Cartographies of encounters: Understanding conflict transformation through a collaborative exploration of youth spaces in Beirut

This paper explores practices and imaginations of space among young people in postwar Beirut. Relying on an innovative collaborative-mapping methodology, it shifts the focus from the traditional analysis of the city at war, centred on anxious urbanism, toward spatial dynamics of conflict transformation. It deploys an ethnographic approach to shed light on everyday perceptions of the urban landscape among a group of students. Their visions of space are composed along conventional tropes, comparable to Bakhtin's notion of chronotopes: images that connect temporal and spatial relationships to describe their ways of inhabiting the city. These images reveal that their experiences of space are not produced exclusively in relation to the memory of wartime topographies and politico-religious territories. Rather, they are also the result of their personal trajectories and agency. For these young people, ordinary encounters inspire a reframing of the political geography of the everyday, including renewed narratives on coexistence and strategies of circumventing the sense of spatial confinement they inherited from the war. The analysis shows that the experiences of these students stand in sharp contrast with the dominant image of unbending intergroup boundaries in postwar Lebanon. Young people's abilities to navigate, negotiate and rediscover social encounters in a complex, changing environment call attention to the transformative power of micro-situations in postwar contexts. Through highlighting their original lifestyles and ways of thinking, this paper argues that the city, far from only symbolising and reproducing conflicts, is also the place where mundane practices and imaginations reinvent the social fabric.     

The political geographies of religious sites in Moscow’s neighborhoods

Abstract

This paper addresses the spatial politics of Russia’s increased religiosity in Moscow. It analyzes the rights of minority Muslim communities within the context of increased political support for expressions of Russian Orthodoxy in Moscow’s public space. Moscow’s Russian Orthodox and Muslim religious leaders claim that their communities have a lack of religious infrastructure, with one church per 35,000 residents and one mosque per three million residents, respectively. The Russian Orthodox Church has been more successful than Muslim organizations at expanding their presence in Moscow’s neighborhoods. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, religious spaces are examined as sites of dissent as well as participatory, active citizenship at three different sites in Moscow. Protests over Russian Orthodox Church construction in one neighborhood are contrasted with the protests over mosque construction in two neighborhoods. This paper provides insights into how civil society and religious groups have increased their public presence in Moscow and shows the unequal access that different groups have to public space in that city.     

Sharing public space across difference: attunement and the contested burdens of choreographing encounter

This paper concerns how claims to public space are negotiated between differently embodied subjects, and how forms of bodily articulation shape capacities for sharing space. Drawing on a study of outdoor access practices, entailing mobile video ethnographies with walkers and cyclists, it explores the corporeal mechanisms through which the entitlements of differently mobile subjects are asserted, resisted, circumscribed or accepted in the time-spaces of bodily encounter. How the signalling of ‘responsible’ and ‘irresponsible’ conduct influences how bodies are allowed to move in relation to other bodies is the focus. Mobilisations of speed, affective and sensory attunement, and techniques of bodily articulation, were found to be a key in the disciplining of cycling and walking bodies. This paper highlights the central role of attunement to, and concession of, hybrid subjectivity in the choreography of encounters, and, moreover, how related burdens of orchestrating coexistence are shared and struggled over amongst different publics. It demonstrates that whilst greater attunement can enable differently mobile subjects to develop a reciprocal choreography, expectations of such attunement can also undermine the ability to share space if not met. This paper thus raises the dilemma of when to accept or extend the limits of attunement in facilitating coexistence in public space.     

Ceramics,clothing and other bodies: affective geographies of homoerotic cruising encounters

This paper provides a new approach to the geographies of cruising and public homosex. For some time, social scientists have contended that, in those semi-public spaces where men meet each other for sex, actions speak louder than words and men's competency in using the space is more important that the (sexual) identities they claim in other aspects of their lives. This paper extends that argument in a new direction through an engagement with recent theorizations of affective geographies and more-than-representational approaches to spatial practices. Through a series of short vignettes of cruising encounters on city streets, in public toilets and in urban green spaces, this paper examines how public homosex is enacted and performed in relation to both human and non-human bodies, objects and the environment in which it takes place. The encounters described in the paper draw attention to the complex choreography of gestures through which cruising is performed and sexual engagement is negotiated ethically. I contend that the site-specific, performative nature of these sexual encounters suggests a more contingent sexuality arising from the interaction of bodies in specific environments and exceeding the boundaries of reified sexual identities.     

