scholarly journals Governmentality, the Local State, and the Commons: An Analysis of Civic Management Facilities in Barcelona

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina Pera ◽  
Iolanda Bianchi
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
City Council ◽  
Local State ◽  
Public Employees ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Administrative Procedures ◽  
The One ◽  
The City ◽  
Hybrid Forms

This article deploys the Foucauldian concept of governmentality to study the political tensions that may unfold when commons are enacted through hybrid institutional configurations. We focus on civic management facilities (CMFs) that are located in the city of Barcelona. These are facilities owned by Barcelona City Council which, responding to organised citizens’ demands, are transferred to them so that they can develop their own transformative projects for the community. The hybrid institutional nature of these CMFs makes it impossible for them to avoid maintaining a relationship with the local state. Based on a survey to 51 CMFs, semi‐structured interviews with 41 grassroots members of CMFs and seven semi‐structured interviews with public employees and politicians, we argue that hybrid forms of commons lead to the development of political tensions. On the one hand, we show how the local state’s administrative procedures—to do with accountability and the use of public space—reshape the activities of the CMFs, leading to the depoliticisation of their transformative projects. On the other hand, the analysis also presents the strategies of resistance articulated by the facilities, which enable members to work towards the development of their transformative aims. We conclude that such political tensions cannot be resolved but must be properly governed in order to make the commons’ transformative project an enduring one.

Linguistic Landscape as standing historical testimony of the struggle against colonization in Ethiopia

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-290
Author(s):  
Hirut Woldemaram
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Addis Ababa ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
The Public ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
The City

Ethiopia is Africa’s oldest independent country and its second largest in terms of population. Apart from a five-year occupation by Italy, which is considered as a war time, the country has never been colonized. The Linguistic Landscape (LL) of Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia and the seat of the African Union, prominently depicts that important history. Erected in the main squares of the city, the various monuments serve as standing testimonies of the struggle, victory and important figures pertaining to Italian fascist invasion of Ethiopia. Moreover, there are different institutions (schools, hospitals) and infrastructures (bridges, streets) officially named after significant historical moments. Visible in the central locations and squares of the city, monuments, statues, and the naming of streets, bridges, schools, and hospitals, keep the peoples’ memory about the struggle against the Italian invasion and the victories obtained. Symbols of the Lion of Judah, cross and national flags are also part of the public exhibit marking identities, ideologies and references to the country’s history. This study aims at showing how the LL serves as a mechanism to build the historical narrative of Ethiopia. It overviews how the LL in Addis Ababa via its monuments depicts the anti-colonial struggle and the victory over Fascist Italian forces. The monuments considered are: the Victory Monument, The Patriots Monument, The Abune Petros statute, and the Menelik II Statue. After presenting background aspects, this paper tackles Ethiopians’ memories of the Italian invasion as expressed in Addis Ababa’s LL and their identity construction and reconstruction. The last section discusses the findings and draws concluding remarks. Methodologically, digital Figures of the monuments were collected coupled with interview. Ethnographic approaches to the LL are used to analyze the selected memorial objects. As Creswell (2003) indicates ethnographic designs like qualitative research procedures, aims at describing, analyzing, and interpreting a culture-sharing group’s patterns of behavior, beliefs, and language. Semi-structured interviews were carried out in 2014 with a sample of 15 pedestrians, males and females, of different ages and educational categories who were standing in front of the monuments waiting for buses. The interviewers wanted to know what people think of the significance and relevance of location of the monuments in the public space. Most of the interviewees tended to support the views of the prevailing popular interpretations. They strongly relate the monuments with memories of brutality of Italian invaders on the one hand, and the strong resistance, patriotism and heroism of the Ethiopian people. The interviews agree that this unique victory needs to keep being celebrated and glorified as part of the history of Ethiopia.

Mocking Parades and the Place of Pagan Statuary in Late Antique Alexandria

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 270-288
Author(s):  
Jonathan Stutz
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Mob Violence ◽  
Visual Contact ◽  
The Public ◽  
Sacred Objects ◽  
The One ◽  
The City

AbstractWith the present paper I would like to discuss a particular form of procession which we may term mocking parades, a collective ritual aimed at ridiculing cultic objects from competing religious communities. The cases presented here are contextualized within incidents of pagan/Christian violence in Alexandria between the 4th and 5th centuries, entailing in one case the destruction of the Serapeum and in another the pillaging of the Isis shrine at Menouthis on the outskirts of Alexandria. As the literary accounts on these events suggest, such collective forms of mockery played an important role in the context of mob violence in general and of violence against sacred objects in particular. However, while historiographical and hagiographical sources from the period suggest that pagan statues underwent systematic destruction and mutilation, we can infer from the archaeological evidence a vast range of uses and re-adaptation of pagan statuary in the urban space, assuming among other functions that of decorating public spaces. I would like to build on the thesis that the parading of sacred images played a prominent role in the discourse on the value of pagan statuary in the public space. On the one hand, the statues carried through the streets became themselves objects of mockery and violence, involving the population of the city in a collective ritual of exorcism. On the other hand, the images paraded in the mocking parades could also become a means through which the urban space could become subject to new interpretations. Entering in visual contact with the still visible vestiges of the pagan past, with the temples and the statuary of the city, the “image of the city” became affected itself by the images paraded through the streets, as though to remind the inhabitants that the still-visible elements of Alexandria’s pagan topography now stood as defeated witnesses to Christianity’s victory.

