Coffeehouses, Urban Spaces, and the Formation of a Public Sphere in Safavid Isfahan

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 177-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farshid Emami
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Physical Structure ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Capital City ◽  
The Public ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Visual Evidence ◽  
The Social ◽  
Urban Topography

This essay examines the urban topography, physical structure, and social context of coffeehouses in Safavid Iran (1501–1722), particularly in the capital city of Isfahan. Through a reconstruction of the architecture and urban configuration of coffeehouses, the essay shows how, as an utterly novel institution, the coffeehouse opened up a new sphere of public life, engendered new conceptions of urbanity, and altered the social meaning of urban spaces. The essay will specifically focus on the drinking houses that existed in the Maydan-i Naqsh-i Jahan and Khiyaban-i Chaharbagh, the grand urban spaces of seventeenth-century Isfahan. The remaining physical traces, together with textual and visual evidence, permit us to reconstruct Isfahan’s major coffeehouses. This analysis not only reveals a less-appreciated aspect of urbanity in the age of Shah ʿAbbas (r. 1587–1629) but also elucidates the ways in which the public spaces of Safavid Isfahan contained and shaped novel social practices particular to the early modern age.


Life in small urban spaces of “Sanskari Nagari – Vadodara”

2021 ◽  
pp. 70-90
Author(s):  
Abhilash Kolluri ◽  
Garbhit Naik ◽  
Shubham Kaushal
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Western India ◽  
Street Life ◽  
Life Project ◽  
The Public ◽  
City Dynamics ◽  
The Social ◽  
The City

This paper envisages the situation of social life in the city of, “Vadodara – Sanskari Nagari” during and post-pandemic. In the globalization hub of Western-India, the city Vadodara stands true to its name – “Sanskari Nagari”, which still celebrates its rich heritage and culture to its fullest. The social life of people in Vadodara is not only a part of their culture but also part of their routine, which can be perceived from the world’s largest “Garba-gathering”; to every day’s post office hour “Chai-meetup”; to relishing their free time playing “Ludo” by the sides of bridges across the city. With the presence of COVID-19, city people are hesitant about social gatherings and meeting people. Ultimately, life is resuming but at a slow pace and there is an urge to “reimagine” the public spaces and public behaviour so that city doesn’t lose its charm. Referring to the city assessment of William H. Whyte, the mentor of Street Life Project for Public Spaces, Pedestrian behaviour, and City Dynamics, through his book – “Social Life Of Small Urban Spaces,1980” forms the prelude for the research. This paper draws attention to similar spaces for the city of Vadodara as referred to in the book. We see what we do not expect to see, and get acquainted to see crowded spaces. Hence, this paper analyses the selected “Urban-blocks” and “Neighbourhood-spaces” of different typology and their diverse activities. Conclusion focus on the rational segregation and “re-defining” of Urban Spaces based on their safe carrying capacity.

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 The Politics of Gendered Spatializations: A Study of Cityscapes in Manu Joseph’s Novels

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.S. Parvathi ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Urban Landscape ◽  
The Body ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
City Image ◽  
Spatial Practices ◽  
Spatial Politics ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
The City

Burton Pike (1981) terms the cityscapes represented in literature as word-cities whose depiction captures the spatial significance evoked by the city-image and simultaneously, articulates the social psychology of its inhabitants (pp. 243). This intertwining of the social and the spatial animates the concept of spatiality, which informs the positionality of urban subjects, (be it the verticality of the city or the horizonality of the landscape) and determines their standpoint (Keith and Pile, 1993). The spatial politics underlying cityscapes, thus, determine the modes of social production of sexed corporeality. In turn, the body as a cultural product modifies and reinscribes the urban landscape according to its changing demographic needs. The dialectic relationship between the city and the bodies embedded in them orient familial, social, and sexual relations and inform the discursive practices underlying the division of urban spaces into public and private domains. The geographical and social positioning of the bodies within the paradigm of the public/private binary regulates the process of individuation of the bodies into subjects. The distinction between the public and the private is deeply rooted in spatial practices that isolate a private sphere of domestic, embodied activity from the putatively disembodied political, public sphere. Historically, women have been treated as private and embodied and the politics of the demarcated spaces are employed to control and limit women’s mobility. This gendered politics underlying the situating practices apropos public and private spaces inform the representations of space in literary texts. Manu Joseph’s novels, Serious Men (2010) and The Illicit Happiness of Other People (2012), are situated in the word-cities of Mumbai and Chennai respectively whose urban spaces are structured by such spatial practices underlying the politics of location. The paper attempts to problematize the nature of gendered spatializations informing the location of characters in Serious Men and The Illicit Happiness of Other People.

