Paper short abstract:

Post-Franco reorganizations of gender and sexuality have produced new physical realities including new bodies and places out of old spaces and bodies in the capital city of Madrid. This paper will address how the Madrid barrio of Chueca is produced as a gay space out of the use of commodities and images thought by Spaniards to be indicative of a global gay identity; as well as the emotional /perceptual construction of the border between homonormative space and heteronormative space.

Paper long abstract:

The rise of public gay identity in Spain after the death of Franco in 1975 has reorganized systems of sexuality and gender. Before the death of Franco public manifestations of queerness were forbidden and punishable by prison terms. Post-Franco reorganizations have produced new physical realities including new bodies and places out of old spaces and bodies in the capital city of Madrid. This paper will address how the Madrid barrio of Chueca is produced as a gay space out of the use of commodities and images thought by Spaniards to be indicative of a global gay identity; as well as the emotional /perceptual construction of the border between homonormative space and heteronormative space. The connection between gay identity and 'modernidad' (modernity (but not in terms of an historical epoch and more in terms of a rejection of the Franco-ist past)) produces place in particular manners by using various tools at various scales of analysis ranging from the global commodity to the everyday lived experiences of crossing from heterosexual space to gay space within the confined of the city itself. Essentially, this paper traces how Chueca was and is produced as a gay place through use of the commodity, images and the emotional lives of the men and women who move between what they term as gay and heterosexual space. This paper is based on three years of anthropological fieldwork in the gay neighborhood of Chueca.

Paper short abstract:

The cultural history of differents streets are never unidirected. In the case of the two central streets, The Esplanade in Helsinki and Bolsjaja Konjusjennaja in St Petersburg, there are apparent similaritites but also differences due to the different economic and political systems. In two processes of street upheaval one can analyse how the promotion of commerce tend to give the streets dignified and international airs at the same time as shutting out people without the means to utilize the shops and restaurants. The history ot the two streets will reveal different stress on different epochs as well as ritual profanisations of the streets. Interesting is also the fact that both have clear national and ethnic profilations.

Paper long abstract:

The Esplanade and the Bolsjaja Konjusjennaja

Dignity and marginality of street life in two central streets

The cultural history of differents streets are never unilateral. In the case of the two central streets, The Esplanade in Helsinki and Bolsjaja Konjusjennaja in St Petersburg, there are apparent similarities but also differences due to a different history and the different economic and political systems influencing commerce and street life. The Esplanade is the most luxurious street in Helsinki, Bolsjaja Konjusjennaja is a sidestreet to the elegant Nevskij Prospect, with a stress on consumption even in the Soviet era. In two cases of street upheaval processes, the Esplanade of the 1970s and Bolsjaja Konjusjennaja of the 2000s, one can analyse how the promotion of different shops tend to give the streets dignified and international airs at the same time as shutting out people without the means to utilize the shops and restaurants.

The outcome is one of intensive showing off versus discrete manifestation of dignity. The history ot the two streets will reveal different stress in different epochs as well as ritual profanisations of the streets. Interesting is also the fact that both have clear national and ethnic profiles.

Paper short abstract:

Budapest's VIII. district is currently undergoing widespread and divergent forms of gentrification. This essays explores how the process plays out in the public places of one street through the analysis of urban rhythms.

Paper long abstract:

Budapest's VIII district is undergoing widespread and divergent forms of gentrification. The process is driven by the market, spurred on by middle-class resident's demands, mediated by the local state and administered by all of the above and more. These often global processes and their local effects are revealed through a rhythm-focused ethnography of one of the district's most well known streets. This 'rhythmanalysis' uncovers the temporal and spatial aspects of gentrification as well as everyday acts of resilience. The article concludes that 1) rhythmanalysis is a useful methodological tool for research into the multiple temporalities and spatialities of gentrification; and 2) it is constructive to explain the less than successful purification of the street's public places through the term 'everyday acts of resilience' as it a) metaphorically highlights the disaster like qualities of gentrification; b) focuses on the public acts of the body in space and time; and c) is clearly distinguishable from conscious acts of resistance.

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Paper short abstract:

Infrastructures, as subways, cause transformations related to the new urban topologies, to the definition of new identity limits and new city configurations. We use the case of a remodelled square to question how new identities are developed, and what is the way in which urban boundaries are being redefined in the city.

