Spatial Sociology

Hamlets are, first of all, an historical, cultural and landscaping heritage; an asset that, apparently, seems definable through the mere architectural point of view. Unlike the modern city, the hamlet is a space built and lived with ancient criteria and requires, today, to be deeply redesigned on the socioeconomic side in order to be kept involved in the territorial texture. After a review of the elements that compose the definition of “hamlet”, in the first paragraph, an analysis of the various aspects concerning the new functions of these places will take place. The Umbrian case of Postignano, at least, will show practically the implications of the reflections made before.

ARCHITECTURE AND HUMAN RIGHTS
(Ph.D. Thesis)
Hossein SADRI
GAZİ UNIVERSITY
INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
September 2010
ABSTRACT
Today, one can observe that the capital oriented power relations have transformed the process of formation of space into a sphere of production; therefore space has also been transformed into consumption good and a means for obtaining surplus value. Space that is formed as a result of this understanding of production-consumption does not contain diversity and exclude vulnerable groups.
To prevent these exclusions and to guarantee free and equal life for all people in dignity, principles which include everybody during production and utilization of space should be determined and these principles should manifest human rights and minimum standards concerning those rights.
Based on Henri Lefebvre’s idea of the right to the city, this  dissertation attempts to explain in detail the right to appropriation and the right to oeuvre through rights of human beings regarding their living spaces in order to determine above mentioned minimum standards. A comparative analysis looks at different documents of human rights in the city in order to achieve norms of human rights regarding space.
All actors taking part in the process of production and utilization of space are responsible for protection of these rights. Among these actors, the architects’ role is vital, since they can affect the process of production and utilization of space both directly by their personal practices and indirectly by their collective activities. Therefore, an ethical code illustrating the ethics of the profession of architecture as well as the responsibilities of architects could guarantee the protection of norms of human rights regarding space.
It is possible to classify the documents of ethics of architectural profession into two categories in terms of their binding force. One category consists of codes of ethics that are binding, and the other includes declarations that are not binding.
The dissertation examines four different ethic codes and 12 different declarations that were published by the American Institute of Architects, the Royal Institute of British Architects, Architect’s Council of Europe and the Union of International Architects as case studies and evaluates these documents in terms of human rights related with space.
This evaluation illustrates that declarations in contrast with codes of ethics are sensitive to norms of human rights. However, it is observed that, human rights norms which are related to public space are not covered within these declarations due to apolitization of architecture in recent years.
The conclusion discusses the results of those evaluations on codes of ethics and declarations in terms of human rights norms related to space. It also suggests recommendations for developing codes of ethics sensitive to human rights related with space.
Science Code : 802.1.100
Key Words : Architecture, Ethics, Human Rights
Page Number : 227
Advisers : Prof. Dr. Nur ÇAĞLAR
Co-Adviser : Prof. Dr. İoanna KUÇURADİ

In establishing an anarchic framework for understanding public space as a vision for radical democracy, this article proceeds as a theoretical inquiry into how an agonistic public space might become the basis of emancipation. Public space is presented as an opportunity to move beyond the technocratic elitism that often characterizes both civil societies and the neoliberal approach to development, and is further recognized as the battlefield on which the conflicting interests of the world's rich and poor are set. Contributing to the growing recognition that geographies of resistance are relational, where the “global” and the “local” are understood as co-constitutive, a radical democratic ideal grounded in material public space is presented as paramount to repealing archic power in general, and neoliberalism’s exclusionary logic in particular.

Within the context of understanding the opening up of the People’s Republic of China and the city of Shanghai, the aim of the study is to explore ‘space’ in Chinese Communist Party rhetoric, Shanghai spatial planning discourse and personal intercultural engagements. By the term ‘space’, the author refers to an understanding of societal production that integrates space as part of the analysis, taking into account the interplay between official statements on nation building, regional and urban planning, concrete built environments and people’s situated understandings of space. With this in mind, the tripartite aim establishes an understanding of how the Chinese Communist Party envisioned the opening up of the People’s Republic of China and Shanghai, how the Shanghai Municipal Government has implemented the Chinese Communist Party’s visions for the city and how young Chinese talk about their experiences of the changes taking place in Shanghai in interviews about intercultural communication in the city. The tripartite understanding of the opening up of the People’s Republic of China and Shanghai is established by the term ‘contact space’. By this term, the author illustrates and analyses the phenomenon of the opening up processes taking place in the People’s Republic of China and Shanghai, and also develops an analytical tool that allows for an analysis of how the opening up involves several integrated levels of the Chinese society. By the combined use of sociology of space and postcolonial studies, the author shows that the Chinese Communist Party encouraged a controlled insertion of capitalism within the one-party system to modernize the country. Several cities, such as Shanghai, were designated to lead the country into a modern, prosperous, socialist state. Emerging into state-sanctioned capitalist spaces within the one-party rule, the localities were named ‘special economic zones’ and ‘open coastal cities’. Through a land-leasing system, demolition and renovation of selected built environments, the author shows that Shanghai is acquiring the material and visual components of a global city. The author illustrates that the Shanghai Municipal Government produces contemporary Shanghai into a twenty-first-century post-revolutionary city anchored in ancient China, the city’s colonial heritage and Mao’s socialism. By the interviews, the author demonstrates that the city of Shanghai emerges into a contact space conditioned by its colonial history and more recent changes, the city’s geographical location and representations in literature. Illustrating China’s emerging society, the interviewees engage in culture and language exchanges, work at international companies and take part in the city’s leisure and entertainment spaces. Belonging to the emerging Chinese middle-classes, the interviewees demonstrate how they create their own contact spaces (one-to-one occasions and group gathering initiatives) and make use of established contact spaces in Shanghai (universities, language schools, international companies, leisure and entertainment spaces). The author also concludes that Shanghai’s emerging society is based in China’s own developmental discourses but also globally recognized patterns of social hierarchies and capitalist urban space.

