysis ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Community Struggles ◽  
Physical Layout

In discussing the role of streets and urban spaces as a locus of collective memory, I draw a distinction between overt commemoration of public memory and the accumulation of group memories in the setting of the everyday street. Community struggles over postwar street clearances stimulated interest in the physical layout of the public realm as a gestalt for shared memory, a theme of earlier work on memory and urbanism by Maurice Halbwachs. I show how Aldo Rossi and colleagues put the concept onto a practical footing by making morphological analysis the basis for urban infill, repair, and extension, most ambitiously and controversially in the ‘critical reconstruction’ of modern Berlin.

scholarly journals The Metamorphosis of Written Devotion in the Age of Vatican II (c. 1948–c. 1998) in Hungary—Guestbooks in Hungarian Marian Shrines

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 235
Author(s):  
Krisztina Frauhammer
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Vatican Ii ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Combined Effect ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
The Public ◽  
Written Form ◽  
Personal Prayer ◽  
The Church

This article presents the Hungarian manifestations of a written devotional practice that emerged in the second half of the 20th century worldwide: the rite of writing prayers in guestbooks or visitors’ books and spontaneously leaving prayer slips in shrines. Guestbooks or visitors’ books, a practice well known in museums and exhibitions, have appeared in Hungarian shrines for pilgrims to record requests, prayers, and declarations of gratitude. This is an unusual use of guestbooks, as, unlike regular guestbook entries, they contain personal prayers, which are surprisingly honest and self-reflective. Another curiosity of the books and slips is that anybody can see and read them, because they are on display in the shrines, mostly close to the statue of Virgin Mary. They allow the researcher to observe a special communication situation, the written representation of an informal, non-formalised, personal prayer. Of course, this is not unknown in the practice of prayer; what is new here is that it takes place in the public realm of a shrine, in written form. This paper seeks answers to the question of what genre antecedents, what patterns of behaviour, and which religious practices have led to the development of this recent practice of devotion in the examined period in Hungarian Catholic shrines. In connection with this issue, this paper would like to draw attention to the combined effect of the following three factors: the continuity of traditions, the emergence of innovative elements and the role of the church as an institution. Their parallel interactions help us to understand the guestbooks of the shrines.

In a “Half-dark, Half-light Zone”: Mobility, Precarity, and Moral Ambiguity in Vietnam's Urban Waste Economy

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Minh T.N. Nguyen
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Network ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Urban Waste ◽  
The Public ◽  
Moral Ambiguity ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
State Agents

AbstractThis article discusses the everyday practices of a mobile network of migrant waste traders originating from northern Vietnam, locating them in an expanding urban waste economy spanning across major urban centres. Based on ethnographic research, I explore how the expansion of the network is foregrounded by the traders’ dealing with the precarious nature of waste trading, which is rooted in the social ambiguity of waste and migrants working with waste in the urban order. Characterised by waste traders as a “half-dark, half-light zone”, the waste economy is unevenly regulated, made up of highly personalised ties, and relatively hidden from the public. It is therefore rife with opportunities for accumulating wealth, but also full of dangers for the waste traders, whose occupation of marginal urban spaces makes them easy targets of both rent-seeking state agents and rogue actors. While demonstrating resilience, their practices suggest tactics of engaging with power that involve a great deal of moral ambiguity, which I argue is central to the increasing precaritisation of labour and the economy in Vietnam today.

scholarly journals Hindi Print Media Content Analysis Of Bhopal Gas Tragedy: In The Context Of Reflect And Effect Study Of Media On Society

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 01-10
Author(s):  
Armendra Amar
Keyword(s):  
Print Media ◽  
Effect Study ◽  
Media Content ◽  
Industrial Accidents ◽  
Media Content Analysis ◽  
The Public ◽  
Gas Leak ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The City

