Politics Of Public Space Research Articles

Character of Protest Political Mobilization in the Regional Public Space of Volgograd Region

Introduction. The article is devoted to the analysis of the protest political mobilization in the regional political space of Volgograd region. Particular attention is paid to the study of the main conditions and causes of protest activity in the context of implementing public policy in Volgograd region. The relevance of the problem field is due to the need for a political analysis of the characteristics of the population mobilization at the regional level, including their comparison with federal trends. Methodology and methods. The authors conceptualize political mobilization on the basis of the theoretical principles of the theory of collective behavior of G. Blumer, E. Hoffer, T. Garr and the rational basis for the mobilization of D. Gupt. The methodological basis of the study is the theory of collective action (Ch. Tilly), on the basis of which it is concluded that political mobilization is defined as a combination of institutional and social conditions that allow actors to rationally evaluate transaction costs and possible gains from mobilization actions. The analysis of the regional public policy system is based on the conclusions contained in the works of Yu.O. Gaivoronsky, S.I. Morozov, S.A. Pankratov. The empirical basis of the study is the public opinion polls of the Levada Center, expert and analytical materials on the state of protest activity of the Institute of Regional Expertise, as well as the results of monitoring data from Internet resources obtained with the direct participation of the authors in March 2020. Analysis. The modern Russian socio-political system is a synthesis of two opposites: a hermetically “closed” institutional political structure, which is determined by the situation of internal uncertainty, and an active social component. At the same time, the specifics of the regional public space of Volgograd Region is a combination of the subject composition of the institutional design of the regional political regime based on copying the features of the federal regime, as well as the diversity of the regional themes of socio-political protest. Based on the results obtained by the case-study method, it was found that the protest dynamics in Volgograd region show a downward trend, however, any manifestations of public protest activity in the region implicitly imply a political nature in direct proportion to the number of participants: the greater the number of participants in the protest stocks, the higher the degree of its politicization. Results. According to the results of the study, it was revealed that the protest political mobilization in the public space of Volgograd region is characterized by: firstly, the prevalence of regional problems over federal ones in the protest discourse; secondly, the lack of strong institutional structures that can mobilize material and organizational resources; thirdly, a critically low number of protesters; fourthly, the spontaneous nature of mobilization. A special feature of political mobilization in the regional dimension is the low social potential of the protest and the lack of effective mechanisms for political and communicative interaction between government institutions and the population of Volgograd region on a specific range of problems of a public nature. In order to overcome the shortcomings of dialogue communication, within the framework of representative democracy, the authors propose recommendations for the main actors of the public political space (regional authorities, expert community and civil society institutions).

Los discursos de lo público y su alcance político

El trabajo se extiende en un breve examen del lugar asignado por algunos autores como Jürgen Habermas, Karl-Otto Apel o Julio De Zan al discurso como instancia de legitimidad y crítica meta institucional de la sociedad. Haciendo un repaso de posiciones contrarias como las de Arnold Gehlen o Niklas Luhmann se procura establecer los alcances y los límites del espacio público –topos natural del discurso– como lugar paradigmático para interrelaciones sociales de fuerte contenido normativo orientadas hacia la validez de las instituciones. Por último, se realizan una serie de precisiones que son necesarias para esa reivindicación del espacio público político.

