Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong: Between permanence and temporariness in everyday life

2018 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maren Boersma
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Circular Migration ◽  
Temporal Dimension ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Group Interviews ◽  
The City ◽  
Lived Time

Hong Kong is residence to around 200,000 Filipina domestic workers who have migrated to the city in order to earn money for their families and futures. The employment of these migrants is organized through temporary two-year contracts. However, since many women stay for ‘multiple contracts’ in Hong Kong, their situation may be better characterized as permanently temporary. In this respect, scholars have coined the term ‘permanent temporariness’, signifying both a specific experience of temporal or circular migration, as well as a sort of disciplinary mechanism that informs people’s everyday lives. Lacking in these understandings, however, is a solid theoretical exploration of the temporal dimension. Based on ethnographic work, individual and group interviews, this article attempts to further the theoretical discussion on permanence and temporariness by focusing on the ‘lived time’ of Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong. The article discusses how temporariness and permanence are enacted and experienced in the everyday lives of Filipina workers, how these women reflect on and cope with this, and, how this informs everyday life decisions and negotiations with employers. The study indicates that engaging permanently in temporary labour involves many uncertainties that are reflected in the domestic workers’ experiences and decisions with respect to their migration trajectories.

Some Reflections on Making Popular Culture in Urban Africa

2008 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 75-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
AbdouMaliq Simone
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Urban Residents ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Urban Africa ◽  
The City ◽  
Ways Of Being

Abstract:In contemporary urban Africa, the turbulence of the city requires incessant innovation that is capable of generating new ways of being. Rather than treating popular culture as some distinctive sector, this article attempts to investigate the popular as methods of bringing together activities and actors that on the surface would not seem compatible, and as experimental forms of generating value in the everyday life of urban residents. This investigation, sited largely in Douala, Cameroon, looks at how youth from varying neighborhoods attempt to get by, and at the unexpected forms of contestation that can ensue.

Precarious city: home-making and eviction in Buenos Aires, Argentina

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 411-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Solange Muñoz
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Buenos Aires ◽  
City Center ◽  
Place Making ◽  
Domestic Spaces ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Temporal And Spatial ◽  
The City ◽  
Traditional Roles

This article expands on current conceptualizations and applications of precarity by exploring the everyday socio-spatial complexities of migrant squatters living in informal hotels in the center of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Through ethnographic methods, this research investigates squatters’ practices of negotiating access to shared domestic spaces and resources, while experiencing long-term waiting for eviction from their home and potentially from the city center. Employing a cultural geographies approach, this work is concerned with understanding the ways in which precarity is routinely experienced in the micro-spaces of everyday life. Precarity is examined in its temporal and spatial manifestations, with particular emphasis on gendered experiences and home-making practices. Moving through daily spaces and routine situations, I document how precarity is embedded in the mundane tasks of the domestic, and as a result, unevenly impacts women whose traditional roles as mothers and caretakers mean that they are often at the fore of place-making practices and responsibilities.

scholarly journals Transformasi Makna dan Fungsi Ruang di RPTRA Kalijodo dalam Pergulatan Citra Kota Jakarta

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 13-27
Author(s):  
Eka Permanasari ◽  
◽  
Thomas Lientino ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Human Trafficking ◽  
Community Center ◽  
Highway Bridge ◽  
City Image ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Green Belt ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

Kalijodo has a long history in terms of gambling, prostitution, human trafficking and other illicit activities. Although it is a green belt area, the location had always being filled with semipermanent buildings. The area was changed its meaning in 2016 when the late Governor of Ahok with the help of the police and army, eradicated these housing and transformed this place as the community center (RPTRA-Ruang Publik Terpadu Ramah Anak). Together with Yori Antar, Basuki changed Kalijodo into a new center for Jakarta with its mural and skatepark. Former illicit users have been pushed out from the site. Some built a temporary shelter under the highway bridge while others went to their villages. After the fall of Basuki due to the blasphemy crime, the image of RPTRA Kalijodo was contested. Within a day, the area was filled with illegal parking and prostitution returned in different forms taking place under the highway bridge. Layers of meaning and use of Kalijodo transforms rapidly and in results changes the image of the city. Through observation, interviews and archival research, this paper analyses the contestation of the city image by investigating the relationship between the top-down approach and the everyday life uses of space.

