Encounters Across Borders. Modernist Ideas and Professional Practices in the 1970s Romania

Author(s):  
Mara Mărginean

Building on several international professional meetings of architects organized in Romania or abroad, this article details how various modernist principles, traditionally subsumed to Western European culture, were gradually reinterpreted as an object of policy and professional knowledge on urban space in the second and third world countries. The article analyses the dialogue between Romanian architects and their foreign colleagues. It highlights how these conversations adjusted the hierarchies and power relations between states and hegemonic centres of knowledge production. In this sense, it contributes to the recent research on the means by which the "trans- nationalization of expertise" "transformed various (semi)peripheral states into new centres of knowledge and thus outlines a new analytical space where domestic actions of the Romanian state in the area of urban policies are to be analysed not as isolated practices of a totalitarian regime, but as expressions of the entanglements between industrialization models, knowledge flows and models of territoriality that were not only globally relevant, but they also often received specific regional, national and local forms.

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 394-412
Author(s):  
Sumi Madhok

In this article, I raise a question and acknowledge a ‘feminist debt’. The ‘feminist debt’ is to the politics of location, and the question asks: what particular stipulations and enablements does a critical reflexive feminist politics of location put in place for knowledge production and for doing feminist theory? I suggest that there are at least three stipulations/enablements that a critical reflexive politics of location puts in place for knowledge production. Firstly, it demands/enables scholarly accounts to reveal their location within the prevailing entanglements of power relations and to highlight the politics of struggle that underpin these. Secondly, it demands/enables conceptual work from different geographical spaces – and in particular, it facilitates the production of conceptual work in non-standard background contexts and conditions. And finally, a critical reflexive politics of location demands/enables a methodological response to capture the different conceptual and analytical and empirical knowledges produced in different locations.


2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 165-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rogerio Proença Leite

Based on research in the old Recife Quarter in the city of Recife, capital of Pernambuco state, Brazil, this study examines processes of gentrification in areas of heritage value. The article focuses on the way in which these urban policies have transformed cultural heritage into a commodity, and urban space into social relationships mediated by consumerism. I argue that heritage sites that undergo processes of gentrification create strong spatial segregation and generate an appropriation of space by the excluded population that takes the form of counter-uses, undermining the uses imagined by urban and heritage policy makers.


2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 541-552 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Rock ◽  
Mark McGuire ◽  
Alexandra Rogers

With its conceptual origins in marketing, design, and education, co-creation also has analogues in the fields of science and museology. Reviewing its development in these different disciplines highlights some common challenges (e.g., power relations) and benefits (e.g., joint knowledge production, critical thinking, and shared investment). Aligning this overview with conceptual models such as Arnstein’s ladder of citizen participation and Bakhtin’s carnival theory we aim to further inform the development of co-creation broadly within science communication.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-46
Author(s):  
Florentina-Cristina MERCIU ◽  
Oana-Ramona ILOVAN ◽  
Andreea-Loreta CERCLEUX

The built heritage, through the multiple meanings it associates (oldness, architectural, aesthetic, symbolic, authenticity), is characterized by uniqueness and irreversibility, being frequently related to the cultural and implicitly tourist image of cities. Due to the seniority of architectural heritage and the special relations established with the place and people, under the direct influence of the socio-cultural and political factors, it ensures the accumulation of symbols that codify the urban space. As a result, heritage buildings are associated with elements of territorial identity. Visual imagery is used as an argument to support the process of selecting significant buildings for local / national culture. These are promoted among the general public. Most of the time, the selection process aims at identifying representative buildings, a process that registers the influence of socio-cultural and politic factors. This article focuses on the socio-cultural evolution of the Romanian Athenaeum, a symbolic building of the Romanian culture. Based on a rich background of historical illustrations and recent observations, the authors analysed the symbols associated with the Romanian Athenaeum, in various historical periods. The authors used a sample of picture postcards with representations of the Athenaeum and interpreted the information they provided. The key results show the cultural role of the Athenaeum for the capital city, Bucharest, and its relation with the political factor, as this building was selected as the host for important political events with a deep historical charge, most often having the support of national authorities. In the course of time, the Athenaeum was represented constantly in picture postcards, as cultural building symbol and tourist attraction, due to its unique characteristics which emphasize its role as element of urban identity for Bucharest. At the same time, the interpretation of visual imagery allowed the decoding of the symbols and identification of the identity narrative and politics built around the Athenaeum, which, through the interactions generated by the socio-cultural and political plans, confer it the quality of symbolic building for the national and European culture.


