EU and peripheral cultural (musical) politices and policies A proposal for a doctoral thesis (draft b, spring 2004)
Basis for international referee article/articles, some of the following themes would be discussed:
Special characteristics of the cultural politics in Lapland (as a case of peripheral/local but internationally acclaimed cultural institutions)
centralised but de-centralising
what is the political motive of localised cultural politics? Education?
why does the Chamber Orchestra of Lapland play in primary school halls?
compare with the cultural politics in Sweden, Norway
EU and periphery politics
e.g. the Eurovision song contest: new countries (or peripheries), like Latvia, have been shown some cultural/political sympathy
new member countries in the EU; some of them are traditional musical centres, but politically/economically quite peripheral in the European context
Theories of peripheries
orchestras/other musical institutions in other peripheral European areas
traditional centres with a national tradition and symphonic composers of their own: Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Prague Philharmonic, the London Orchestras
have been challenged with progressive programming choices lately
centres with no strong orchestral tradition: Paris, Italy (opera instead)
semi-peripheries (or peripheries of the centres): Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra, Schleswig-Holstein, local BBC orchestras (Scottish orchestra plays lots of local music)
new musical centres, or new semi-peripheries with a tradition of their own: Toulouse
peripheries: Lahti Symphony Orchestra, Gothenburg, Oslo, Iceland
traditional peripheries: Barcelona, Oulu, Jyväskylä
peri-peripheries: Lohja, Kuhmo, other local orchestras in Finland, Umeå, Bergen
peri-peripheries: local orchestras with a profile of their own: Vantaa, Rovaniemi. Do they have a special local mission or are they nationally/internationally orientated?
new peripheries: Petroskoi, Archangel
new peripheries/old centres: Prague, Budapest, Warsaw
Why is it advantageous to show up as a patron of culture (or sports)?
Ilkka Kanerva, Tanja Karpela, Matti Ahde, Suvi Lindén, Silvio Berlusconi comp. with Lennart Meri, Vaclav Havel
Music sociology: the traditions from musicology or sociology. Musicological tradition has as its starting point the institutions of music making, sociology is mostly concentrated in audience research.
Sociology of music: is here established
Programming policies
theories of postmodernism; crossover
choice of what is being performed; decided by whom, which are the motives?
Political will:
why is music considered to be of central importance in Finland (not other arts); the national myth of “Sauna, sisu, Sibelius”
since 1960s music institutions, conservatories have expanded in Finland but also elsewhere
the general professional level and quantity of musicians has expanded
new generation of conservatory-raised musicians have occupied the local orchestras
the musical standard of local orchestras has improved considerably
little later: more local orchestras have been founded
keskiviikkona 18. marraskuuta 2009
Local, National and International Interpretations of the Importance of a Local Cultural Institute and Reception of Challenging Programming
Research Proposal for a Doctoral Thesis -
Local, National and International Interpretations of the Importance of a Local Cultural Institute and Reception of Challenging Programming - Case the Chamber Orchestra of Lapland
Spring, 2004
Music is a commodity of a special kind. It is immaterial by nature, although it can be obtained by buying material objects like recordings. In this study, I will try to sort out the logic how people do consume music as a cultural and a service product. What is special in this case, how do music critics worldwide, nationally and locally react to the Chamber Orchestra of Lapland, as it is a local institute having become famous for its attempts to cross over the traditional definitions of musical genres. As a starting point, I try to solve out if the audience’ choice is conservative or tolerant of challenging concert programs, and whether this same approach to culture also applies to music critics. I will also develop the theoretical concepts of symbolic consumption and imaginary groups. The original idea of this study is accepted at the University of Helsinki; also some contacts with Sibelius Academy have been taken.
Culture can be seen as a service product (by Kolb 2000, pages 136-141): it is a convenience product, a comparison product and a speciality product.
There are external factors influencing consumer choice (Kolb 2000, pages 123-130); according to Kolb such as education, ethnic culture, reference groups, family and social class. Then there are motivators that might be called as “internal” reasons for attendance, mentioned by Kolb (pages 107-110) e.g. leisure and entertainment, social ritual and self-improvement, or likeas divided in a survey conducted in France internal factors influencing cultural choices can be divided into three main groups: educational motives: cultural “meat”, learning from the performance, intellectual stimulation: personal development, an intellectual challenge and pleasure: social, interaction, communication (Bouder-Pailler 1999)
This division of external and internal motivators stresses out the notion that consumer choice of musical products is deeply a social venture practiced, determined, renewed, constructed and produced by individual consumer choices. It goes both ways; of course also the choice and the possibility the choose is determined by the available cultural products.
