Boundaries in Interaction: The Cultural Fabrication of Social Boundaries in West Jerusalem

2010 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 390-413 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nir Gazit

Boundary work projects are relevant in any social context, but they seem to carry particular significance in multicultural or multinational and highly contested urban settings. This study examines how daily artifacts such as local newspapers are used by various urban social groups in their local boundary work projects. the analysis is based on the particular case of West Jerusalem, and focuses on how Jewish communities use the popular local Jerusalem newspaper Kol Ha'Ir (“Whole of the City”). the study shows that local newspapers have three functions: (1) they are important components in the local cultural tool kit that various groups use and relate to; (2) they are cultural objects exploited by communities to redefine and regulate their particular identities and to sustain a common ground for local solidarity; and (3) they serve as mechanisms that construct and maintain an ethnonational front toward rival communities within their urban space. This study also suggests that in order to facilitate such a complex task of boundary work, cultural objects must be polysemous. First, they should produce to some degree a consensus among their various consumers on their content and social significance. Second, they should permit a range of interpretations regarding their particular social meaning for each group.

Author(s):  
Elena Grunt ◽  
◽  
Ludmila Russkikh ◽  

The article examines the urban identity of the inhabitants of the Ural metropolis. Today, urbanisation has reached an enormous scale and speed of development, and these processes cannot but have an impact on certain changes in human life. For people to live productively, there must be some common ground, something to unite them, something to hold them together. Urban identity is the inception of unity. The study is aimed at the analysis of what city dwellers think about the existence/absence of urban identity. The study was conducted in 2018 in Yekaterinburg, which is one of the largest metropolises in the Urals; for the purpose of the research, qualitative and quantitative strategies were applied. During the study, 345 Yekaterinburg residents were enquired via the combination questionnaire method (online survey, street interview). The sampling was random. Respondents were randomly sampled from city residents born in Yekaterinburg and having resided in the city for over 20 years. The study revealed that Yekaterinburg residents recognise the existence of urban identity in the metropolis. City residents attribute major significance to local identity (47.0 % of respondents). Its indicators are the residents’ engagement with the city, the urban space, knowledge of the city’s culture, and being born in or living in the metropolis for a long time. Territorial and national identities are of minor significance in the practice of integration into urban space. The survey found that every second person surveyed thinks that ideally one should be born and grow up in Yekaterinburg, passing through all the stages of socialisation, and if they were not born, then they should live in the city for at least 10 years to be a true resident of Yekaterinburg.


2015 ◽  
Vol 747 ◽  
pp. 40-43
Author(s):  
Yong Seng Toong ◽  
Nangkula Utaberta

The terminology and concept of city image is very much related to good city planning and reflects strong image which, defined by Kelvin Andrew Lynch, a town-planner. He elaborates such terminology with regarding to people perception on urban space in term of city legibility and image-ability. Elizur who has classified city image as “rich” and “poor” in his study reminds of prototype and stereotype city place respectively. City image generally refers to the characteristic of a true urban image such as skylines, landmarks and panoramas. Architects, urban designers and town-planners play a crucial role in carrying out the task of shaping the city image. However, when discussion on city image which regards to economics point of view, city image could be interpreted as active use and passive use in accordance to a paper presented by some scholars. Active use means usage of the old buildings restoration and preservation which generates incomes to cover their building’s maintenance and expenses. Examples such as cafés, boutique hotels, art galleries. Conversely, passive use does not generate substantial income but contribute to and beneficial of the community. Examples such as community library, museums and other social activity buildings. Both active and passive use are portraying adaptive re-use of the old buildings. This paper unfolds the common ground which integrates adaptive re-use of pre-war shophouse buildings as architecture concept in Kuala Lumpur Chinatown (KLC) and contributing the city image under the term of conservation. The study is conducted with photographic records, on site study, observation (visual survey technique) and analysis.


