scholarly journals Urban Space and Gender Performativity in Knut Hamsun’s Hunger and Cora Sandel’s Alberta and Freedom

Humanities ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 128
Author(s):  
Unni Langås
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Male Subject ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
Gender Performativity ◽  
City Life ◽  
The World ◽  
Outer Appearance ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
The City

In this article, I discuss the combination of city life and gender performativity in two Norwegian classics, Knut Hamsun’s Hunger (2016) [Sult, 1890] and Cora Sandel’s Alberta and Freedom (1984) [Alberte og friheten, 1931]. These are modernist novels depicting lonely human subjects in an urban space, the first one featuring a man in Kristiania (now Oslo) in the 1880s, the second one a woman and her female acquaintances in Paris in the 1920s. I interpret and compare the two novels by focusing on their intertwined construction of gender performativity and urban space. Gender norms of the city life are critical premises for how the subjects manage to negotiate with different options and obstacles through their modern existences. To both protagonists, inferior femininity is a constant option and threat, but their responses and actions are different. The strategy of the male subject in Hunger is to fight his way up from humiliation by humiliating the female other; the strategy of the female subject in Alberta and Freedom is instead to seek solidarity with persons who have experiences similar to her own. Hamsun’s man and Sandel’s woman both perceive their own bodies as crucial to the interpretation of their physical surroundings. However, while the hero in Hunger must deal with a body falling apart and a confrontation with the world that depends on a totally fragmented bodily experience, the heroine in Alberta and Freedom instead sees herself as a body divided between outer appearance and inner inclinations. Both novels stage a person with writing proclivities in a city setting where the success or failure of artistic work is subjected to the mechanisms of a market economy. Their artistic ambitions are to a large extent decided by their material conditions, which seem to manipulate Hamsun’s hero out of the whole business, and Sandel’s heroine to stay calm and not give up. Yet the novels share the belief in the body’s basis as a denominator for the perception and interpretation of sensual and cognitive impressions of the world.

Guns, Slums, and “Yellow Devils”: A Genealogy of Urban Conflicts in Karachi, Pakistan

2007 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 515-544 ◽  
Author(s):  
LAURENT GAYER
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Ethnic Enclaves ◽  
Urban Crisis ◽  
Ethnic Parties ◽  
The World ◽  
Development Plans ◽  
The City ◽  
Urban Conflicts

Karachi is a city of migrants and an important commercial hub, which provides Pakistan with a window on the world. But Karachi is also a deeply fragmented city, plagued by an acute urban crisis that takes roots in the failure of the development plans that successive Pakistani governments have delegated to foreign experts. The transnationalisation of the Afghan jihad, in the 1980s, also fuelled social and ethnic antagonisms in the city and contributed to the proliferation of violent entrepreneurs and ethnic parties. Both criminal elements and ethnic activists contributed to the ever-increasing fragmentation of urban space in the city, and to the multiplication of ethnic enclaves controlled by private militias. This extreme fragmentation of the city has benefited local jihadis and foreign terrorists who have taken shelter here since the fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. However, Karachi will never be a “sanctuary” for jihadi militants, due to the hostility of local ethnic parties, whose activists see themselves as enlightened secularists at war with the most retrograde elements of their society and their foreign allies.

Analysis of the local communities focused around improving the quality of urban space on the example of activities in public spaces and cultural activities in Bytom

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylwia Widzisz-Pronobis ◽  
◽  
Grzegorz Pronobis ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Local Community ◽  
City Life ◽  
Social Activists ◽  
Good Investment ◽  
New Vision ◽  
Basic Ideas ◽  
The City

Bytom is a polish, post-industrial city which is looking for a new vision of the future. City dwellers are between a history related to coal and new challenges. It is not easy for them to understand that industry is a thing of the past and you need to look for yourself and your identity again. Groups of social leaders are trying to show a different picture of the city and engage more and more people to act for the city. Building the city's identity and new image are basic ideas. However, in the era of global discussion about climate change and the technologization of city life, it becomes important to become aware of the role of greenery and community. In the article I want to show how Bytom social activists promote and animate the local community in the spirit of collectivism and improving the quality of life in the city. The assumption of the described groups was the maximum involvement of residents in activities to improve the space in Bytom. In the article I want to show what tools they used and what effects they obtained. Particularly important here are activities that contribute to making the community aware of the role of greenery and pedestrian space. The effects of social activities show more clearly how important are strong communities opposing local authorities and supporting good investment decisions. Analysis of the activities of social groups showed how important local leaders play and how various methods and tools used by them gave measurable effects in the city space. The bottom-up activity helped to understand the advantages of a pedestrian city, which is Bytom, and to show how little it takes for the city to gain a new image.