The quantitative aspect of the cultural consuming and participation can be tackled through different cultural statistics. Some comparative studies based on this data are already being made; in the study I use here included were Ireland, Scotland and Finland because of the comparable population scale, Northern Ireland, Wales, England because of similarity in language, norms, administration and France because it is a model country in cultural activity and expenditure. Following indicators were then used: aggregate attendance in arts events, patterns of attendance at selected arts events, ownership of items of consumer electronics, use of home-based technology as a means of accessing the arts for selected artforms, participation in amateur activities and attitudes to the arts (Clancy 1999, 223-244; in the book edited by Fitzgibbon&Kelly).
My aim is to have a picture of the logic and evaluation process of social appreciations and cultural classifications that define the consumer’s social position in the field of collecting music and to try to define the factors influencing cultural choices, both individually and socially. In my master’s thesis I claimed that so-called crossover is not easy to apprehend and locate by the music journalists, as they usually are specialists, specialised in one musical genre.
My method will consist of getting familiar with all the relevant cultural statistics and audience research, and then perhaps test by preliminary hypothesis by interviewing attendants of musical events and musical directors. I will also try to have a picture of the musical product as a species of industrially produced and marketed mass entertainment but also as a individual lifestyle-orientated but popularly marketed package of experience. I also have to find all the possible material written about the Chamber Orchestra of Lapland; also articles helping the conseptualisation of the concept crossover.
BACKGROUND LITERATURE for this paper:
From Maestro to Manager. Critical Issues in Arts&Culture Management. Oak Tree Press, Dublin in association with Graduate School of Business&University College Dublin. 1997; Reprinted in 1999. Edited by Anne Fitzgibbon & Anne Kelly
KOLB, Bonita M. (2000): Marketing Cultural Organisations. New Strategies for Attracting Audiences to Classical Music, Dance, Museums, Theatre and Opera. Oak Tree Press, Dublin 2000.
PERUKANGAS, Michael (1998): Musiikkiarvostelut - politiikkaa vai tiedettä. A master’s thesis in sociology, University of Helsinki.
Local, National and International Interpretations of the Importance of a Local Cultural Institute and Reception of Challenging Programming - Case the Chamber Orchestra of Lapland
Spring, 2004
Music is a commodity of a special kind. It is immaterial by nature, although it can be obtained by buying material objects like recordings. In this study, I will try to sort out the logic how people do consume music as a cultural and a service product. What is special in this case, how do music critics worldwide, nationally and locally react to the Chamber Orchestra of Lapland, as it is a local institute having become famous for its attempts to cross over the traditional definitions of musical genres. As a starting point, I try to solve out if the audience’ choice is conservative or tolerant of challenging concert programs, and whether this same approach to culture also applies to music critics. I will also develop the theoretical concepts of symbolic consumption and imaginary groups. The original idea of this study is accepted at the University of Helsinki; also some contacts with Sibelius Academy have been taken.
Culture can be seen as a service product (by Kolb 2000, pages 136-141): it is a convenience product, a comparison product and a speciality product.
There are external factors influencing consumer choice (Kolb 2000, pages 123-130); according to Kolb such as education, ethnic culture, reference groups, family and social class. Then there are motivators that might be called as “internal” reasons for attendance, mentioned by Kolb (pages 107-110) e.g. leisure and entertainment, social ritual and self-improvement, or likeas divided in a survey conducted in France internal factors influencing cultural choices can be divided into three main groups: educational motives: cultural “meat”, learning from the performance, intellectual stimulation: personal development, an intellectual challenge and pleasure: social, interaction, communication (Bouder-Pailler 1999)
This division of external and internal motivators stresses out the notion that consumer choice of musical products is deeply a social venture practiced, determined, renewed, constructed and produced by individual consumer choices. It goes both ways; of course also the choice and the possibility the choose is determined by the available cultural products.
The quantitative aspect of the cultural consuming and participation can be tackled through different cultural statistics. Some comparative studies based on this data are already being made; in the study I use here included were Ireland, Scotland and Finland because of the comparable population scale, Northern Ireland, Wales, England because of similarity in language, norms, administration and France because it is a model country in cultural activity and expenditure. Following indicators were then used: aggregate attendance in arts events, patterns of attendance at selected arts events, ownership of items of consumer electronics, use of home-based technology as a means of accessing the arts for selected artforms, participation in amateur activities and attitudes to the arts (Clancy 1999, 223-244; in the book edited by Fitzgibbon&Kelly).
