3. The City, the Everyday, and Boredom: The Case of Sherlock Holmes

2019 ◽  
pp. 128-162
Keyword(s):  
Sherlock Holmes ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The City

Some Reflections on Making Popular Culture in Urban Africa

2008 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 75-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
AbdouMaliq Simone
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Urban Residents ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Urban Africa ◽  
The City ◽  
Ways Of Being

Abstract:In contemporary urban Africa, the turbulence of the city requires incessant innovation that is capable of generating new ways of being. Rather than treating popular culture as some distinctive sector, this article attempts to investigate the popular as methods of bringing together activities and actors that on the surface would not seem compatible, and as experimental forms of generating value in the everyday life of urban residents. This investigation, sited largely in Douala, Cameroon, looks at how youth from varying neighborhoods attempt to get by, and at the unexpected forms of contestation that can ensue.

Goods and States: The Political Logic of State-Socialist Material Culture

2009 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 426-459 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krisztina Fehérváry
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Democratic Governance ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Socialism ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Widespread Phenomenon ◽  
The City ◽  
State Socialist

In the two decades since the fall of state socialism, the widespread phenomenon ofnostalgiein the former Soviet satellites has made clear that the everyday life of state socialism, contrary to stereotype, was experienced and is remembered in color. Nonetheless, popular accounts continue to depict the Soviet bloc as gray and colorless. As Paul Manning (2007) has argued, color becomes a powerful tool for legitimating not only capitalism, but democratic governance as well. An American journalist, for example, recently reflected on her own experience in the region over a number of decades:It's hard to communicate how colorless and shockingly gray it was behind the Iron Curtain … the only color was the red of Communist banners. Stores had nothing to sell. There wasn't enough food… . Lines formed whenever something, anything, was for sale. The fatigue of daily life was all over their faces. Now… fur-clad women confidently stride across the winter ice in stiletto heels. Stores have sales… upscale cafés cater to cosmopolitan clients, and magazine stands, once so strictly controlled, rival those in the West. … Life before was so drab. Now the city seems loaded with possibilities (Freeman 2008).

Everyday agency and transformation: Place, body and story in the divided city

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Mannergren Selimovic
Keyword(s):  
Coping Mechanisms ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Generative Capacity ◽  
Peace And Conflict ◽  
Analytical Work ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The World ◽  
The City

How do we identify and understand transformative agency in the quotidian that is not contained in formal, or even informal structures? This article investigates the ordinary agency of Palestinian inhabitants in the violent context of the divided city of Jerusalem. Through a close reading of three ethnographic moments I identify creative micropractices of negotiating the separation barrier that slices through the city. To conduct this analytical work I propose a conceptual grid of place, body and story through which the everyday can be grasped, accessed and understood. ‘Place’ encompasses the understanding that the everyday is always located and grounded in materiality; ‘body’ takes into account the embodied experience of subjects moving through this place; and ‘story’ refers to the narrative work conducted by human beings in order to make sense of our place in the world. I argue that people can engage in actions that function both as coping mechanisms (and may even support the upholding of status quo), and as moments of formulating and enacting agential projects with a more or less intentional transformative purpose. This insight is key to understanding the generative capacity of everyday agency and its importance for the macropolitics of peace and conflict.

Age and gentrification in Berlin: urban ageing policy and the experiences of disadvantaged older people

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meredith Dale ◽  
Josefine Heusinger ◽  
Birgit Wolter
Keyword(s):  
Older People ◽  
Urban Transformation ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Socially Disadvantaged ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Disadvantaged Neighbourhoods ◽  
Everyday Experiences ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

Chapter 5 examines the impact of gentrification processes in Berlin, Germany, on the distribution of older people across the city as well as the everyday experiences of ageing in socially disadvantaged neighbourhoods. The chapter concludes with an overview of developments in the context of political processes, where urban transformation driven by economic interests generates growing conflict and contradiction with the needs of an ageing and increasingly less affluent population.