scholarly journals Observation, speculation, spectacle: visual culture(s) at the observation deck, 1968-2020

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Philipp Röding
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
World Trade Center ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Paradigm Shifts ◽  
Experience Economy ◽  
Economic Paradigm ◽  
The World ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The City

The project investigates how economic paradigm shifts that occur at the beginning of the 1970s (primarily the abandonment of the gold standard and the endlessly increasing pool of capital awaiting investment that succeeded it) led to the emergence of a unique building type: the high-altitude observation deck. Part investment vehicle, part iteration of an ongoing fascination with the view from above, the project presents the observation deck as the point where three distinct paradigms intersect: observation, speculation and spectacle. Tracing the emergence of the observation deck through a series of case studies (Top of the World atop the World Trade Center (NYC), One World Observatory (NYC), The Tulip (London) the project enriches its interdisciplinary approach with archival research and fieldwork. Re-telling the complicated collaboration between architect Warren Platner and graphic designer Milton Glaser at the end of the 1960s, the project lays out how the observation deck is conceived at a time when the perceived “crisis” of New York results in a rapidly accelerating neoliberalization of urban space. An avatar of this emerging ideology the observation deck is heavily invested in making the city visually comprehensible. Incorporating a sort of neoliberalist geometry, the deck transforms the city into a product to be consumed instead of a reality to live in and thus paves the way for other ventures of what has been called the “experience economy.” Thus, it signals the ongoing shift away from an architecture that possesses any use value, towards one that, as Barthes put it with regards to Eiffel Tower, is centered only on viewing and being viewed. A speculative machine, the observation deck renders the city into a product.

scholarly journals Practical urban: The urbanity and its relationship with the contemporary city.

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodrigo Balestra ◽  
Amilton Arruda ◽  
Pablo Bezerra ◽  
Isabela Moroni
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Social Representations ◽  
Industrial Age ◽  
The World ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The City

As the Industrial Revolution took place and steam driven machines emerged in the 18th century, the Industrial Age began and cities became the core of industrial and populational growth. That phenomena occurred as the job opportunities and quality of life increasingly developed away from the countryside, with the arrival of electricity and inventions such as the light bulb, thanks to important people like Sir Joseph Swan and Thomas Edison. The city, therefore, can be looked in two different ways: the urban space, occupied with tangible elements, and the social environment, filled with urban practices and cohabitation. An essential matter in many disciplines, the city is a recurrent topic for researchers who seek to understand this phenomenon of human activities. The history behind the rise of the cities show tell us about the creation of urban spaces and its manifestations, functions, transformations and the complexity inherent to the various typologies in cities all over the world. The city is a scenario full of overlapping messages that characterize the accessibility and urban communication. This is defined by Nojima (1999) as the result of the interaction between social representations and the scenario where they occur. It is through the interpretation of these messages that are manifested in the urban design accessible from cities (streets, buildings, gardens, squares, furnitures), that the individual defines the elements that identify their city. This paper discovery the concepts of city and their accessibility relationships with urban practices - design of urban activity - that directly influence the implementation of urban furniture and, above all, the importance given to them by the population, with regard to its true functions (adequacy, accessibility, ergonomics, identity and others) of their uses and appropriations. It is important for the study also understand the urban furniture relation with the project of cities - is to complement the public space or the way how interferes the urban landscape. It is need to understand how society is shown in front of herself and the world itself that surrounds and what are the affective devices that make city living when connected - through the use - therefore, this is the powerfull forces of individuals and community , space practices created by the tactics of the population to allow theirs ambiance, wellness, safety and comfort, sensations often perceived by the set of elements that constitute the urban furniture of cities.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4995/IFDP.2016.3291

scholarly journals Globalization processes in the modern city

2021 ◽  
pp. 19-30
Author(s):  
E. Shkurov ◽  
M. Yenin ◽  
T. Kolomiiets ◽  
Kenneth Laundra
Keyword(s):  
World Economy ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Large Cities ◽  
City Life ◽  
Cultural Innovation ◽  
Mass Consciousness ◽  
Communication Processes ◽  
The World ◽  
Big City ◽  
The City

