scholarly journals Maintenance epistemology and public order: Removing graffiti in Paris

2020 ◽  
pp. 030631272095672
Author(s):  
Jérôme Denis ◽  
David Pontille
Keyword(s):  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Public Order ◽  
Distributed Attention ◽  
Information Infrastructures ◽  
Specific Setting ◽  
Specific Order ◽  
Technical Specifications ◽  
Objects Of Knowledge ◽  
The City ◽  
Graffiti Removal

Taking part in the growing concern for repair and maintenance in STS, this article investigates epistemic dimensions of maintenance. Drawing on an ethnographic study of graffiti removal in Paris, it highlights the different objects of knowledge involved in this specific setting of urban maintenance and documents their relationships. It shows that, inspired by the ‘broken windows’ thesis, the anti-graffiti program that emerged in Paris at the turn of 2000 articulates three objects of knowledge – public order, graffiti and the city – whose intertwined definitions root a restorative maintenance epistemology. Such epistemology unfolds in an assemblage of policy documents, regulatory texts, contracts, technical specifications and procedures, information infrastructures and categories, removal techniques, tools and situated gestures, which take place in municipality’s offices, contractors’ workshops and during each intervention in the streets. The Paris graffiti removal program instantiates a preservationist approach which focuses on recurrent visual signs of disruption occurring on the façades and rests on both a distributed attention and a particular pace for interventions. It involves three main operations: measuring surfaces, identifying public expressions and composing with materials. None of these operations are neutral. Aimed at preserving a specific order, they also participate in the daily transformation of urban reality. The heterogeneous knowledge at play in maintenance practices intricately takes part in the becoming of the things whose stability it strives to ensure.

scholarly journals Produção do espaço urbano pelos homens ordinários: antropologia de dois micro-espaços na cidade de Salvador

ILUMINURAS ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 15 (36) ◽  
Author(s):  
Urpi Montoya Uriarte
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Theoretical Background ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Recent Theory ◽  
Use Value ◽  
Henri Lefebvre ◽  
Production Of Space ◽  
Differential Spaces ◽  
The City

Este trabalho se insere no que se chama hoje de antropologia da cidade, que se preocupa com a forma como os citadinos – em sua condição alternada de usuários, moradores, transeuntes ou consumidores – fazem a cidade (Agier, 2011). Nossa compreensão de cidade está marcada pela recente teoria do espaço no interior da Geografia (Massey, 2012) e nossa compreensão da produção do espaço se baseia na teoria de Henri Lefebvre, especialmente em seu La production de l´espace (1974). Com esta bagagem teórica, propomos uma antropologia dos espaços urbanos preocupada com a forma como os espaços na cidade são produzidos por pessoas comuns ou homens ordinários. Os dados empíricos analisados provêm de uma etnografia de dois micro-espaços na cidade de Salvador. As leituras teóricas destes micro-espaços nos levam a afirmar a atualidade e força dos espaços diferenciais que emergem no espaço abstrato, a significação política dos espaços apropriados e a vigência do valor de uso e as relações costumeiras na cidade contemporânea.Palavras-chave: Espaços urbanos. Produção do espaço. Espaços diferenciais. Apropriação de espaços. Valor de uso.Production of urban space by ordinary men: anthropology of two micro-spaces in the city of SalvadorAbstractThis work is part of what is today called anthropology of the city, that is concerned with how the townspeople – in their alternating condition of users, residents, bystanders or consumers – make the city (Agier, 2011). Our understanding of the city is marked by the recent theory of space inside the geography (Massey, 2012) and our understanding of the production of space is based on the theory of Henri Lefebvre, especially in its The production of the space (1974). With this theoretical background, we propose an anthropology of urban spaces concerned with how the spaces in the city are made by ordinary people or ordinary men . The data analyzed come from an ethnographic study of two micro-spaces in the city of Salvador. The theoretical interpretations of these micro-spaces lead us to affirm the relevance and strength of differential spaces that emerge in the abstract space, the political significance of the appropriate spaces and the duration of use value and customary relations in the contemporary city.Keywords: Urban spaces. Production of space. Differential spaces. Appropriation of spaces. Use value.  

