Space and CulturePub Date : 2024-01-28DOI: 10.1177/12063312231223118
Danielle Wyatt, Dale Leorke
{"title":"Playing in the “Third Place”: How Games and Play Are Transforming Public Libraries","authors":"Danielle Wyatt, Dale Leorke","doi":"10.1177/12063312231223118","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/12063312231223118","url":null,"abstract":"Games and play are a growing presence in public libraries, part of a suite of new spaces and services that respond to digitization and new urban policy imperatives. Drawing on observation of library spaces and interviews with library staff in Australia, Finland, and Singapore ( n = 27), we examine the myriad ways games and play are transforming the library: from its architectural design and furnishings to its daily rhythms, atmosphere, and acoustics. Games and play, we argue, are more than adjuncts to traditional library services. Often spilling out of designated zones and beyond the library’s walls, they mirror the wider integration of libraries into urban policy agendas and the city’s economic and cultural life. This trend underscores the growing tensions libraries face in balancing their conscription into instrumental objectives with their traditional role as “third places” bounded by the utilitarian demands of work and home.","PeriodicalId":508357,"journal":{"name":"Space and Culture","volume":"123 7-8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140491611","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}
Space and CulturePub Date : 2024-01-10DOI: 10.1177/12063312231213275
Yanli He
{"title":"Erasing the Pink on the World Atlas: Re-Mapping African American Literature","authors":"Yanli He","doi":"10.1177/12063312231213275","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/12063312231213275","url":null,"abstract":"This article aims at analyzing Henry Louis Gates’ theoretical strategies for remapping the African American literary space within the context of both American literature and world literary system. Gates’ strategies can be delineated through four stages. Firstly, he excavates a vast array of African American literary texts. In the second stage, he traces the lineage of African American literary theory to its origins within the African interpretation system. During the third stage, he employs African American literary theory to curate the African American literary canon. In the fourth and final stage, within the realm of African American literature, Gates endeavors to rebalance the representation of female and male voices within the literary space. A pivotal aspect of Gates’ strategies lies in his willingness to embrace and celebrate the African legacy, setting him apart from other marginalized nations and minority groups who may tend to disregard or belittle their own heritage. Building upon this distinctive characteristic, this article posits that Gates’ approach holds the potential to assist marginalized nations and minority groups in several ways: 1) Re-mapping literary space: Gates’ strategies can guide these groups in redefining their literary space within the broader contexts of both national and global literature systems. 2) Claiming literary legacy: emulating Gates, these groups can be inspired to embrace and champion their own literary heritage, instead of diminishing its significance. 3) Fostering indigenous literary models: by adopting Gates’ model, writers from these communities can craft their literary space grounded in their native or national paradigms, as opposed to adhering solely to Western European or U.S. models. 4) Balancing literary representation: Gates’ strategies also facilitate the recalibration of the literary landscape within these nations or groups by accommodating diverse elements such as race, gender, and class, thereby achieving a more inclusive and balanced representation. Overall, Gates’ methodology offers a powerful framework for marginalized communities to assert their literary identities, reshape their narratives, remap their literary spaces, and promote diversity within their literary landscapes.","PeriodicalId":508357,"journal":{"name":"Space and Culture","volume":"8 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139439512","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}
Space and CulturePub Date : 2024-01-02DOI: 10.1177/12063312231220265
Tina Gudrun Jensen
{"title":"Extensions: The Embodiment, Spatiality, Materiality, and Sociality of Neighboring in Danish Public Housing","authors":"Tina Gudrun Jensen","doi":"10.1177/12063312231220265","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/12063312231220265","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork from a public housing area in Copenhagen, this article explores how dwelling, spatiality, materiality, sociality, and the senses interplay and inform different qualities of neighbor relations. Starting from the individual home space and moving to the space of the stair-case shared with other residents who live next door, below, or above, the article argues that neighbor relations constitute a practical embodied experience of the neighborhood. The article describes the condition of dwelling related to home as bestowing a certain embodied dimension to neighborhood relations. Furthermore, the article illustrates near-dwelling, or living near, as one distinctive context for neighbor relations, which involve material and sensorial aspects of neighboring. The article concludes that spatiality and materiality may condition yet not determine the nature of social relations among neighbors.","PeriodicalId":508357,"journal":{"name":"Space and Culture","volume":"44 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139452506","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}