Abuja is not for the poor: Street vending and the politics of public space

The article examines how street vendors in Abuja, Nigeria are experiencing and responding to the attempts to restrict their access to public space. Modernist planning and the increasing trend in the privatization of public space is limiting the amount and types of public spaces available to street vendors. Drawing largely on primary research, the article reports that street vendors are responding by adopting a range of spatial, relational and temporal tactics. Specifically, it cites the Ready-to-Run tactic, relocating to relatively more secure sites, informal relations and networks and operating at certain times of the day. Access to the street and mobility are key factors that shape the types of tactics adopted. Vendors prioritize proximity to the street in order to maximize access to potential customers. The highly mobile vendors are more likely to adopt spatial and temporal tactics, while the less mobile tend to rely on informal relations and networks. Furthermore, in the absence of formal organizing, individual agency is more prevalent. Where collective agency exists, it is often a response to an immediate challenge. Gender and age influence the experiences of vendors and the tactics adopted. The Abuja case is a notable example of the link between modernist planning, particularly the master plan approach and socio-spatial exclusion. As a city built from scratch, the plan laid the foundation for socio-spatial exclusion by planning the poor out of the city. The plan remains at the centre of contemporary urban politics, notably the relations between the state and informal workers.

Choreographies of Dissent and the Politics of Public Space in State-of-Emergency Turkey

This article investigates a recent period in which dissenting activism has been shifted in Istanbul under the state of emergency (2016-2018). Based on an ethnography conducted with activists in feminist and LGBTQI+ demonstrations, anti-emergency decree vigils, and the Presidential Referendum protests, the study discusses how activists resist and undermine mobilization of violence through using the hegemonic tools of repression tactically, and choreographically. By employing Hannah Arendt’s concepts of “politics” and “isolation,” I examine that state agencies like the police forcefully disperse protesters and display authority, oppression, and occupation of public spaces by constantly creating an atmosphere of fear and insecurity. In opposition, dissenters practice and rehearse dispersal as a resilient choreography to once again relate each other against the forces of isolation. I suggest the term “tactics of dispersal” to define and analyze how activists depart from the central assembly of the social movement to create smaller, mobile, and ephemeral assemblies. In the city-scale, by scattering themselves in the city of Istanbul and mobilizing peripheries of the urban space, dissenters re-choreograph and subvert a thanatopolitical strategy of dispersal in favor of pluralism under political hardship. In the bodily-scale, activists claim the public sphere through the transience of folk dance. Whenever protesters depart from folk dance collectives to create new ones, they perpetually re-configure the area and initiate novel actions contingent upon their temporal and positional assessments during the dance. Such tactical applications of dispersal characterized by the smaller scale and transitory gatherings with ever-changing combinations of bodies at the peripheral space of urban activism manifest its great potential for collective agency and plural politics.

“Night Hawks” Watching Over the City: Redeployment of Night Watchmen and the Politics of Public Space in Turkey

Technological advances have enormously increased surveillance techniques in the last three decades. In this article, we scrutinize the re-instatement of bekçi, the traditional night watchmen patrolling the residential neighborhoods in Turkey, which was obsolete for decades. We analyze the re-emergence of the bekçi in relation to the dynamics of urbanization, and with a perspective of power and surveillance. Our discussion bridges the Foucauldian notion of “visibility,” equating it with being subject to surveillance, and the Arendtian emphasis on “appearance” as the precondition for a claim to public space (hence, citizenship) in order the uncover the role of visibility within the mechanisms of power in public space. We argue that although the bekçi seems outmoded, especially within the context of ever-increasing advancement of surveillance technologies; its recent deployment in the public spaces of Turkish metropolises brings about new modes of politics of visibility parallel to the changing modality of the urban environment.

The abstract space and the alienation of political public space in the Middle East

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explain how abstract space of the State – universally and specifically within the context of Middle Eastern cities – aims to homogenise the city and eliminate any anomaly that threatens its power structure.Design/methodology/approachThrough a historical and discourse analysis of these policies and processes in the two case studies, this paper presents a contextualised reading of Lefebvre’s concept of abstract space and process of abstraction in relation to the alienation of political public spaces.FindingsThe paper proposes that regardless of these homogenising strategies being applied universally, they fail to respond to contextual particularities and therefore they – in a contradictory manner – may themselves produce a space of resistance and difference.Originality/valueThis paper focusses on Iran, the case of Tehran and Turkey, the case of Taksim Square and Gezi Park in Istanbul. Recent policies and strategies have been proposed and implemented to reduce, alienate and possibly neutralise the impacts of urban and political protests in these cities and socio-political contexts.