Author(s):  
Евгения Александровна Коршунова

В данной статье исследуются проблемы поэтики «московского текста» в творчестве С. Н. Дурылина (1887–1954) на материале записок «В родном углу» (1928–1939), созданных в томской ссылке, и стихотворения из «московского цикла» «А. Р. Артём» (1926), публикуемого впервые. Кроме традиционного подхода, используемого литературоведами, который предлагает рассматривать городское пространство как текст, в статье используется полидисциплинарный визуально-антропологический подход, рассматривающий город как визуально-коммуникативный текст и культурно-коммуникативную среду. Это обусловлено особенностями поэтики данных произведений писателя. Именно аудиовизуальный код позволяет наиболее адекватно рассмотреть «городское пространство» в названных произведениях Дурылина как наиболее репрезентативных для рассмотрения этой темы. Стихотворение Дурылина «А. Р. Артём» выполняет роль микромодели «московского текста», содержит основные аудиовизуальные семиотические «знаки» «городского пространства» (образ тишины, на фоне которой изображается «звучащий мир» московского дома и его обитатели: А. Р. Артём, А. П. Чехов, кот). Это подчёркивает важность антропологического аспекта в формировании модели «московского текста», ведь персонажи, а не объекты культуры или локусы являются носителями «московского духа». В ходе анализа предпринята попытка определить место записок «В родному углу», ранее не анализированных литературоведами, в литературном процессе эпохи. Наряду с другими московскими текстами: романом о Москве А. Белого, стихами М. И. Цветаевой, «Счастливой Москвой» А. П. Платонова, «московскими» произведениями М. А. Булгакова, И. С. Шмелёва – Дурылин пытается создать свой инвариант «московского мифа». Дурылин, отходя от построения традиционного сюжета, создаёт и изображает именно те образы столицы (тихая, златоглавая, великорусская), которые обрели почти мифологический статус, выразили её неповторимый и вневременной лик, имеющий для писателя зачастую и национальное значение и, нужно думать, указали читателю определённый ракурс прочтения записок, составляющих ядро «московского текста» Дурылина. Писатель выделяет три важнейших концепта, представляющих лик Москвы: душа Москвы – третьего Рима (дореволюционная Москва) – растворяется в историческом пореволюционном втором Вавилоне и становится невидимой, Москвой-Китежем, городом, который должен воскреснуть. Важно также, что Дурылин представляет свой метатекст о городе прежде всего как о человеческом способе присутствия в бытии и, следовательно, о пространстве как о культурном измерении бытия. При этом он представляет сакральный архетип соборности как культурообразующий. Пытаясь создать объективную картину, автор уделяет внимание и свидетельствам иностранцев Герберта Уэллса, Эмиля Верхарна и других. The article analyzes the problems of the poetic style of the “Moscow text” in the works of Sergei N. Durylin (1887–1954) based on the notes V Rodnom Uglu [Hometown. The Life of Old Moscow] (1928–1939) written in the Tomsk exile and the poem from the “Moscow cycle” “A. R. Artyom” (1926), which is being published for the first time. Aside from the traditional approach used by literary scholars, which proposes to consider urban space as a text, the article uses a multidisciplinary visual-anthropological approach, which considers a city as a visual-communicative text and a cultural-communicative environment. This is relevant due to both a new surge of interest in urban issues and due to the peculiarities of the poetic style of the writer’s works. It is the audiovisual code that makes it possible to most adequately consider the “urban space” in Durylin’s mentioned works as the most representative for considering this topic. Durylin’s poem “A. R. Artem” serves as the micro-model of the “Moscow text”. It contains the main audiovisual semiotic “signs” of “urban space” (the image of silence, on the background of which the “sounding world” of the Moscow house and its inhabitants are depicted: Alexander R. Artyom, Anton P. Chekhov, the cat). This emphasizes the importance of the anthropological aspect in the formation of the “Moscow text” model because characters, not cultural objects or loci, are bearers of the “Moscow spirit”. In the course of the analysis, an attempt was made to determine the place of the notes V Rodnom Uglu, which had not been previously analyzed by literary scholars, in the literary process of the era. Along with other Moscow texts, a novel about Moscow by Andrei Bely, poems by Marina I. Tsvetaeva, Happy Moscow by Andrei Platonov, “Moscow” works by Mikhail A. Bulgakov and Ivan S. Shmelyov, Durylin is trying to create his own invariant of the “Moscow myth”. Diverging from the construction of the traditional plot, Durylin creates and depicts the images of the capital (quiet, golden-domed, Great Russian) which acquired an almost mythological status for the writer, expressed Moscow’s unique and timeless face, which is almost always of national significance for the writer, and, one must think, showed the reader a certain perspective on reading the notes that make up the core of Durylin’s “Moscow text”. The writer identifies three important concepts that represent Moscow’s face: the soul of Moscow, the third Rome, dissolved in the historical post-revolutionary second Babylon, became the invisible Moscow-Kitezh, a city that should rise again. It is also important that Durylin presents his supertext about the city primarily as a “human way of being in existence” and, therefore, about space as a cultural dimension of being. Along with this, he presents the sacred archetype of sobornost as culture-forming. Trying to create an objective picture, the author pays attention to the testimonies of foreigners Herbert Wells, Émile Verhaeren, and others.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Khangelani Moyo

