Musical borderness: Contesting spaces through cultural engagement

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-279
Author(s):  
Carolin Müller
Keyword(s):  
Music Education ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Educational Practice ◽  
Social Imaginary ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
Mass Migration ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

Across European nations, the binary distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’ has been reinforced by right-wing populists seeking to frame global mass migration waves as the backdrop against which increased social fragmentation can be explained. While persisting resentments and continuing ethnicization of different social groups amplify hatred towards migrants, refugees and people of colour, many artistic and cultural institutions have taken a stand against such discriminatory rhetoric, trying to use their programmes as gateways to imagine new forms of solidarity and possibilities of organizing living with difference. This account focuses on developments in the city of Dresden, Germany, one of the hotspots for understanding the impact of racist and right-wing extremist legacies on contemporary responses to migration into Europe. Following the influx of refugees in 2015, Dresden became the centre of right-wing extremist protest, but also a focal point of its resistance in the arts and cultural institutions. In theatre and music, people have organized protests, founded community groups and established recurring programmes that focus on pivotal issues of belonging, citizenship, gender and home to reframe the social imaginary of what life with people of different backgrounds would look like in the city. This article draws on ethnographic work with three music initiatives in the city whose work centres on issues of ‘borders’ to show how ‘borderness’, a term used by social anthropologist Sarah Green to describe the sense of border, is experienced through and lived in music, educational practice and political activism. Findings show that collaborations between resident and refugee musicians resulted in narrations of border-experiences and transformed music repertoire. Spaces of music-making could become cultural borderlands themselves. Projects engaged in dismantling ‘the everyday construction of borders through ideology, cultural mediation, discourses, political institutions, attitudes and everyday forms of transnationalism […] that create and recreate new social-cultural boundaries and borders’ (Yuval-Davis et al. 2018: 229) in music education, which yielded a transcultural dialogue in the classroom in politically heated neighbourhoods. Theatre projects addressed gender-specific needs that provided women with opportunities to participate.

scholarly journals The impact of Internet distribution systems on the promotion, sales, and quality of hotel accommodation (with 4 and 5 stars in the City of Niš)

2021 ◽  
pp. 56-72
Author(s):  
Tamara Stanković ◽  
Slobodan Čerović
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Distribution Systems ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Hotel Industry ◽  
Market Demand ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City ◽  
Hotel Accommodation

This work is a theoretical and empirical overview of the influence of IDS and social networks on the promotion, sales, and quality of hotel accommodation. The work outlines a theoretical-academic presentation and includes a case study, which was carried out through research in 4-star and 5-star hotels. The research identifies the usage and influence of IDS on promotion, sales, and quality of hotel accommodation, the key advantages of cooperation and areas where it is lacking, as well as the usage and importance of social networks in promotion and sales. The terms "IDS" and "social networks in hotel businesses", their definition and importance are presented in the theoretical part of this work. The focal point of this work is to prove the importance of applying IDS and social networks in promotion, sales, and quality of services, in addition to showing the advantages of cooperation and areas where it is lacking. Furthermore, this work emphasizes the importance of staying up to date and in agreement with the latest innovations and their usage in the hotel industry, as well as the significance of adjusting the offer and services to the market demand.

scholarly journals Rights, Regulation and Bureaucratic Impact: The Impact of Human Rights Litigation on the Regulation of Informal Trade in Johannesburg

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marius Pieterse
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
South African ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Central Business District ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
Informal Trade ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City ◽  
Informal Traders

In contemplating the extent to which rights-based litigation is conducive to positive social change, attention ought to be paid to the bureaucratic impact of court judgments that vindicate rights against the State. As a case study of such impact, this article considers the effects of human rights litigation on the regulation of informal trade in the City of Johannesburg, where a 2013 attempt by local government to clamp down on informal trade in the central business district (CBD) led to high-profile court action. After describing and problematising the City's general approach to managing informal trade, the article focuses on "Operation Clean Sweep", which aimed to rid much of the CBD of informal traders and became the focal point of rights-based resistance. It then briefly describes the constitutional and jurisprudential framework within which the legal challenge to "Operation Clean Sweep" was to be decided, before critically discussing the judgment of the Constitutional Court in South African Informal Traders Forum v City of Johannesburg 2014 4 SA 371 (CC), which effectively halted "Operation Clean Sweep" by interdicting the City from removing traders from their places of business. The article then proceeds to consider the aftermath of the judgment, and assesses its impact on the City's informal trade policy and urban management practices, as well as on the broader regulatory and political environment around street trade in South African cities. The article shows that the bureaucratic impact of the judgment has, at best, been mixed, and that the judgment has not been entirely successful in disrupting the legal and bureaucratic mindsets, frameworks and processes that simultaneously create, exacerbate and unsuccessfully attempt to address the "unmanageability" of street trade in Johannesburg.