A Street-less Revolution: The Production of Political Public Spaces during Iran’s 1905-06 Constitutional Revolution

En 1905-1906, la première révolution moderne de l’histoire contemporaine iranienne débouche sur l’établissement d’une démocratie parlementaire. Plusieurs mois de soulèvement et de protestations forcent le gouvernement à céder aux revendications des manifestants et à accepter la création du premier parlement. À Téhéran, la capitale, les principaux lieux de protestation sont les cours de deux mosquées, un mausolée sacré, et le jardin de l’ambassade de Grande-Bretagne. Dans d’autres grandes villes du pays, les mosquées et les lieux saints s’imposent eux aussi comme les principaux espaces de protestation. La Révolution Constitutionnelle peut donc être comprise comme un mouvement social sans rue durant lequel l’action collective de la population s’est avant tout concentrée dans ses espaces sacrés. Cet article cherche à expliquer les choix spatiaux des manifestants à travers l’analyse de la société urbaine iranienne durant le xix e siècle et le début du xx e siècle, d’une part, et des répertoires ordinaires de contestation de l’Iran pré-moderne, d’autre part. Il défend l’idée selon laquelle il existe un lien étroit entre la configuration de la société urbaine et la production d’espaces publics politiques dans l’Iran du tournant du siècle. À travers l’étude de la formation de ces espaces publics politiques non-occidentaux, il s’agit d’apporter des éléments de discussion au corpus de connaissances produites par les théories des espaces publics et les théories spatiales des mouvements sociaux qui ont tendance a être dominées par des perspectives européennes et nord-américaines.

The New Enclosures: London, New York City, Philadelphia, and the Transformation of Public Space

ABSTRACTIn recent years, social movements have taken to the streets to protest various forms of economic and racial injustice. However, these attempts to exploit the political opportunities public spaces afford have been compromised by the increasingly private nature of “public” spaces. What has changed is the rise of privately owned public spaces (POPS), areas that appear to be public, but in fact are owned by corporations that prohibit a range of activities, including political protest. This article argues such restrictions of public space are not limited to POPS. Rather, they are just one expression of a far more pervasive phenomenon, novel variations on centuries-old practices by which common or public land has been enclosed. I suggest that four forms of enclosure -for profit, of behavior, of community, and of the public realm- degrade the status of public institutions and insulate private interests from counter-mobilization by groups pursuing egalitarian ends.

Message, Sociocultural Background, and The Politics of Religion of Islamic Sermons in The Netherlands

Da‘wa does not merely concern theology and religion, but it also addresses socio-political aspects. This is highly dependent on the background of the da‘i (preacher) and public space of politics of religion in which the da‘wa message is conveyed. Using the qualitative method, this research focuses on three questions; what are the priority da‘wa message in the contemporary Netherlands? How is the suitable qualification of the da‘i for the context of Netherlands? How does the politics of religion support the life of Muslim migrants? On that question, some mosques and Muslim communities are chosen for data collection. The research shows that the most delivered topic of da‘wa message is about aqīdah (creed) and sharī‘ah (Islamic law), then akhlāq (ethics). The background of the da‘i heavily influences the selection of da‘wa material. There are two major streams on the matter; Salafi and Sunni. The da‘wa activity by Sunni da‘is tends to be more open, compared to Salafi activities. Concerning the politics of religion, the Dutch government launched a program of Pillarization of Islam so that the government maintains the controls over the activities of Muslim migrants, as well as for the benefits of the multi-origin and multi-ethnic Muslim migrants. However, this measure proves to be ineffective and the da‘wa goes on without following this pillarization program. Being a Muslim is because of personal will, not just because of sermon.