scholarly journals Where’s the database in digital ethnography? Exploring database ethnography for open data research

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 598-616 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Burns ◽  
Grace Wark
Keyword(s):  
Smart City ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Open Data ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Data Types ◽  
Digital Ethnography ◽  
Fundamental Dimension ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
Technical Specifications ◽  
The City

Contemporary cities are witnessing momentous shifts in how institutions and individuals produce and circulate data. Despite recent trends claiming that anyone can create and use data, cities remain marked by persistently uneven access and usage of digital technologies. This is the case as well within the emergent phenomenon of the ‘smart city,’ where open data are a key strategy for achieving ‘smartness,’ and increasingly constitute a fundamental dimension of urban life, governance, economic activity, and epistemology. The digital ethnography has extended traditional ethnographic research practices into such digital realms, yet its applicability within open data and smart cities is unclear. The method has tended to overlook the important roles of particular digital artifacts such as the database in structuring and producing knowledge. In this paper, we develop the database ethnography as a rich methodological resource for open data research. This approach centers the database as a key site for the production and materialization of social meaning. The database ethnography draws attention to the ways digital choices and practices—around database design, schema, data models, and so on—leave traces through time. From these traces, we may infer lessons about how phenomena come to be encoded as data and acted upon in urban contexts. Open databases are, in other words, key ways in which knowledges about the smart city are framed, delimited, and represented. More specifically, we argue that open databases limit data types, categorize and classify data to align with technical specifications, reflect the database designer’s episteme, and (re)produce conceptions of the world. We substantiate these claims through a database ethnography of the open data portal for the city of Calgary, in Western Canada.

Clientelism or Something Else? Squatter Politics in Montevideo

2012 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
María José Alvarez Rivadulla
Keyword(s):  
Land Tenure ◽  
Urban Poor ◽  
Building Materials ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Municipal Governments ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Political Opportunities ◽  
Political Networks ◽  
The City

AbstractThrough the in-depth ethnographic study of one squatter neighborhood in Montevideo and its leader’s political networks, this article illustrates a successful strategy through which some squatter neighborhoods have fought for their right to the city. This consists of opportunistic, face-to-face relationships between squatter leaders and politicians of various factions and parties as intermediaries to get state goods, such as water, building materials, electricity, roads, and ultimately land tenure. Through this mechanism, squatters have seized political opportunities at the national and municipal levels. These opportunities were particularly high between 1989 and 2004, years of great competition for the votes of the urban poor on the periphery of the city, when the national and municipal governments belonged to opposing parties. In terms of theory, the article discusses current literature on clientelism, posing problems that make it difficult to characterize the political networks observed among squatters.

scholarly journals Under the bridge in Tehran: Addiction, Poverty and Capital

Ethnography ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maziyar Ghiabi
Keyword(s):  
Drug Users ◽  
Primary Objective ◽  
The State ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
The City ◽  
The Way

The article provides an ethnographic study of the lives of the ‘dangerous class’ of drug users based on fieldwork carried out among different drug using ‘communities’ in Tehran between 2012 and 2016. The primary objective is to articulate the presence of this category within modern Iran, its uses and its abuses in relation to the political. What drives the narration is not only the account of this lumpen, plebeian group vis à vis the state, but also the way power has affected their agency, their capacity to be present in the city, and how capital/power and the dangerous/lumpen life come to terms, to conflict, and to the production of new situations which affect urban life.

Scripts of Blackness

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isar P. Godreau
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Spanish Colonial ◽  
Racial Mixture ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
The City

The geopolitical influence of the United States informs the processes of racialization in Puerto Rico, including the construction of black places. This book explores how Puerto Rican national discourses about race—created to overcome U.S. colonial power—simultaneously privilege whiteness, typecast blackness, and silence charges of racism. Based on an ethnographic study of the barrio of San Antón in the city of Ponce, the book examines institutional and local representations of blackness as developing from a power-laden process that is inherently selective and political, not neutral or natural. The book traces the presumed benevolence or triviality of slavery in Puerto Rico, the favoring of a Spanish colonial whiteness (under a hispanophile discourse), and the insistence on a harmonious race mixture as discourses that thrive on a presumed contrast with the United States that also characterize Puerto Rico as morally superior. In so doing, the book outlines the debates, social hierarchies, and colonial discourses that inform the racialization of San Antón and its residents as black. Mining ethnographic materials and anthropological and historical research, the book provides powerful insights into the critical political, economic, and historical context behind the strategic deployment of blackness, whiteness, and racial mixture.

