Spatial Practices

2009, « Habitus, Freedom and Reflexivity », in Theory and Psychology Volume 19, no. 6, pp. 728-755.

by Mathieu Hilgers

The question of freedom is recurrent in the theory of habitus. In this paper I propose that the notion of freedom is... more The question of freedom is recurrent in the theory of habitus. In this paper I propose that the notion of freedom is an essential and necessary component for the coherence of the analyses which mobilize habitus both in terms of their theoretical articulation and in terms of their grounding in empirical reality. This argument can seem surprising considering that the theory of habitus has often been accused of being deterministic. Yet I show that, from an epistemological point of view, habitus theory is not deterministic. Bourdieu’s treatment of this concept implies at least three principles that exclude determinism: (1) the production of an infinite number of behaviors from a limited number of principles, (2) permanent mutation, and (3) the intensive and extensive limits of sociological understanding. After identifying and describing these principles, I show the reason for their incompatibility with a deterministic perspective and consider their implications for the corresponding model of action. I illustrate this analysis by a discussion of Loïc Wacquant’s carnal sociology of the pugilistic universe which reveals why it is essential to understand and explain the relation between habitus and freedom.

Last Call for Papers "Raumwissen und Wissensräume"; Deadline 25-04-12

by Stefan Schreiber

Call for Papers: "Raumwissen und Wissensräume. Interdisziplinärer Theorie-Workshop für NachwuchswissenschaftlerInnen" des Lesezirkels der Cross Sectional Group V „Space and Collective Identities“ des Exzellenzclusters „Topoi. The Formation and Transformation of Space and Knowledge in Ancient Civilizations” vom 7.–9. August 2012 in Berlin

more info at: http://www.topoi.org/event/raumwissen-und-wissensraume/

Enabling Justice: Spatializing Disability In the Built Environment

by Victor Santiago Pineda

Critical Planning Summer 2008

Dominant models of disability, such as the medical abnormality and personal tragedy models are unjust and fail to... more Dominant models of disability, such as the medical abnormality and personal tragedy models are unjust and fail to address the enabling and disabling role of the environment. The Independent Living Movement of the 1970s offered a socially and spatially just perspective of disability, but the gains of this struggle have brought mixed results. Despite progress in legislation, planning practitioners have failed to fully realize the enabling power of physical space. This paper presents disability rights advocates, researchers, and practicing planners an argument for using space as a dimension along which justice for people with disabilities can be realized.

DRIVING IN THE SUBURBS: THE MAKING AND UNMAKING OF MULTICULTURAL SOCIAL SPACE IN A FILM BY YOUNG ARAB AUSTRALIAN FILM MAKERS

by Ilaria Vanni

'Driving in the suburbs: the making and unmaking of multicultural  social space in a film by young Arab Australian film makers', in B. Axford and R. Huggins, Cultures and / of Globalization, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholar Publishing,138-152.

This chapter considers the film Trouble Comes To Me as a narrative of everyday events in the life of young Arab... more This chapter considers the film Trouble Comes To Me as a narrative of everyday events in the life of young Arab Australian men, as they are articulated across the social space of a multicultural suburb in Australia. I argued that this film operates at different levels entering the media debate promoted in the early 2000 by mainstream media and the conservative government on people ⿿of Middle Eastern Appearances⿝. The film thus re-appropriates the mainstream representation of Arab Australians as criminal others, by taking the viewer cruising in a car with four young men who are stopped and searched by the police with no apparent reason. In doing so it also creates a different discoursive arena and together with similar project contributes to the making of an independent public sphere. Most importantly it produces cultural capital for a whole community of young Arab Australian artists. The film is read as a metaphor for crossing affective borders, or invisible borders put in place by the governmental imaginary of the dominant Australian culture to manage the placing and distribution of others into the national space.

Bridging the gap: the production of tourist objects at La Perouse

by Ilaria Vanni

Sulla spiaggia. Cronulla, dicembre 2005

by Ilaria Vanni

Studi Culturali, III, 2, pp. 343-354 Bologna: Il Mulino.