Relational complexity and the imaginative power of strategic spatial planning1

This paper explores the imaginations of place and spatial organization and of governance mobilized in recent experiences of strategic spatial planning for urban regions in Europe. Drawing on examples of such experiences, it examines how far these imaginations reflect a relational understanding of spatial dynamics and of governance processes. Spatial imaginations are assessed in terms of the nature of the spatial consciousness expressed in a strategy, the way the multiple scales of the social relations of a place are conceived, and the extent to which relational complexity is understood and reflected in a strategy. Governance imaginations are assessed in terms of how the relation between government and society is imagined, how the tensions between functional/sectoral and territorial principles of policy organization are addressed, and what assumptions are made about the nature and trajectory of transformative processes in governance dynamics. The paper concludes that signs of a recognition of the “relational complexity” of urban and regional dynamics and of territorially-focused governance processes can be found in these experiences, but a relational understanding is weakly-developed and often displaced by more traditional ways of seeing place/space and governance process. The paper concludes with some comments on the challenge of developing a stronger understanding of “relational complexity” within strategic spatial planning endeavours.     

Turkish–Dutch mosques and the formation of moral subjects

This article explores how mosque spaces become everyday sites of ethno-religious subjectivation for immigrants and citizens originating from Turkey in the Netherlands. I argue that the symbolic and material constructions of mosques as simultaneously moral and moralizing spaces undergird the production of ethno-religious subjectivities through mosque-centered everyday practices. The articulation of Muslimness to Turkishness at mosques in culturally specific and gendered ways is crucial for the formation of a particular modality of the Turkish–Dutch self as moral subject. The ensuing incorporation of practices and activities that are deemed ‘secular,’ i.e. ‘cultural’ or ‘recreational’ to mosque services engenders a creative tension between the sacred and profane conceptions of mosque space. Mosque administrators and their congregations concur that recreational activities and quotidian accessibility to mosques are essential to the long term survival of Turkish–Dutch alterity, for mosques are spaces where children and youth are exposed to the performances of Turkish-Islamic morality and subjected to collective social control. However, the diversification of mosque services does not always sit comfortably with the meaning and use of mosques as sacred sites proper within a secularized framework. A creative tension between mosques as serene and pure spaces of the sacred and mosques as impure and immoral spaces of the everyday arises, as a result.     

Geographical imaginations,public education and the everyday worlds of Fascist Italy

This article explores the phenomena of geographical imaginations and their seldom-noted promotion within various corners of Fascist Italy. Imagined geographies are socially constructed understandings of other places and regions and, as such, they are malleable, contingent, shifting and unquantifiable. Nevertheless, these imaginaries help us to navigate our imaginative worlds and our relative place in the material world. In 1930s Italy, various interest groups associated with the colonial and expansionist projects of Fascism promoted the development of wider geographical imaginaries among Italians. Academic geographers were often key figures in these initiatives: some prompted these projects, while others did so at the behest of the regime and its desire to expand Italians' coscienza geografica (the geographical imagination) to an ‘imperial level’. This article explores how academic geographers from Trieste sought to contribute to this project and to embed their geographical knowledge into the ordinary, everyday circuits of public life. The article therefore outlines the notion of the geographical imagination and demonstrates via case studies how Triestine geographers tried to nurture these phenomena. Finally, it suggests that, although elusive and amorphous, geographical imaginations were a feature of everyday life in some corners of Fascist Italy and, as such, they deserve academic attention.     

'My Son's a Bit Dizzy.' 'My Wife's a Bit Soft': Gender,children and cultures of parenting

What it means to be a child and what it means to be a parent are both cultural inventions, ideologies which are (re)constructed and (re)produced over time. The two are deeply intertwined. The dominant contemporary Western imagining of children as vulnerable and incompetent in public space contributes towards structuring the way that parents look after their offspring and determine their children's personal geographies. Children's safety in public space from traffic accidents and stranger-dangers is an issue that is high on the public agenda in the USA and UK, heightening parental anxieties about the amount of independence and spatial freedom they should grant their offspring. Mothers' and fathers' understandings of their children's safety and the culture and conduct of parenting are gendered processes. This paper therefore explores how parents' attitudes towards girls' and boys' respective vulnerabilities and competencies to handle danger in public space vary. It then goes on to consider the way that parental practices, such as taking responsibility for managing children's spatial boundaries and disciplining them for any infringements, are also gendered.     