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.

scholarly journals Social movements and the law: the legal group inside the occupation of Porto Alegre city council in 2013

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 193-219
Author(s):  
Fiammetta Bonfigli ◽  
Germano Andre Doederlein Schwartz ◽  
Fabricio Pontin
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
City Council ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
The Political ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Porto Alegre ◽  
Law And Social Movements ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City ◽  
Movimientos Sociales

This work is part of the research project developed by the Observatory on New Social Movements and Law in Brazil at La Salle University, focusing in the city of Porto Alegre and on the occupation of the City Council on July of 2013, which is placed in the context of the protests against the increase of bus fares and for free fare, attempting to understand the relationship between the political organization of the Bloco de Lutas pelo Transporte Publico and its legal group during the eight days of City Council occupation. We conducted semi-structured interviews with members of the occupation in order to clarify the dynamics in the movement and its understanding of the relationship between law and social movements, highlighting the deferment of the eviction order and the elaboration of two Bills as fundamental moments of the relationship between the collective organization of the occupation and its legal team. Este artículo forma parte de un proyecto de investigación desarrollado por el Observatorio de Nuevos Movimientos Sociales y Derecho de la Universidad La Salle de Brasil. Nos centramos en la ciudad de Porto Alegre y en la ocupación de su ayuntamiento en julio de 2013, en el contexto de las protestas contra el aumento de las tarifas de autobús y a favor del transporte gratuito. Intentamos comprender la relación entre la organización política del Bloco de Lutas pelo Transporte Publico y su grupo jurídico durante los ocho días que duró la ocupación. Realizamos entrevistas semiestructuradas con miembros de la ocupación para aclarar las dinámicas del movimiento y cómo entendía la relación entre derecho y movimientos sociales, destacando el aplazamiento de la orden de desalojo y la elaboración de dos leyes como momentos fundamentales de la relación entre la organización colectiva de la ocupación y su equipo jurídico.

scholarly journals Mapping the History of a Territory: Bon Pastor (Barcelona) – Social Remembrance and Heritage Project

2019 ◽  
pp. 37-54
Author(s):  
Salvador Angosto
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Health Centre ◽  
City Council ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Participatory Action ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Development Plans ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
The City

The topic of the article are the complex stages of the formation of the Bon Pastor neighbourhood in Barcelona, and contemporary efforts to create the remembrance space system that would preserve the social memory and historical identity of the place. The author presents how the urban development plans for the district were transformed as a result of major changes in national politics, economy, and social policy, since the 1930s, through 60s and 70s, till today. The article describes the Bon Pastor Civic Memory project as an interesting example of a participatory action aimed at the preservation of local heritage. The implementation of the Civic Memory project was possible due to the neighbours’ initiative and their cooperation with cultural and academic institutions. The aim of this project is to mark certain points of the territory which possess historically and socially significant value, and to enhance them through public art, urban design and other implementations envisaged. The Association of residents of Bon Pastor (Barcelona) has been characterized, since 1974, for its combative and vindictive nature, at the same time as for its great capacity to launch solidarity initiatives and manage complicated processes to improve the living conditions of residents of the neighbourhood. After the struggles to obtain a health centre, the improvement of communications by metro and bus, and the constant improvement of public space, in recent years, the Association is co-managing with the Barcelona City Council, the radical transformation of the neighbourhood. The different phases for the remodelling of the neighbourhood, by replacing the so-called “cheap houses” with new buildings, with more spacious apartments and with better material conditions, is coming to an end and now, the possibility opens up, driven by the neighbours and the Museum of the History of the City (MUHBA) to have a metropolitan museographic space devoted to the presentation and study of the evolution of workers’ and popular housing in Barcelona.

scholarly journals “LIKE YOU, I WANT TO FEEL EXCITEMENT AND HOPE ABOUT OUR CITY”: ‘CHRISTCHURCH THE CITY’ IN CAMPAIGN MATERIAL OF THE 2013 CHRISTCHURCH CITY COUNCIL ELECTION

2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sally Carlton
Keyword(s):  
Physical Environment ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
City Council ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
City Space ◽  
The One ◽  
The City ◽  
Post Disaster

The Christchurch City Council election of 2013 provides a compelling case study through which to consider the interaction between politics and city space. On the one hand, through the careful placement of campaign posters, politics encroached on the physical terrain of the city. On the other hand, candidates included in their campaign material multitudinous references to ‘Christchurch the city,’ demonstrating the extent to which the physical environment of the post-disaster city had become central to local politics.