The 1984 Bhopal Gas Leak tragedy has been classified as one of the World’s major Industrial accidents of the 20th century, recorded post 1919, by a United Nations Report. This tragedy killed thousands of people and maimed thousands. Union Carbide subsidiary pesticide plant released approximately 40 tonnes of Methyl Isocyanate (MIC) gas which went on to touch the lives of more than 500,000 people of the city. In a way, even after it immediately killed and maimed in thousands, it is still a continued disaster as the generations exposed to the toxic gases have been consistently showing up signs of physical and mental deformity. This gruesome event’s impacts on society are beyond time and space. The crucial question that renders is that how media dealt with the situation and to what extent it affects the everyday life of masses. This study came into initiation when the researcher visited the Methyl Ico-Cynate gas-affected area of Bhopal. During the pilot study, the researcher saw that people of the affected place were living in inadequate conditions. Thus, a concern piqued the interest of the researcher, and evoked an indispensible question: Is media fulfilling its responsibility as the fourth pillar of society in times of chaos and devastation, towards the public? For examining his queries researcher has taken renowned print media outlet’s articles of Bhopal gas tragedy as the content of the analysis. Hence on the basis of Hindi print media content of Bhopal gas disaster the researcher has taken the initiative to search appropriate answers to questions which examine the role of media after the tragic occurrence has taken place in society.

Participatory Design Practices in Mental Health in the UK: Rebutting the Optimism

Design Issues ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 25-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paola Pierri
Keyword(s):  
Professional Practice ◽  
Participatory Design ◽  
Complex Dynamics ◽  
Community Organizations ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
The Public ◽  
Design Practices ◽  
The Uk

In what has been defined as an “era of participation,” design practices have become very central to the process of making publics and in bringing to life the dream of developing new ways of political engagement. By reflecting on my professional practice, I highlight the overly optimistic attitude that—most of the time—over-simplifies the role of design, especially when applied in public and community organizations. I illustrate participation as a paradox in itself, by problematizing the role and meaning of participatory encounters, and revealing some complex dynamics of exclusion and self-exclusion that are at play in the public realm.

scholarly journals What’s in a word? Contextual diversity, urban ethnography and the linguistic limits of the street

2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (5) ◽  
pp. 952-967 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Dines
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
Contextual Diversity ◽  
Urban Ethnography ◽  
Common Assumption ◽  
The Public ◽  
Lexical Change ◽  
Raymond Williams

This article takes to task a common assumption within Anglophone scholarship that conceives the street as a preeminent site of urban life, arguing that this sociological truism has worked to obscure the role of other spaces, terms and experiences across different historical, geographical and linguistic contexts. In response, and building on recent reappraisals in sociology of the work of Raymond Williams, the aim of this article is to analyse the street as a particular keyword and reflect on how a cultural materialist approach to lexical change can be incorporated into the practices of urban ethnography and translation. To develop its methodological argument, the article draws on the author’s research on Italian cities, where rather than the strada (street), the piazza and the vicolo (alleyway) have typically commanded a more prominent place in ideas about the public realm. At the same time, the disparate meanings of these two spatial forms attest to the uneven and disputed positions of different Italian cities within national urban culture. In conclusion, the article argues for greater attention to be paid to variations in language use vis-a-vis urban spatial forms as the prerequisite for a more incisive sociology of the street.

“DISMEMBERING THE HUMAN CHARACTER”: ADAM FERGUSON’S CONCEPTION OF CORRUPTION

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (02) ◽  
pp. 54-72
Author(s):  
Samuel Fleischacker
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
Role Of Government ◽  
The Public ◽  
Liberal Perspective ◽  
Do So

Abstract:This essay lays out three kinds of corruption—personal, structural, and civic—stressing the differences among these phenomena. It then explores civic corruption via the work of the eighteenth-century Scottish thinker Adam Ferguson. Civic corruption occurs when the citizens of a republic lose interest in defending their shared institutions, and pursue their private wealth alone; avoiding it, according to Ferguson, requires placing limits on these private pursuits and getting citizens to participate in the public realm instead. By way of a comparison with Ferguson’s contemporary and friend Adam Smith—who agreed with Ferguson on many issues, although not on what was corrupting about the acquisition of wealth—the essay argues that Ferguson, for all his emphasis on participatory government, was a liberal, not a collectivist. With that in mind, the essay endorses many of Ferguson’s suggestions from a liberal perspective, and argues that, to preserve liberal republics, it is often necessary to expand what governments do, so as to maintain the commitment of citizens to their public institutions. This prescriptive implication brings out sharply how civic corruption differs from personal corruption, which may best be limited by shrinking the role of government, rather than expanding it.