Running road races as transgressive event mobilities

Running is a unique form of mobility because while it involves traveling over distance, it is not usually done as a means of transportation. Although running can and does take place almost anywhere, bringing together hundreds or thousands of runners at a time via an event known as a road race enables a different, transgressive occupation of space that no one runner could accomplish on his or her own. In this paper, based on participant observation, I argue that the transgressive but sanctioned nature of the mobilities that road races allow, by temporarily taking over a space devoted to motorized vehicles and turning it into a space for pedestrians, defines these events as unique moments that are only possible through the collective nature of this usually solitary form of mobility and that allow for the pleasure of being transgressive without the risks that transgression normally entails. The paper further argues for considering ‘event mobilities’ as more than traveling in order to participate in an event, because some kinds of mobility are only possible in the context of an event.     

Encounters and (in)tolerance: perceptions of legality and the regulation of space

Modern western societies are becoming increasingly diverse, undergoing rapid demographic change as a product of new patterns of migration driven by processes of globalization. As populations and cultures have become more heterogeneous in this way, public space has been increasingly defined as a space of encounter. The growing focus on the significance of everyday contact with difference raises questions about the frameworks within which such encounters occur and, specifically, the extent to which incidental encounters are shaped or regulated by perceptions of formal obligations to comply with legislative frameworks, or informal expectations about appropriate ways of behaving in public space. Using original empirical data about what ordinary people think about equality laws, the paper contributes to social geographies by considering the spatial sensitivities and regulatory frameworks that shape encounters with difference.     

Window opening effects on structural behavior of historical masonry Fatih Mosque

Structural walls of old historical structures are either blind or have openings for functional requirements. It is well known that in and out of plane responses of structural walls are affected by the size, locations, and arrangements of such openings. The purpose of this investigation is to study the window opening effects on static and seismic behaviors of historical masonry old mosques. Fatih Mosque, which was converted from a church, constructed in 914 in Trabzon, Turkey, is selected for this purpose. The mosque is being restored. Structural exterior walls of the mosque were made using stone and mortar materials. When the plaster on the walls was removed during the restoration, 12 window openings were found as blind on the exterior structural walls of the mosque. Within the scope of restoration works, it is aimed to open such blind windows. In order to investigate the effects of the window openings on the structural behavior of the mosque, 3D solid and finite elements models of the mosque with and without window openings are initially developed. The experimental dynamic characteristics such as frequency, damping ratio, and mode shapes of the current situation of the mosque, where some windows openings are blind, are determined using Ambient Vibration Testing. Then, the finite element model of the current situation of the mosque is updated using the experimental dynamic characteristics. The static and seismic time history analyses of the updated finite element model with and without window openings are carried out. Structural behaviors of the mosque with and without window openings are compared considering displacement and stress propagations.     

Terrace Dissent in Urban Western Sahara: Between Plazas and Homes

Since 2018, domestic Saharawi houses in occupied Western Sahara have become tactical sites for organising dissent. The move to interior spaces came as a collective retreat from the city's public plazas. This retreat from extravagant plazas illustrates that the turn toward interior spaces was a tactic in front of destructive occupation power rather than a withdrawal. This article explores Saharawi spatial production of dissent under two different political moments. I ask, what spaces of dissent do people under occupation animate when the city is mobilised against them? This paper is based on ethnographic engagement with encounters between Saharawis and Moroccan security forces that led Saharawis to construct the house as its own public. I demonstrate interiorising the exterior by analysing homes’ terraces as the new space of urban dissent in the Western Sahara. As such, the terrace appears as a new space and a new tool of and in urban insurgency.     

The politics of holding: home and LGBT visibility in contested Jerusalem

This article explores LGBT politics of space in Jerusalem, a contested and fractured city. By interpreting the challenges and contradictions inherent in the Jerusalem Open House (JOH), a social movement and community space in Jerusalem, the article will show how the discourse and the practice of the JOH lead to a politics of holding. This LGBT spatial politics consists of striving to include oppositional politics, emphasizing the consolidation of public and private LGBT politics of home. The JOH persistently maintains a politics of holding, continually balancing inclusion, creating a home-like space and framing the organizational space as a shelter for all LGBT individuals in Jerusalem, while adopting a politics of visibility. This visibility enhanced processes of politicization which at many points stand in contrast to the JOH’s goals of being accessible, inclusive, and safe. The politics of holding illustrates the religious, political, national, and ideological fractures’ at work in producing a unique kind of LGBT spatial politics in the conservative Jerusalem space.     