GAS Political public space in the satire theatre case study on the performance eyayu fenges” Ethiopian satire theater

Abstract፡ This article aims to describe about the techniques of make understanding for the space of audience or target group in the satire drama in the stage. The researcher would watch the theater in YouTube and in the stage and also read the script which written by Bereket Belayneh in the type of satire drama, its function in terms of political and social issues. In the addition to the above mentioned these script and play must show the use of satire for political and social criticism for the audience clearly with easy understanding. The other thing that plays show transmitted of the message to the higher officials in the comic entertaining way to the audience of the satire drama. Besides techniques, purpose and different features of satire has investigated from the relevant references. Its researcher mainly has shown the technique of making understand for the audience that have been watched the satire theater on the stage. Bereket Belayneh and Girum Zenebe Eyayu fenges Ethiopian Satire Theater focusing on political satire to find the satire and comic elements used in the humor in order to ridicule the political evils and suggest solutions with in artistically color. The primary sources of this article are Bereket Belayneh and Girum zenebe Eyayu fenges Ethiopian Satire Theater. It’s have used as methodology a qualitative descriptive analysis and have use the document study which is that in library, research digital media sites and the relative relevant materials.

Mass media, Elections and New Reality

In the media age, such fundamental concepts as “subject”, “power”, “sign”, “meaning”, on which the picture of the modern world was built, underwent dramatic changes. The election process in our country has shown how the post-modern sociology has become relevant agents of the modern political process. Television, the media are becoming a genuine space of human habitation, which requires new principles of orientation. In this case, the traditional means of orientation in space and time disappear. In the world of mass media, the linear sequence is canceled, the dialectic polarity is canceled, the opposition of the subject and the object is canceled. Any event, action, value, social institution, falling into the scope of a system in which there is no linear sequence, undergoes a certain deformation. This also applies to the authorities, which no longer belong to the order of the legislative and supervisory authority, but rather to the order of tactility and switching. We need to understand what is happening with the public space of politics and social, how the dissolution of television in life, as well as the dissolution of life in television happens, how in the space of the media the power is disorganized, turns into a simulation of power, losing touch with goals and objectives and dooming yourself to produce power effects. The sphere of simulation is contained in the media, in the field of communication. It is necessary to start studying this area from the most important, from the theory of signs. The process of creating value and value correlates with the process of signification. In particular, the subject of modern political economy is not a commodity and not a sign, but their indissoluble unity in which they are destroyed as particular definitions, but not as a form. Any attempt to overcome the political economy of the sign, relying on one of its components, is doomed to reproduce the arbitrariness of the sign. Therefore, a symbolic semantic operation should come to replace the sign.

Public Sphere as Democratic Sphere

Political public space is more conflicted and stressed. Process of black-balling other actors is dominant here. Other civilian public spaces mean mutual learning and opinion improvement. These two spaces try to affect each other. Civilian public spaces try to affect political public space with political discourses. The only way to determine the willpower of the society is participation. Planning is conducted through this participation which brings democracy concept with. Planning is the participation of the folk in the decision phase. It puts communicative rationality instead of instrumental rationality in decisions to be taken for the community. This newly existing planning concept is based on the principle of consensus creating. All these let the planning turn into a democracy project. Handling the planning in such a concept and bringing together new spatial representation form in transmitting information by regarding spatial changings must be concept of planning of today. This study conducted a brief review on constructing democratic public space.

The Politics of Public Space in Republican Rome by Amy Russell

The Politics of Public Space in Republican Rome by Amy Russell

RITOS CATÓLICOS E RITOS CIVIS: A CONFIGURAÇÃO DA FALA PÚBLICA DA IGREJA CATÓLICA EM DOIS ATOS EM MEMÓRIA DE VLADIMIR HERZOG (1975/2015)