Drawing on field research and a survey of 150 Zimbabwean migrants in Johannesburg, this paper explores the dimensions of migrants’ transnational experiences in the urban space. I discuss the use of communication platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook as well as other means such as telephone calls in fostering the embedding of transnational migrants within both the Johannesburg and the Zimbabwean socio-economic environments. I engage this migrant-embedding using Bourdieusian concepts of “transnational habitus” and “transnational social field,” which are migration specific variations of Bourdieu’s original concepts of “habitus” and “social field.” In deploying these Bourdieusian conceptual tools, I observe that the dynamics of South–South migration as observed in the Zimbabwean migrants are different to those in the South–North migration streams and it is important to move away from using the same lens in interpreting different realities. For Johannesburg-based migrants to operate within the socio-economic networks produced in South Africa and in Zimbabwe, they need to actively acquire a transnational habitus. I argue that migrants’ cultivation of networks in Johannesburg is instrumental, purposive, and geared towards achieving specific and immediate goals, and latently leads to the development and sustenance of flexible forms of permanency in the transnational urban space.


2020 ◽  
pp. 233-248
Author(s):  
Marta Zambrzycka ◽  
Paulina Olechowska

The subject of the article is an analysis of the three aspects of depicting urban space of Eastern Ukraine, focusing specifi cally on the Donbass region and the city of Kharkov as depicted in the novels Voroshilovgrad (2010) and Mesopotamia (2014) by Serhiy Zhadan. The urban space of Eastern Ukraine overlaps with the most important values that shape a person’s personality and aff ect her or his self-identifi cation. The city space is also a “place of memory” and experiences of generations that infl uence current events. In addition to the historical and axiological dimension, the imaginative aspect of space is also important. This approach is used by the author to describe the urban space as a functioning imagination or stereotypes associated with it as opposed to its realistic depiction.


GEOgraphia ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (16) ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Ângelo Ribeiro

O objetivo que permeia a presente pesquisa é utilizar a Fortaleza de Santa Cruz, localizada no bairro de Jurujuba, em Niterói, construída em 1555, na entrada da barra da Baía de Guanabara, como foco de antílise, ressaltando a importância deste fixo social enquanto atração turística e de lazer, incluindo a cidade de Niterói no circuito destas atividades, complementares à cidade do Rio de Janeiro; além de abordar conceitos e categorias analíticas, oriundos das ciências sociais, principalmente provenientes da Geografia, pertinentes ao estudo das atividades em tela. Neste contexto, na dinâmica espacial da cidade de Niterói, o processo de mudança de função dos fixos sociais têm sido extraordinário. Residencias unifamiliares, prédios e até mesmo fortificações militares, verdadeiras monumentalidades, foram refuncionalizadas, passando por um processo de turistificação. Assim, a refuncionalização da respectiva Fortaleza em espaço cultural toma-se um importante atrativo da história, do patrimônio, da cultura, marcando no espaço urbano sua expressões e monumentalidade, criada pelo homem como símbolo de seus ideais, objetivos e atos, constituindo-se em um legado as gerações futuras, formando um elo entre passado, presente e futuro. Abstract This paper focuses on Santa Cruz Fortress, built in 1555 in Jurujuba (Niterói), to guard the entrance of Guanabara bay, and stresses its role as a towist attraction and leisure' area, as a social fix which links the city of Niterói to the complementary circuit of these activities in the city of Rio de Janeiro. The study uses important concepts and analytic categories fiom social sciences, particularly fiom Geography.In the spatial dynamic of the city of Niterói, change in functions of social fuces has been extraordinary. Single-family dwellings, buildings and even military installations have been re-functionalized, undergoing a process of touristification. In that way, the refunctionalization of the Fortress as a cultural space provides an important attraction in the domains of history, patrimony, and culture, providing the urban space with an expression of monumentality, created by man as a symbol of his ideals, aims and actions, a legacy to future generations forming a link between past, present and future.