Paper long abstract:

In 2009, Seville has reached one of the main goals that its leaders had set for its modernisation: the "Metro". This urban transformation has brought to surface different things related to what in anthropology has been framed as "place." It shows us a particular way of being in the subway and in Modern Seville (what is called identity), but mostly underground the other part of the place is shown: its relational capabilities, drawing a new urban topology.

One of the places that have arisen as a result of this reorganization is "Puerta de Jerez" Square, where we are going to carry on our ethnography of the subway. We are talking about a traditional area of the city center transformed today into a new urban place. Since the underground station was installed, this area has crossed the limits of a "historical center" to become the stage where, in a plastic way (performed landscapes), diversities are shown and identities that make up the current Seville are mixed up. Daily, in this place there are tourists, walkers, youth, immigrants, vendors, pedestrians and people from very different backgrounds.

The importance of this space has to do with its centrality in the definition of the most classic and traditional identities in the city. From these new landscapes and uses we question: Are they blurring the traditional boundaries of the city? What kind of citizenship will show these interconnections (socio-spatial). In short: What limits and / or urban boundaries are being redefined with these new landscapes?

Paper short abstract:

This paper will address the issue of legal pluralism and scales of law, focusing on the relation between law and place. I will analyze how legal orders (local, national, global) are actively engaged in the production of place and delimitation of rights, being important components of the cityscape.

Paper long abstract:

Legal pluralism is one of the most recurrent topics of legal anthropology, especially when referring to the African continent. However, if in its early moments legal pluralism was focused in rural and colonial contexts and was constructed over the binary opposition between "tradition" and "modernity", currently it also involves the urban space and processes of globalization of the legal field, accounting to analyze the "clash" between "local" and "global" scales of law, both of which are taken as commonly taken as "given" categories. In this paper, I will take this discussion further, arguing that the spaces and places (of law) are not natural, but constantly produced, invented, and appropriated by social actors. Under this view, "law" and "legal orders" are so much about social regulation as they are about identity and place making, since they are categories deeply embedded in and productive of these same constructed notions of social spatiality and political territory. Focusing in Luanda, capital city of Angola, I will be particularly interested in understanding how non-essentialist notions of "locality" and "globality" are mediated, reshaped, negotiated, rescaled, hybridized and sculpted in the (plural) legal architecture operating in the urban space. Relying on journalistic material collected from 2007 and 2010, I will argue that this plural urban legalscape is subject to the same power relations inherent to processes of uneven globalization, and therefore becomes a privilege sphere for social and legal struggles over the delimitation of urban borders and the extension of rights to the city.

Paper short abstract:

Cities and life-styles change by the affects of globalization. Transformation in urban spaces should be developed with their users. Article discusses necessary of user participation in global era. Theoretical data will be correlated with practical experience of Istanbul in concern participating models.

Paper long abstract:

Cities exist with its city-dwellers. City-dweller is defined as; the user of the city. Correlation of city and city-dweller (user) can be explained with urban scale of place and people relations.

Globalization affected urban areas and the city-life after 1980s. The transformations of urban spaces propose different life-styles to city-dwellers in cities.

The process of urban transformations should be organized and realized by "participation with city-dwellers". This approach makes global transformation in urban areas more humanitarian and democratic. Citizen may have the right to have a place in re-shaping their environment. Advanced city polities participate with their citizens in urban design processes. In this article, the understanding of process integration is explained as "user participation in global cities".

User participation has been discussed theoretically since 1950s. The practicing of participation models have been first experienced at 1960s. The aim of participation models in different cities was to implicate citizens to urban design processes interactively.

Regarding globalization, participation models should be re-developed for new life-style formations in global cities.

User participation has a mission to constitute a mediating globalization in city-dwellers.

In this study, contemporary participation models will be analyzed by the help of theoretic postulations. Then the issue will be discussed in concern to Istanbul. Relation between city and city dweller in Istanbul will be introduced by a "case study in Levent" (globally developing region). Results of public survey in Levent regarding user participation will be presented. Article concludes with "a participation proposal" for Levent.

Paper short abstract:

My paper explores the consequences of globalisation processes for the narrative construction of local identities. Transnational networks of Irish migrants in Munich and German migrants in Dublin are analysed in two case studies while looking at life narratives being inscribed in urban memories.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the consequences of globalisation processes for the identity construction of migrants in urban contexts. Material from two case studies analysing life stories of Irish migrants in Munich and German migrants in Dublin will be discussed. Throughout my PhD project, the gathering of data has been carried out while utilising a biographical interview method (Wengraf 2001), which is complemented by multi-local fieldwork (Wulff 2002). The thesis intends to reveal patterns and mechanisms of recent transnational migration flows.

