Globalization and Virtuality: Analytical Problems Posed by the Contemporary Transformation of African Societies

In response to the need for further conceptual development in the field of anthropological globalization studies, this article concentrates on the concept of virtuality, arguing that this constitutes one of the key concepts for a characterization and understanding of the forms of globalization in Africa. The article first defines virtuality and globalization and provisionally indicates their theoretical relationship. The problematic heritage of a locality-obsessed anthropological tradition (as explored in the article) then provides the analytical framework within which virtuality makes an inspiring topic. The transition from theory to empirical case studies is made by examining the problem of meaning in the African urban environment. Finally, an ethnographic situation is invoked (urban puberty rites in present day Zambia) which illustrates particular forms of virtuality as part of the globalization process.     

近代上海虹庙的转型与城市社会空间构建

上海开埠以后,传统民间信仰赖以存续的社会环境发生改变,虹庙由官、民共同信仰转变为以妓女行业为主要信仰群体的局面,并构建出以虹庙为中心的特殊城市社会空间,进而促使公众对虹庙的意象由护国安民变为“妓女烧香的地方”。研究发现,上海开埠后,行业种类繁盛背景下妓女职业的发展,以及政府祭祀政策转变等因素是虹庙信仰变迁的主要原因。报刊、社会小说等近代传播媒介的宣传,加速了虹庙社会公众意象转变并强化了其空间属性,从而带来虹庙这一传统信仰在近代上海的转型。     

Creative Copenhagen: Globalization,Urban Governance and Social Change

The introduction of 'creativity' and the 'creative city' in imagineering Copenhagen and in strategies for developing its urban competitiveness is analysed from a perspective on relations between processes of globalization, developments in urban government/governance and social geographic change. This perspective problematizes what on the surface seems to be an unequivocally positive quality ('creative') and goal ('creativity'). We argue there is a need to recognize the social costs of developments that are glossed over by the creative city rhetoric, including diminished representative democracy, social and geographic polarization and considerable displacement of the marginalized.     

传统城市空间的近代转型:以上海县城为例(1905-1914)

学界对于传统中国城市空间近代转型相对缺乏关注。通过对上海县城的研究发现,在人口压力增加、城市用地紧张、环境恶化及租界示范效应的多重作用下,明清治所城市空间结构不再适用于20世纪初的上海县城,城市空间亟待改造。上海县城市政机构的设立为解决这一需求提供了制度保障与财力支持,故县城得以开展前所未有的大规模建设,包括道路、排水、桥梁、码头、义冢迁移、公地改造、市容清理等,以不同以往的空间结构重塑了上海县城。这种因人地关系紧张带来的适应性改善不限于上海一地,而具有普遍性的意义。     

The Urban Sensorium: Space, Ideology and the Aestheticization of Politics

This essay outlines a theoretical framework for investigating the links between the production of urban space (Lefebvre) and the production of ideology (Althusser) and hegemony (Gramsci) by proposing the concept of “the urban sensorium”. With a view to the aesthetics of urban experience and everyday life, this concept aligns Fredric Jameson's “postmodern” adaptation of city planner Kevin Lynch's research on “cognitive mapping” with Walter Benjamin's insights on “aestheticizing politics” in order to ask: how does urban space mediate ideology and produce hegemony while aestheticizing politics? In so doing, the spotlight falls on a conceptual constellation including four key theoretical terms: “ideology”, “aesthetics”, “mediation” and “totality”. While working through them, the essay argues that Jameson's outstanding contribution to a spatialized understanding of “postmodernism” lies above all in his Marxist (Lukácsian, Althusserian and Sartrean) theorization of mediation and totality; whereas radical students of the city can find the richest dialectical elaboration of these two concepts with special attention to space and urbanism in the oeuvre of Henri Lefebvre, especially in the recently translated The Urban Revolution.     

The Paris Sewers and the Rationalization of Urban Space

Sewers are perhaps the most enigmatic of urban infrastructures. Most citizens of modern cities are aware of their existence, yet few could accurately describe their layout or appearance. This paper takes as its starting point a key moment in the cultural representation of urban space: the photographs of the Paris sewers taken by Félix Nadar in the early 1860s. These images capture a dramatic transformation in subterranean Paris, initiated in the early 1850s by Baron Georges Haussmann and his chief engineer Eugène Belgrand as part of the comprehensive reconstruction of the city's infrastructure during the Second Empire of Napoléon III. This paper argues, however, that with respect to the underground city, we cannot consider the Haussmann era to be the unproblematic epitome of modernity. The reconstruction of subterranean Paris revealed a series of tensions that were only to be resolved in the post-Haussmann era in response to the combined influence of growing water usage, the persistent threat of disease and changing conceptions of public health policy. It is concluded that the flow of water in Second Empire Paris is best conceived as a transitional phase in the radical reworking of relations between the body and urban form engendered by the process of capitalist urbanization.     