The pace of urbanization at the beginning of the XXI century is accelerating. For large cities, the processes of globalization are becoming significant. Globalization has become one of the powerful factors that determine the formation of both visual-architectural, and cultural-behavioral and economicpolitical spheres of city life. Globalization creates and sets the general trends of behavioral patterns of society, determining their frames of unified processes at the global and regional levels. Ukrainian sociological thought lacks a reception of Western discourses of the city's globalization. The article analyzes a number of theses of modern Western scholars on globalization and urbanization. The interdependence of globalization processes, communication and urbanization is revealed: along with the acceleration of communication processes, globalization, which affects urbanization, is also accelerating. The potential of globalization phenomena in transformational-urban processes is understood: socio-economic, sociopolitical, socio-cultural. Emphasis is placed on the fact that the globalization of the world economy with the simultaneous erosion of national sovereignty of modern states, fragmentation of social and class structure, value transformation in the direction of strengthening the individualistic orientation of mass consciousness, commercialization of higher education forms a new configuration where the most successful and urbanized cities become centers of technological, economic and cultural innovation. The processes of unification and interdependence, which are clearly traced at all levels of globalization practices, especially in the life of cities, are considered. The world is unifying, which causes both positive and negative receptions in social and scientific discourses. The article focuses on the sociological interpretation of the city in the context of urbanism as a way of life (Urbanism as a Way of Life): the influence of urban lifestyle on the transformation of gender roles, the potential of universal inclusion in everyday life – a big city should be tolerant and multicultural.

The Great Chicago Waiters’ Strike

2014 ◽  
Vol 40 (6) ◽  
pp. 1079-1098 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Garb
Keyword(s):  
Labor Markets ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Consumer Culture ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Complex Interactions ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Urban Labor Markets ◽  
The City

In the 1890s, restaurant and hotel waiters in Chicago formed a biracial labor organization that successfully challenged their employers. The Culinary Alliance, a rare example of biracial unionism in the late nineteenth century, was produced by, and helped to shape, a dramatic reorganization of urban space with the emergence of corporate capitalism and consumer culture in the city. The Alliance’s rise and demise demonstrates the ways urban space was a powerful force in the complex interactions between race and gender relations in urban labor markets.

scholarly journals SAFE CITIES: UKRAINIAN AND WORLD DIMENSIONS

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (87) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alla Demicheva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Residential Areas ◽  
City Community ◽  
The World ◽  
Perceived Security ◽  
Atmosphere Interaction ◽  
The City ◽  
Active Interaction

Security at the city level is the security aspect that is only beginning to be recognized by Ukrainian society, although in many cities around the world, creating a secure urban space is a well-established practice or a strategic goal. A safe city includes many indicators, including infrastructure security, personal and cybersecurity, the level of crime in the city, citizens' assessment of residential areas in terms of their safety, etc., so they usually distinguish between actual and imaginary security. The role of the authorities and local governments is to provide material living conditions for the city - lighting, normal roads, repair of emergency buildings, reduction of vehicles and the priority of cyclists and pedestrians. The role of the community is indifference, the desire to create a safe atmosphere, interaction with the police through information and cooperation, through prevention. The global index of safe cities is compiled and based on an assessment of various factors that determine security. In Ukraine, a safe city is understood mainly as a city illuminated and saturated with surveillance cameras, which, surely influence its creation, but a safe city isn’t created only by the police or authorities, but includes active interaction of city authorities, police, city community. Each of these actors has a field of responsibility, but the result of their cooperation is the creation of a safe and comfortable city. The country is just beginning to involve programs aimed at intensifying cooperation between the city's actors, including "Community Police", "Neighborhood Guard", "Safe City", which have proven their effectiveness in the world. Citizens themselves and their actions naturally create an atmosphere of security on the street. In addition to actual security, another perspective of a secure city is perceived security, which is the feeling of security on a subjective level. The point is that certain places in the city can cause fear: some estranged areas, residential areas, industrial areas, any dark places and so on. Nationwide surveys recorded the level of citizens’ security and identified the most dangerous and safest regional centers.