Resumo Tomando como pretexto o culto ecumênico celebrado em 1975 na Catedral da Sé em repúdio à morte do jornalista Vladimir Herzog e o ato inter-religioso que relembrou sua morte em 2015, na mesma catedral, procuraremos neste artigo analisar como determinadas “estratégias de ritualização” produzem sentidos cívicos por meio da interpelação e da produção de diferentes públicos. A análise das estratégias rituais colocadas em movimento nestes dois atos pretende, por um lado, mapear as figuras que, por ocasião desses atos, assumem a fala pública em diferentes contextos e, por outro, determinar sua função em cada cena. Partimos da hipótese de que a configuração do que está sendo mobilizado como vontade coletiva e o seu sentido político e/ou religioso dependem das formas de endereçamento produzidas nas sequências rituais. Nesse sentido, este trabalho não pretende tratar do papel da Igreja Católica na luta contra a ditadura militar - tema já profusamente debatido na literatura - mas sim, tomando estas “situações” como um ponto de partida, localizar as dinâmicas através das quais os rituais categorizam e fazem existir diversos formatos de coletividades políticas. Desta forma, pensamos ser possível, a partir da análise comparativa de dois casos concretos e bem circunscritos, localizar alguns elementos-chave na configuração recente do espaço público político da sociedade brasileira.

‘If I climb a wall of ten meters’: capoeira, parkour and the politics of public space among (post)migrant youth in Turin, Italy

ABSTRACTRather than being seen as citizens, the children of immigrants are portrayed as a population to be controlled and contained across Europe. In Italy today, debates about cultural ‘authenticity’ and renewed nationalism accompany waves of moral panic that depict a country under siege by illegal and unwanted immigrants. Specifically in cities, immigrants and their children are imagined and portrayed as alien and out of place. Drawing on fourteen months of ethnographic research in Turin, Italy, with children of immigrants aged between 16 and 21, De Martini Ugolotti and Moyer illustrate how these youth make use of their bodies through capoeira and parkour practices to contest and reappropriate public spaces, thereby challenging dominant visions about what constitutes the public, how it should be used and by whom. They analyse the ‘body in place’ to understand how the children of immigrants navigate unequal spatial relations and challenge dominant regimes of representation, while also attempting to improve their life conditions and reach their personal goals.

Assimilating Seoul: Japanese Rule and the Politics of Public Space in Colonial Korea, 1910–1945 by Todd A. Henry