Space and CulturePub Date : 2024-01-02DOI: 10.1177/12063312231210241
Anna Daly
{"title":"Mapping the Interior: The Consolidation of an Idea Across Disciplines, Movements, and Geographical Regions in the Early-to-Mid 20th Century","authors":"Anna Daly","doi":"10.1177/12063312231210241","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/12063312231210241","url":null,"abstract":"The use of the word interior to refer to the inside of a house emerged in the 19th century and assumed some significance in modernist discourses. While the rise of digital media has shaped contemporary notions of space, these notions remain indebted to an idea of interiority that coalesced early last century. This discussion demonstrates the significance of the interior to modernists of different stripes and its consolidation as an idea across disciplines and geographical regions, despite the divergent attitudes it encompassed. Le Corbusier and Sigmund Freud viewed the interior and interiority as problematic, a view that found extreme expression in Richard Neutra’s domestic architecture. At the same time, visual artists such as Salvador Dali and the architects Alvar Aalto and Eileen Gray saw the interior as crucial to modern living, an approach revisited in the participatory art, architecture, and therapy that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s.","PeriodicalId":508357,"journal":{"name":"Space and Culture","volume":"102 28","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139391429","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}
Space and CulturePub Date : 2024-01-02DOI: 10.1177/12063312231210168
Neha Gupta
{"title":"Si(gh)ting the City: An Uber View of Calcutta","authors":"Neha Gupta","doi":"10.1177/12063312231210168","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/12063312231210168","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, I take a socio-material approach to highlight the changes in the legibility of the built environment due to digital interfacing and the subsequent fragmentation of urban space. Using Uber as an example, I demonstrate how app-reliant mobility practices, reflexive of the changing mobility values in the city of Calcutta, manifest certain “temporal spaces”—quasi-virtual spaces of the online/digital-offline/material continuum—that imbricate the physicality of the city with the digital traces that Uber accrues about a particular location and the data about the rhythms of the individual users within that space. The investigation uses screenshots of Uber pick-up points to conceptualize legibility in the context of temporal spaces and how this changing legibility alters the kinaesthetic quality of Calcutta. Siting the argument in postrepresentationalist thought—one that does not assume an ontological distinction between representations and the referent—this article offers a posthumanist account of spatial performativity that considers the everyday entanglements of human actors, social practices, networked technologies, algorithms, and interfaces that render “legible” the urban space.","PeriodicalId":508357,"journal":{"name":"Space and Culture","volume":"39 22","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139389769","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":"Valuing Urban Heritage Through Participatory Heritage Websites: Citizen Perceptions of Historic Urban Landscapes","authors":"Arno van der Hoeven","doi":"10.1177/1206331218797038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1206331218797038","url":null,"abstract":"This study examines how people value their historic urban landscapes through participatory heritage websites. These websites are online places where citizens actively contribute to the conservation of urban heritage. Taking UNESCO’s 2011 Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape as its theoretical starting point, this study understands urban landscapes as (1) dynamic, because they change over time; (2) multilayered, as different generations and communities contribute in diverse ways to the development of urban landscapes; and (3) mediated through digital technologies such as participatory heritage websites. Furthermore, this UNESCO recommendation is used to make a distinction between the kinds of heritage discussed on the websites (attributes) and the significance attached to it (values). Through a qualitative content analysis of 20 participatory heritage websites from various Dutch and English cities, the study examines what is valued by those who contribute in their urban environments. In so doing, the study demonstrates how online media can support a people-oriented form of urban heritage conservation. This analysis reveals that the following five categories of heritage attribute are remembered by citizens: (1) the built environment and public space, (2) the social fabric and identity, (3) culture and leisure, (4) business and industry, and (5) politics and public order. Moreover, it is found that these attributes are valued because of their social relevance (social value), their connection to the biographies of citizens (experiential value), and their contribution to our understanding of the urban past (historical value).","PeriodicalId":508357,"journal":{"name":"Space and Culture","volume":"73 5","pages":"129 - 148"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141208388","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}