scholarly journals Under the bridge: autoarchaeoethnographic study of an interstitial space in supermodern Mallorca

Complutum ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 191-215
Author(s):  
Daniel Albero Santacreu
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Living Environment ◽  
Interstitial Space ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ethnographic Observation ◽  
Theoretical Foundations

Supermodern cities have certain spaces that escape the regulations exerted by the authorities in our living environment. This is the case of interstitial spaces, abandoned areas that are often marginalized by urban planners. This paper presents the results of an autoarchaeoethnographic study focused on the analysis of a 21st Century interstitial space located on the urban periphery of Palma (Mallorca). The methodology used to record the appropriation strategies and practices developed in this space combined direct ethnographic observation with the analysis of materiality. The study aims to address some of the practices developed in such marginal peripheral urban spaces closely related to the non-places characteristic of our current supermodern world. These practices allow us to understand how these spaces work and are conceptualized and to see how they become active elements of our landscape that are crucial for the social development of certain groups and individuals. Through the study of these practices we verified how certain sectors of society make an appropriation and active use of certain marginal public spaces that must be related to large-scale social, economic and historical phenomena. Finally, taking into consideration some of the theoretical foundations of symmetric archeology, we made an assessment of the way in which the very materiality of these spaces (and other elements with which they are associated with) enhance their use as a social space

scholarly journals The Paradoxes in the Use of the Panopticon as a Theoretical Reference in Urban Video-surveillance Studies: A Case Study of a CCTV System of a Brazilian city

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (27) ◽  
pp. 144-161
Author(s):  
Iafet Leonardi Bricalli
Keyword(s):  
Social Control ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Theoretical Background ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Surveillance Studies ◽  
The Public ◽  
Ethnographic Studies ◽  
Control Rooms

This article aims at introducing the relation between the use of CCTV systems in urban spaces and social control. More specifically, its purpose is to problematize and reaffirm the use of the theoretical background of the panopticon in order to interpret such a relation. In CCTV studies, as a consequence of literal interpretations, as well as the existence of a hegemony in ethnographic studies carried out in control rooms, the theoretical use of the panopticon is then questioned. In this article, based on an ethnographic study conducted in the public spaces surveilled by a CCTV system in a Brazilian city, it can be concluded that the effects of social control through surveillance are paradoxical. The indifferent way in which citizens deal with surveillance, or even the lack of awareness of it, imposes limits to the interpretation of the system as a tool of social control. Thus, the use of the panopticon becomes problematic. However, this research has shown how the presence of cameras in public spaces makes it conducive for a state of control in the form of a network whose project would be a mythical and homogeneous ordering of the spaces. The importance of the interpretation of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon by Michel Foucault is then reaffirmed, that is, panopticism as a trend of normalization and moralization of the public spaces.

The Material World of a Household and Collection

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Hierarchy ◽  
Professional Expertise ◽  
Material World ◽  
The Public ◽  
Printed Books ◽  
The Social ◽  
Information And Communication ◽  
Insight Into

This chapter demonstrates the significance of the Palais de Justice at the summit of Parisian office-holding society and as a centre of information and communication in the capital. It situates L’Estoile in the social hierarchy of the Palais, analysing his duties in its Chancery and his involvement in the sale of offices, a crucial factor in the complex and developing administration of the early modern French state. Like most office-holders, L’Estoile openly criticized the sale of offices while tacitly practising it. His understanding of his colleagues’ use and abuse of this system reveals how it worked from the inside. From his position in the Chancery, L’Estoile was particularly involved in the licensing of printed books, and his professional expertise gives his diaries unparalleled insight into the public presence of print in Paris and the limits that contemporaries imposed on its sale and circulation.

