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Streets have been celebrated and demonized. They are the sites of meetings and struggles for citizens where hopes and ideas for a better and more just society are often formulated and presented to those in power. Streets are also sites of despair and violence where the least privileged might end up living and be exposed to the contempt of others, or where in particular the poor are exposed to the violence of gangs and criminals and brutal political regimes. In a guest edited section with the title “Street Life,” Joshua Barker and his contributors examine streets, street life and street cultures to understand this complexity. Taking examples from Toronto, Ho Chi Minh City, Tokyo, Paris and Sao Paolo, they illustrate the immense variety of actors, dynamics, possibilities and constraints of street and street life. Mariana Valverde illustrates the intricate web of legal regulations that underlie the construction, existence and flow of traffic at just one intersection in downtown Toronto. Erik Harms examines how the forced remaking of outdoor cafés in Ho Chi Minh City represents broader top‐down processes of “civilizing” urban spaces and in the process of remaking citizens, redrawing lines of public‐private, and very importantly construct venues for private profit (real estate and otherwise). Willi Goetschel revisits the Paris of the 19 th century and looks at a street corner using the perspective of the poet and writer Heinrich Heine. Here the street emerges not only as the stage for an idealized and distant flâneur, but comes to life as a much more complex and contradictory space. James Holston analyzes how residents in peripheral neighborhood in Sao Paolo by way of “autoconstruction” organize themselves with considerable success. This “insurgent citizenship” has helped to remake aspects of the Brazilian political landscape. Issue 21(2) also includes an independent article and a short note from the field. Mark Ingram examines the changing cultural production and organization in France by looking at the example of a large art center in Marseille. In the face of a withdrawal of the state from cultural affairs and funding, but a simultaneous new emphasis on regions, and a particular focus on Mediterranean ties, debates about locality and arts are refocused, but as Ingram argues, the influence of now official agencies remains. It just shifts and is reformulated in the process of better fit the demands of a 21 st century European cultural landscape. In their note from the field, George and Sharon Gmelch reflect of their experiences of moving an anthropological field school from a rural (Barbados) to an urban location (Tasmania, Australia).
City & Society – Wiley
Published: Dec 1, 2009
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