{"title":"The spatial politics of street art in post-Revolution Egypt","authors":"Mohamed El-Shewy","doi":"10.1386/jucs_00029_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jucs_00029_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article is concerned with exploring the politics of street art and graffiti in Egypt in the aftermath of the uprising against former President Hosni Mubarak in 2011. Rather than viewing street art and graffiti as mere by-products of the revolutionary period, the article centres them as important elements of political and social struggle. I put forward a reading of Egypt’s street art and graffiti as sites of politics through both aesthetic and spatial approaches. To do so I draw on Jacques Rancière’s concept of ‘dissensus’, a term referring to a political and aesthetic process that creates new modes of perception and novel forms of political subjectivity. In various writings, Rancière argues that part of the work of ‘dissensus’ is the creation of spaces where political activity can take place. As spatially bound practices, street art and graffiti can allow a visible ‘dissensus’ to take place. Through a semiotic analysis of several street art and graffiti works, the article makes a further contribution to scholarship on Egypt’s revolutionary street art and graffiti scene. Instead of focusing on the figure of the ‘rebel artist’, I centre the works in relation to the history of Egyptian nationalism, and argue that we need to complicate our understanding of street art and graffiti’s potential as modes of resistance.","PeriodicalId":36149,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Cultural Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47840632","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From local space to global spectacle: World Heritage and space utilization in Calle Crisologo, Vigan City, Philippines","authors":"Mark Louie Tabunan","doi":"10.1386/jucs_00007_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jucs_00007_1","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract World Heritage, a project of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) that aims to protect and preserve tangible and intangible inheritances of mankind, enables the construction of 'distributed, \"polycentric\" networked\u0000 economy of cultural production and exchange'. This article focuses on Calle Crisologo in northern Philippines, analysing the ways in which it has been creatively produced as World Heritage Site from postcolonial Vigan's built space. Building on Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of habitus, field,\u0000 and capital and reading ordinances and an architect's plans, I argue that the World Heritage project reconfigures the once local space into a global spectacle. While World Heritage is a western construct and a result of the experience of late modernity, how it is manifested in Calle Crisologo\u0000 also shows how vernacular modernity developed in Vigan as a colonial city. With the syncretic mixing of cultures in everyday Calle Crisologo as a resource, western modernity, supposed to be unitary and linear in its aims of progress and development, gets deflected.","PeriodicalId":36149,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Cultural Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41993320","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tracing working-class cultural historical heritage through one building's story: 'La Grande Brasserie du Levant'","authors":"Mira Kfoury","doi":"10.1386/jucs_00014_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jucs_00014_1","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This research looks at an abandoned beer brewery that is set for a new real-estate-led redevelopment project in Beirut between past, present and future. While the building proudly represented a moment of Lebanese modernity and identity formed around industry, it\u0000 also speaks of the eventual failure of the promise of modernity associated with Lebanon's first republic. The building's story is also closely woven with Mar Mikhail and the history and geography of drinking-culture and leisure-spaces in Beirut. In one sense, Mar Mikhail represents,\u0000 through its recent street-based, informal re-claiming of public-space, lower prices, minimal overhaul of built infrastructure and attachment to an 'authentic' traditional working-class neighbourhood, a resistance to exclusive urban spaces of neo-liberal consumption. The enquiry\u0000 highlights neo-liberal capital's tendency to exploit vulnerabilities ‐ for example, that of urban and architectural decay, wherein the re-discovery of 'heritage' makes it appear as revolutionary but in reality it is further incorporation into the capitalist system. The research\u0000 also reveals the nexus of these shifts with gentrification and social, economic and cultural stratifications of the city. I, thus, analyse the new architectural vision for the brewery site and how it re-inscribes capitalism's hegemony over architecture in advancing gentrification processes\u0000 in cities: commodification of heritage blatantly visible in architectural terms.","PeriodicalId":36149,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Cultural Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44040628","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The heritagization of post-industrial re-development and social inclusion in Amsterdam","authors":"Linda van de Kamp","doi":"10.1386/jucs_00010_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jucs_00010_1","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The histories of former industrial urban areas offer a contested and ambiguous framework for urban redevelopment. Whilst the newly emerged