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- Convenor:
-
Jean-Yves Durand
(CRIA-UMinho)
- Location:
- Tower B, Piso 3, Room T10
- Start time:
- 20 April, 2011 at
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
- Session slots:
- 3
Long Abstract:
Contemporary social life and cultural dynamics are increasingly shaped, in deeper or more superficial ways, by population (forced or voluntary) movements, by cultural fluxes, by the impacts of new technologies of communication or of geolocalisation. In recent years, this has led to a growing importance given by social sciences to such topics as migrations, translocality, multi-belonging, networks of all sorts within the general framework of globalisation. And the rise of multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork is a methodological consequence of this evolution. However, there still is a need for more detailed approaches of the way locality and the sense of place fit within this new context, of how spaces are territorialized sometimes simultaneously by diverse groups. How does the production of locality, belonging, and memory, which requires at least some stability and permanence, interact with contested and fluid spaces? How does technology mediate such processes?
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
The present project is motivated by the recent phenomenon of the so-called rusticization. How did this rusticity emerge and in what forms it exhibits itself and is assimilated by the Romanian contemporary society are the main questions that the project tries to address
Paper long abstract:
The present project is motivated by the recent cultural phenomenon of the so-called rusticization, present both in the urban and rural space. How did this rusticity emerge and in what forms it exhibits itself and is assimilated by the Romanian contemporary society are the main questions that the project tries to address.The study presents the changing condition of rural life in terms of practices, place and social representation. The countryside, both materially and simbolicaly is slowly, but surely, entering the post-rural era (Murdock and Prat), in which the rural space is becoming a cultural capital (Bourdieu), an "armchair countryside" commodity packed and sold under the name of rusticity not only to the urban public, but also in the village. Taking up a bottom-up approach, the project puts forward the ethnographic study of a Romanian village, where the accent now seems to fall from the ethic (ethics of work) to esthetic (rustic décor defined as something beautiful and traditional).
The presentation will be supported by visual fragments from the ethnographic documentary "Rustik Pucheni" which presents the discourses and practices of rusticization in one Romanian village.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the paradoxes of two opposing branches of thought concerning the relation between time and place - the 'genius loci' and the 'utopia'. In what follows there is a critique of the use of oversimplified frameworks, that ignore the project as an in-between in places' time.
Paper long abstract:
The 'genius loci' (Norberg-Schulz, 1980) is the permanence of the place's 'character' over time - from past to present. Reversely the 'utopia' is the projection of an idealized future. Pastness vs futurness? The utopic has neither place nor time: the "Utopia has no future, the future has already come as its present (which is why it has no place, but also, even more ironically, no time (...)" (Grosz, 2001).
The paper considers the extent to which the genius has no past, as the past has already come has its present. The past is fixed in one genius, obliterating the several geniuses that exist within one place (which is why it has no time, but also, even more ironically, no place).
The 'Utopia' and 'genius loci' share the same absence of time. They freeze time. And by freezing time they freeze place. They both belong to the same world: "a world in which there is no time. Only images." (Lightman, 1993). Only static images without people. In so doing they ignore that extent to which "people make places".
Finally the paper presents an alternative way of thinking architecture as a 'creative research practice', which works across both places' uncertainty and the places' time traces. In the openness of both past and future, it works positively with the endless changing of human needs. To bring ideas to existing ground, are given samples of projects made in the diffuse territory of Vale do Ave, from our research practice in the School of Architecture.
Paper short abstract:
Is there a bond between administrative borders and the feelings of locality? If the bond exists, how can it be performed and expressed? My paper concentrates on the region of municipality and its meanings as a place which people feel they belong to and as means to construct local identity.
