Paper short abstract:

My case study on Ulm's Münsterplatz is interested in the semantic and phenomenological structure of urban space, produced by both built environment and every day users. The results of the ethnographic research show the texture of a city square as an interplay of topology, everyday practices, narratives and atmospheres.

Paper long abstract:

Urban anthroplogy no longer only deals with structural analysis of cities or with isolated social phenomenons within the cities but also with the research on the characters and logics of cities or urban space. The here proposed work wants to show a model for a cultural anthropological analysis of urban space.

I want to show how topology, practices, narratives and atmospheres build a polyvalent interdependency between actors and envirnomnet. The field of topology shows the symbolic and positional relations, the role of buildings and other spots as points of gravitation and the interplay of center and periphery. The practices make up topics like abidance and passing, watching static objects as well as interactional scenes and all related agencies. The narratives show the discursive connectivity of the concrete place into narrations od collective commemoration, strategies and legitimations of present developments or historic meaning. The atmosphreres or moods describe specific states of the place connected both with subjecitve and objective aspects, which have crucial impacts on the place.

The concept of appropriation (cf. e.g. Rahel Jaeggi) as a rather general way of relation to the world serves as an theoretical bracket for my model. 'Appropriation' is emphasizing actors' practices and their active and self-determined character, changing the appropriator as well as the appropriated.