2013 ◽  
pp. 50-56
Author(s):  
Colomba Muriungi

My article is a reading of Genga-Idowu’s Lady in Chains with an intention to show how she attempts to rewrite the presentation of the prostitute figure in a Kenyan urban space by figuring prostitution as an institution that is useful in questioning and revising economic power relations between men and women. Genga-Idowu shows that women can reliably accumulate income from prostitution and emancipate themselves from the economic disadvantages of postcolonial Kenya. I examine specific traits of the prostitute figure and the spaces within the city that this writer utilizes to revise and disavow Kenyan male writers and socio-cultural conception of the prostitute. Thus prostitution will be projected as a business and a potential alternative road that makes women economically powerful and frees them from other kinds of disadvantages that characterize their lives.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 19-32
Author(s):  
Yihenew Wubu Endalew ◽  
◽  

Until alternative theories that sought a serious consideration of third world states in International Relations (IR) proliferated in the last quarter of the 20th century, knowledge production remained monopolized by dominant Western-centered theories. Historical Sociology in International Relations (HSIR) is one of the approaches that aimed at directing IR towards more inclusive inquiries that acknowledge temporal and spatial variance; especially against ahistorical and ‘asociological’ foundations of Neorealism. Despite this motivation, most of the studies and debates within HSIR are concentrated on illustrating the approach’s applicability in the study of Western states. Through a review of the available literature, this paper aims to demonstrate the promise of HSIR in explaining the relationship between domestic and foreign affairs of third world states. To achieve this objective, the paper mainly draws from the works of John Hobson and Fred Halliday and suggests the incorporation of third world states in the inquiries and debate within HSIR.


2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 84-95
Author(s):  
Mardian Sulistyati

Abstract. Until now, the development process in most Third World countries including Indonesia still places women as second-class citizens; while leaving a latent environmental crisis problem. This paper examines the influence of development practices through the face of mining corporations, and examines the experiences of the struggles of the people who are in the circle of power relations. The global ecofeminism approach of Vandana Shiva and Maria Mies is used as a linguistic nomenclature that helps explain each of the key words in concepts that have previously been tendered by the patriarchal power system. In the end, the value of ecofeminism as the ethics of life becomes a solutive choice to restore traditional and relational awareness that transcends the binary barriers of the human genitals, and transcends the boundaries of human egoism towards non-humans.Abstrak. Hingga kini, proses pembangunan di sebagian besar negara Dunia Ketiga termasuk Indonesia masih menempatkan perempuan sebagai warga kelas dua; sekaligus menyisakan problem krisis lingkungan yang laten. Tulisan ini mengkaji pengaruh praktik pembangunanisme melalui wajah korporasi tambang, serta mengkaji pengalaman perjuangan masyarakat yang berada di dalam lingkar relasi kuasa tersebut. Pendekatan ekofeminisme global Vandana Shiva dan Maria Mies digunakan sebagai nomenklatur linguistik yang membantu memaparkan setiap kata kunci dalam konsep- konsep yang sebelumnya telah tergenderkan oleh sistem kuasa patriarki. Pada akhirnya, nilai ekofeminisme sebagai etika kehidupan menjadi pilihan solutif untuk mengembalikan kesadaran tradisional dan relasional yang melampaui sekat-sekat biner kelamin manusia, serta melampaui sekat egoisme manusia terhadap non-manusia. 


Author(s):  
Rachel K. Staffa ◽  
Maraja Riechers ◽  
Berta Martín-López

AbstractTransdisciplinary Sustainability Science has emerged as a viable answer to current sustainability crises with the aim to strengthen collaborative knowledge production. To expand its transformative potential, we argue that Transdisciplinary Sustainability Science needs to thoroughly engage with questions of unequal power relations and hierarchical scientific constructs. Drawing on the work of the feminist philosopher María Puig de la Bellacasa, we examine a feminist ethos of care which might provide useful guidance for sustainability researchers who are interested in generating critical-emancipatory knowledge. A feminist ethos of care is constituted by three interrelated modes of knowledge production: (1) thinking-with, (2) dissenting-within and (3) thinking-for. These modes of thinking and knowing enrich knowledge co-production in Transdisciplinary Sustainability Science by (i) embracing relational ontologies, (ii) relating to the ‘other than human’, (iii) cultivating caring academic cultures, (iv) taking care of non-academic research partners, (v) engaging with conflict and difference, (vi) interrogating positionalities and power relations through reflexivity, (vii) building upon marginalised knowledges via feminist standpoints and (viii) countering epistemic violence within and beyond academia. With our paper, we aim to make a specific feminist contribution to the field of Transdisciplinary Sustainability Science and emphasise its potentials to advance this field.


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