By means of the life history approach (e.g. Plummer 2001; Tierney 2000), I intend to provide an insight into the everyday life of migrants in both cities. In doing so, the project gives voice to their complex life narratives by which their identities are constructed. The fieldwork focuses, in particular, on places in which cultural and religious practices are performed. Various theoretical dimensions intersect in my project in order to develop a perspective that enables us to study local identity negotiations in multi-cultural cities. Whilst great emphasis is put on recent theories on the narrative construction of identity (e.g. Cerulo 1997), minor theoretical implications are given by theories on urban space (Lefebvre 1991), social networks (Wilson and Peterson 2002), and social memory (Climo and Cattell 2002). The local narratives of dwellers are inscribed in urban memories. Presuming that places are inhabited by representable, textual structures, I wish to examine textual fragments of the multiple, cosmopolitan memories that shape lives in multi-cultural cities.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on analyzing life histories of people involved in associations shaped in transnational contexts. The purpose is to identify the experience of groups who are facing situations of social exclusion and stigma in different places, by local practices in public spaces of Madrid City.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I analyze life experiences of transmigrants of Bolivian origin living in Spain, who have shaped associations to solve some problems they face as individuals without whole citizenship. The area, in which their actions take place claiming citizenship rights through the use of public spaces, is collective. Thereupon, from my point of view is central focuses the construction of the collective experience in a transnational field, as well as its transmission. Ethnicity in this context, plays an ambiguous role, as a space to collective response to a few of social exclusion factors; as a social stigma and hence, an "imaginary" border; and finally as a factor that builds subjectivities.

The public sphere is a central concept to this discussion, because the practices that I analyze, take place above all in parks, generating sometimes conflicts between different social groups. Case of Bolivian transmigrants lets see appropriation's practices of the urban landscape, from interstitial spaces, building a cultural citizenship in response to the exclusion and marginalization.

Paper short abstract:

My proposal looks at the process of “urban renewal” in a marginal area of Lyon. The urban development projects are analysed as a negotiation arena around the “value” of city and the meaning of what a “desirable” city is supposed to be. Two aspects will be particularly discussed: the changes in urban space practices and the strengthening of the internal borders in this urban zone.

Paper long abstract:

One expression of the globalisation of cities is the idea (that became globalised as well) that they constitute marketing territories, international prestigious places connected to the world.

But how do their marginal areas, the ones we call "ban-lieu" participate in this general trend that heavily informs urban policy? How are they affected by an urban development approach based on image marketing and international tourism?

France adopted in 2003 a new urban policy concerning these "inner cities". The urban regeneration process became a negotiation arena around the "value" of city and the meaning of what a "desirable" city is supposed to be.

I followed the transformation of these urban zones and the competition around their symbolic construction among various actors (political, cultural, economic actors, inhabitants, etc.).

On one hand I analyzed the changes in urban space practices and symbolic construction, and on the other hand I looked at how the internal borders of the neighbourhood (physical and symbolic) are being produced and seemingly reinforced by the urban development projects.

In my presentation I will discuss two general views about the city resulting from my fieldwork data.

This presentation is based on an anthropological research in Lyon (France) in "La Duchère" district which was affected by massive demolitions, reconstructions, resettling of some inhabitants, and an influx of new inhabitants.

Paper short abstract:

Chervonograd, a place where the physical border meets transborder mobility, global weakening of borders in a result of flows of capital and modern technologies. Place where the state project of "miners' city" coexists/conflicts with the "migrant city," and this space is the object of research.

Paper long abstract:

Ukrainian town Chervonograd, a place where the physical (political) border meets transborder mobility, global weakening of borders in a result of flows of capital and modern technologies. In other words, the place where globalization and de-territorialization crosses with territorial reality of the national state and, thus, the main object of research is the city as dynamic space of transformations and result of this intersection. On the one hand, Chervonograd is a miners' town, where state invests capital in the unprofitable miner industry and supports "miners'" identity (miners' day, monuments of miners), and on the other hand - city, where with opening of the borders after collapse of USSR and activation of the international capital, especially in shadow economy and connected with migrant economy one can note mutation of territoriality of the national state. In the city space, and especially in architecture and the character of public and private constructions, monuments, interiors of the private houses, local and foreign goods and commodities becomes visible the intersection (tension) of global capital and territorial policy of the state, what causes creation of hybrid identity of the town - at the same time miners', Ukrainian, border, migrant/global.