Paper long abstract:
How does a region, based on administrative structures, become a place for its residents to which they locate and identify themselves? There has recently been a virile attempt in Finland to form large local administrative regions, especially large municipalities. More than 70 municipalities have been consolidated in the past three years and the number of municipalities has reduced from 415 to 342. Expressions of identity and sense of community in municipalities have been one of the current topics in Finnish media. In my paper I concentrate on the region of municipality and its meanings as a place where people feel they belong to and as means to construct local identity. My paper concentrates on one case: a small municipality 'disappeared' and was merged with a larger city. What happens to senses of locality and how residents of merged municipality continue to exist in the face of changing municipal boundaries? Is there a bond between administrative borders and the feelings of locality? Where can it be seen, and how can ethnologists study it? In my paper I articulate 'municipal heritage' and the idea of the municipality as an imagined and emotional place, which idea is emphasized in the process of the consolidation of municipalities. People commit themselves to a place by engaging with it, talking about it and even fighting for it. They also want to reminisce about former independent municipality.
Paper short abstract:
IC-technology, like mobile phones, molds spatial experiences by creating e.g. new rules for social interaction. We will discuss the ways the designers and developers of new ubiquitous technology intentionally and implicitly aim to change citizens' sense of place in the northern Finnish city of Oulu.
Paper long abstract:
In the northern Finnish city of Oulu, we live in an urban space surrounded by ubiquitous technology, such as wireless networks and computing devices. Thus, mobile phones and laptops with internet connections enable us to act simultaneously in physical and virtual space, which together construct new social spaces with multiple cultural codes and social rules. New communication technologies hence affect peoples' sense of place by molding their understanding of space and time in social interaction. For example, by talking on a mobile phone with someone who is waiting for you, you are already with that person. Technology can create new forms of sociality, but on the other hand, it can also produce new ways of separation and isolation. The designers and developers of the ubiquitous Oulu are aiming to change the city by creating an improved urban environment by offering new services for the citizens (www.ubioulu.fi). In our presentation, we will discuss the meanings of this goal by analysing the in-depth interviews we have made with the people behind the multidisciplinary UBI (UrBan Interactions) Program, that is coordinated by the University of Oulu and the City of Oulu. We will especially consider the spatial changes already evoked by technological innovations implemented within the city as well as the changes the developers and designers are currently aiming for. The analyses will explain not only the way these people talk of their own sense of belonging to the city, but also the ways they hope new technology will change the citizens' sense of an urban northern place called Oulu.
Paper short abstract:
The paper develops a double faced understanding of geo-localisation. It parallels orientation and socio-spatial constructions in geographical spaces with constructions of locality in virtual environments. It will discuss the changes of spatial orientation and the social construction of places today that come up with the informational enrichment of spaces through geo-localisation systems and other media technologies.
Paper long abstract:
The paper here proposed follows an understanding of geo-localization that is double faced. On the one hand geo-localization is seen as a digital infrastructure that is installed to provide people with information of various kinds about the place right where they are or where they want to go. In this character it can be and it is mingled already with other media technologies like for example mobile phones or the internet, which opens up a variety of applications for this technology. Navigation systems or digital city guides are just two examples for the new usages coming up with these technologies. They give way to novel forms of orientation in spaces and even more of the perception of socio-spatial qualities by installing additional information at these places. Local places are thus more and more informational enriched in a hypertext mode and modified into augmented realities. On the other side a more metaphorical understanding of geo-localization is developed by studying the construction of locality as it is done in the virtual three-dimensional-environments Second Life. Here geographies and orientation are re-configured virtually but still refer intensely to actual locality and geographic spaces.
By paralleling geo-localization practices in actual socio-spatial environments with the principles of constructing locality and orientation in a virtual world this paper will study the effects of the informational enrichment of spaces we experience today through geo-localizaton technology. It will discuss the changes of spatial orientation and the social construction of places today.
Paper short abstract:
I consider three meanings for a single place, a mid-twentieth century residential suburb at the time of development, the same neighborhood at present day, and an online representation of that constructed landscape. I thus explore both place and tele-place as materialized and understood then and now.
Paper long abstract:
The site of three interpretations, a Greensboro, North Carolina neighborhood, stands in for the ubiquitous post-war American suburb - a site for the single-family house re-conceptualized and built to modern sensibilities and standards. Following an architectural lexicon of mixed pedigree, with Ranch, Classical Revival, and Modern style structures alongside one another, the structures collectively tell of post-war expansion in tangible, built form. Here we recognize Modern residences as discourses of non-conformity to tradition and the white-columned mansions of the Piedmont South.