People will enter the downtown – the postwar ruralisation of the proletarian city of Łódź (1945–55)

Rural History ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-86
Author(s):  
Agata Zysiak
Keyword(s):  
Negative Influence ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Social Imaginary ◽  
Postwar Reconstruction ◽  
Mass Migration ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Political Speeches ◽  
The City ◽  
Urban Working

AbstractThis article deals with the postwar confrontation of the rural and the urban in Poland. It sheds light on a time of mass migration to the cities and the postwar reconstruction in Central Europe, heading towards state-socialism, and focuses on official discourses concerning peasants as new social and political subjects and the intelligentsia’s response to rural newcomers. A testing ground for these processes was the Polish city of Łódź, the biggest textile industrial centre.These processes became the subject of both journalistic and academic inquiries framed by political efforts to reshape the ‘social imaginary’ (Taylor) through the state’s ‘socialist modernization’. Along with the scale of migration, there was another unprecedented aspect: peasants were becoming citizens, recognised political subjects, later even as privileged representatives of the People’s Republic. The postwar press and political speeches encouraged them to become a part of the modernisation project. Almost immediately, counter-narratives followed and lamented the newcomers’ ‘improper’ uses of the city. The term ‘ruralisation of the city’ was coined to describe the misuses of urban spaces, a moral decline and even the negative influence of peasants on the urban working class.

The Function of Commercial Centers in the Modernization of European Capitalism: Amsterdam as an Information Exchange in the Seventeenth Century

1984 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 985-1005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Woodruff D. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Information Exchange ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Informal Information ◽  
High Level ◽  
Functional Areas ◽  
The City ◽  
Commercial Center

During Amsterdam's development as the commercial center of Europe in the seventeenth century, an informal “information exchange” appeared among the economic and political institutions of the city. Informational economies of the types discussed by Stigler, North, and Pred led to the emergence of Amsterdam as the focal point of information flows throughout Europe. They also encouraged a high level of innovation within all functional areas of Amsterdam's information exchange—especially in long-term data analysis—which contributed to the general modernization of capitalism.

Marian Devotion and Confessional Identity in Sixteenth-Century Germany

2004 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
pp. 218-227
Author(s):  
Bridget Heal
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Marian Devotion ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Confessional Identity ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

The Virgin Mary provided a powerful focal point for religious identity. During the early modern period Mary-worship marked out one Christian confession from another, rather than Christian from Jew, as in the Middle Ages, or Catholic from secularist, as in more modern times. Intra-Christian disputes over Mary’s status were particularly intense in Germany, the heartland of the Reformation, where Catholic and Protestant lived side by side. This paper will consider the fate of Marian imagery and devotion in three of Germany’s key free cities: Nuremberg, Augsburg, and Cologne. Each city had a different confessional structure: Nuremberg adopted the Lutheran faith in 1525; Augsburg’s council introduced wide-ranging and radical (Zwinglian-influenced) reforms in the 1530s but the city had religious parity imposed on it in 1548; Cologne remained Catholic, despite the presence of a considerable Protestant minority within its city walls and the attempts of two archbishops to introduce a synodal Reformation. These three cities therefore illustrate the spectrum of possible responses of traditional Marian veneration to the pressures of Protestant and Catholic reform. A comparison between them allows us to assess the impact of both doctrinal debate and local circumstance on the expression of Marian piety, and reveals the various ways in which Marian devotion might be used to create confessional consciousness and define religious allegiance.

scholarly journals Rethinking the Impact of Urban Form in Sustainable Urban Planning Policy

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 325
Author(s):  
Séverine Hermand ◽  
Monica García Quesada
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Urban Development ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Urban Form ◽  
Policy Development ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Capital Region ◽  
Management Plans ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