The mosque in the suburbs: Negotiating religion and ethnicity in South London

The geography of religi on for UK residents of South Asian origin is inexorably linked to the politics of the built environment. In particular, the siting, or expansion, of places of worship for minority-religious groups has often been bound up with the negotiation and contestation of the politics of identity. In this paper we explore the historical unfolding of a complex politics of identity and difference across one particular site of religious worship. The building in question is the London Fazl Mosque, London's first mosque. The paper focuses on two periods in the architectural, social and religious life of the site: its initial planning, opening and use in the London suburbs of the 1920s; and the community's more recent--and ultimately unsuccessful--attempts to extend the mosque in the 1990s. Across these two periods we draw out the ways in which notions of similarity and difference were employed by mosque-users, other local residents, the press and local and central government bodies in their discourse relating to the mosque. In particular we are concerned with how the mosque has meant different things to different religious, ethnic and social groups across the period under study, and how the mosque's relative ability to conform to associative aesthetic valuations throughout its history effectively sanctioned as well as condemned building works. Pour les résidents du Royaume-Uni d'origine sudasiatique, la géographie de la religion est inexorablement liée à l'environnement architectural. En particulier, le choix de sites ou l'expansion de lieux de culte pour les groupes religieux minoritaires ont souvent été reliés à des débats identitaires. Dans cet article, nous explorons l'évolution historique d'un jeu complexe de politiques de l'identité et de la différence par le biais d'un édifice religieux. Le site en question est la mosquée Fazl, la première ayant été bâtie à Londres. L'article se concentre sur deux périodes de la vie architecturale, sociale et religieuse de ce site: sa planification initiale, son ouverture, et son utilisation dans la banlieue de Londres pendant les années 1920, ainsi que les efforts plus récents--éventuellement sans succès--d'agrandir la mosquée pendant les années 1990. À travers ces deux périodes, nous exposons comment des notions de similaritéet de différence ont été mises de l'avant par les usagers du lieu, les autres résidents du quartier, la presse et les institutions gouvernementales centrales et locales dans leurs discours respectifs sur la mosquée. Nous cherchons en particulier à dégager comment la mosquée acquière une signification différente selon chaque religion, ethnie ou groupe social impliqué pendant la période sous étude. Nous cherchons aussi à dégager comment la capacité relative de la mosquée à se conformer à des valeurs esthé tiques associatives au cours de son histoire a servi à supporter de même qu'à condamner les travaux de construction. La geografía de la religio´n para los habitantes del Reino Unido naturales de Asia Sudoriental es inexorablemente vinculada a la política del entorno construído. En particular, la ubicación, o la expansión de los edificios de culto para los grupos de religiones minoritarios muchas veces ha estado estrechamente vinculado con la negociación y la contestación de la política de identidad. En este papel, examinamos el desarollo histórico de la compleja política de identidad y diferencia en un sitio de culto determinado. El edificio en cuestión es la mezquita Fazl, la primera mesquita de Londres. El papel enfoca a dos períodos en la vida arquitectural, social y religiosa del sitio: su planificación, inauguración y empleo iniciales en el barrio londinense en los años 20: y los intentos más recientes de la comunidad de ampliar la mezquita en los años 90, los cuales no resultaron exitosos. Através de estos dos períodos destacamos las maneras en que las nociones de semejanza y diferencia fueron empleadas por las personas que frecuentaban la mezquita, otros residentes locales, la prensa y cuerpos de los gobiernos local y central en sus discursos sobre la mezquita. En particular nos interesa lo que significaba la mezquita para los diferentes grupos religiosos, étnicos y sociales en las épocas bajo investigación y como la manera en que la mezquita cuadraba con las valuaciones estéticas asociativas durante toda su historia efectivamente sancionaba, tanto como condenaba, su construcción.     

Encountering enchantment: stories from the street football court in Singapore

While enchantment has been used productively to think through the geographies of social encounter, extant research – drawing largely from cases in the West – has reinforced a celebratory notion of enchantment, characterized by egalitarianism and serendipity. In this paper we draw ethnographically on encounters between Malay and Chinese users of two street football courts in Singapore, a non-Western context where principles of public interaction converge with but also exceed those in the West. In so doing we aim to advance existing debates by conceptualizing enchantment as it is negotiated and constituted, rather than asking if observed occurrences live up to dominant interpretations. We find that enchantment can be experienced through the construction, perpetuation and negotiation of boundaries; it is also a product of enduring rhythms in space that are produced and developed via the interactions of its users over time. In specifying the different ways in which enchantment is created, negotiated and lived we contribute to signalling the validity of expansive notions of publicness i.e. the different ways in which encounter in public space can be made meaningful and fulfilling.     

