scholarly journals GLOBURBIA: Suburban place-making admist diversity

Author(s):  
Zhixi Cecilia Zhuang

Toronto, with half of its population born outside of Canada and speaking more than 140 languages, is well known as one of the most multicultural cities in the world. Its ethno-cultural diversity is often manifested in urban landscapes with long-lasting imprints of ethnic-oriented facilities and institutions. With increasing suburbanization of immigrant populations, ethnic neighbourhoods have speckled the suburban landscapes. The stereotypically homogeneous suburban landscapes have been transformed by ethnic communities who bring new identities and new meanings to the space. What has become imperative for suburban municipalities to understand is how these ethnic neighbourhoods have emerged and evolved, how ethnic communities have played a role in suburban place-making, and more importantly, what municipal planning interventions (e.g., planning policies and processes) are appropriate and effective to enhance the advantages of urban diversity and manage unprecedented social, cultural, economic, physical, and political changes that challenge conventional suburban planning. This documentary explores the increasing diversity in Toronto’s suburbs and the place-making challenges and opportunities. The research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. To link to this documentary: https://youtu.be/ODBnO0v_hpk

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhixi Cecilia Zhuang

Toronto, with half of its population born outside of Canada and speaking more than 140 languages, is well known as one of the most multicultural cities in the world. Its ethno-cultural diversity is often manifested in urban landscapes with long-lasting imprints of ethnic-oriented facilities and institutions. With increasing suburbanization of immigrant populations, ethnic neighbourhoods have speckled the suburban landscapes. The stereotypically homogeneous suburban landscapes have been transformed by ethnic communities who bring new identities and new meanings to the space. What has become imperative for suburban municipalities to understand is how these ethnic neighbourhoods have emerged and evolved, how ethnic communities have played a role in suburban place-making, and more importantly, what municipal planning interventions (e.g., planning policies and processes) are appropriate and effective to enhance the advantages of urban diversity and manage unprecedented social, cultural, economic, physical, and political changes that challenge conventional suburban planning. This documentary explores the increasing diversity in Toronto’s suburbs and the place-making challenges and opportunities. The research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. To link to this documentary: https://youtu.be/ODBnO0v_hpk


2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chad Gaffield

At the heart of the emergence and development of the Digital Humanities has been the potential to move beyond the out-dated epistemological and metaphysical dichotomies of the later 20th century including quantitative-qualitative, pure-applied, and campus-community. Despite significant steps forward, this potential has been only partially realized as illustrated by DH pioneer Edward L. Ayers’ recent question, ‘Does Digital Scholarship have a future?’ As a way to think through current challenges and opportunities, this paper reflects on the building and initial use of the Canadian Century Research Infrastructure (CCRI). As one of the largest projects in the history of the social sciences and humanities, CCRI enables research on the making of modern Canada by offering complex databases that cover the first half of the twentieth century. Built by scholars from multiple disciplines from coast-to-coast and in collaboration with government agencies and the private sector, CCRI team members came to grips with key DH questions especially those faced by interdisciplinary, multi-institutional, cross-sectoral and internationally-connected initiatives. Thinking through this experience does not generate simple recipes or lessons-learned but does offer promising practices as well as new questions for future scholarly consideration.


2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (6) ◽  
pp. 1097-1110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rivke Jaffe

How can we recognize the political in the city? How might urban scholars engage with forms of urban politics outside of established sites of research such as those associated with representative democracy or collective mobilizations? This article suggests that new perspectives on urban politics might be enabled through reinvigorated connections between the social sciences and humanities, and by combining long-term urban ethnography and cultural analysis. Reading forms of creative expression in relation to power struggles in and over urban space can direct our attention towards negotiations of authority and political belonging that are often overlooked within urban studies. The article explores the possibilities of such an approach by focusing on the idea of the political imagination as socially and materially embedded in urban landscapes. Expressive culture generates both analytical and normative frames, guiding everyday understandings of how urban power works, where and in whose hands it is concentrated, and whether we see this as just or unjust. Such frames can legitimize or delegitimize specific distributions of urban resources and risks, and can normalize or denaturalize specific structures of decision-making. Through a discussion of popular music and visual culture, the article considers how everyday practices both feed into, and are informed by, imaginations of urban rule and political belonging.