Reviewed by: Assimilating Seoul: Japanese Rule and the Politics of Public Space in Colonial Korea, 1910–1945 by Todd A. Henry Vladimir Tikhonov Assimilating Seoul: Japanese Rule and the Politics of Public Space in Colonial Korea, 1910–1945. By Todd A. Henry. University of California Press, 2014. 320 pages. Hardcover $49.95/£34.95. The study of urban modernity in colonial-era Korea has expanded within both Japanese and South Korean historiography in recent decades. Since an unofficial taboo on discussions of colonial modernity was lifted in the 1980s, a number of highly informative monographs on the colonial pasts of Seoul, Pusan, and other modern Korean cities have appeared in South Korea. Particularly noteworthy are the works of Son Chŏngmok, a former Seoul city planner with colonial-era experience, and of Kim Paegyŏng, a younger historian. While Son’s books are especially rich in facts and statistics, Kim’s are valuable because of the author’s skillful use of postcolonial and postnationalist [End Page 222] approaches.1 One reason for the growth in the study of colonial-era cities in South Korea today has been the heated debates, in both academic and nonacademic forums, on how best to understand Japanese colonialism during the period 1910 to 1945 and colonial-era Korean collaboration with the colonizers. Research on colonial-era urbanization supplies evidence to those arguing from each of two different perspectives: first, those who take a more positive view of colonial-period policies and development (and are intent on emphasizing the continuity between colonial and postcolonial urban planning) and, second, those who cling to a more traditional, skeptical view foregrounding the poverty, ethnic discrimination, and exploitation seen in the colonial city space. Despite the interest in research on Korea’s colonial period among Western scholars, Assimilating Seoul is, to my knowledge, the first monograph-length study in English dealing specifically with Korea’s urban development during that period.2 As a pioneering work on an important subject so far glaringly under-researched outside of South Korea and Japan, it enriches the scholarship on Korean history in English. As mentioned above, colonialism is a controversial subject in South Korea and elsewhere. Seen from this perspective, Henry’s book deserves praise for its skillful balancing between two different views of the colonial past. There are those who have understood Japanese colonial modernization as a successful project that was able to win the loyalty of at least some middle-class Koreans owing to the universality of its underlying modernist vision, while others have taken a more traditional position emphasizing colonialist oppression, covert and overt nationalist resistance, the ethnocentric brutality of wartime attempts to “imperialize” Koreans for use as cannon fodder on the Japanese empire’s battlefields, and the utter failure of such efforts to change Koreans’ ethnic consciousness. But as Henry persuasively demonstrates to the reader, the truth, as often happens, is somewhere in the middle—albeit significantly closer to the latter position. On the one hand, both the colonial authorities and the local nationalist elites embraced the values of hygienic modernity—the apparatus of modern “biopower,” ranging from sewage collection to mass vaccination, that was designed to fight off the germs and keep modern bodies safe, sound, and useful for the sake of capital accumulation. Korean nationalist newspapers, otherwise fiercely critical of the colonial authorities’ policies, thus actively promoted government-led exhibitions and films on sanitation and hygiene, partially because outbreaks of contagious diseases continued to ravage the colonial capital throughout the 1920s. On the other hand, even the relatively moderate bourgeois nationalists saw poverty, rather than Koreans’ “lack of civilization,” as the root cause of the persistently unsanitary conditions prevalent in colonial cities and, [End Page 223] furthermore, had little doubt that colonial ethnic discrimination was the main factor perpetuating poverty and essentially premodern conditions on the Korean side of the ethnic divide in the colonial urban centers. While some Japanese-educated middle-class Koreans did seemingly acquiesce to the colonialist assimilation project, their feelings remained ambivalent. Chŏn Sŏng’uk (1877–1945), for example, was a councilman in the Korean colonial capital of Kyŏngsŏng (today’s Seoul) and a supporter of the local Shinto shrine...

Assimilating Seoul: Japanese Rule and the Politics of Public Space in Colonial Korea, 1910–1945 by Todd A. Henry

Assimilating Seoul: Japanese Rule and the Politics of Public Space in Colonial Korea, 1910–1945 by Todd A. Henry

Assimilating Seoul: Japanese Rule and the Politics of Public Space in Colonial Korea, 1910–1945 by Todd A. Henry

Assimilating Seoul: Japanese Rule and the Politics of Public Space in Colonial Korea, 1910–1945 by Todd A. Henry

Public Space and the Public Sphere: The Legacy of Neil Smith

AbstractThis article attempts to untangle two threads of the intellectual and political legacy of Neil Smith. The first concerns the work that Neil and I did together on theThe Politics of Public Space(Low and Smith, Routledge) on public space and the public sphere and then explains how our paths diverged. I elaborate some of the ways that the public space and public sphere have been expanded by later researchers and that left me with a sense of optimism about the future of public space as a forum for new social and political encounters. The second part of the discussion turns to Neil's thinking and writing as he moved away from having any faith in liberal urban policy, and his conclusion that neoliberalism was waning. Drawing upon publications by his students, I have attempted to assess the impact of his work—particularly on anthropology students focusing on his contribution to gentrification as a global urban strategy and his later turn to revolution as the necessary corrective to the death of neoliberalism. I contrast his revolutionary imperative with my desire to imagine new kinds of translocal public spaces that could expand into a global public sphere.

Assimilating Seoul: Japanese Rule and the Politics of Public Space in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945. By Todd A. Henry. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014. vii, 299 pp. $49.95 (cloth).

Assimilating Seoul: Japanese Rule and the Politics of Public Space in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945. By Todd A. Henry. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014. vii, 299 pp. $49.95 (cloth).