‘We or them,’ ‘you and I,’ and ‘I’: spaces of intimacy and (not so) public displays of affection in Hanoi

Through an exploratory study of romantic heterosexual couples in a public park situated in Hanoi’s outskirts, this article offers a conceptual rethinking of a western understanding of the park’s public/private dichotomy which can then be used to better appreciate how these categories are evolving in western urbanizing societies and their impacts on gender relations. By developing a relational, spatialized understanding of how young romantic couples justify their ‘transgressive’ displays of sexual intimacy in public spaces in contemporary urban Vietnam, this article focuses on how couples, especially women, manage their visibility. This analysis confronts the public civilizational discourse on Vietnamese sexual restraint by analyzing how young couples justify their romantic displays by creating an intimate space within a public environment. This space of visible intimacy is justified through their commitment to marriage. For the individuals involved in these romantic couples, visibility is justified, particularly for young women, through the enjoyment of a newly gained sexual autonomy as they migrate to the city.     

From invisibility to visibility? The appropriation of public space through a religious ritual: the Filipino procession of Santacruzan in Padua,Italy

Mainly employed as domestic workers and care providers since the 1980s, Filipino migrants have been, and still are, largely invisible in Italian public space. Since 1991, once a year, on the last Sunday of May, they transform the streets of Padua, city of Saint Anthony, into their own temporary ‘sacred space’ celebrating the finding of the Holy Cross (Santa Cruz). Based on ethnographic research and in-depth interviews, the paper analyses the preparation of the ritual and the embodied performance as a means to interpret the Filipino local and transnational territorialisation in the Italian context. The discussion underlines how the Italian setting affects the relationship between the sacred and the secular and between majority and minority religions in the urban texture. Urban space being the symbolic arena where identity and the process of boundary making are inscribed, we consider public space as a social process constituted by three levels: accessibility, temporary appropriation and visibility. Drawing on this immigrant religious ritual, we apply this perspective to look at the interactions between local society and newcomers and the blurring boundaries between religious and non-religious in the ambiguous Italian public space.     

The Gaze In The City: Video Surveillance In Perth

The gaze is a technique of power/knowledge that creates and exploits a new kind of visibility, of organising people so that they can be seen, known, surveilled and controlled. There is a complex interaction between the gaze and power, power and space, space and social subjectivity. Examples from Perth, Western Australia, illustrate how techniques of surveillance are used to gaze on the public, inviting consequent redefinition of what is public and private in the city. The possibilities of resistance to the gaze are outlined. There is a need to rethink the apparatus of the gaze, to debate publicly its enabling and oppressive aspects.     

Liquid passions: bodies,publics and city waters

This article explores water’s capacities as a vibrant matter with specific properties that generates passions, attachments and a sense of belonging, and which enrols bodies in new connections, socialities, alliances and politics in unpredictable ways. Based on research into practices and engagements with water in a large urban public space the paper builds on studies of blue space. It concludes that water has the capacity to enhance a sense of well-being in those that swim in it and to mobilise a very particular sense of embodiment which gives this form of public space its distinctiveness constituting new forms of sociality and connections amongst diverse individuals. It seeks to do this by paying attention to the experiences of things themselves and the active participation of nonhuman forces in events and the ‘vital materiality’ that runs through and across bodies both human and non-human. The article also explores water’s capacity to be constituted and defined by experts as dangerous and risky matter, and to thus engender political associations and connections amongst diverse groups who seek to oppose such expert interventions.     

Healthy discretion? Breastfeeding and the mutual maintenance of motherhood and public space

Although idealizations of motherhood are ever in flux, specific historical moments can be said to produce distinctive tropes of ‘good’ motherhood that have very real impacts on how women act and conceptualize themselves as mothers. This article examines good motherhood in its current iteration, and how now-common beliefs about breastfeeding are implicated in its construction. Furthermore, it looks at the ways in which idealizations of motherhood discipline the breastfeeding body so that it will fit into public space without disruption. I discuss the contradictory impacts of characterizations of the good mother as they appeared in the pro-breastfeeding dialogs that arose following a 2007 incident in which a mother was asked to cover herself up while nursing in a Kentucky restaurant. I posit that while these characterizations helped to make breastfeeding a more widely accepted public activity, they also had the effect of reifying a very narrow conception of what it means to be a good mother. I make this claim through an analysis of two common refrains heard in pro-public-breastfeeding arguments: breast milk is exceedingly healthy and mothers should not be persecuted if they nurse discreetly. Although these assertions together are compelling to the general public in that they provide a scientific justification for breastfeeding while at once assuaging fears of discomfort presented by a reproductive act being performed in a public space, I suggest that they also work to discipline women and maintain public-space-as-usual.