The originality of the “estate topos” in the A.N. Tolstoy’s novel “Peter the First”

2020 ◽  
pp. 262-272
Author(s):  
Anna S. Akimova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Childhood Memories ◽  
Research History ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Peasant Household ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
Poor Peasant ◽  
The City

Moscow is the city which united the characters of A.N. Tolstoy’s novel “Peter the First”. Kitay-Gorod is the space where the action of the first book is mainly set. In the novel Tolstoy showed in great detail the everyday life of the city and its inhabi- tants. According to the I.E. Zabelin’s research (“History of the city of Moscow”) in late 17 — early 18 th centuries Moscow was like a big village that is why Tolstoy relied on his childhood memories about the life in the small village Sosnovka (Samara Region) describing the streets of Moscow. The novel begins with the description of a poor peasant household of Brovkin near Moscow, then Volkov’s noble estate is depicted and Menshikov’s house. The space of the city is expanding with each new “address”. Moscow estates, and in particular, connected with the figure of “guardian, lover of the Princess-ruler” V.V. Golitsyn, in Tolstoy’s novel are inextricably linked with the character’s living and with the life of the country. The description of the palace built by Golitsyn at the peak of his career is based on the Sergei Solovyov’s “History of Russia in ancient times”. Golitsyn left it and went to his estate outside Moscow Medvedkovo and from there in exile.

scholarly journals Dominion, Stewardship and Reconciliation in the Accounts of Ordinary People Eating Animals

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 669
Author(s):  
Anna Sofia Salonen
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Food Consumption ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Human Relations ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
The Everyday

Despite the growing popularity of vegetarian foods and diets, the vast majority of people in North America and other parts of the affluent world still eat meat. This article explores what ordinary people think about eating animals and how they navigate the ethical questions inherent in that praxis. Drawing from interviews with 24 people living in Ottawa, Canada, the study shows how the concepts of dominion, stewardship and reconciliation manifest in the everyday lives of ordinary people as models for human relations with nonhuman others and the environment. These ideas resonate in the lives of ordinary people, both religious and nonreligious, and entwine as people try to make sense of how to live with the fact that their everyday food consumption causes suffering and harm. This study shows that in the context of everyday life, dominion, stewardship and reconciliation are not alternative views, but connected to each other, and serve different purposes. The study highlights a need for analyses that constitute practical ways to renew the broken relationships within creation and which incorporate nonreligious people into the scope of analyses that focus on the relationships between humans and nonhuman creation.

Sooner or later we will melt together: Framing the digital in the everyday

First Monday ◽  
2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Beer
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Empirical Case Studies

Digital technologies are increasingly pervading our everyday lives. Many of our everyday practices involve the appropriation of digital technologies. The aim of this piece is to discuss two central issues surrounding this digitalisation of everyday life: (i) what constitutes digital culture?; and, (ii) how do digital technologies transform ownership? These questions are considered in this work with the intention of creating a benchmark from which future explorative (empirical) case studies can be developed. The central argument of the piece is that the study of digital technologies should be framed within everyday life. In other words, the study of digital technologies should be redefined as the study of the digitalisation of everyday life.

Street Performance and the City

2011 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 415-430 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Street Performance ◽  
The City

This article examines the performative transformation of street spaces into performance places by considering the practices of street performers. Street performance here refers to a set of practices whereby either musical or nonmusical performances are undertaken in the street with the aim of eliciting donations from passersby. Drawing on ethnographic observations undertaken in Bath, U.K., and situating the discussion in recent conceptions of everyday life and public space, the specific sociospatial interventions that street performances make into Bath’s everyday life are considered. In doing so, the article focuses on the fleeting social relations that emerge from these interventions and what these can do to the experience of the everyday in terms of producing moments of sociality and conviviality. This is also reflected on in light of the various debates that have occurred in Bath as a result of these interventions relating to the increased regulation of street performances. The article then highlights the conflicted and contentious position that street performers occupy in the everyday life of such cities.