My aim is to have a picture of the logic and evaluation process of social appreciations and cultural classifications that define the consumer’s social position in the field of collecting music and to try to define the factors influencing cultural choices, both individually and socially. In my master’s thesis I claimed that so-called crossover is not easy to apprehend and locate by the music journalists, as they usually are specialists, specialised in one musical genre.
My method will consist of getting familiar with all the relevant cultural statistics and audience research, and then perhaps test by preliminary hypothesis by interviewing attendants of musical events and musical directors. I will also try to have a picture of the musical product as a species of industrially produced and marketed mass entertainment but also as a individual lifestyle-orientated but popularly marketed package of experience. I also have to find all the possible material written about the Chamber Orchestra of Lapland; also articles helping the conseptualisation of the concept crossover.
BACKGROUND LITERATURE for this paper:
From Maestro to Manager. Critical Issues in Arts&Culture Management. Oak Tree Press, Dublin in association with Graduate School of Business&University College Dublin. 1997; Reprinted in 1999. Edited by Anne Fitzgibbon & Anne Kelly
KOLB, Bonita M. (2000): Marketing Cultural Organisations. New Strategies for Attracting Audiences to Classical Music, Dance, Museums, Theatre and Opera. Oak Tree Press, Dublin 2000.
PERUKANGAS, Michael (1998): Musiikkiarvostelut - politiikkaa vai tiedettä. A master’s thesis in sociology, University of Helsinki.
keskiviikkona 23. syyskuuta 2009
Right to the city
In the context of this work, right to the city is about reclaiming the commons. Rights to urban commons have been under threat and enclosures have occurred due to land speculation and due to commons becoming subjected to market forces. Different proposals for relationships between ownership and usage rights of urbanity are discussed in the paper; furthermore, I will postulate the right to urban recreation areas. I will conclude that usage rights of the commons have to be recognized as a primary measure of value of urban, public space.
Right to the city is both a political program declaration and a research concept. I will have a closer look on definitions of urban rights, both in academic papers and in NGO driven declarations. Those proposed in the NGO driven declarations are the more detailed but they are aimed as recommendations for practical implementation; on the other hand, those by scholars are presented as ideals. Here, a proposal for a Lefebvrian transduction from ideals to implementation is needed and attempted; for this purpose, I will present a how-to-read for his conception.
I will maintain that Right to the City is:
- an urban application of citizenship rights
- an urban human rights programme
- a definition of relationships and processes
A wide notion of commons, including social and cultural commons, is at the core of the Right to the City. Essential about commons is not ownership but usage rights. Commons are an antithesis to the ubiquitous commercialization of urbanity. I will discuss some proposals to maintain, manage, reclaim or enclose the commons. Furthermore, I will present a few examples to illustrate these proposals.
I will postulate that the cry for reclaiming the urban commons is about the Lefebvrian rights to the city, including rights to the centrality, right to social life, right to access to and definition of production of space, right to environs (habitat and to inhabit), right to full usage of moments and places and right to appropriation (usage rights, as opposite to private property).
As David Harvey calls for re-birth of urban commons, and to him, this requires mobilization for recognizing derivative rights, they perhaps have to be placed ahead of the previously recognized basic rights. This has implications to what includes to the Right to the City declaration, to define commoning as the most general and fundamental of urban rights.
Right to the city is both a political program declaration and a research concept. I will have a closer look on definitions of urban rights, both in academic papers and in NGO driven declarations. Those proposed in the NGO driven declarations are the more detailed but they are aimed as recommendations for practical implementation; on the other hand, those by scholars are presented as ideals. Here, a proposal for a Lefebvrian transduction from ideals to implementation is needed and attempted; for this purpose, I will present a how-to-read for his conception.
I will maintain that Right to the City is:
- an urban application of citizenship rights
- an urban human rights programme
- a definition of relationships and processes
A wide notion of commons, including social and cultural commons, is at the core of the Right to the City. Essential about commons is not ownership but usage rights. Commons are an antithesis to the ubiquitous commercialization of urbanity. I will discuss some proposals to maintain, manage, reclaim or enclose the commons. Furthermore, I will present a few examples to illustrate these proposals.
I will postulate that the cry for reclaiming the urban commons is about the Lefebvrian rights to the city, including rights to the centrality, right to social life, right to access to and definition of production of space, right to environs (habitat and to inhabit), right to full usage of moments and places and right to appropriation (usage rights, as opposite to private property).
As David Harvey calls for re-birth of urban commons, and to him, this requires mobilization for recognizing derivative rights, they perhaps have to be placed ahead of the previously recognized basic rights. This has implications to what includes to the Right to the City declaration, to define commoning as the most general and fundamental of urban rights.
sunnuntaina 3. toukokuuta 2009
Gir markaloven Marka til folket?
