Geographies of encounter

Abstract

Geographical studies on interpersonal contact in urban settings are usually focused on segregation or social mixing, and thus limited, to a long-term perspective on contact. A comprehensive analysis of urban life, though, calls for the additional integration of short-term and situational aspects in urban encounters. So called geographies of encounter, developed by British cultural geographies, seek to close this research gap by scrutinizing the fugitive qualities of encounters in the city. This altered approach is based on the premise that the interplay between bodily performances and the urban environment - what we have called ‘situational place’ elsewhere - represents a constituting element of urbanity. The empirical research discussed in this paper comprises videographic data of encounters between strangers in public spaces in Berlin. In three different urban settings interactions between strangers are analysed and new theoretical insights are derived from these video sequences of situational encounters. The authors suggest an extension of existing theoretical vocabulary for analysing urban encounters in order to more comprehensively reflect the interrelation between urban space and interaction.