This paper examines how urban form affects the sustainable development of cities. It look at the case of Brussels, a city and a region with a very distinctive position in Belgium and in Europe, where public and political institutions have developed together detailed management plans to ensure the responsible management of the city in environment, social and economic terms. The paper first examines the concept of urban form and its constituent features. It then analyses two main questions: How can urban form indicators be integrated in decision-making process for sustainable urban planning? What urban development priorities are in place in Brussels-Capital Region and how do they impact the urban form development of the city? By proposing an analysis on the notion of urban form in Brussels-Capital Region, this paper intends to equip designers and decision makers with a better overview the type of city environmental strategies that can be deployed in the early stages of urban development projects. Keywords: Urban form, Density, Polycentric, Brussels-Capital Region, Policy development

Syrian Crisis and Migration

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 181-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pinar Yazgan ◽  
Deniz Eroglu Utku ◽  
Ibrahim Sirkeci
Keyword(s):  
Human Mobility ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Host Countries ◽  
Syrian Crisis ◽  
Mass Migration ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Europe Today ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Near Future

With the growing insurrections in Syria in 2011, an exodus in large numbers have emerged. The turmoil and violence have caused mass migration to destinations both within the region and beyond. The current "refugee crisis" has escalated sharply and its impact is widening from neighbouring countries toward Europe. Today, the Syrian crisis is the major cause for an increase in displacement and the resultant dire humanitarian situation in the region. Since the conflict shows no signs of abating in the near future, there is a constant increase in the number of Syrians fleeing their homes. However, questions on the future impact of the Syrian crisis on the scope and scale of this human mobility are still to be answered. As the impact of the Syrian crisis on host countries increases, so does the demand for the analyses of the needs for development and protection in these countries. In this special issue, we aim to bring together a number of studies examining and discussing human mobility in relation to the Syrian crisis.

The impact of a mega-event on city branding: The European Capital of Culture 2010 and the image of Istanbul

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evinç Doğan ◽  
Ibrahim Sirkeci
Keyword(s):  
Visual Analysis ◽  
Place Branding ◽  
World City ◽  
City Branding ◽  
City Image ◽  
European Capital Of Culture ◽  
National Boundaries ◽  
Symbolic Production ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

This study examines the ways in which the city image of Istanbul is re-created through the mega-events within the context of the European Capital of Culture (ECoC) 2010. Istanbul “took the stage” as one of the three ECoC cities (Essen for the Ruhr in Germany and Pécs in Hungary), where the urban spaces were projected as the theatre décor while residents and visitors became the spectators of the events. Organisers and agents of the ECoC 2010 seemed to rebrand Istanbul as a “world city” rather than a “European capital”. With a series of transnational connotations, this can be considered as part of an attempt to turn Istanbul to a global city. In this study we examine posters used during the ECoC 2010 to see whether this was evident in the promoted images of Istanbul. The research employs a hermeneutic approach in which representations, signs and language are the means of symbolic meaning, which is analysed through qualitative methods for the visual data (Visual Analysis Methods), namely Semiotics and Discourse Analysis. The analysed research material comes from a sample of posters released during the ECoC 2010 to promote 549 events throughout the year. Using stratified random sampling we have drawn 28 posters (5% of the total) reflecting the thematic groups of events in the ECoC 2010. Particular attention is also paid to the reflexivity of the researchers and researchers’ embeddedness to the object of research. The symbolic production and visual representation are therefore investigated firstly through the authoritative and historically constituted discourses in the making of Istanbul image and secondly through the orders of cultural consumption and mediatisation of culture through spectacular events. Hence enforcing a transnationalisation of the image of the city where the image appears to be almost stateless transcending the national boundaries. Findings and methodology used in this study can be useful in understanding similar cases and further research into the processes of city and place branding and image relationships. 

