Crafting Space: The Role of Spatial Practices in Managing Refugee Camps

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 (1) ◽  
pp. 17682
Author(s):  
Philipp Darkow ◽  
Daniel Geiger
Author(s):  
Elise Paradis ◽  
Warren Mark Liew ◽  
Myles Leslie

Drawing on an ethnographic study of teamwork in critical care units (CCUs), this chapter applies Henri Lefebvre’s ([1974] 1991) theoretical insights to an analysis of clinicians’ and patients’ embodied spatial practices. Lefebvre’s triadic framework of conceived, lived, and perceived spaces draws attention to the role of bodies in the production and negotiation of power relations among nurses, physicians, and patients within the CCU. Three ethnographic vignettes—“The Fight,” “The Parade,” and “The Plan”—explore how embodied spatial practices underlie the complexities of health care delivery, making visible the hidden narratives of conformity and resistance that characterize interprofessional care hierarchies. The social orderings of bodies in space are consequential: seeing them is the first step in redressing them.


2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-72
Author(s):  
Thomas Asher ◽  
Steve Ouma Akoth

Abstract This essay foregrounds mobility in cities in the global South in order to recast our current understanding of how informal settlements function and how residents of these neighborhoods navigate increasingly feral economies. Focusing largely on an informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya, the piece explores the social worlds animated by mobility, bringing renewed attention to social and spatial practices. These include strategies of economic and social cooperation used by residents to spatially constitute communities, imbue them with meaning, and in the process create ladders to opportunity. The essay also demonstrates that when development agencies and advocates of the urban poor operate without a sociological understanding of the role of mobility, the results can be devastating.


2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 143-167
Author(s):  
Karol Kurnicki

Space gains significance through processes of social differentiation and bordering, and in consequence is connected with the creation and maintenance of social divisions. The author seeks confirmation of this fact at the level of everyday practices in housing settlements, tracking the mechanisms used by people in situations of contact and confrontation with others in the social space. He sets himself several aims: (1) he attempts to analyze selected spatial practices (parking within the settlement, the creation of belonging), reflecting the internal structuring strategies of housing settlements; (2) he points to the causes of that structuring, that is, the main contexts in which these practices occur and are strengthened; (3) he highlights the important role of space in processes of bordering and differentiation. Practices connected with parking and the creation of belonging, although apparently disparate and deriving from contrary spheres of social life make it possible to hypothesize that the striving for separation and the increased importance of space determine the organization of borders, divisions, and social relations in housing settlements.


2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 13
Author(s):  
Monika Ciesielkiewicz ◽  
Oscar Garrido Guijarro

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of Saharawi women as educators and promoters of peace. The study includes published research on the topic, as well as two interviews conducted with a Paz Martín Lozano, a Spanish politician who is an expert on Saharawi issues, and Jadiyetu El Mohtar, a Saharawi activist and representative of the National Union of Saharawi Women (UNMS) who was well known by the Spanish media due to the hunger strike that she went on at the Lanzarote Airport in 2009. Despite the unbearable extreme conditions, Saharawi people were able to organize their political, economic and social life in refugee camps in the middle of a desert, mainly thanks to the incredible Saharawi women who educate their children to fight for the liberation of the territory of Western Sahara in a peaceful and non-violent way. They are striving for the recognition of the Saharawi cause at the international level and raising awareness of their right to self-determination through a free and fair referendum. They provide an excellent example for their children and transmit the values of peace, non-violent resistance, and not despairing in the face of difficult circumstances.


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