Autochtonie, Libéralisation Politique, et Construction d'une Sphère Publique Locale au Cameroun

2011 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 71-99
Author(s):  
Ibrahim Mouiche
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ethnic Communities ◽  
Political Liberalization ◽  
Public Spheres ◽  
Plural Form ◽  
Political Roles ◽  
Emerging Democracy

Abstract:This study focuses on the hegemonic struggles between two ethnic communities, the Mbo and the Bamiléké, in Santchou, West Cameroon. At issue is the sharing of political roles in this locality, which point to issues of political representation. In this district, these roles (mayor, representative, etc.) were under the single party rule of the ethnic minority Mbo, who are a majority in this area but a minority in the rest of the district, where the Bamileke are the majority. In this monolithic context, where all protests were banned, the Bamileke had given up and accepted this arrangement. With the advent of the multiparty system and democracy, in which mayors are now elected and no longer simply nominated, uncertainty has been hovering over this political stronghold of the Mbo. Nevertheless, the Mbo have been able to hold onto the post of mayor and acquire other political posts as well. However, unlike during the single party era, the situation created by the political liberalization has offered to the Bamileke a public space where they can discuss the allocation of local political positions, and manifest their disagreement with the hegemonic trend. In the footsteps of Habermas and many other authors such as Cottereau, this study underlines the need to talk about public spaces in a plural form, instead of a single public space, in order to put in context the internal dynamics of popular cultures engendering subcultural public spheres or places of emerging democracy.

scholarly journals Political Representation In Urban Public Space In Jakarta Child-Friendly Public Space (Ruang Publik Terpadu Ramah Anak – RPTRA)

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 39-49
Author(s):  
Eka Permanasari ◽  
Sahid Mochtar ◽  
Rahma Purisari
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
The Political ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Urban Architecture ◽  
The Public ◽  
Space Design ◽  
The Government ◽  
Participative Design

The design of public space often embodies the power and political representation of a specific regime. As urban architecture symbolizes and establishes the identity of a regime, authorities often use a top-down approach to implement urban architectural programs. As a result, the spaces constructed often display power and identity, but lack consideration of public use. Public spaces are often exclusionary for public use. They merely stand for the representation of the authority. Accordingly, many public spaces built by the government are abandoned soon after their launch. Big ceremonies and public space displays only last a few days before these spaces are then closed to the public or appropriated for different uses. Most top-down approaches focus on the physical development, overlooking the users’ inclusion in decision making. This research analyses the political representation of public space design in RPTRA Bahari located in the South Jakarta. It analyses the political reason behind the development of RPTRA in Jakarta and the way participative design approach is employed during the design process to get public engagement in public space. Therefore, it investigates how the political representation is perceived in everyday life by analysing how the public space has been used three years since its launch. Through observation and interviews, this paper interrogates the political representation in urban forms and how public spaces become an arena where the government’s intentions and everyday uses meet. It concludes that a participative, bottom-up approach leads to more public use and engagement.

scholarly journals Uma trilha sonora no largo da carioca: caminhadas de escuta e observação como método de investigação dos espaços públicos/A soundtrack on the Largo da Carioca: listening and observation walks as a public spaces investigation method

2018 ◽  
pp. 235-253
Author(s):  
Renato Coimbra Frias
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Rio De Janeiro ◽  
Political Geography ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
The Political ◽  
Audio Recording ◽  
Street Vendors ◽  
Investigation Method ◽  
The Relationship

RESUMOO presente trabalho discute a relação existente entre sons, política e espaços públicos. Tal discussão é conduzida pela análise dos dados obtidos em um trabalho de campo realizado no Largo da Carioca, Rio de Janeiro, que consistiu no mapeamento das diferentes atividades que ocupam esse espaço público e no registro em áudio dos sons ao longo de uma caminhada pelo Largo da Carioca. A análise evidencia como o som produzido por camelôs, artistas de rua e outras atividades observadas em campo exerce um importante papel no jogo de posições entre elas, configurando-se como importante fator na geografia política dos espaços públicos.Palavras-chave: Espaços Públicos, Caminhadas Sonoras, Paisagens Sonoras. ABSTRACTThis paper discusses the relationship between sounds, politics and public spaces. This discussion is conducted by the analysis of data obtained in a fieldwork in Largo da Carioca, Rio de Janeiro, which consisted in mapping the different activities that occupy this public space and in the audio recording of the sounds present on a walk along the Largo da Carioca. Our analysis shows how the sound produced by street vendors, street performers and other activities observed in field plays an important role in the positions established between them, becoming an important factor in the political geography of public spaces.Keywords: Public Spaces, Soundwalks, Paisagens Sonoras.

scholarly journals The (No-)Public Space. Reviewing the Transformation of Al-Qaed Ibrahim's Urban Image