creative industries are framed in continuity with an industrial past, cultural heritage is being mobilized by different actors\u0000 to authenticate or to contest the redevelopment of working-class neighbourhoods. This article explores the ongoing transformation of post-industrial Amsterdam North, an area that has become subject to active urban redevelopment since the 2000s. Based on ethnographic material, this study examines\u0000 how 'heritage as development' ‐ based on cosmopolitan ideals of social inclusion ‐ reinforces a process of heritagization grounded on cultural rights that involves working-class memories of solidarity and dissent. I argue that the Amsterdam case complicates dualist interpretations\u0000 of gentrification and heritagization as processes of categorizing individuals as 'winners' and 'losers'. Heritage practices tend to reinforce cultural differences that produce feelings of exclusion rather than inclusion, but also offer pathways for emancipation and a re-appropriation of local\u0000 heritage for long-term working-class residents.","PeriodicalId":36149,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Cultural Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47920955","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rust Belt Chic: Deindustrialization, place and urban authenticity","authors":"James Rhodes","doi":"10.1386/jucs_00013_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jucs_00013_1","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In the context of deindustrialization and urban decline, America's industrial heartland came to be re-imagined as the 'Rust Belt'. Synonymous with outmoded and decrepit landscapes, identities and practices, the term has operated as a form of stigma, as places such\u0000 as Detroit, Cleveland and Pittsburgh became symbols of industrial, institutional and individual failure. However, in the contemporary period 'Rust Belt' is increasingly accompanied by an apparently incongruous term: 'chic'. Focusing on the narratives and essays of a younger, educated and predominantly\u0000 white demographic, the article explores discourses of 'Rust Belt Chic', examining the social, cultural and political significance of this emergent phenomena thinking through the ways in which it constructs the past, present and future of deindustrialized landscapes. It is argued that within\u0000 these narratives the region is valued for its liminality, for its proximities to the industrial past and a sense of history and tradition, along with its distance from what is seen as the failures of the post-industrial city. The article considers this reappraisal of the region and its material\u0000 and symbolic significance in the context of deindustrialization and urban regeneration, examining how claims about the region are used to articulate a particular form of urban 'authenticity'.","PeriodicalId":36149,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Cultural Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42443604","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Chinatown Invisible: Hybrid-mapping and making-do","authors":"Liska Chan","doi":"10.1386/jucs_00008_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jucs_00008_1","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article is a proposal to address visual mapping as a means to reveal the interrelationships between a place represented, a place lived and a place perceived. A form of critical cartography called hybrid-mapping is used to interrogate the combined sociocultural\u0000 and biophysical legacies of the continually changing landscape. This approach expressly facilitates a focused interpretation of the everyday lives of urban dwellers and the nuanced connections between landscape, history and culture. Offering to a larger conversation about landscape representation,\u0000 this article introduces, situates and analyses the application of hybrid-mapping in a creative research project entitled Chinatown Invisible about Manhattan's Chinatown. The Chinatown Invisible project uses hybrid-mapping to interrogate the quotidian practice of 'making-do' to\u0000 adapt existing urban structures to fulfil everyday needs. Capturing and understanding making-do is vital because it sheds light on the ways in which residents informally claim space and how they shape the ongoing physical evolution of their neighbourhood, establishing their 'right to the city'.\u0000 Chinatown Invisible shows how hybrid-mapping unveils the dynamics between culture and landscape in an urban setting, bridging critical geography and landscape representation to examine multiple ways in which we can interact with the processes of real, imagined and perceived space.","PeriodicalId":36149,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Cultural Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46739377","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"'That once romantic now utterly disheartening (former) colliery town': The affective politics of heritage, memory, place and regeneration in Mansfield, UK","authors":"Jay Emery","doi":"10.1386/jucs_00011_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jucs_00011_1","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article investigates the affective politics of heritage, memory, place and regeneration in Mansfield, UK. Ravaged by workplace closures from the 1980s, Mansfield's local government and cultural partners have supposedly put heritage at the centre of urban regeneration\u0000 policies. Principal are ambiguous, and forestalled, ambitions to mobilize the industrial past to build urban futures. Yet these heritages, and their attendant memories and histories, are emotionally evocative and highly contested. The affective politics are played