scholarly journals Race, Space and Place: Exploring Toronto’s Regent Park from a Marxist Perspective

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaihun Sahak

Regent Park, a multi ethnic immigrant community situated in the centre of downtown Toronto, is the poorest neighbourhood in Canada. Using the spatial triadic theory of French Marxist Henri Lefebvre, Vanessa Rosa’s reformulation of his theory and Sherene Razack’s concept of “Place becomes Race”, the aim of this paper is to demonstrate that Regent Park has become a racially produced space through spatial practice, representations of space and representational spaces. In addition to Lefebvre, the writings of Frederick Engels, Louis Althusser, Antonio Gramsci and David Harvey will also be examined to put into context the historical significance of the existence of Regent Park in a capitalist society. This paper will analyze why Regent Park was built, who developed it, and who were the original residents. And the conclusion, that Regent Park was produced as a marginalized and racialized space within the periphery of the center, will be discussed.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaihun Sahak

Regent Park, a multi ethnic immigrant community situated in the centre of downtown Toronto, is the poorest neighbourhood in Canada. Using the spatial triadic theory of French Marxist Henri Lefebvre, Vanessa Rosa’s reformulation of his theory and Sherene Razack’s concept of “Place becomes Race”, the aim of this paper is to demonstrate that Regent Park has become a racially produced space through spatial practice, representations of space and representational spaces. In addition to Lefebvre, the writings of Frederick Engels, Louis Althusser, Antonio Gramsci and David Harvey will also be examined to put into context the historical significance of the existence of Regent Park in a capitalist society. This paper will analyze why Regent Park was built, who developed it, and who were the original residents. And the conclusion, that Regent Park was produced as a marginalized and racialized space within the periphery of the center, will be discussed.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 47-64
Author(s):  
Gustavo Godinho Benedito

A percepção de desenvolvimento espacial, a colonização do mundo da vida e a instrumentalização dos sujeitos na modernidade estão associadas às formas de perceber a espacialidade das relações sociais pelas filosofias e ciências positivistas constituídas na modernidade e pelo Estado, indissociavelmente. Na sociedade moderna, o espaço abstrato – um espaço homogêneo, fragmentado, hierárquico – dominou o espaço social, ou o espaço integrado de comunhão social, e o próprio potencial de produção do último foi, ele mesmo, atenuado. Por conseguinte, desenvolveu-se uma concepção do espaço como neutro e sem contradições, configurando-se como uma estratégia que pratica um “epistemicídio” do espaço ao ignorar, intencionalmente, a práxis no espaço social. Objetiva-se, neste artigo, a análise da complementaridade da filosofia da práxis de Antonio Gramsci e da metafilosofia de Henri Lefebvre no processo de renovação epistemológica da categoria espaço e as rupturas com os pressupostos epistemológicos positivistas acerca dessa categoria.  Recebido: 20/06/2018Aceito: 14/08/2018


Processes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 2281
Author(s):  
Zihan Yang ◽  
Jianqiang Yang ◽  
Kai Ren

With the gradual deepening of the development of high-quality urban transformation, the “Danwei Compound” urban space production method constitutes the basis of Chinese current urban spatial transformation. The transformation plan of the original danwei compound “stock” to promote the healthy development of urban society has become the focus of research. First, with the help of Lefebvre’s space production theory, combined with the spatial transformation characteristics of its own structural form experienced by the Chinese urban danwei compound, the space production is divided into three stages, namely, the diversity-orderly type average space of the danwei compound system period, dispersed type abstract space of the commercial enclosed community period, and the integrated differential space of a livable community undergoing regeneration and transformation. At each stage, the government, market, and residents have different influences on time-space production. Secondly, using Hefei’s typical danwei compound as the research carrier, according to the space ternary dialectics, a multi-level analysis of “representations of space-representational space-spatial practice” is carried out on the production mechanism, and the logic of different types of spaces in different periods are described. Among them, the representations of space of the change of the danwei compound are the interrelationship of multiple governance subjects in different periods, such as changes in the implementation degree of governance strategies, the degree of residents’ community governance participation, residents’ satisfaction with community governance, etc. The representational space is the residents’ community perception and interpersonal relationship at different transition stages, Interpersonal trust, and other social relations’ changes. Spatial practice is manifested in changes in the support of public service facilities, public space, per capita living area, building quality, architectural style, and illegal building area. Finally, the three-dimensional space dialectical coupling coordination degree model is used to analyze and compare the representations of space of typical settlements in the three stages and the coupling characteristics of the representational space and the practice of space. On this basis, we provide innovative ideas and put forward relevant measures and suggestions for the regeneration, transformation, and development of livable areas.