Modernism, Space and the City

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Thacker
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Joseph Conrad ◽  
Jean Rhys ◽  
Transport Systems ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
European Cities ◽  
Blaise Cendrars ◽  
Stephen Spender ◽  
Christopher Isherwood ◽  
The City

This innovative book examines the development of modernism in four European cities: London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. Focusing upon how literary and cultural outsiders represented various spaces in these cities, it draws upon contemporary theories of affect, mood, and literary geography to offer an original account of the geographical emotions of modernism. It considers three broad features of urban modernism: the built environment of the particular cities, such as cafés or transport systems; the cultural institutions of publishing that underpinned the development of modernism in these locations; and the complex perceptions of writers and artists who were outsiders to the four cities. Particular attention is thus given to the transnational qualities of modernism by examining figures whose view of the cities considered is that of migrants, exiles, or strangers. The writers and artists discussed include Mulk Raj Anand, Gwendolyn Bennett, Bryher, Blaise Cendrars, Joseph Conrad, T. S. Eliot, Christopher Isherwood, Hope Mirlees, Noami Mitchison, Jean Rhys, Sam Selon, and Stephen Spender.

Urbanization of fauna on the example of marsh frog (Pelophylax ridibundus)

2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 116-123
Author(s):  
A. P. Korzh ◽  
T. V. Zahovalko
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Cognitive Modeling ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Natural Populations ◽  
Cellular Level ◽  
Anthropogenic Factors ◽  
Migration Routes ◽  
Corrective Effect ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

Recently, the number of published works devoted to the processes of synanthropization of fauna, is growing like an avalanche, which indicates the extreme urgency of this theme. In our view, the process of forming devices to coexist with human and the results of his life reflects the general tandency of the modern nature evolution. Urbanization is characteristic for such a specific group of animals like amphibians, the evidence of which are numerous literature data. Many researchers use this group to assess the bioindicative quality of the environment. For this aim a variety of indicators are used: from the cellular level of life of organization up to the species composition of the group in different territories. At the same time, the interpretation of the results is not always comparable for different areas and often have significantly different interpretations by experts. Urban environment, primarily due to the contamination is extremely aggressive to amphibians. As a consequence, the urban populations of amphibians may be a change in the demographic structure, affecting the reproductive ability of the population, the disappearance of the most sensitive species or individuals, resizing animals, the appearance of abnormalities in the development, etc. At the same time play an important amphibians in the ecosystems of cities, and some species in these conditions even feel relatively comfortable. Therefore, it is interesting to understand the mechanisms of self-sustaining populations of amphibians in urban environments. To assess the impact of natural and anthropogenic factors on the development of amphibian populations were used cognitive modeling using the program Vensim PLE. Cognitive map of the model for urban and suburban habitat conditions were the same. The differences concerned the strength of connections between individual factors (migration, fertility, pollution) and their orientation. In general, factors like pollution, parasites, predators had negative impact on the population, reducing its number. The birth rate, food and migration contributed to raising number of individuals. Some of the factors affected on the strength to of each other as well: the majority of the factors affected the structure of the population, had an influence on the fertility. Thanks to it the model reflects the additive effect of complex of factors on the subsequent status of the population. Proposed and analyzed four scenarios differing strength and duration of exposure. In the first scenario, a one-time contamination occurs and not subsequently repeated. The second and third scenario assumes half board contamination, 1 year (2 scenario) and two years (scenario 3). In the fourth scenario, the pollution affected the population of amphibians constantly. In accordance with the results of simulation, much weaker than the natural populations respond to pollution - have them as an intensive population growth and its disappearance at constant pollution is slow. Changes to other parameters of the model showed that this pollution is the decisive factor -only the constant action leads to a lethal outcome for the populations. All other components of the model have a corrective effect on the population dynamics, without changing its underlying trand. In urban areas due to the heavy impact of pollution maintaining the population is only possible thanks to the migration process – the constant replenishment of diminishing micropopulations of natural reserves. This confirms the assumption that the form of existence metapopulations lake frog in the city. In order to maintain the number of amphibians in urban areas at a high level it is necessary to maintain existing migration routes and the creation of new ones. Insular nature of the placement of suitable habitats in urban areas causes the metapopulation structure of the types of urbanists. Therefore, the process of urbanization is much easier for those species whicht are capable of migration in conditions of city. In the initial stages of settling the city micropopulationis formed by selective mortality of the most susceptible individuals to adverse effects. In future, maintaining the categories of individuals is provided mainly due to migration processes metapopulisation form of the species of existence is supported). It should be noted that the changes in the previous levels are always saved in future. In the case of reorganizations of individuals we of morphology can assume the existence of extremely adverse environmental conditions that threaten the extinction of the micropopulations. 

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document