L’undici dicembre 2005 una folla di cinquemila persone chiamata a raccolta attraverso un giro di SMS che invitava ad... more L’undici dicembre 2005 una folla di cinquemila persone chiamata a raccolta attraverso un giro di SMS che invitava ad andare, ‘a spaccare di botte i libanesi e gli wogs’ (persone di discendenza sud-europea o medio-orientale), confluì a Cronulla, una spiaggia a sud di Sydney. Giovani avvolti nella bandiera australiana arrivarono dalle periferie della città, dichiarando poi di essere accorsi a difendere la propria spiaggia e le proprie donne dal pericolo dei libanesi. Alcuni giovani dall’apparenza medio-orientale vennero poi isolati e violentemente aggrediti dalla folla. Nel giro di ventiquattro ore questo evento diventò nell’immaginario australiano ‘gli scontri razziali di Cronulla’ o più semplicemente ‘Cronulla’, e dette inizio a una serie di episodi di violenza, di rappresentazioni mediatiche e reazioni politiche. Il dibattito continua tuttora e ruota intorno a una domanda all’apparenza oziosa, ma in realtà fondamentale: è giusto leggere gli scontri di Cronulla in termini di razza?
Questo saggio esamina ‘Cronulla’ partendo dall’analisi proposta da Ghassan Hage (2000) dell’immaginario di una supremazia ‘bianca’ come fattore determinante nella costruzione della nazione Australia. Secondo Hage tutti i gruppi etnici che costituiscono il caledoscopio del multiculturalismo australiano condividono in varia misura un senso di nazionalismo inteso come senso di appartenenza alla nazione, ma solo gli australiani ‘bianchi’ possono intendere il nazionalismo in termini di governamentalità. Per Hage sia la promozione dell’Australia multiculturale in termini di diversità produttiva, sia i ricorrenti episodi di xenophobia degli ultimi dieci anni di storia australiana, sono il frutto dell’ immaginario ‘bianco’ che vede sia negli indigeni australiani sia nelle popolazioni di origine emigrante semplicemente degli oggetti da governare, gestire e disporre all’interno dello spazio nazione. Hage interpreta questo tipo di nazionalismo come una pratica spaziale di dominio del territorio. I fatti di Cronulla possono allora essere letti in termini di nazionalismo governamentale, come desiderio di stabilire una gerarchia di appartenenza allo spazio della nazione, simbolizzato dalla spiaggia. Fattori quali lo scontro tra due tipi di mascolinità, la storia e la grammatica culturale della spiaggia, di Cronulla e del surf, l’ansia australiana dell’essere invasi da nemici esterni, il ruolo in absentia delle donne nella vicenda, la costruzione dell’Altro come musulmano e terrorista verranno analizzati nel corso del saggio che ripercorrerà le vicende e le rappresentazioni nei media delle giornate immediatamente precedenti e seguenti agli scontri di Cronulla.

La banlieue du Hizb'allah: Images alternatives du Beyrouth d'après-guerre

by Mona Harb

Annales de la Recherche Urbaine, no.96 , p. 53-61 (2004).

material adventures, spatial productions: manoeuvring sculpture towards a proliferating event

by Bianca Hester

Zmeda s krajinami: lidar in prakse krajinjenja/Messy Landscapes: Lidar and the Practices of Landscaping

by Dimitrij Mlekuz

Published in Arheo 28, 2011. In Slovenian with English summary.

The paper is an attempt to accommodate lidar
as a relative new technology within the practice of landscape... more The paper is an attempt to accommodate lidar
as a relative new technology within the practice of landscape archaeology. In it the author argues that lidar allows us to see and understand archaeological landscapes in a new way, since the sheer density and quantity of data that became available with lidar brought a new quality. In contrast to traditional topographic surveys, which have a long tradition in archaeology, lidar maps not only the important places but everything, landscape as a whole. This reveals the landscape as a mess, a continuum of materialized traces of daily practices and activities. Focusing on these practices and their material traces, however, demands that more attention be given to the questions of time and temporality of landscape; since a landscape is not just a palimpsest of traces of activities, but a palimpsest of temporalities as well. Messy landscapes require a more reflexive approach to the practice of landscape archaeology.

À propos d'une géométrie vernaculaire : pratiques d'orientation en pays touareg (On a vernacular geometry: Spatial orientation in Tuareg country)

by Dominique Casajus

Published in Afriques. Débats, méthodes et terrains d'histoire 2 (2010) 11 p

What practical knowledge do the Tuareg, who have neither maps nor compasses, develop to orient and mentally situate... more What practical knowledge do the Tuareg, who have neither maps nor compasses, develop to orient and mentally situate themselves in space? This know-how is no different from what we use everyday. Our day-by-day spatial orientation has little to do with the learned description that we can make of it. This article is drawn from practices observed in northern Niger and from a study of 19th and early 20th century documents. This article can be read at the following URL: http://afriques.revues.org/723

The Ereignis & The Hyperlieu: A Symbiotic Urbanity

by Anisha Jogani

http://www.mara-stream.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/anisha-jogani_symbiotic-urbanity_reduced-file-size.pdf

Place, persistence, and practice: evaluating historical significance at Angel island, San Francisco, and Maxwell street, Chicago

by Gareth Hoskins

Temporalities and perceptions of the separation between Israelis and Palestinians

by Cedric PARIZOT

Cédric Parizot , « Temporalities and perceptions of the separation between Israelis and Palestinians », Bulletin du Centre de recherche français à Jérusalem [En ligne] , 20 | 2009 , mis en ligne le 10 mars 2010. URL : http://bcrfj.revues.org/index6319.html