Popular Music ◽  
1982 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 19-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iain Chambers

… it is not a question of introducing out of nowhere a science of everyone's individual life, but of innovating and rendering critical an already existing practice. (Antonio Gramsci)Some years ago the concept of ambiguity was proposed as a central category in the analysis of everyday life. Henri Lefebvre, unorthodox French marxist and sociologist, suggested that precisely there, in the ‘explosive chronicle’ of daily life, it was both possible and necessary to find common ground between what was socially and culturally familiar and its eventual critique (Lefebvre 1958). The study of pop music, although rarely given attention in this context, brings us up immediately against the oscillating tensions of that cultural ambiguity which Lefebvre considered the heart of everyday life.


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Garrett Wolf ◽  
Nathan Mahaffey

Design and Planning professionals have long been influenced by the belief in physically and spatially deterministic power over people and the environment, a belief that their representations of space become space. As a result the goal of design often becomes “fixing” or directing behavior and culture instead of letting culture happen. This outlook often prevents designers from engaging critically with culture, through representational space and spatial practice, as a crucial, possibly the most crucial, aspect in the design process. Just as human cultures interact to constantly reproduce and co-produce hybrid cultures, the professional designer and those users and experiencers of design (at whatever scale) must interact to co-produce spaces and places of activity. Through a critique of the practice of placemaking, we highlight the need to differentiate between participation and co-production. Understanding participation as one element of the design process and the role of design at larger scales of co-productive processes can help designers have a better understanding of how spaces are produced, and the role of designers in the creation of spaces of potentiality. Agamben’s writing on<em> potentialities </em>and Lefebvre’s spatial triad offer a theoretical framework to investigate the ethical role of professional designers in society while taking a critical stance against the singular solutions of modernist urban transformation. Spaces of Potentiality are seen here as a designer’s simultaneous withdrawal from rational problem solving and deterministic solutions, and an engagement with open source strategies for the co-production of urban space.


2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Arizka Warganegara ◽  
Ahmad Nizamuddin Sulaiman

Power is an important topics of study in the social sciences. As a concept, power has an intersubjectivity meaning. This paper analyses the various concept of power from the political geography perspective, analyzing the thoughts by four prominent and influential social scientists, Anthony Giddens, Antonio Gramsci, David Beetham, and Michel Foucault. This paper aims to explain how the concept of power has contextualized within the place, space and society’s narrative in modern-day of human life. Furthermore, the concepts of power presented by these four selected thinkers have massively influenced the notion and the discourse of the study of power nowadays. This paper argues that instead of having a different context and discourse as well as paradigm, the concepts of power by those thinkers have a similar way of thinking when looking the dynamics of space and place of the society as the basic principle of their analysis.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 192
Author(s):  
Stefan Gandler

<p class="Diss-TextGast">En este texto se analiza la crítica e interpretación que realiza Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez en relación a la teoría del conocimiento de otros pensadores marxistas, especialmente Louis Althusser, y también Antonio Gramsci. Sánchez Vázquez critica el concepto althusseriano de la "praxis teórica" como uno que, a final de cuentas, lleva a una subestimación de la praxis (en el sentido de Marx, como Sánchez Vázquez la entiende) y una sobre valoración o un asilamiento de la ciencia en relación a la praxis política-material en el proceso emancipador de la humanidad. La intención de Sánchez Vázquez es preparar teóricamente el camino para evitar la repetición de viejos errores políticos de la izquierda de América Latina y del mundo.</p>


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