Policing and Public Order in the City of London, 1784–1815

2003 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew T. Harris
Keyword(s):  
Public Order ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City

scholarly journals De Feira Nordestina a Centro de Tradições: a construção da identidade nordestina no Rio de Janeiro

ILUMINURAS ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (54) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vitor Rebello Ramos Mello
Keyword(s):  
Rio De Janeiro ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Cultura Popular ◽  
Places Of Memory ◽  
Brazilian Northeast ◽  
The City ◽  
Made In

Resumo: Este estudo etnográfico discute o processo de construção de identidades dos migrantes nordestinos na cidade do Rio de Janeiro, tendo como referência a transformação da Feira de São Cristóvão no Centro Municipal Luiz Gonzaga de Tradições Nordestinas. Parte integrante da dissertação Memórias repentinas: a construção poética do Nordeste pelos repentistas da Feira de São Cristóvão (RJ) defendida no Programa de Pós-Graduação em Memória Social/ UNIRIO[1], a presente análise faz uso da ideia de sociodinâmica da estigmatização para compreender as relações estabelecidas entre cariocas e nordestinos, bem como utiliza o conceito de lugares de memória para entender a importância da Feira enquanto bastião da cultura para a população migrante. Para tanto, fez-se um trabalho de campo entre 2010 e 2012, realizando observação não-participante e entrevistas semiestruturadas com atores sociais locais, além de pesquisa na hemeroteca digital do Centro Nacional de Folclore e Cultura Popular e revisão bibliográfica sobre o tema. Palavras chave: Feira de São Cristóvão. Identidade Nordestina. Nordeste. Rio de Janeiro  FROM A REGIONAL FAIR INTO A CENTRE OF TRADITIONS: THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE BRAZILIAN NORTHEASTERN IDENTITY IN RIO DE JANEIRO.  Abstract: This ethnographic study discusses the process of northeastern migrants' construction identities in the city of Rio de Janeiro, taking as reference the change of the São Cristóvão Fair into the Luiz Gonzaga Municipal Centre of Northeastern Traditions. As part of the dissertation Sudden memories: the poetic construction of the northeast region by the troubadours of the São Cristóvão Fair (RJ) defended in the Post-Graduation Program in Social Memory / UNIRIO, the present analysis makes use of the ideia of the sociodinamic of stigmatization to understand the relationships established between cariocas and northeasterners, using as well the concept of places of memory to comprehend the importance of the Fair as a bastion of culture for the migrant population. To this end, a fieldwork was performed out between 2010 and 2012, with a non-participant observation and semi-structured interviews with local social actors. Besides, researches were made in the digital library of the National Center for Folklore and Popular Culture and a bibliographic review about the topic. Keywords: São Cristóvão Fair. Brazilian northeastern identity. Brazilian northeast. Rio de Janeiro [1] Esta pesquisa contou com bolsa de estudos da CAPES.

scholarly journals Book Review: Dealing in Desires

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Patara McKeen
Keyword(s):  
Financial Sector ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Ho Chi Minh City ◽  
Global Trend ◽  
The 2008 Financial Crisis ◽  
International Interactions ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

This is a review of Kimberly Kay Hoang’s (2015) Dealing in Desire. Her ethnographic study observes four different bars in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam: 1) Kong Sao Bar, 2) Naught Girls, 3) Secrets, and 4) Lavender. Hoang traces different representations of the global financial sector after the 2008 financial crisis and explores the relationship between Asian ascendancy and Western decline. From the local to the international, interactions with clients and hostesses in the bars of Ho Chi Minh City demonstrate a new global trend: the rise in transactions occurring among a global financial sector undefined by traditional social structures (e.g., commercial or national banks). By moving from observer to participant, Hoang develops a deeper understanding of the capital and labour practices that these men and women engage in, highlighting how their everyday experiences demonstrate that nightlife in the city is a way for locals to move up the socio-economic ladder.