Ifølge miljøvernminister Erik Solheim er det ingen motsetninger mellom den reviderte markaloven og økt fremkommelighet og bruk av Marka.
Selvsagt representerer Marka mangfold i naturen, men der er nærheten til Oslo som gjør den helt unik. Det er antakelig ingen annen byskog i en slik kaliber i hele verden; man kan faktisk snakke om Oslo som en blågrønn by. Hva som gjør bynaturen unik er at den betyr noe for byfolket. Dets bruk er dets betydning, og flerbruk betyr at det finnes flere forskjellige fortellinger om Marka og flere forskjellige grunn for Oslomarka å eksistere. Alle disse brukene har friluftsinteresser til felles.
Natur og kultur betraktes ofte som motsetninger. Det er ikke slik. De fleste måten man bruker naturen er tilknyttet til særtradisjoner og særpraksiser. Og valget av den selve måten, hvordan man bruker naturen, er også kulturelt motivert.
Den store amerikanske nabolags- og parkforskeren Jane Jacobs hevde att parker tilbyr et sted for det sosiale livet man har i nabolaget. Hvis det ikke finnes en park i nabolaget må man reise videre, for eksempel til Oslomarka. Marka er ingen substitutt for nabolagssosialitet, men den er mer enn en substitutt for nabolagsparker, som er mangelvare her i Oslo. Man kan si at Marka er en nabolagspark for alle! Men, hvem er alle? Hvilke interesser har disse "alle"?
I den ideale verden har Solheim rett. De aktiviteter man pleier å knytte til Marka trenger skognaturen rundt seg. Det er ikke lurt å skyte elg eller mulig å leie en skistue i Frognerparken eller St. Hanshaugen. Men det er naiv å negligere de motsetninger som i praktikken utgjørs av flerbruket med forskjellige interesser. Spørsmålet er, hvilken særinteresse har de sterkeste lobbyen og beste argumentene.
Hvis Oslomarka er et ekstrem av bynaturen, er selve byparker det andre ekstremet. Begge brukes til friluftsliv. Planleggeren av New York Central Park, Frederic Law Olmsted legitimerte byparkene som alminnelige og demokratiske rettigheter for byfolket. Selv om marken som er utnyttbar for bygninger av forskjellige slag og trafikkfunksjon er mangelvare i store byer, er det utenkbar at bruke marken i Central Park til noe annet enn alminnelige friluftsinteresser. Det er nettopp disse interesser man vil verne med en særlov. Hvis en riktig stor by som New York kan garantere friluftsområdene sine, kan det ikke være umulig for en minimetropolis som Oslo, med eller uten en særlov.
Michael Perukangas
parkforsker
keskiviikkona 29. huhtikuuta 2009
“From Spinning Jenny via George Best and Joy Division: David Beckham and beyond. The New Order of Manchester”
What is Manchester?
Manchester was probably the first town in the world to become known as an industrial town. By the mid-19th century it was known as the cottonopolis; now it is known as a foremost center of and trend setter in popular culture. Band Joy Division is perhaps better known for its influence than its music; the same can be said about its reincarnation, the New Order and the Smiths.
Football players David Beckham, and George Best already in the late 1960s were pop stars in their own rights. Indeed the fame of George Best in the late 60s was reminiscent of that of the Beatles (Best 2003, 175; 269), with whom Best socialized himself. Now perhaps the best known Mancunian is Cristiano Ronaldo, a Portuguese football player.
The transition of Manchester from a rusty industrial town into a postindustrial pop-city will be studied by using the definitions of postmodernity and postindustrialism by Mike Featherstone, Fredric Jameson and Jean Baudrillard. Also the importance of culture to the city branding will be studied.
As the Fordism and post-Fordism not only refer to production regimes but also to consumption patterns, cultural forms, individual and collective identities, and patterns of social and political regulation, this should result in a greater understanding of Manchester’s specificity (Mole 1996, 19-20). As Manchester is trying to seek pastures new after the collapse of the textile industries, the possible answer as the new main source of income is to be found in entertainment, investment, tourism and service industries (Haslam 1999, xi). As the industrial Manchester was defined by the daytime labor, and hooked on pleasure, now only the pleasure remains. Manchester now lives of consuming, not of producing (ibid., xiv-xvi). A Mancunian, Noel Gallagher of the band Oasis recalls his youth:
“When my generation left school, they had only three choices offered them: football, music or the dole. That’s why there are so many big rock groups from the North” (ibid., xxvii).