Realising the City

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Governance ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Industrial City ◽  
Entrepreneurial City ◽  
Football Fans ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
The City ◽  
Distributed Analysis

This book demonstrates how a city is constituted in the productive tension between making and realising, between directing activity and allowing for its emergence. It presents nine ethnographic accounts across Manchester UK, including residential neighbourhoods, cultural events, public spaces, the council, areas of urban regeneration and the airport. The authors examine the dynamics of power for those developing the city, experiencing such interventions and the spaces in-between. These perspectives trace the multiple dynamics of a vibrant post-industrial city, showing how people’s decisions and actions co-produce the city and give it shape. The ethnographic accounts focus on issues including self-policing (Smith), loss and de-industrialisation (Lewis), disenfranchised football fans, (Poulton), sexuality and public space (Atkins), nurturing an emergent city (Symons), defining the commons in public spaces (Lang), conflicting futures thinking (Pieri) networked urban governance (Knox), and how airport design shapes behaviour (O’Doherty). Their specificity provides grounded contexts for identifying ideological patterns and structural processes. They demonstrate the potential of ethnographies to beyond the particular. In doing so, the contributors complicate the dominant narrative of Manchester’s renaissance as an entrepreneurial city. The Afterword argues that even though a city’s future may be planned, it does not materialise as the perfect representation of its blueprint drawings, strategies or vision documents. Instead it is realised through the accumulative efforts of all those who live and work in the city. Researchers of cities can undertake a similar distributed analysis, attending to the unexpected insights that emerge through an open and discursive ethnographic process.

scholarly journals Uliczni „przedsiębiorcy”, czyli spór o widzialność w przestrzeni publicznej miasta

2016 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 69-85
Author(s):  
Beata Kowalczyk
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
The Other ◽  
Public Order ◽  
Legal Regulations ◽  
The Public ◽  
Street Trading ◽  
City Street ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
The City

This text is an attempt at a sociological description of the phenomenon of street trading as a form of (in)visible presence in the public space of the city. Street traders are (in)visible in the sense that, in breaking the legal regulations setting the frame for public visibility, they must be invisible to the apparatus of power in order to avoid fines and ensure their ability to achieve their aims, their livelihoods. On the one hand, street traders balance on the edge of the law, transgressing the public order, and on the other hand, they are active creators of its (in)visible portion, metaphorically speaking—protesters against the established socio-cultural structures but in reality people seeking the means to survive.

scholarly journals Urban Commons and the Right to the City

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-4
Keyword(s):  
Urban Communities ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Social Inclusion ◽  
Universal Access ◽  
City Space ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Right ◽  
Urban Commons ◽  
The City

In the increasing cosmopolitan condition of our cities inclusionary urban commons are becoming more and more relevant as civic institutions for encounter, dialogue and collaboration. Their non-commodifiable asset experiences increasing issues of social inclusion, participation, privatisation and universal access. The papers included in this issue of The Journal of Public Space are focused on the development of the commons’ capacity firstly to contingently relate and articulate heterogeneous values and paradigms, personalities, spheres of thought and material and intangible elements; secondly to sustain equity, diversity, belonging by transforming conflicts in productive associations that counter conditions of antagonism to set up critically engaged agonistic ones (Connolly, 1995; Mouffe, 1999, 2008). They include analytical studies, critical appraisals and creative propositions—part of which documenting the City Space Architecture’s event at Freespace, the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale—which address the power of the inclusionary urban commons to support the constitution of free, open and participatory networks that enhance social, cultural and material production of urban communities by reclaiming, defending, maintaining, and taking care of the “coming together of strangers who work collaboratively […] despite their differences” (Williams, 2018: 17).

scholarly journals Grass-Roots Initiatives and Bottom-Up Musealisation Mechanisms in Urban Space: The Case of Heraklion Crete

Heritage ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 1912-1926
Author(s):  
Konstantina Nikolopoulou
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Tourist Destination ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Grass Roots ◽  
Grass Roots Initiatives ◽  
The City

Heraklion is gradually transforming into the newest tourist destination in Crete, which is one of the most popular island destinations in Greece. The regional statutory and local tourist bodies aim to develop Heraklion as a destination per se, overcoming the “gateway to the rest of the island” identity that the city currently holds. At the same time, grass-roots initiatives are active in the city context, defending public space and urban cultural heritage, in idiosyncratic, bottom-up ways. This paper investigates the role undertaken by three such initiatives, currently active in Heraklion, to better comprehend their possible impact on the urban landscape and cultural heritage, within this gradually developing tourist landscape. The structure, aims and vision of the initiatives were documented through semi-structured interviews. Their actions, despite being diverse, are compared to the wider activity of similar initiatives in Greece, especially against neoliberal politics, culminating in defending public space, activating bottom-up musealisation mechanisms and participating in urban design in their own ways.

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