Through imaginative geographies that erase the interconnectedness of the places where violence occurs, the notion that violence is 'irrational' marks particular cultures as ‘other’. Neoliberalism exploits such imaginative geographies in constructing itself as the sole providence of nonviolence and the lone bearer of reason. Proceeding as a ‘civilizing’ project, neoliberalism positions the market as salvationary to putatively ‘irrational’ and ‘violent’ peoples. This theology of neoliberalism produces a discourse that binds violence in place. But while violence sits in places in terms of the way in which we perceive its manifestation as a localized and embodied experience, this very idea is challenged when place is reconsidered as a relational assemblage. What this re-theorization does is open up the supposed fixity, separation, and immutability of place to instead recognize it as always co-constituted by, mediated through, and integrated within the wider experiences of space. Such a radical rethinking of place fundamentally transforms the way we understand violence. No longer confined to its material expression as an isolated and localized event, violence can more appropriately be understood as an unfolding process, derived from the broader geographical phenomena and temporal patterns of the social world.

In this paper, I wish to shed light on my research process and how I made the decision to structure my PhD thesis along French philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre’s work on the production of space (1991). First, I situate Lefebvre’s spatial theory within a philosophy of social science perspective, and then I continue with defining and discussing my interpretive approach. I finish the paper by approaching research methods from a Lefebvrean spatial perspective.

This paper examines a city and a natural disaster, specifically New Orleans, Louisiana, after Hurricane Katrina of August 2005. Recovery here is ongoing and the process of return is incomplete, with long-term dislocation to other cities in the United States, such as Houston, Texas. The question arises as to how planning and stratification influence evacuation and return/dislocation and how they result in a particular practice of adaptation. This interrelated process is conceptually integrated and termed ‘schismo-urbanism’ and is analysed within a multidimensional theoretical framework to evaluate aspects of urban sociology and natural disasters. Empirical research is based on a quantitative and qualitative mixed-method case study. Data were collected during two rounds of field research in New Orleans and Houston in 2007 and 2009. As a comparative sociospatial study of affected and receptor communities, it makes a novel theoretical and methodological contribution to research on urban disasters in the context of continuing and rapid social change, and is targeted at disaster researchers, planning theorists and practitioners, and urbanists.

Von dieser eher fragmentären Präsenz Erving Goffmans in der soziologischen Debatte zum Raum ausgehend, möchte ich in diesem Beitrag die Konturen von Goffmans Soziologie des Raums präzisieren.Mit Soziologie des Raums beziehe ich mich allgemein auf die Palette soziologischer Ansätze, die sich theoretisch mit der physisch-materiellen Dimension des sozialen Lebens beschäftigen und in diesem Zusammenhang konzeptionell auf die Rolle des „Raums“ in sozialen Verhältnissen und Interaktionen verweisen. Mein Argument ist zweiteilig: das Goffman'sche Werk der 1950er, 1960er und vom Anfang der 1970er Jahre ist von soziologischen Reflexionen zum Raum durchzogen, die chronologisch betrachtet ein für die soziologische Debatte alternatives, mehrdimensionales Raumkonzept in den Vordergrund bringen.

Городские жители и производство пространства (на примере российских городов) 1 Петр Иванов* П е т р И в а н о в В данной статье представлено основанное на ряде исследований, проведенных автором в разное время в 2012–2015 гг., концептуальное построение, описывающее структуры производства пространства в российских городах с акцентом на роли город-ских жителей в этих структурах. Для создания этого построения решается ряд таких за-дач, как различение горожан (citizens) и городских жителей (urban dwellers), описание паттернов пространственного поведения и участия городских жителей в производстве пространства, а также описание шести ключевых структур отчуждения городских жите-лей в России от участия в производстве пространства. В статье даются предложения по развитию исследовательской повестки и направлений дальнейших исследований в области производства пространства в российских городах, а также в области иссле-дований городских жителей и городских активистов.