2020 ◽  
pp. 177-192
Author(s):  
Iman Hegazy
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
The Political ◽  
Urban Image ◽  
Political Conflicts ◽  
Political Events ◽  
The One ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

Public spaces are defined as places that should be accessible to all inhabitants without restrictions. They are spaces not only for gathering, socializing and celebrating but also for initiating discussions, protesting and demonstrating. Thus, public spaces are intangible expressions of democracy—a topic that the paper tackles its viability within the context of Alexandria, case study Al-Qaed Ibrahim square. On the one hand, Al-Qaed Ibrahim square which is named after Al-Qaed Ibrahim mosque is a sacred element in the urban fabric; whereas on the other it represents a non-religious revolutionary symbol in the Alexandrian urban public sphere. This contradiction necessitates finding an approach to study the characteristic of this square/mosque within the Alexandrian context—that is to realize the impact of the socio-political events on the image of Al-Qaed Ibrahim square, and how it has transformed into a revolutionary urban symbol and yet into a no-public space. The research revolves around the hypothesis that the political events taking place in Egypt after January 25th, 2011, have directly affected the development of urban public spaces, especially in Alexandria. Therefore methodologically, the paper reviews the development of Al-Qaed Ibrahim square throughout the Egyptian socio-political changes, with a focus on the square’s urban and emotional contextual transformations. For this reason, the study adheres to two theories: the "city elements" by Kevin Lynch and "emotionalizing the urban" by Frank Eckardt. The aim is not only to study the mentioned public space but also to figure out the changes in people’s societal behaviour and emotion toward it. Through empowering public spaces, the paper calls the different Egyptian political and civic powers to recognize each other, regardless of their religious, ethnical or political affiliations. It is a step towards replacing the ongoing political conflicts, polarization, and suppression with societal reconciliation, coexistence, and democracy.

“We are all republicans”: Political Articulation and the Production of Nationhood in France's Face Veil Debate

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 938-967 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Laxer
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Boundaries ◽  
The Face ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractIn July 2010, following a year-long nationwide debate over Islamic veiling, the French government passed a law prohibiting facial coverings in all public spaces. Prior research attributes this and other restrictive laws to France's republican secular tradition. This article takes a different approach. Building on literature that sees electoral politics as a site for articulating, rather than merely reflecting, social identities, I argue that the 2010 ban arose in significant part out of political parties’ struggles to demarcate the boundaries of legitimate politics in the face of an ultra-right electoral threat. Specifically, I show that in seeking to prevent the ultra-right National Front party from monopolizing the religious signs issue, France's major right and left parties agreed to portray republicanism as requiring the exclusion of face veiling from public space. Because it was forged in conflict, however, the consensus thus generated is highly fractured and unstable. It conceals ongoing conflict, both between and within political parties, over the precise meaning(s) of French republican nationhood. The findings thus underscore the relationship between boundary-drawing in the political sphere and the process of demarcating the cultural and political boundaries of nationhood in contexts of immigrant diversity.

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.

scholarly journals Espaços públicos como espaços políticos: o que isso quer dizer?/Public spaces as political spaces: what does it mean?

2018 ◽  
pp. 12-33
Author(s):  
Iná Elias De Castro
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Conflicts Of Interest ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Space ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Third ◽  
Sociological Literature

RESUMOEste artigo se propõe debater as condições para a transformação dos espaços públicos em espaços políticos e responder como isto ocorre. A tese defendida é a de que os espaços públicos são espaços do cotidiano social urbano e não possuem uma essência política, embora possam tornar-se espaços políticos quando invadidos por fenômenos da política que transformam temporariamente suas rotinas e seu público usual. O texto está dividido em três partes. Na primeira, a política é conceituada como um sistema institucional e operacional de resolução de conflitos de interesses, apresentando os riscos da falácia, muito comum na literatura sociológica, de considerar a política como uma esfera abstrata. Na segunda, o espaço político é apresentado como um conceito, que apesar da origem na ciência política, foi apropriado e ampliado na geografia política como espaço de ação das políticas públicas e das leis, mas também dos movimentos sociais e dos atos políticos. Na terceira, são elaborados os argumentos da tese central deste texto, respondendo à questão sobre as circunstâncias em que os espaços públicos podem se transformar em espaços políticos.Palavras-chave: Espaço político; espaço público; mobilizações políticas. ABSTRACTThis article proposes to discuss the conditions for the transformation of public spaces into political spaces and to respond how this occurs. The thesis defended is that public spaces are spaces of everyday urban social and do not have a political essence, although they may become political spaces when invaded by phenomena of politics that temporarily transform their routines and their usual public. The text is divided into three parts. In the first, politics is conceptualized as an institutional and operational system for resolving conflicts of interest, presenting the risks of the fallacy, very common in the sociological literature, of considering politics as an abstract sphere. In the second, the political space is presented as a concept, that despite the origin in political science, was appropriated and expanded in political geography as a space for action of public policies and laws, but also for social movements and political acts. In the third part, the arguments of the central thesis of this text are elaborated, answering the question about the circumstances in which the public spaces can turn into political spaces.Keywords: Political space; public space; political mobilizations.