Conscience

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terrence Merrigan ◽  
Geertjan Zuijdwegt
Keyword(s):  
Church And State ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
John Henry Newman ◽  
Systematic Account ◽  
The Public ◽  
Religious Subjectivity

This chapter contributes in two ways to a better understanding of the theme of conscience in the thought of John Henry Newman. First, it offers a genealogical account of the formation of Newman’s idea of conscience between his adolescent conversion and the eve of the Tractarian Movement—a period of profound development that has often been misrepresented. Second, it provides a systematic account of Newman’s understanding of conscience as a Roman Catholic. It elaborates on the role of conscience in the development of religious subjectivity, and on its role in the public realm, where it is confronted with the authority of Church and state.

scholarly journals COLLECTIVE MEMORY “JUM’AT KELABU” DI BANJARMASIN (PERSPEKTIF RESOLUSI KONFLIK ATAS PERISTIWA 23 MAY 1997)

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 75
Author(s):  
Husnul Khotimah
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
Peace Building ◽  
The Public ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Strategic Role ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Friday Prayer ◽  
The City

This paper intends to explore the events of the conflict on 23 May 1997 from the aspect of the peaceful resolution. Where a peace-building effort is needed to maintain a peaceful situation. With the collective memory being represented in the present mass, it is part of the form of efforts in fostering post-conflict sustainable peace. Through the elements of society (Non-Governmental Actor) the memory of conflict is represented in the public sphere as a form of warning against forgetting over history.The role of a non-governmental actor in peacebuilding has a strategic role in resolving conflicts and building peace post-conflict. There are three things raised in this research that is: The incident of conflict "Jum'at Kelabu" in the city of Banjarmasin in 1997, a collective memory form of conflict that built elements of society after the conflict, and the views of elements of society to the collective memory that was represented in the present in the effort to build peacebuilding. This research is a qualitative research, using a sociology-historical approach. The method used in data collection is through observation, interview, and documentation as secondary data. From the results of data analysis, the following results are obtained: the conflict that occurred in Banjarmasin city has a long chronology, the cause of this conflict is an unclear campaign route, the party base that controls Banjarmasin, because the mass of one the OPP that interfere with the Friday prayer, and aggressiveness of campaign participants. The form of peacebuilding efforts of the elements of society is to take peaceful action down the street, discussion/dialogue, and watching a documentary film. Elements of society argue that bringing back the memory of the conflict has two impacts: negative and positive impacts on people’s lives thereafter. These efforts need to be built to create an awareness that the conflict is painful, unpleasant and disturbing so hopefully it will never happen again.

scholarly journals A book as an attribute of everyday life culture (based on the German classics)

Bibliosphere ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 27-35
Author(s):  
N. N. Misyurov
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Material Thing ◽  
Literary Reading ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Inner World

The functional role of books (scientific, artistic, philosophical, religious and moralistic) in the public prac­tice of the German Enlightenment is comparable to the significance of such major national concepts as the Lutheran faith and a special German character. The idea of aesthetic education in contemporary historical circumstances and socio-political circumstances actually became the ideology of national self-determina­tion. The book, its semantic «images» as literary reading images enshrined in famous works of German clas­sics, helps better revealing the spiritual content of the era and the human inner world (in typical «hero of time»). Educational book (serious and entertaining) defines the vector of social development in Germany.  German book in its «materiality» belongs to the everyday life culture, reflects the level of development of the book business in Germany and the specificity of the «culture of consumption». Everyday life culture is a holistic «life world» shared «values» and «meanings» perceived as a world attitudes and behavioral habits and regarded as a natural space of human activity. Such an approach makes it possible to study the typical, recurring forms of «cultural practices», before remaining on the periphery of classical humanities. «Reading» could be attributed to this range of socio-cultural practices. Philosophical basis of the study is the following: everything that a thing opens our perception is simply «a scheme of sensation» changing in accordance with «angles», in which we perceive them; what the thing is in its materiality can be revealed only through our final experiences. A material thing and its «causality» base in sensory perception of a subject. This series of «material things» should include «the book in general» and specifically German book as an attribute of everyday life culture of the Enlightenment. The author investigates representations of meanings of «books» (ash an abstracted subject of study) realized in the «chronotope» of a literary work. The structure of «reading image» and «book image» identified during the texts analysis of famous masterpieces of German classics have a moral connotation.  

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