Cholula (Puebla, Mexico), an ancient pre-Hispanic city, since 1971 is home to UDLAP, Universidad de las Américas Puebla. Over the years, the presence of UDLAP has deeply affected the fabric of the city, transforming a once rural center into a university town. Students are very important for the economy of Cholula: one example is avenida 14 Oriente, a street entirely devoted to nightlife and student fun. Since the pandemic, most students returned to their hometowns. This had huge consequences on the microeconomy of the city, especially for informal traders. In this paper, we discuss the changes brought about by the pandemic in the socio-economic dynamics of Cholula. To do so, we rely on fieldwork, complementing it with information found in magazines, newspapers and local media.

Der folgende Text versucht, eine neue Perspektive auf die in der Sozialwis­senschaft anhaltende Raumdebatte um den spatial turn zu entwickeln. Hauptanliegen ist es, die darin waltende unproduktive Dichotomisierung von Raumessenzialismus versus Raumkonstruktivismus hinter sich zu lassen, um das dialektische Verhaeltnis von Materie und sozialer Raumkonstitution (nicht: Konstruktion) in den Vordergrund zu ruecken. Es wird argumentiert, dass nur eine diese Wechselwirkung beachtende Theoriebildung das Problem sozialwissenschaftlicher Konzeption von Raeumlichkeit in seiner Tragweite in den Griff bekommen kann. Grundlage und Ausgangspunkt ist eine Kritik an einer vereinfachenden Spielart des Konstruktivismus, wie er in den Sozial­ und Kulturwissenschaften populaer ist, und der das Nachdenken ueber Raum tendenziell verunmoeglicht.

Gli spazi di vita quotidiana delle città contemporanee sembrano generare un crescente spaesamento e difficoltà ad essere addomesticati e considerati come luoghi significativi a causa del fatto che le progettazioni e le politiche urbane dominanti si disinteressano del bisogno antropologico degli abitanti di 'farsi spazio' e di addomesticare gli spazi di vita quotidiana. L'obiettivo dell'articolo è quello di analizzare il contributo che potrebbe fornire per colmare questo gap lo sguardo socio-antropologico con la sua messa al centro dei vissuti intersoggettivi degli abitanti e delle specificità dei contesti. Partendo dalla principale letteratura ispirata dalla prospettiva socio-spaziale delle scienze sociali, in particolare saranno individuate le principali dimensione di analisi per la progettazione di spazi abilitanti, di spazi cioè dotati di elevata accessibilità, eterogeneità di usi, capacità di promuovere relazioni e facilità nel generare attaccamento al luogo. The everyday spaces of contemporary cities seem to generate an increasing outsidness and difficulty in being domesticated and considered as significant places because dominant urban policies disregard the anthropological need of the inhabitants to 'make space' in their everyday life. The aim of the article is to analyse the contribution that it could provide to fill this gap by the socio-anthropological viewpoint that focuses the attention on the intersubjective experiences of the inhabitants and the specificity of the contexts. Starting from the main literature inspired by the socio-spatial perspective, in particular, will be identified the main dimensions of analysis for the design of enabling spaces, that is spaces with high accessibility and heterogeneity of uses and ability to promote interactions and generating place attachment. Parole chiave: spazi abilitanti; socio-antropologia; interdisciplinarità; attaccamento al luogo; capitale spaziale; accessibilità; appropriazione degli spazi; pianificazione urbana; prospettiva socio-spaziale. Le città contemporanee sono in forte difficoltà e non solo per i tradizionali problemi di disequilibrio ecologico ma anche per il fatto che gli spazi di vita quotidiana che le compongono sembrano 'funzionare' sempre meno e generare addirittura un crescente spaesamento. Un numero sempre più rilevante di strade, piazze Tracce Urbane, 6, Dicembre 2019.

Conceptually embedded in an ethnological and a sociological research career that is evolving in and on urban Brazil, this essay comparatively gazes at a dispute in current German-speaking urban sociology that was explicitly addressed by three articles of the dossier “Uproar in Urban Sociology” (Leviathan 41/2, 2013). The debate concerns a lineage of studies on the Eigenlogik of cities, the assumption that an “intrinsic logic” structures city dwellers’ everyday impression that cities differ from one another. By sociologically contextualizing the three papers, and critically evaluating their possibilities and limitations as to the development of the discussion, I end up arguing that, from a comparative viewpoint, this controversy in German urban sociology is less controversial than it seems.