Author(s):  
Fonna Forman ◽  
Teddy Cruz

Cities or municipalities are often the most immediate institutional facilitators of global justice. Thus, it is important for cosmopolitans and other theorists interested in global justice to consider the importance of the correspondence between global theories and local actions. In this chapter, the authors explore the role that municipalities can play in interpreting and executing principles of global justice. They offer a way of thinking about the cosmopolitan or global city not as a gentrified and commodified urban space, but as a site of local governance consistent with egalitarian cosmopolitan moral aims. They work to show some ways in which the city of Medellín, Colombia, has taken significant steps in that direction. The chapter focuses especially on how it did so and how it might serve as a model in some important ways for the transformation of other cities globally in a direction more consistent with egalitarian cosmopolitanism.


Author(s):  
Carlos Machado

This book analyses the physical, social, and cultural history of Rome in late antiquity. Between AD 270 and 535, the former capital of the Roman empire experienced a series of dramatic transformations in its size, appearance, political standing, and identity, as emperors moved to other cities and the Christian church slowly became its dominating institution. Urban Space and Aristocratic Power in Late Antique Rome provides a new picture of these developments, focusing on the extraordinary role played by members of the traditional elite, the senatorial aristocracy, in the redefinition of the city, its institutions, and spaces. During this period, Roman senators and their families became increasingly involved in the management of the city and its population, in building works, and in the performance of secular and religious ceremonies and rituals. As this study shows, for approximately three hundred years the houses of the Roman elite competed with imperial palaces and churches in shaping the political map and the social life of the city. Making use of modern theories of urban space, the book considers a vast array of archaeological, literary, and epigraphic documents to show how the former centre of the Mediterranean world was progressively redefined and controlled by its own elite.


Food Security ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Kiaka ◽  
Shiela Chikulo ◽  
Sacha Slootheer ◽  
Paul Hebinck

AbstractThis collaborative and comparative paper deals with the impact of Covid-19 on the use and governance of public space and street trade in particular in two major African cities. The importance of street trading for urban food security and urban-based livelihoods is beyond dispute. Trading on the streets does, however, not occur in neutral or abstract spaces, but rather in lived-in and contested spaces, governed by what is referred to as ‘street geographies’, evoking outbreaks of violence and repression. Vendors are subjected to the politics of municipalities and the state to modernize the socio-spatial ordering of the city and the urban food economy through restructuring, regulating, and restricting street vending. Street vendors are harassed, streets are swept clean, and hygiene standards imposed. We argue here that the everyday struggle for the street has intensified since and during the Covid-19 pandemic. Mobility and the use of urban space either being restricted by the city-state or being defended and opened up by street traders, is common to the situation in Harare and Kisumu. Covid-19, we pose, redefines, and creates ‘new’ street geographies. These geographies pivot on agency and creativity employed by street trade actors while navigating the lockdown measures imposed by state actors. Traders navigate the space or room for manoeuvre they create for themselves, but this space unfolds only temporarily, opens for a few only and closes for most of the street traders who become more uncertain and vulnerable than ever before, irrespective of whether they are licensed, paying rents for vending stalls to the city, or ‘illegally’ vending on the street.


Designs ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 26
Author(s):  
Michael M. Santos ◽  
João C. G. Lanzinha ◽  
Ana Vaz Ferreira

Having in mind the objectives of the United Nations Development Agenda 2030, which refers to the sustainable principles of a circular economy, it is urgent to improve the performance of the built environment. The existing buildings must be preserved and improved in order to reduce their environmental impact, in line with the need to revert climate change and reduce the occurrence of natural disasters. This work had as its main goal to identify and define a methodology for promoting the rehabilitation of buildings in the Ponte Gêa neighborhood, in the city of Beira, Mozambique, with an emphasis on energy efficiency, water efficiency, and construction and demolition waste management. The proposed methodology aims to create a decision support method for creating strategic measures to be implemented by considering the three specific domains—energy, water, and waste. This model allows for analyzing the expected improvement according to the action to be performed, exploring both individual and community solutions. It encompasses systems of standard supply that can reveal greater efficiency and profitability. Thus, the in-depth knowledge of the characteristics of urban space and buildings allows for establishing guidelines for the renovation process of the neighborhood.


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