Kathrin Wildner

In the past decades, international port cities have been strongly affected by global transformation processes, dramatically altering life and work around the ports, the built environment and public imagery of urban waterfronts. Based on recent theories of city-port development, the ethnographic studies in this volume focus on local stakeholders' perceptions and strategies in port cities in Europe and Latin America. This book covers a wide variety of urban fields, from traditional dockland communities, inland waterway sailors and new forms of migration and exile, to active agents of urban transformation.

1. The Transnationality of Cities - Concepts, Dimensions and Research Fields: An Introduction Stefan Kratke, Kathrin Wildner and Stephan Lanz 2. Transnationality and the City Nina Glick-Schiller 3. Cities of the Global South in the Context of Transnational Urbanism and International Development Policies Hans Harms 4. Transnational Planning: Reconfiguring Spaces and Institutions Clara Irazabal 5. Conceptualizing Transnational Urban Spaces: Multicentered Agency, Placeless Organizational Logics, and the Built Environment Christof Parnreiter 6. Materializing the Digital Commodity: Recording Studios in Transnational Project Networks of Digital Musical Production Michael Hoyler and Allan Watson 7. Global Capitalism and the Informal Economy: A Methodological Approach to the Complex Incorporation of Mexican Cities into the Globalized Markets Sandra Alarcon 8. The Return of the Local?: Anglicization, Transnationalism and Religion in the Global City John Eade 9. Small Town Transnationalism: Socio-Spatial Dynamics of Immigration to the Heartland Faranak Miraftab 10. Challenging Heteronomous Power in a Globalized World: Insurgent Spatial Practices, 'Militant Particularism', and Multiscalarity Marcelo Lopes de Souza 11. Move From and Not On the Occult Zone (Where the People Dwell): An Argument for the Political Priority of Solidarity with Popular (and Largely Situated) Mobilization by the Poor over Transnational Organization by Civil Society Richard Pithouse

Taking into account that global economic and political processes are materialised and manifested on a local level, these processes provoke changes in the material culture of the city i.e. of environment, architecture, commodities etc. as well as in social interaction and cultural practice. These changes are not to be interpreted as homogenious adaptations abstract global effects, but they are translated

1 Universität Hamburg, Institut für Ethnologie, Rothenbaumchaussee 64 a, 20418 Hamburg, Germany; 2 Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana – Azcapotzalco, División de Ciencias y Arte para el Dise˜no, Departmento de Evaluación, Area de Estudios Urbanos, Av. San Pablo ...

Als kollaboratives Experiment haben wir im Sommer 2019 Menschen unterschiedlicher Herkunft, die seit kurzem oder schon lange in Berlin leben, zu einer Stadterkundung eingeladen. Darin betrachten wir als Urban Citizen Walker die Stadt aus der Perspektive des Ankommens, mit dem Blick des Sich-Zurecht-Findens, in alltäglichen Momenten der Aneignung. Uns interessiert vor allem der postmigrantische Blick, mit dem Menschen sich die Stadt vor dem Hintergrund ihrer subjektiven Erfahrungen erschließen und konkrete Möglichkeiten zu besetzender räumlicher Nischen ausloten. Die Methode des kollaborativen Gehens ermöglicht es, die Blickrichtung zu verändern, sich die unbekannte Stadt zu erschließen, bekannte Orte wieder zu erkunden und diese im Idealfall gemeinsam neu zu besetzen. In unserem Beitrag gehen wir der Frage nach, wie das Gehen als Methode der kritischen Stadtforschung weiterentwickelt werden kann. Dazu werden wir einige theoretische und methodologische Aspekte des Gehens vor allem ab...

In the field of contemporary urban research, there is a growing realization that urban configurations, collective imaginations as well as complex networks of power cannot be examined and interpreted adequately by applying only classical methods of social science. This text looks at different kinds of knowledge production within the research and exhibition project Global Prayers focusing on processes of research, the invention of ­methods, the collection and analysis of data, and their translation into formats for presentation. In the context of theoretical concepts on the role of ethnographic and artistic research, examples from the Global Prayers project are re-viewed to analyze several methodological procedures, such as multi-sited ethnography, sound recordings, enactments, and interventions as promising challenges for inventive urban research.

We're strolling through the city – " strolling " in the sense of what we'll call an associative perceptual walking tour. We – an artist and a city ethnologist – are examining the Große Bergstraße in the Altona district of Hamburg. This is a shopping strip which in the 1970s was a popular urban-planning project intended to revitalize the city centre. Its main features were broad, car-free streets, large shopping complexes and glass arcades. The new Große Bergstraße featured department stores as well as one of the city's first escalators. It was a favourite destination for shoppers from the urban peripheries. Nowadays, like many of its counterparts, this pedestrian zone has lost its flair and prosperous commercial appeal. The new 1-euro stores, call shops and discount supermarket chains are frequented and/or run by immigrants and locals on the lower end of the social scale. City planning, politics and the media now stigmatize the former models of urban modernization, labelling them as " problem zones ". The new Große Bergstraße is a typical example of contemporary urban development processes. It is a temporary zone, subject to the processes of controlled urban transformation. An urban space in a state of metamorphosis with consequences extending beyond the street itself and giving rise to architectural, eco-
nomic, social and cultural questions. It is a controversial place, one that – de-
pending on one’s perspective – calls for property improvement, better security
and clean-up, economic prosperity or prosperous creativity.

In: Beyes, Timon  et al. (Hrgs.) Parcitypation. Zürich: Niggli. 2009.

Only English Abstract

In this article the possibilities for and attainment of knowledge in a transdisciplinary combination of the analytical categories "space" and "discourse" are explored, focusing on research of the urban and the public in the area of cultural science. The background of this article is a shared research experience in an interdisciplinary ethnography project investigating political appropriation of urban space in Mexico City. In this project ethnographic research on urban space by WILDNER and the semiotic analysis of discourse by HUFFSCHMID were combined. In the first part of the article the conceptual assumptions of this intersection are discussed, followed by questions about what was learned from the respective analytical practices. Our assumption is the interpenetration of space and discourse: no space (as discussed by LEFEBVRE) can be acknowledged without its discursive configurations; meanwhile discourse (as discussed by FOUCAULT) does not take place in a void, but rather in a material as well as socially constructed space. The authors discuss different levels of methodological approaches as observation, reading, description, and analysis of spatial and discursive practices and materiality. On the basis of the case study (three closing events of the election campaign in Mexico City 2006) possible interfaces and intersections between research on spaces and on discourses are delineated in connection to the concepts of setting/stage/dramatization, control/power, and inscription.

In: Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung 10 (3): Art. 25.