The main problem of this research is in what way belonging to the national state, and closeness to the state border, what means to the transnational flow of capital and people influenced the life strategies and everyday practices of local inhabitants and how it is visualized in the city space of Chervonograd.

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Paper short abstract:

Moving from ethnographical fields results to contemporary public space anthropological analysis grounded in the migrant neighbourhood of La Goutte d'Or (Paris), this communication aims to discuss the relation between urban changes and boundaries negociation in a global city like Paris.

Paper long abstract:

La Goutte d'Or is an historical working class and migrant neighbourhood of Paris, with a specific everyday life, combining a density and diversity of population that makes it one of the most cosmopolitan areas in Paris. A place where "foreign/ strange" practices take place on the streets, characterizing the general atmosphere of this north-east Parisian area that makes the visitors, as much as the inhabitants, feel "elsewhere". La Goutte d'Or is, in fact, a North and sub-Saharan African centrality in Europe.

This district, integrated into the core of Paris at the end of the XVIII century, is nowadays suffering from a new discrimination as a "foreign" part of the city that has to be transformed into "a neighbourhood as all the others". We observe today a new negotiation of an invisible boundary between what should be inside and what should be outside the French capital; what would fit and what is not fitting with the image of Paris within the so called process of general gentrification of the city. This paper aims to outline the complexity of the arena involved in this process: from inhabitants to local community organisations, from the voluntary sector, to the policy making institutions and local political figures, the wish for "normality" and the desire to preserve the specificity of this neighbourhood are both narratives that orient action, participation and local media production.

Paper short abstract:

In report the correlation of ethnic marked and global elements of the culture of modern citizens on example of the food is considered. Influence of modern marketing technologies on culture of the consumption in sphere of the feeding is shown.

Paper long abstract:

Food is one of the ethnic markers. In the context of globalization, the high and growing dynamics of urban life is considered as an area where ethnic interests are realized. In the cities of the Republic of Tatarstan in recent decades interest in ethnic food, as from part of the population, as well as from manufacturers and sellers of goods and services has increased. Grocery retail of the Republic reacts to the demand for traditional food system change in the structure of assortment.

For example, the products that are pure products of the "spiritual descent", worked out in accordance with Muslim traditions (halal), and the food of Christians in the post are included. In catering, the fraction of national dishes tailored to the ritual feast of ethnic groups. The report presents an analysis of the relations of the Russians and the Tatars to the regional brand "Bahetle" as to the supermarket with the national characters and national cuisine.

Modern marketing techniques, including tools provocative, viral, guerrilla marketing, on the one hand, try to take into account the system of cultural values of consumers and, on the other hand, affect them. The report reveals attitudes to advertising as one of the tools that will work on cultural norms and values, including in the field of nutrition. There are shown the basic directions and nature of that.

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses the impact of neo-liberal investments of the mining and tourism industry on the livelihood of displaced people in medium sized cities in the Peruvian Andes. We discuss how their livelihoods have been shaped in a context of inequality and spatial segregation.

Paper long abstract:

Together with Kaat Houtman

Neoliberal policies have attracted ever more foreign investors from abroad to the Latin American continent. In Peru, for example, tourism and mineral exploration and exploitations have become some prominent economic activities that have launched the country into global markets. Although these activities might bring new opportunities to the region and are supposed to contribute to local development processes, they are generally highly exclusive in kind. They often result in the creation of 'outsider zones' of which local people are removed. Big land acquisition projects of mining companies in Cajamarca, for instance, have displaced several local peasants from the area. Former landowners have been forced to move to the city in search for new livelihood opportunities. Tourism attracts ever more rural dwellers to the city of Cusco, but at the same time these newcomers are in permanent struggle to gain access to the tourist centre for economic means. In the hope to open up spaces for tourism development, the local authorities of Cusco have removed these people from the highly globalised city centre to the outskirts of the city. What do these kinds of displacement (forced by global forces such as tourism and mining) mean for the way local people can make a livelihood in their new socio-economic environments. What does it mean for the identity building of people living in the periphery of the global city?