scholarly journals INCLUSIVE DESIGN AS A COMPONENT OF CITY DEVELOPMENT

2019 ◽  
pp. 55-57
Author(s):  
V. Shkuro
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Full Range ◽  
People With Disabilities ◽  
Equal Access ◽  
Inclusive Design ◽  
City Life ◽  
The City

The article presents theoretical analyze the importance of implementation the concept of inclusive design in urban space; the relevance between the implementation of inclusive design and the quality of life of citizens of the settlement. Inclusive design is design that considers the full range of human diversity with respect to ability, language, culture, gender, age and other forms of human difference. Increasing the number of elderly people (9,4 mln people over 60 or 22% of the population of Ukraine), people with disabilities (2,6 mln people – 6% of the population), families with young children, pregnant (4 % of the population) makes to the city, its design and infrastructure new challenges. These groups risk becoming effectively excluded from significant parts of city life, suffering marginalisation, exclusion and isolation. Limiting a city's access to just a part of the population while ignoring a significant other part, is economically, socially and politically unsustainable. Inclusive design at the city create the opportunity to guarantee equal access to fundamental rights; improve the quality of life of its population and ensure that everybody - regardless of age, mobility or ability - has equal access to all the resources and pleasures cities have to offer. Inclusive design creates an opportunity to support and create equal living conditions for the most vulnerable groups (people with disabilities, the elderly, families with young children). Implementation the ID to the urban space also support development economical sustainability of the city: increase the level of employment people and reducing unemployment, accordingly increasing the purchasing power of citizens, local business development, increase income to the budget; reduction the level of social exclusion, isolation and therefore increase the degree of independence of the client and the reduction of funds for social welfare and individual support. Creation access to the education facilities will increase the level of education. As the results, better education support better employment and higher salary. Creation accessibility also support of tourism attraction of the city. Creation inclusive design in the urban space support to improve the quality and sustainability of municipal services. Inclusive design ensure involving citizens to the city life.

Horseback riding in the history of Poland – selected moments and reflections

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 11-24
Author(s):  
Wojciech J. Cynarski
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Military Culture ◽  
High Culture ◽  
Martial Art ◽  
City Space ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
The City

Background. The cavalry was the primary armed force of Poles and their legendary ancestors from ancient times, especially in historical formations. It also functions as an element of national history in culture in its various areas. Problem. How this fragment of the old Polish military culture manifests itself in high and mass culture, in the world of film, in the city space, in pictures and numismatic values, and how is it displayed in the field of martial arts cultivated today? Method. The answers will be formulated based on an analysis of 30 selected works of art, value or cultural artefacts and illustrated with examples. Examples include films of Polish cinematography (Teutonic Knights, The Deluge, Hubal and others), a series of commemorative medals and paintings by outstanding Polish painters that inspired the authors of these medals. Therefore, both great paintings by outstanding artists (Jan Matejko, Wojciech Kossak etc.), monuments and films, and small graphic forms (coins, medals). Results and conclusions. This Polish tradition of military culture manifests itself even today in high culture (painting, literature) and mass culture (films, songs), in urban space (monuments), and the artistic qualities of medals. It is also cultivated in the Polish martial art practised today – in teaching one of the schools. It is about horse fencing in Signum Polonicum.

Bangladeshi Women and Gender Boundaries

2020 ◽  
pp. 118-145
Author(s):  
Alisa Perkins
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Domestic Spaces ◽  
Teenage Girls ◽  
Cultural Frameworks ◽  
Home Based ◽  
Paid Labor ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Democratic Spaces ◽  
The City

This chapter analyzes how Bangladeshi American women and teenage girls in Hamtramck renegotiate conceptualizations of the public-private divide through ongoing interpretive and explorative spatial practices while referencing religious and cultural frameworks. It discusses how Bangladeshi women across generations organize the gendering of spaces within paid labor, public and private celebrations, streets, mosques, home-based religious gatherings, and schools. The analysis centers on how Bangladeshi women in Hamtramck are self-consciously and actively engaged in a process of negotiating their relationship to urban space, searching to interface with the city and its institutions in ways that maximize their sense of mobility, mastery, and centrality within public, semi-public, and domestic spaces of the city. In doing so, they advance new agendas of cultural citizenship, thus encouraging municipal environments and institutions to become more democratic spaces that represent and uphold the values of those who participate in them.

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