PENERAPAN KONSEP SOSIAL DAN BEHAVIOR SETTING PADA RUMAH ADAT BALI

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-31
Author(s):  
Josephine Roosandriantini ◽  
Fernanda Yosefi Meilan
Keyword(s):  
Research Method ◽  
User Behavior ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Behavioral Approach ◽  
Behavior Patterns ◽  
The Public ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
Behavior Setting ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

Title: Application of the Social and Behavioral Setting Concept on Balinese Architecture The neighborhood is formed unique as a result of the activities, reactions as well as behavior of the individuals who are living in it. The formation of the neighborhood has a natural architectural meaning which is determined by the necessity of individuals related to the division of the nature of space. The division of the nature of space is very apparent in Balinese traditional houses, it consists of the private to the public spaces. The nature of space is also studied in architecture behavior, and in this study behavioral approach is used in seeing the relationship between the nature of space and the physical appearance of Balinese architecture. This approach is also observing the pattern of user behavior that occurs repeatedly to form a distinct environmental order. This research was conducted to identify the spatial division and the formation of behavioral setting in which the behavior patterns is defined. The purpose of this study is to understand how the concept of behavior setting is applied in Balinese traditional houses. The research method used is a descriptive qualitative, by collecting data based on literature research on Balinese architecture. The results of this study are to explain the human needs of each arrangement based on the nature of the space, and also determine the formation of behavioral setting concepts in the arrangement of Balinese traditional houses.

The Literary Depiction of the “Public Space”: Chen Zhongshi’s White Deer Plain Revisited

Rural China ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-171
Author(s):  
Zhi Gao
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Economic

Chen Zhongshi’s novel, White Deer Plain, is a complex text revealing the social, political, economic, and cultural dimensions of a community in transformation in which multiple public spaces coexist and struggle to survive. As a reinterpretation of the novel, this article examines three types of public spaces: the popular, the political, and the cultural-educational, respectively. Focusing on the forms of depiction, the inner workings of the public spaces, the overlapping between different spaces and their expansion, this article aims to delineate the trajectories of the rise and fall of such public spaces and explore their entangling and association with modernity.

Endogenous Formation and Development of Capitalism in Japan

1969 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasukazu Takenaka
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Essential Elements ◽  
Strong Sense ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
The Social ◽  
Tokugawa Period ◽  
Warrior Class ◽  
Endogenous Formation

Japanese historians have characterized the Tokugawa period (1600–1868) as an “early modern feudal system” (kinsei hòken seido). While there is disagreement on the nature of feudalism in general, and the form of feudalism in the Tokugawa period in particular, I believe that Tokugawa society does include the essential elements of a feudal system so as to justify this label. What is particularly conspicuous is that Japan, like Europe, experienced feudalism before the birth of the modern age. In the case of Japan, as Professor E. O. Reischauer has pointed out, feudalism permitted the development of a goal-oriented ethic, rather than a status-oriented ethic, a strong sense of duty and obligation, and excluded the non warrior class from political power. Professor R. N. Bellah has differentiated the social values of Japan's feudalism from those of European feudalism by stressing the element of “loyalty” in the former and identifying this value as a key to the modernization of Japan. Whatever the special characteristics of feudalism in Japan may be, all analysts agree that the term “feudalism” is appropriate as a description of Tokugawa society.

Political Theology and the Metamorphoses of The King’s Two BodiesThe King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology, by Ernst H. Kantorowicz

2020 ◽  
Vol 125 (1) ◽  
pp. 132-145
Author(s):  
Brett Edward Whalen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Medieval Studies ◽  
Dual Nature ◽  
The Public ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Two Bodies

Abstract As is well known, Ernst H. Kantorowicz’s groundbreaking 1957 study The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology explored the “dual nature” of the king’s body in medieval and early modern religious and political thought, tracing the evolution of an idea that would ultimately underwrite the “myth of the State,” namely, that the king possessed a mortal, transitory body, but also a supranatural one that never died. Readers greeted The King’s Two Bodies as an exceptional contribution to medieval studies immediately upon its publication. As Whalen relates, however, a growing awareness of where the book fits into the trajectory of Kantorowicz’s life and early career in 1920s and 1930s Germany has reshaped scholarly analyses of his famous work. Increasing numbers of scholars now interpret Kantorowicz’s study of medieval political theology as a response and oblique challenge to contemporary theories about the theological origins of modern sovereignty, including the work of Carl Schmitt. As Whalen also suggests, in recent years, the so-called return of religion to the public sphere and ongoing debates about the validity of the “secularization” narrative, positing the transference of religious concepts to secular politics in the modern age, has inspired further rounds of critical interest in The King’s Two Bodies. Now over sixty years old, Kantorowicz’s book seems as important and vital as ever, experiencing transformations in its reception that few could have imagined when it first appeared in print.

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