Precarious city: home-making and eviction in Buenos Aires, Argentina

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 411-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Solange Muñoz
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Buenos Aires ◽  
City Center ◽  
Place Making ◽  
Domestic Spaces ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Temporal And Spatial ◽  
The City ◽  
Traditional Roles

This article expands on current conceptualizations and applications of precarity by exploring the everyday socio-spatial complexities of migrant squatters living in informal hotels in the center of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Through ethnographic methods, this research investigates squatters’ practices of negotiating access to shared domestic spaces and resources, while experiencing long-term waiting for eviction from their home and potentially from the city center. Employing a cultural geographies approach, this work is concerned with understanding the ways in which precarity is routinely experienced in the micro-spaces of everyday life. Precarity is examined in its temporal and spatial manifestations, with particular emphasis on gendered experiences and home-making practices. Moving through daily spaces and routine situations, I document how precarity is embedded in the mundane tasks of the domestic, and as a result, unevenly impacts women whose traditional roles as mothers and caretakers mean that they are often at the fore of place-making practices and responsibilities.

scholarly journals Transformasi Makna dan Fungsi Ruang di RPTRA Kalijodo dalam Pergulatan Citra Kota Jakarta

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 13-27
Author(s):  
Eka Permanasari ◽  
◽  
Thomas Lientino ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Human Trafficking ◽  
Community Center ◽  
Highway Bridge ◽  
City Image ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Green Belt ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

Kalijodo has a long history in terms of gambling, prostitution, human trafficking and other illicit activities. Although it is a green belt area, the location had always being filled with semipermanent buildings. The area was changed its meaning in 2016 when the late Governor of Ahok with the help of the police and army, eradicated these housing and transformed this place as the community center (RPTRA-Ruang Publik Terpadu Ramah Anak). Together with Yori Antar, Basuki changed Kalijodo into a new center for Jakarta with its mural and skatepark. Former illicit users have been pushed out from the site. Some built a temporary shelter under the highway bridge while others went to their villages. After the fall of Basuki due to the blasphemy crime, the image of RPTRA Kalijodo was contested. Within a day, the area was filled with illegal parking and prostitution returned in different forms taking place under the highway bridge. Layers of meaning and use of Kalijodo transforms rapidly and in results changes the image of the city. Through observation, interviews and archival research, this paper analyses the contestation of the city image by investigating the relationship between the top-down approach and the everyday life uses of space.

scholarly journals Hindi Print Media Content Analysis Of Bhopal Gas Tragedy: In The Context Of Reflect And Effect Study Of Media On Society

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 01-10
Author(s):  
Armendra Amar
Keyword(s):  
Print Media ◽  
Effect Study ◽  
Media Content ◽  
Industrial Accidents ◽  
Media Content Analysis ◽  
The Public ◽  
Gas Leak ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The City

The 1984 Bhopal Gas Leak tragedy has been classified as one of the World’s major Industrial accidents of the 20th century, recorded post 1919, by a United Nations Report. This tragedy killed thousands of people and maimed thousands. Union Carbide subsidiary pesticide plant released approximately 40 tonnes of Methyl Isocyanate (MIC) gas which went on to touch the lives of more than 500,000 people of the city. In a way, even after it immediately killed and maimed in thousands, it is still a continued disaster as the generations exposed to the toxic gases have been consistently showing up signs of physical and mental deformity. This gruesome event’s impacts on society are beyond time and space. The crucial question that renders is that how media dealt with the situation and to what extent it affects the everyday life of masses. This study came into initiation when the researcher visited the Methyl Ico-Cynate gas-affected area of Bhopal. During the pilot study, the researcher saw that people of the affected place were living in inadequate conditions. Thus, a concern piqued the interest of the researcher, and evoked an indispensible question: Is media fulfilling its responsibility as the fourth pillar of society in times of chaos and devastation, towards the public? For examining his queries researcher has taken renowned print media outlet’s articles of Bhopal gas tragedy as the content of the analysis. Hence on the basis of Hindi print media content of Bhopal gas disaster the researcher has taken the initiative to search appropriate answers to questions which examine the role of media after the tragic occurrence has taken place in society.