Globalization and the Urban Property Boom in Metro Cebu,Philippines

The hyper mobility of capital and the associated growth of international investment in real estate which occurred across the world in the late twentieth century, led to bursts of property development and market booms. This article examines how this global trend interfaced with local processes in the setting of a secondary metropolis of a developing country, in Metro Cebu, Philippines, and resulted in a property‐led development dominated by production of high‐end residential real estate commodities, the rise of a speculative land market, and a highly regressive spatial allocation. It is argued that this regressive outcome was mediated by a weak state, controlled and dominated by predatory and rent‐seeking bosses who, in Cebu in particular, are not simply representatives of the local oligarchy but are big real estate developers and brokers themselves. During the boom period, neither the middle classes, whose members were also attracted to speculative property buying, nor the low‐income and urban poor groups, who were largely hoodwinked by official rhetoric of social housing reform and by token participation, provided any significant social force to constrain the opportunism and rent‐seeking of these bosses or to challenge the pro‐growth governing agenda.     

The Ethnocracy of the Palestinian Urban Space and the Indigenous Approach: Praxis and Theory

This article is a case study of the Palestinian recent past that produces a new knowledge on the maltreatment given to the archaeological remains of the Palestinians in the Late Ottoman period (18th to 20th centuries) by the dominant culture in Israel. The inequitable representation of the Palestinian-Ottoman heritage by the state creates both submission and resistance to the prevailing culture by the Palestinian citizens. The new knowledge created by this case study may be further used in order to understand the diverse experience of marginality of various contemporary dispossessed and displaced groups.     

Reforms,Globalization, and Urban Growth in China: The Case of Hangzhou

Chinese cities have experienced unprecedented growth and restructuring during the reform period. This study by two geographers examines the rapid growth of urban population in the relatively typical large city of Hangzhou (one of China's historical capitals), and investigates underlying factors by highlighting the significance of reforms and globalization in the growth of Chinese cities. The authors also discuss problems that Hangzhou (currently with ca. 4 million inhabitants) faces in coping with rapid urban growth and restructuring. They argue that "control" and "management" approaches to urban growth have limitations in China's transitional cities, and that the gradual process of reform is incompatible with the nature of urban planning in China. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O18, O20, R23. 4 figures, 44 references.     

Working with Strangers in Saturated Space: Reclaiming and Maintaining the Urban Commons

The commons is increasingly invoked as a way to envision new worlds. One strand of commons research focuses at the local scale, on small groups in “traditional”, mostly rural societies; this research asks how commons are maintained over time. Another strand focuses on the commons at a global scale; this is political research that asks how commons can be reclaimed from a capitalist landscape. Here, I bridge these two approaches by theorizing the commons as reclaimed and maintained in the context of the city, through examining the experiences of limited‐equity housing cooperatives in Washington, DC. I argue that the urban commons is marked by two distinct traits: it emerges in space that is saturated with people, competing uses, and financial investment; and it is constituted by the collective work of strangers. The challenges of reclaiming and maintaining an urban commons are substantial, but the need for them is urgent.     

Nightscapes of Play: Enjoyment of Architecture and Urban Space through Bicycling

Anti‐automobile, anti‐capitalist, and pro‐environmental worldviews are known to shape bicyclists’ right to the city demands. This research uncovers another layer of their radical engagement with the city: playful enjoyment of architectural structures and urban space, using the case study of Midnight Mystery Ride, a community bicycle ride taking place in the middle of the night once a month in several cities around the world. Through theoretical lenses of play and rhythmanalysis, I argue that bicyclists at night take over spaces built with exchange vale in mind and introduce use value in the same spaces. Interviews with bicyclists demonstrate how their unconventional use of space questions separation from natural rhythms and nature. I demonstrate that their nighttime use of the city is also a critique of how urban space is organised largely for profit and discipline and of how the human and playful potential of urban space are not fully realised.     

Globalization and Entrepreneurial Response in Post-Socialist Transformation: A Case Study from Transcarpathia,Ukraine

This paper sets out to examine the extent and characteristics of the globalization process in a region undergoing a process of socio-economic transformation. In doing so it draws upon the experience of an entrepreneurial, globally orientated, garment-making enterprise in Transcarpathia, the western most region of the Ukraine. The bulk of earlier scholarly research focused upon the consequences of the strategies implemented by multinational corporations. We argue, that this study points towards an alternative mode of integration in the global economy-one which received little attention in the Central and Eastern European context. This takes the form of a set of sub-contracting relationships between parent enterprises in Western Europe, intermediaries located in economies which achieved significant advances in the process of transformation (such as Hungary and Slovakia), and manufacturers in the locality.