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Reclaiming space : progressive and multicultural visions of space exploration
\"Space, to use a worn metaphor, is in the mind of the beholder. When we contemplate the seemingly limitless universe, we tend to project onto space our own hopes and dreams (as well as our fears and anxieties). But like responses to Rorschach inkblots, there are many different hopes, dreams, fears, and anxieties that one can project onto the night's sky. To those who approach it with a thirst for profits, space appears as a resource-rich goldmine, beckoning to anyone with enough wealth and privilege to take advantage of untapped markets. To those who approach it with a yearning for human expansion, space appears as a frontier that is humanity's birthright to conquer, its new manifest destiny. To those who approach it with a passion for knowledge and understanding, space appears as a tantalizing and pristine laboratory for scientific exploration. In these ways, our visions for humanity's future in space--what planets and moons we hope to visit, what we hope to accomplish when we get there--are more products of our perspectives about space (and our underlying worldviews and value systems) than anything else\"-- Provided by publisher.
BOOK
Building Modern Turkey
Building Modern Turkeyoffers a critical account of how the built environment mediated Turkey's transition from a pluralistic (multiethnic and multireligious) empire into a modern, homogenized nation-state following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I. Zeynep Kezer argues that the deliberate dismantling of ethnic and religious enclaves and the spatial practices that ensued were as integral to conjuring up a sense of national unity and facilitating the operations of a modern nation-state as were the creation of a new capital, Ankara, and other sites and services that embodied a new modern way of life. The book breaks new ground by examining both the creative and destructive forces at play in the making of modern Turkey and by addressing the overwhelming frictions during this profound transformation and their long-term consequences. By considering spatial transformations at different scales-from the experience of the individual self in space to that of international geopolitical disputes-Kezer also illuminates the concrete and performative dimensions of fortifying a political ideology, one that instills in the population a sense of membership in and allegiance to the nation above all competing loyalties and ensures its longevity.
eBook
The Radical Bookstore
Examines how radical bookstores and similar spaces serve
as launching pads for social movements
How does social change happen? It requires an identified
problem, an impassioned and committed group, a catalyst, and a
plan. In this deeply researched consideration of seventy-seven
stores and establishments, Kimberley Kinder argues that activists
also need autonomous space for organizing, and that these spaces
are made, not found. She explores the remarkably enduring presence
of radical bookstores in America and how they provide
infrastructure for organizing-gathering places, retail offerings
that draw new people into what she calls \"counterspaces.\"
Kinder focuses on brick-and-mortar venues where owners approach
their businesses primarily as social movement tools. These may be
bookstores, infoshops, libraries, knowledge cafes, community
centers, publishing collectives, thrift stores, or art
installations. They are run by activist-entrepreneurs who create
centers for organizing and selling books to pay the rent. These
spaces allow radical and contentious ideas to be explored and
percolate through to actual social movements, and serve as
crucibles for activists to challenge capitalism, imperialism, white
privilege, patriarchy, and homophobia. They also exist within a
central paradox: participating in the marketplace creates tensions,
contradictions, and shortfalls. Activist retail does not end
capitalism; collective ownership does not enable a retreat from
civic requirements like zoning; and donations, no matter how
generous, do not offset the enormous power of corporations and
governments.
In this timely and relevant book, Kinder presents a necessary,
novel, and apt analysis of the role these retail spaces play in
radical organizing, one that demonstrates how such durable hubs
manage to persist, often for decades, between the spikes of public
protest.
eBook
The View from Above
In mid-twentieth century France, the term \"social space\" ( l'espace social) -- the idea that spatial form and social life are inextricably linked -- emerged in a variety of social science disciplines. Taken up by the French New Left, it also came to inform the practice of urban planning. In The View from Above, Jeanne Haffner traces the evolution of the science of social space from the interwar period to the 1970s, illuminating in particular the role of aerial photography in this new way of conceptualizing socio-spatial relations. As early as the 1930s, the view from above served for Marcel Griaule and other anthropologists as a means of connecting the social and the spatial. Just a few decades later, the Marxist urban sociologist Henri Lefebvre called the perspective enabled by aerial photography -- a technique closely associated with the French colonial state and military -- \"the space of state control.\" Lefebvre and others nevertheless used the notion of social space to recast the problem of massive modernist housing projects (grands ensembles) to encompass the modern suburb (banlieue) itself -- a critique that has contemporary resonance in light of the banlieue riots of 2005 and 2007. Haffner shows how such \"views\" permitted new ways of conceptualizing the old problem of housing to emerge. She also points to broader issues, including the influence of the colonies on the metropole, the application of sociological expertise to the study of the built environment, and the development of a spatially oriented critique of capitalism.
eBook
Theorizing urban social spaces and their interrelations
This paper proposes a new theoretical perspective for understanding urban social spaces and their interrelations. In an effort to understand these multifaceted, complex relations, an inquiry committed to a flat ontology was deployed. Accordingly, we draw our theorization on the Lacanian ontological lack, Harman’s object-oriented ontology, and Laclau and Mouffe’s discursivity of social reality. Thus, we propose that urban social spaces are discursive and real entities with real and sensual qualities and constituted through specific relations. They are located within discursive social relations, where each urban social space has a “differential position” in an urban system of relations. Each urban social space has an “identity,” defined by its specific mixture of social groups and its specific real and sensual qualities. These qualities construct a sensual object with a specific sensual identity within the web of different urban social spaces. Therefore, urban social spaces are being made through multiple interrelations and are constituted through their location in a nexus of positions. The proposed framework that captures the interrelations among urban social spaces is based on three interrelated logics: the logic of difference, the logic of equivalence, and the fantasmatic logic. Understanding the relations of urban social spaces through these logics offers multifaceted social, political, psychological, and spatial illumination, details, and a more nuanced and flexible investigation of the formation and change of these spaces. Hereby, the city is conceived as comprised of spatiotemporal configurations where social spaces have social and political relations ranging from harshly antagonistic to inclusive and equivalent. This proposed framework informs both sociological and political realms of planning theory. It provides planning theory with new perspectives for understanding the city as a web of interrelated social spaces. Furthermore, it allows a more critical understanding of urban reality by illuminating inequality, injustice, antagonism, and the formulation of “otherness.”
Journal Article
The shadowy realm of news avoidance: Exploring public service news avoidance as negative social action
Studies on news avoidance rely on a range of theories to explain why news avoidance takes place and its potential consequences, and the debates on different ways of measuring news avoidance have been lively. Despite the numerous approaches and conceptualisations, there is room to theorise what news avoidance entails as a social phenomenon. In this study, we posit that news avoidance can fruitfully be approached as a form of negative social action embedded in a negative social space – a realm of the lifeworld filled with non-doings and non-appearance. We apply this approach, which opens up new questions in the field of news avoidance studies, to a case study of Swedes who opted out of national public service news in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. Findings suggest that avoiders of public service news occupy relatively precarious social positions, and that news avoidance is embedded in a broader negative social space.
Journal Article