The originality of the “estate topos” in the A.N. Tolstoy’s novel “Peter the First”

2020 ◽  
pp. 262-272
Author(s):  
Anna S. Akimova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Childhood Memories ◽  
Research History ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Peasant Household ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
Poor Peasant ◽  
The City

Moscow is the city which united the characters of A.N. Tolstoy’s novel “Peter the First”. Kitay-Gorod is the space where the action of the first book is mainly set. In the novel Tolstoy showed in great detail the everyday life of the city and its inhabi- tants. According to the I.E. Zabelin’s research (“History of the city of Moscow”) in late 17 — early 18 th centuries Moscow was like a big village that is why Tolstoy relied on his childhood memories about the life in the small village Sosnovka (Samara Region) describing the streets of Moscow. The novel begins with the description of a poor peasant household of Brovkin near Moscow, then Volkov’s noble estate is depicted and Menshikov’s house. The space of the city is expanding with each new “address”. Moscow estates, and in particular, connected with the figure of “guardian, lover of the Princess-ruler” V.V. Golitsyn, in Tolstoy’s novel are inextricably linked with the character’s living and with the life of the country. The description of the palace built by Golitsyn at the peak of his career is based on the Sergei Solovyov’s “History of Russia in ancient times”. Golitsyn left it and went to his estate outside Moscow Medvedkovo and from there in exile.

Public Disclosures of Private Realities

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-189
Author(s):  
Stephen Vider
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Documentary Photography ◽  
Political Space ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Diverse Communities ◽  
History Of ◽  
Public Disclosures ◽  
The City ◽  
Hiv Aids

AIDS at Home: Art and Everyday Activism, presented at the Museum of the City of New York from May to October 2017, aimed to complement and complicate popular narratives about the history of HIV/AIDS by examining how HIV/AIDS played out in the everyday lives of diverse communities in New York. The exhibition placed works of art alongside documentary photography, film, and archival materials in unique ways to ask visitors to rethink what counts as activism and to reconsider home as a crucial political space. This paper reflects on the ways the curator sought to activate the domestic archive—the everyday ephemera and affects of illness, caretaking, and family life.

scholarly journals Refugees Hosting Other Refugees: Endurance and Maintenance of Care in Ouzaii (Lebanon)

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Batoul Yassine ◽  
Howayda Al-Harithy ◽  
Camillo Boano
Keyword(s):  
Humanitarian Aid ◽  
Urban Setting ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Social Infrastructure ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Spatial Mechanisms ◽  
Multiple Dimensions ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The City

Abstract This article examines the socio-spatial mechanisms that emerge when refugees host other refugees. It argues that there is an underlying social infrastructure of care that impacts the refugees’ choice of destinations and modes of survival. When refugees host other refugees from close networks of relatives and neighbours, they create their own spatial clusters. In the process, the social infrastructure of care offers one mode of security to vulnerable refugees. Care as a concept and an approach is related to ideas of endurance and maintenance. It facilitates multiple dimensions, from space, to affection and to the everyday. It is able to reconfigure a life possible, life-enduring and a life meaningful in an urban setting. We focus on Ouzaii in Beirut, Lebanon. Ouzaii has been a destination for multiple displaced groups over different periods of time. Ouzaii currently hosts an approximate 10,000 Syrian refugees. They chose Ouzaii as their destination after they were helped by existing refugees who offered shelter and access to jobs. The resultant socio-spatial practices, flourishing businesses and leisurely facilities are evidence of successful social networks that form an infrastructure of care. They also play a role in the reconstitution of Ouzaii itself. We conclude with reflections on how urban informality may offer refugees an alternative right to the city while allowing them to escape the gaze of the humanitarian-aid apparatus that can signify their vulnerability by reducing them to only being aid recipients. Instead, they form protective socio-spatial networks that have proved to be powerful in sustaining their livelihoods, guarding them from possible social discrimination or political threats.

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