The Israeli separation policy that has been implemented since the early 1990s has not divided territorially Israelis... more The Israeli separation policy that has been implemented since the early 1990s has not divided territorially Israelis and Palestinians. Rather, it has reorganized their trajectories and submitted these two populations to distinct time regimes. Through an ethnographic study of spatial practices of Israeli Jews, Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinians from the West Bank, this article shows to what extent these time regimes have contributed to shape distinct perceptions of space among these groups. Through a process of foliation (feuilletage), these space construct are superposed as many anthropological space/times within a same place or along the same paths. This foliation process underscores that the separation regime does not merely reinforce the gaps between Israelis and Palestinians by creating asymmetrical use and perceptions of space, but that it also strengthen or introduce divisions within these populations. Furthermore, the study of subjectivities reveals the processes by which these actors contribute to construct discontinuity and distinction within their respective spaces while they remain in a highly interconnected context. Finally, this foliation process is significant as it leads to reconsider the conditions within which are constructed representations, discourses and analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Through their daily practices, Israelis, Palestinians and internationals elaborate and construct radically different perceptions of the limits, the Other and the conflict as these construct result from specific time/space experiences.

Spacing Herself: Women In Education

by Maria Tamboukou

Reprinted in Joyce Goodman and Jane Martin, eds. (2010) Women in Education: Major Themes (in press)

(2011) ‘Rethinking the Private Hypothesis: Epistolary Topographies in Carrington’s Letters’.

by Maria Tamboukou

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1755458610000332

In this paper I look into the letters of Dora Carrington, a British artist who lived and worked in the first half on... more In this paper I look into the letters of Dora Carrington, a British artist who lived and worked in the first half on the 20th century in the UK. I am particularly interested in her life-long interest in decorating private spaces and making delightful illustrations of them in her letters. Carrington’s longlife interest in turning lived spaces into works of art went hand in hand with her overall disillusionment with her paintings. The paper discusses the problem of why a young woman artist in the peripheries of the Bloomsbury group had difficulties in devoting herself to her art. This problem I argue has to be considered within what drawing on Foucault I have called the private hypothesis, the long held argument that the private has been socially constructed and experienced as ’a space’ for women. My argument is that for Carrington as for many of her contemporaries it was not the access to the public but the negotiation of solitude and privacy that emerges as a problem. Carrington’s love and passion for private spaces and her epistolary topographies are expressions of spatial technologies of the female self: an artistic intervention in reclaiming solitude and privacy and in reinventing herself.

Keywords: Carrington; Epistolary topographies; Letters; Private hypothesis; Spatial technologies; Women artists

(2011) Archive Pleasures or Whose Time Is It?

by Maria Tamboukou

In Forum: Qualitative Social Research, special issue on Qualitative Archives and Biographical Research Methods, edited by Miguel S. Valles, Louise Corti, Maria Tamboukou and Alejandro Baer

In this article, I draw on my experience of doing archival research at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre,... more In this article, I draw on my experience of doing archival research at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre, University of Texas at Austin and at the archives of the Rodin Museum in Paris. Reflecting on my experience of reading Dora CARRINGTON's and Gwen JOHN's letters, I address the problem of how a researcher makes specific choices while working in the archive: choosing what to see, what to note and even more what to transcribe. These are questions that relate to wider issues of how the researcher can oscillate between pathos and distance and create a transitional space that can accommodate both her involvement and her need for detachment and reflection. What has further emerged from my work in the archives is what I have theorized as heterotemporalities, space/time blocks where women's past is so forcefully contracted in my perception of the present that it becomes a vital part of my actuality as a feminist researcher. I therefore discuss how my experience of working in the archives has created conditions of possibility for transgressing the constraints of the present and has facilitated leaps into open and radical futures, constituting chronotopes of the feminist imaginary

A serto of migrants, flight and affect: Genealogies of place and image in Cinema Novo and contemporary Brazilian cinema

by Isis Sadek

Interview with Mr. Wolf

by Valerio Bindi

collective interview - may 1995 published on Culture del conflitto

destruction

by Valerio Bindi

co- authored with Francesca Iovino - Biennale d'Architettura di Venezia. 2000

Hospitality Spaces, Hospitable Moments: Consumer Encounters and Affective Experiences In Commercial Settings

by Peter Lugosi

This is the accepted, pre-proof version. The final version was published as: Lugosi, P., 2008. Hospitality Spaces, Hospitable Moments: Consumer Encounters and Affective Experiences in Commercial Settings. Journal of Foodservice, 19 (2), pp. 139-149. DOI: 10.1111/j.1745-4506.2008.00092.x

This paper examines the production of hospitable experiences within consumer encounters in commercial hospitality... more This paper examines the production of hospitable experiences within consumer encounters in commercial hospitality spaces. It considers the different dimensions or forms of hospitality and distinguishes between the offer of food, drink, shelter and entertainment within commercial transactions, the offer of hospitality as a means of achieving social or political goals, and meta-hospitality: temporary states of being that are different from rational manifestations of hospitality. It is argued that meta-hospitality is tied to communitesque moments: short-lived emotional bonds that may be built or experienced through hospitality transactions. A case study is used to identify three factors that shape the development of communitesque experiences: the ecology in which it occurs, the participants’ roles and their capabilities.