The Topography of the Frogs

1960 ◽  
Vol 80 ◽  
pp. 112-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. T. W. Hooker
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
City Wall ◽  
Old Comedy ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Intimate Knowledge ◽  
The City

To attempt to relate the fantasies of Old Comedy to reality is no doubt a hazardous business. But the burlesque must have been based on facts, and familiar facts at that, if it was to be effective; and it may enlarge our understanding of theFrogs, and heighten our appreciation of its humour, to inquire what relation the journey of Dionysos may have had to places which were known to Aristophanes' audience. The places alluded to in the course of the journey have been identified in various more or less conflicting ways since at least the time when the Arguments to the play were written. There has been little hesitation over accepting at any rate some of these identifications, for it would certainly have been funny to see Dionysos call on Herakles in, say, Thebes or Tiryns; proceed from there to the Acheron or the Styx; and finally meet the souls of the Initiates in the underworld, moving in an everlasting procession to a ghostly Eleusis. But the fun would surely have been much more pointed had it been more consistent and relevant to the everyday life of the Athenians themselves; and it is the purpose of this article to suggest that it did in fact possess this consistency and relevance—that Dionysos was actually represented as following a route perfectly familiar to the audience, visiting places well known to them and indeed even in view to them as they sat in the theatre. At the beginning of the play Dionysos is on his way to call on Herakles and ask him what route he followed when he went down to the underworld to fetch Kerberos. Dionysos quickly reaches the house of Herakles, and if we take the indications of the play literally at this point we may conclude that this house was not far from Athens. It soon becomes clear that this conclusion is right. Herakles shows by his intimate knowledge of affairs at Athens that he lives in or near the city, and it is easy to see where he lives. He is not the Herakles at Melite, from whom he is sharply distinguished (501); but since Xanthias, when impersonating him, claims to be thinking of the Herakleia in Diomeia (650 f.), he must be the Herakles honoured in that festival. The Herakleia in Diomeia were the principal festival of Herakles at Athens, and were held at Kynosarges, a place outside the walls and not far from the Diomeian gate. There was a Herakleion there, between the city wall and the llissos; and that is evidently the house of Herakles in theFrogs.

scholarly journals Nourrir les vivants par la grâce des saints

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 72-90
Author(s):  
Sepideh Parsapajouh
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The City ◽  
Milieux Populaires

Abstract: In Iran, the giving of food for a religious purpose is a widespread act among Shiite believers, which can be observed daily in the city and in the villages, in both affluent and popular milieus. In order to understand the social, material and spiritual virtues of such food in the everyday life and worldview of Shiite devotees, this article proposes to analyse the process of preparation and sacredness of such food, and to study some important occasions of votive food giving in the lives of believers. The information in this article comes from previous research carried out in Iranian popular milieus, in some Shiite shrines and at the Behesht Zahra cemetery in Tehran, as well as from interviews conducted for this specific purpose.Résumé : En Iran, le don de nourriture pour une intention religieuse est un acte très répandu chez les croyants chiites, que l’on peut observer quotidiennement en ville comme à la campagne, dans les milieux aisés comme dans les milieux populaires. Pour comprendre les vertus sociales, matérielles et spirituelles d’une telle nourriture dans la vie pratique et la vision du monde des pieux chiites, cet article propose d’analyser le processus de préparation et de sacralisation de cette nourriture, et d’étudier quelques occasions importantes de don de nourriture votive dans la vie des croyants. Les données de cet article proviennent de recherches précédemment effectuées dans les milieux populaires iraniens, dans quelques sanctuaires chiites et au cimetière de Behesht Zahra de Téhéran, ainsi que d’entretiens réalisés à cette fin précise.

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