scholarly journals UPAYA SATUAN POLISI PAMONG PRAJA DALAM MEWUJUDKAN KETENTRAMAN MASYARAKAT DAN KETERTIBAN UMUM DI BATANG KAPAS

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 116-125
Author(s):  
Okma Sandra ◽  
Suryanef Suryanef ◽  
Henni Muchtar
Keyword(s):  
Civil Service ◽  
South Coast ◽  
Public Order ◽  
The South ◽  
Basic Need ◽  
The City ◽  
Coastal District

Public tranquility and public order are a basic need of the city, as stipulated in Regional Regulation No. 1 of 2016 in the South Coastal District. But the fact shows that there are still many problems that arise as a result of violations of public peace and public order, such as those that occur in the cotton trunk area where most loose livestock are found throughout 2017. Therefore, the role of Satpol PP is needed in tackling loose livestock issues. This study aims to describe the form of Satpol PP efforts in controlling livestock in the cotton trunk area, constraints encountered when carrying out enforcement activities and solutions that must be done in overcoming the problems that occur. The method used in this study is qualitative. The results showed that the South Coast Civil Service Police Unit had carried out various efforts to control such as preventive, repressive and enforcement of penalties in the form of fines, but had not brought maximum results. Keywords: public peace, public order, civil service police unit Abstrak Ketentraman masyarakat dan Ketertiban umum merupakan suatu kebutuhan dasar kota, sebagaimana yang diatur dalam Peraturan Daerah No 1 tahun 2016 di Kabupaten Pesisir Selatan. Namun faktanya menunjukkan bahwa masih banyak persoalan yang muncul akibat dari pelanggaran ketentraman masyarakat dan ketertiban umum, seperti yang terjadi di daerah batang kapas dijumpai ternak lepas paling banyak sepanjang tahun 2017. Oleh karena itu perlu adanya peran Satpol PP dalam menanggulangi persoalan ternak lepas. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mendeskripsikan bentuk upaya Satpol PP dalam penertiban ternak di daerah batang kapas, kendala yang ditemui saat melakukan kegiatan penertiban serta solusi yang harus dilakukan dalam menanggulangi persoalan yang terjadi. Adapun metode yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah kualitatif. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa Satuan Polisi Pamong Praja Pesisir Selatan telah melakukan berbagai upaya penertiban seperti preventif, represif dan penegakkan hukuman berupa denda, namun belum membawa hasil yang maksimal. Kata kunci: ketentraman masyarakat, ketertiban umum, satuan polisi pamong praja

scholarly journals Defining Politics in an ‘Apolitical City’: An Ethnographic study of Hong Kong

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonia Yue Chuen Lam-Knott
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
General Population ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Economic Stability ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Societal Context ◽  
The City ◽  
Political Actions

Hong Kong has been described as a city that prioritises socio-economic stability at the expense of political engagement. Despite recent protests —such as the 2003 demonstration with half a million people taking to the streets—that seemingly dispel such statements, Hong Kong youth activists claim that the city remains apolitical. How can we make sense of this paradox of seeing the protests on the streets of the city, with what is being said by these youths? In attempting to unravel this puzzle, this paper highlights the importance for anthropologists of understanding how politics is conceptualised amongst their informants, which in turn determines the peculiar manifestations of political actions in that societal context. This paper argues that in Hong Kong, there are discrepancies between youth activists and the general population in how politics is framed and situated in relation to everyday life. It is then revealed that contemporary mainstream attitudes towards politics are actually a product of the city’s colonial history. Finally, this paper will explore the sentiments (of indifference, discomfort, or frustration) youth activists and non-political individuals respectively harbour towards politics and political actors, and the obstacles dominant attitudes towards politics pose for youth activists and for anthropologists alike. 

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