out in the material, embodied\u0000 and atmospheric remains of the industrial past as Mansfield struggles to make sense of its industrial legacies. Drawing on Critical Discourse Analysis, archival research, observant participation and interview data, this article critiques heritage-based regeneration; examines interrelations\u0000 between local memory, class, place and history; and interprets tensions between competing imaginaries of what Mansfield is, was and should be. Contributing to work on memory and class in post-industrial towns, the article demonstrates that affect and place should be central to our considerations\u0000 of heritage-based urban regeneration. In the case of Mansfield, an 'emotional regeneration' will be denied until a shared practice of remembering the affective ruptures of the past is enabled.","PeriodicalId":36149,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Cultural Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47848796","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Between 'creative' boost and political dysfunction: An exploration of class, culture and economic dislocation in East Berlin","authors":"T. Blokland, Sebastian Juhnke","doi":"10.1386/jucs_00012_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jucs_00012_1","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In cities where tourism, creative industries and new service economies are boosting, the continuing impact of de-industrialization is less prominent than in discussions of, for example, former Rustbelt cities. Yet, these cities display new forms of intra-urban inequalities\u0000 that are, beyond the discussion of gentrification, not strongly visible in urban sociology discourses. While scholarly work on Berlin focuses on its gentrification and touristification, urban social movements and forms of migration, less attention is paid to the city as a site of de-industrialization,\u0000 economic dislocation, class-based defamations and the resulting labelling of political dysfunctionality of certain parts of the population. Exploring the less visible yet ongoing effects of de-industrialization in the post-socialist context of a formerly divided city, this article contributes\u0000 to a better conceptual understanding of the economic dislocation of the (previous) working classes of East Berlin. It is argued that effects of deindustrialization are related to the cultural and relational production of class through the organization of socialist industrial work and that\u0000 these effects are ongoing, yet silenced. Lastly, the article outlines a set of hypotheses regarding the friction of a decreasing public, yet continued personal relevance of industrial and working-class heritage, socially and materially, in the city.","PeriodicalId":36149,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Cultural Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45728565","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Editorial: Working-class heritage and the city","authors":"Gareth Millington, Andrew Wallace","doi":"10.1386/jucs_00009_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jucs_00009_1","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Here, we introduce a series of concepts and debates that provide a meta-context for the papers on the topic of working-class heritage and the city that follow. We propose Henri Lefebvre's seminal work on the dissolution of the city as a theoretical framing device\u0000 via brief detours through notions of museification, authenticity and 'communicity'. The fundamental problematic, as we see it, is that urban working-class heritage is symptomatic of the dissolution of the industrial city and an attempt ‐ conditioned by economic, social, cultural and\u0000 political imperatives ‐ to reimagine and/or reconfigure the legacies of this city. While we agree that heritage is an active process ‐ it is selected, curated, narrated and interpreted, or 'decoded' by individuals and social groups in a reflexive manner ‐ we also suggest,\u0000 on the evidence of the papers collected here, that working-class heritage delivers an ambivalent experience and response.","PeriodicalId":36149,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Cultural Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49550350","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Cartographies of Paris: Everyday mobilities in Michèle Rakotoson’s Elle, au printemps and Alain Mabanckou’s Tais-toi et meurs","authors":"A. Toivanen","doi":"10.1386/JUCS_00003_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/JUCS_00003_1","url":null,"abstract":"Literary representations of postcolonial subjects’ concrete mobility practices beyond migrancy have not received much critical attention. To fill this void, this article analyses the representations and poetics of urban everyday mobilities in two francophone African diasporic\u0000 novels, Michèle Rakotoson’s Elle, au printemps (1996) and Alain Mabanckou’s Tais-toi et meurs (2012), through a mobility studies perspective. I focus on the protagonists’ use of urban mobility systems and the narratives’ ways of producing urban cartographies\u0000 as means for inscribing the newly arrived irregular African migrants in the metropolis, and argue that the texts give articulation to a practical cosmopolitanism. The texts’ poetics of mobility – manifest in their uncanny and thrilleresque qualities – and the protagonists’\u0000 journeys to peripheral dead-ends convey the anxious aspects of their attempts to claim Paris as their city through mobility.","PeriodicalId":36149,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Urban Cultural Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47492580","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}