scholarly journals Rasa Čepaitienė, Memory Politis in a Multiethnic City: the case of Vilnius

2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 164-179
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Cultural Politics ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Ethnic Communities ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Relationship

In the article, the concepts that have influenced (and are still influencing) the appreciation, assimilation and usage of the collective memory, evidenced in historic Lithuanian towns, especially Vilnius, are analysed, and some possible solutions to the questions arising are proposed. It is emphasized that the recognition, usage and interpretation of cultural values, accumulated in the public spaces of historic towns, which are, as a rule, multiethnic, multiconfessional and multicultural, is a complex undertaking requiring competence,creativity and responsibility. The relationship between this multipartite problem and the cultural politics of modern Lithuania is examined. Two attitudes, monoperspective (imperial, Soviet, nationalistic) and multi-perspective (postmodern), towards the relationship between ethnic communities and the prevailing culture are distinguished. The clearest cases of public space appropriation/ interpretation which provoked inter-ethnic or intersectional conflicts in recent times are analysed. These are related to the sensitivity of the collective memory, which is linked to the traumas and wrongs of the recent past.

scholarly journals Diversity and the Difficulty of Living it: The Case of Public Spaces in Skopje (North Macedonia)

SEEU Review ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 30-50
Author(s):  
Katerina Mojanchevska
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Ethnic Diversity ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Symbols ◽  
Cultural Heterogeneity ◽  
Majority Groups ◽  
Political Value

AbstractEthnic diversity and cultural heterogeneity are a reality for the city of Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia. The changing ethnic demography and redressed power-balance between majority and non-majority groups on local level have spurred a turbulent conflict – that of governance of diversity in public space. This paper aims to understand citizens’ views on how language, ethnicity, religion and collective cultural symbols are legitimised through the political, social and symbolic value of public spaces in their neighbourhoods. The results indicate that the political value of public spaces to stimulate contact, deliberation and debate among citizens on issues of their concern is undermined. Public spaces in Skopje are not planned and managed through a wide forum of citizen engagement. The colliding ethnonationalism and symbolic power struggle between the major ethnic groups result in co-ethnic preferences in socialisation and selection of public spaces. The concept of “the appropriate citizen” constructed through the symbolic meaning of public spaces perpetuates ethnonational rhetoric and supports expressions of citizenship that are limited to the nation-state and ethnic identification. In opposition to contact theory, this research indicates that self-segregation of ethnic groups can be prevalent in multi-ethnic neighbourhoods. This should make us think of the context where the contact is established and not only of the content of the interaction.

The publicization of public space

2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 519-536 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cédric Terzi ◽  
Stéphane Tonnelat
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
John Dewey ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Shared Experience ◽  
Public Spheres ◽  
The Media

In this article, we start by jointly examining the shortcomings contained in the substantial definitions of publicity commonly applied to the analysis of both public spaces (physical) and public spheres (political). We propose instead to consider publicity as a potential and publicization as a process, observable both in urban spaces and in the media. Building on John Dewey, we argue that when this process reaches its logical end, it determines and brings together a problem, a place, a sphere and a group of people that it makes public. It also leads to mechanisms of political action that constitute the ends of public space. Using the example of New Orleans post Katrina, we illustrate this process by discussing three obstacles that often stall or reverse publicization processes, which we believe deserve further study. Finally, we ground the values on which the process of publicization rests on the shared experience of trouble in potentially public spaces. This pragmatists approach opens the door to the study of publicization processes and public spaces beyond western cultures, and suggests an empirical way to deepen and reassess liberal conceptions of public space.

scholarly journals Óræð inngrip og pólitísk orðræða í borginni

Ritið ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-103
Author(s):  
Æsa Sigurjónsdóttir
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
Guiding Principle ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
The City

In this article I discuss how various collective art projects involving artists and curators using the city as an exhibition site have transformed artistic discourse in Iceland. Chantal Mouffe´s conception of public space as a battleground and art practices as agnostic interventions into this space raise questions about the branding and commodification of art and cultural institutions. Mouffe believes that despite the unrestrained commercial control of the urban landscape, artists still have the possibility of intervening in the political and economic status quo. Employing Mouffe´s analyses as a guiding principle, the study confirms that the permanent value of art in public spaces need not be limited to individual artists’ form, style or content, but may be capable of mobilizing political, critical and artistic discussions within the urban community.

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