2006 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey H. Cohen ◽  
Bernardo Rios ◽  
Lise Byars

Rural Oaxacan migrants are defined as quintessential transnational movers, people who access rich social networks as they move between rural hometowns in southern Mexico and the urban centers of southern California.  The social and cultural ties that characterize Oaxacan movers are critical to successful migrations, lead to jobs and create a sense of belonging and shared identity.  Nevertheless, migration has socio-cultural, economic and psychological costs.  To move the discussion away from a framework that emphasizes the positive transnational qualities of movement we focus on the costs of migration for Oaxacans from the state’s central valleys and Sierra regions.   


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quan-Hoang Vuong

Valian rightly made a case for better recognition of women in science during the Nobel week in October 2018 (Valian, 2018). However, it seems most published views about gender inequality in Nature focused on the West. This correspondence shifts the focus to women in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) in a low- and middle-income country (LMIC).


Author(s):  
Shenique S. Thomas ◽  
Johnna Christian

This chapter draws from a qualitative study of incarcerated men to investigate the social processes and interactions between both correctional authorities and family members that inform their sense of belonging and legitimacy. It reveals that prison visitation rooms present a complex environment in which incarcerated men have access to discreet periods of visibility and relevance to their family members and the broader community. There are, however, several precarious aspects to these processes. The family members who are central to enhancing men’s visibility and legitimacy are primarily women from economically disadvantaged, racial, and ethnic minority groups, resulting in their own marginalization, which is compounded within prison spaces. By illuminating both the challenges and opportunities of familial connections, this chapter informs a social justice framework for understanding the experiences of both incarcerated men and their family members.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (s2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Bergs

Abstract This paper focuses on the micro-analysis of historical data, which allows us to investigate language use across the lifetime of individual speakers. Certain concepts, such as social network analysis or communities of practice, put individual speakers and their social embeddedness and dynamicity at the center of attention. This means that intra-speaker variation can be described and analyzed in quite some detail in certain historical data sets. The paper presents some exemplary empirical analyses of the diachronic linguistic behavior of individual speakers/writers in fifteenth to seventeenth century England. It discusses the social factors that influence this behavior, with an emphasis on the methodological and theoretical challenges and opportunities when investigating intra-speaker variation and change.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 49
Author(s):  
Mohamed Amine Brahimi ◽  
Houssem Ben Lazreg

The advent of the 1990s marked, among other things, the restructuring of the Muslim world in its relation to Islam. This new context has proved to be extremely favorable to the emergence of scholars who define themselves as reformists or modernists. They have dedicated themselves to reform in Islam based on the values of peace, human rights, and secular governance. One can find an example of this approach in the works of renowned intellectuals such as Farid Esack, Mohamed Talbi, or Mohamed Arkoun, to name a few. However, the question of Islamic reform has been debated during the 19th and 20th centuries. This article aims to comprehend the historical evolution of contemporary reformist thinkers in the scientific field. The literature surrounding these intellectuals is based primarily on content analysis. These approaches share a type of reading that focuses on the interaction and codetermination of religious interpretations rather than on the relationships and social dynamics that constitute them. Despite these contributions, it seems vital to question this contemporary thinking differently: what influence does the context of post-Islamism have on the emergence of this intellectual trend? What connections does it have with the social sciences and humanities? How did it evolve historically? In this context, the researchers will analyze co-citations in representative samples to illustrate the theoretical framework in which these intellectuals are located, and its evolution. Using selected cases, this process will help us to both underline the empowerment of contemporary Islamic thought and the formation of a real corpus of works seeking to reform Islam.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Beatriz Marín-Aguilera

Archaeologists, like many other scholars in the Social Sciences and Humanities, are particularly concerned with the study of past and present subalterns. Yet the very concept of ‘the subaltern’ is elusive and rarely theorized in archaeological literature, or it is only mentioned in passing. This article engages with the work of Gramsci and Patricia Hill Collins to map a more comprehensive definition of subalternity, and to develop a methodology to chart the different ways in which subalternity is manifested and reproduced.


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