The second place, built figuratively and literally on the first, consists of alternative readings of the same neighborhood from the current century. Through different cultural lenses, the landscape - with its now-embedded Modern structures - stands quite apart from the place and people who first made and inhabited it. Once forms of civil disobedience, the Modern structures now quietly speak of a heritage to be preserved. These two readings suggest a contestation of memories in the expression of separate identities that result from particular cultural practices in response to larger societal forces.
The third place - a digital representation - provides an additional site of exploration that draws on the sense of place in the physical realm, a memory aid to investigate identities all based on "realities" of the materialized neighborhood. Through this newer form of social discourse, we re-trod the thoughts and insights of the past but re-make the mid-century based on the available pixels and bytes, a sense of place experienced within ever-greater temporal-informational contexts and interpretive frames.
Paper short abstract:
With their more or less identical ground plans and interchangeable elements of interior design motels are usually considered to be "non-places" beyond history and identity. In our paper we will show how these "non-places" are becoming stages of performative appropriations.
Paper long abstract:
Developed shortly after Ford had introduced the legendary T-model to the new US automobile market in 1908 the motel had long become the omnipresent form of travel accomodation in America. The creator of this innovation, architect Arthur Heinemann, had exactly the same idea about travel accomodation as Ford about building cars: Highest economic efficiency for a large proportion of the population at affordable prices through rational construction and ultimate standardization of work routines in "production". Especially with the big motel chains ground plans and elements of the interior are mostly identical and interchangeable. This standardization leads to the assumption that motels are "non-places", as defined by Mark Augé in his »Presumptions for an ethnology of loneliness« , criticized before him by the geographer Edward Relph as lacking in identity because »they not only look alike but feel alike and offer the same bland possibilities for experience«. In these non-places, however, there are acts of brief and perfomative appropriations and therefore a formation of cultural aspects, if you take a closer look at the phenomenon of the motel.
In our paper we would like to first of all go into the connection between the design of a place and performative appropriation and stage performance and to highlight the question of the interdependence of space and behavior. Our proceedings are based on participant observation and the study of literature.
Paper short abstract:
Philosophy can contribute several key insights to the notion of how a sense of place takes shape. More in particular, it allows illustrating the genuine difference between sense and meaning and the inherently ambiguous roles that history, culture or other meaningful forms can play.
Paper long abstract:
Can a philosophical perspective contribute to the discussion on 'place sensing?'
Theoretical analysis shows that, for a place to make sense, two inseparably related elements play a role: 1. meaning/form; and 2. sense or intimacy as a happening.
Meaning or form is that aspect of a place that is tangible. Examples are social-historical remains and oral and written narratives. Strictly speaking, meaning and form reveal only the external side of a place. Sense and intimacy are interwoven with this, but they are different. When we feel that a place makes sense in a strong way, we will be touched by it. We will feel privileged, as if partaking of its soul, its intimacy. We need the form or meaning of the place to be touched by it; its 'freewheeling' sense can be passed on through its form. We cannot manipulate if and when meaning is accompanied by sense.
Yet, while these dynamics need a static form for their transmission, the form can be a hindrance and prevent us from sensing its freewheeling sense. Why? Because we can mistake the form/meaning (accessible through our mind) for the sense (not accessible through our mind). Petrified forms hardly allow freewheeling. Hence, whilst we cannot manipulate if and when sense occurs (if and when the intimacy of a place touches us), we can facilitate or hinder its occurrence.
This distinction between meaning and sense needs further elaboration. The congress is expected to be a fertile environment for further reflection on its implications.
Paper short abstract:
to follow
Paper long abstract:
Relative newcomers in road-building history, traffic circles are increasingly used, as least in Western Europe, to smooth out the flow of automobiles and reduce their speed at particularly dangerous crossroads. Void of technical functions, the central space of these focal points is of uneasy access. Being thus relatively protected from uncivil behaviour, it is frequently used as a support for more or less elaborately staged presentations of the local natural or cultural heritage, or for public art display. An ethnography of the massive introduction of roundabouts in France and Portugal in the last 20 years leads to considerations on how specific technical constraints can interact with cultural narratives and fashion the way public spaces are turned - or not -- into cultural places.