This article demonstrates the use of spatial regression models in social scientific survey research. Self-rated health and feeling of unsafety were chosen as topics for the illustrative practical example. The rationale for this choice is threefold. First, both are central areas of well-being. Second, they possess very different spatial structures, which serves well the purposes of illustration. Third, they stem from the two historical roots of the modern spatial analysis, namely, the fields of 19th century epidemiology and criminology.

Spatial analysis offers flexible and underused tools for social scientist. The spatial distribution of the phenomenon of interest can be visualised using  different  scales  or  resolutions.  From  the point of view of modelling, one is able to account for  the  possible  spatial  autocorrelation  of  the phenomena, which results in more correct estimates. It is possible that the substantial interpretations depend on whether or not one accounts for spatial autocorrelation. In our illustrative example, feeling of unsafety has a stronger spatial structure than self-rated health. As a consequence, accounting for spatial correlation makes a difference in the case of unsafety, contrary to that of self-rated health. The point estimates of the contextual variables diminish rather markedly in the spatial models of unsafety when compared to the standard models.

This article methodologically develops one theoretical issue regarding the sociological debate on relational space: How do past, present and future times interfere in the relations between human bodies and in their interconnectedness with material and/or symbolic goods in places, by considering that space is generated through these relations? After demonstrating the absence of this issue in the debate, the article presents a methodology for analytically identifying and conceptually interpreting the relational space produced through historically relational time in relational bodies in places, with the aid of Henri Lefebvre's dialectical concerns with everyday life and the production of space. In order to show the approach 'in action', the study focuses on the rules of pedestrians' body conduct in the cathedral square of the Brazilian city of São Paulo in 2013–2014. Hence the approach is analytically complemented by Erving Goffman's phenomenological approach to the bodily dimension of social interaction. In conclusion, three contributions of this methodology for relational-spatial sociology are summarized. Assuming that the particularity of the human body throughout the history of sociology lies in the simultaneity of physical and symbolic skills (for a summary see Knoblauch, 2005: 92–95), and that the sociological debate on so-called relational space concerns the various

Öz Bu çalışmada Gazi Mahallesi'nde yaşayan ya da çocukluk ve erken gençlik yıllarında bu mahallede yaşamış olan yükseköğretim mezunu gençlerin mekânsal deneyimleri ele alınmış, söz konusu bu gençlerin kentle kurdukları ilişki eğitim süreçleri ekseninde anlaşılmaya çalışılmıştır. Bunun için gençlerin eğitim hayatları boyunca devam ettikleri okulların kentteki yerleşimlerinin bu gençlerin deneyimleri üzerinde nasıl konumlandığı irdelenmiş, böylelikle eğitimin mekânsal boyutu sorgulanmıştır. Bu kapsamda nitel araştırma yöntemi kullanılarak fenomenolojik bir desenden hareket edilmiştir. Bu çerçevede yaşları yirmi üç ile yirmi dokuz arasında değişen 13 kişi ile yarı yapılandırılmış mülakat yapılmıştır. Veriler Atlas.ti programı kullanılarak yorumlayıcı fenomenolojik analize tabi tutulmuştur. Buna göre katılımcıların mekânsal pratiklerinin şekillenmesinde eğitim aldıkları okulun kentsel konumunun rol oynadığı görülmüştür. Bunun aynı zamanda katılımcıların mekânsal beğeni yargılarını da şekillendiren bir mekanizmaya işaret ettiği anlaşılmıştır. Bu anlamda katılımcıların yaşadığı mekânsal aidiyet ve bunun neden olduğu sosyal ve kültürel mesafe sorunları da ele alınmış, bu durumun eğitim yoluyla sağlanan hareketlilik sayesinde aşılabileceği sonucuna varılmıştır.

This essay aims to demonstrate that three methodological traits of German urban sociology
of the 1990s and 2000s – i.e. traits that relate to the logical operations mobilized
by recent urban reasearchers in German-speaking countries in order to explain
empirically given sociospatial features of small, medium-sized or big German cities -
particularize German urban sociology amid analogous debates extant respectively in
contemporary Brazil (and Latin America in general), France and the Anglo-American
world within the context of a globalized economy. Therefore my starting point is
a specific anthropological perspective, a Brazilian point of view, given that my apprehension
of the conceptual accounts of German urban sociology is underpinned by
a particular “comparative consciousness” (NADER, 1994, p. 89).

Ce n'est pas n'importe quelle rue qui peut servir de territoire d' « un mouvement empêche . La possibilité, dans les faits, de l'identifier dans les rues et sur les places publiques des villes occidentales d'aujourd'hui, dépend de la coexistence phénoménique de pas moins de quatre règles implicites dans l'usage corporel, physique, de l'espace par les piétons. Il s'agit respectivement de deux régularités symboliques à la médiation des comportements corporels de ces types urbains et de deux autres modèles qui sont des intermédiaires de leurs interactions sociales dans ces  routes et voies publiques que la notion de « rue » résume, en termes conceptuels.