The dawn of the industrial town: Manchester the cottonopolis
Manchester didn’t rise from the ashes by the dawn of the industrialism. It existed already in the Roman era, but since the mid-16th century it gained in importance by the introduction of textile manufacturing, and its mechanization since the 1770s, furthermore contributed to setting up new manufactures in the Lancashire region. The seminal invention in this process was the steam engine by James Watt, first used in textile factories in 1783 (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SCwatt.htm). Manchester was the centre of the Lancashire region that was involved in the development. (Goodman & Chant 1999, 31-32.)
The networking of raw materials into Manchester and finished products into surroundings was made possible by then exceptionally developed transportation systems; the other towns of the region – such as Bolton, Bury, Rochdale, Oldham, Blackburn and Preston - were connected to Manchester by canals. A railroad in 1830 – one of first in the world -provided another connection for the Lancashire towns to Manchester and thus contributing greatly to birth of an industrial region. (ibid., 32-33; 43.)
However, the label of cottonopolis doesn’t do full justice to the industrial Manchester. It had a burgeoning engine industry, although largely fuelled by the needs of machinery in the textile industry. Although Manchester expanded during the heyday of textile manufacturing (from 70 000 in 1801 to 505 000 in 1891), still it employed less than one fourth of the men. (ibid., 34-35.)
The manufacturing process applied by the Manchester’s cotton industry might have had pre-Fordist features, as its textile manufactures concentrated each only in one stage of the spinning process (Mole 1996, 21). However, in scale it can’t be called as properly Fordist as it would have implied the domination of a few large, vertically integrated firms. The cotton industry in Lancashire was occupied by numerous small family companies.
By the 1920s the Lancashire cotton industry became forced out by American and continental producers, providing new products produced by using new technologies, in competitive price and quality. Even on the protected domestic markets it faced the rising, low-cost competition from India, Egypt and China, so indeed the decay of the Manchester’s cotton industry was due to Fordist mass production (Mole 1996, 22-23).
What about the cityscape of Manchester, then? Even the factories were overshadowed by warehouses in its urban space. The city was of extremes of poverty and wealth. Its centre was conceived as “dead” as it was filled with smoke. (Goodman & Chant 1999, 40.)
“Manchester is an agglomeration, the most extraordinary, the most interesting, and in some respects, the most monstrous, which the progress of society has presented. The first impression is far from favourable. Its position is devoid of picturesque relief, and the horizon of clearness. Amid the fogs which exhale from this marshy district, and the clouds of smoke vomited forth from the numberless chimneys, Labour presents a mysterious activity, somewhat akin to the subterraneous action of a volcano… All the houses, all the streets, resemble each other; and yet this uniformity is in the midst of confusion… The waters of the Irk, black and fetid as they are, supply numerous tanneries and dye-works…From this apparently indifferent combination, there results a great economy both of time and wealth in production. There is perhaps good reason for complaint that too little attention has been paid to the health and convenience of the inhabitants; of the want of public squares, fountains, trees, promenades, and well-ventilated buildings; but it is certain that it would be difficult task to devise a plan by which the various products of Industry could be more concentrated, or by which the manufactories should be brought nearer to the fuel which feeds them, or more accessible to facilities for disposing of the goods when manufactured… During the greater part of the day, the town is silent and appears almost deserted… You hear nothing but the breathing of the vast machines, sending forth fire and smoke through their tall chimneys, and offering up to the heavens, as it were in token of homage, the sighs of that Labour which God has imposed upon man. At certain hours of the day the town appears suddenly animated. The operatives going to, or returning from their work, fill the streets by thousands…but even at those times when the inhabitants relax from their arduous duties and give free course to their feelings, they lose nothing of that serious and angular stiffness, which a too exclusive occupation in industrial pursuits communicates to them… ” (Goodman & Chant 1999, 68-70; originally Faucher, L (1844): Manchester in 1844: its present condition and future prospects, London, Simpkin, Marshall, and Manchester, Abel Heywood, pp. 16-19, 90-93.)
Manchester for Europe – never mind London
The idea of Europeanness and cosmopolitanism and the aim of being number one in Europe or in the whole world is a way of by-passing the London’s cultural dominance. The Mancunian rock bands and football clubs are a source of pride for local people. Manchester United is not only the number one in England, but it aims continuously to be that in Europe and in the whole world. Manchester United is perhaps the best known football brand – or sports brand in the world, for that matter.
As London is by nature and history as the earlier capital of the British Empire essentially a cosmopolitan city, Manchester claims also cosmopolitan rights in a backward and rough Northern style. Yet it desperately imitates London or at least, relates itself to London and refers to London (Savage et al 2005, 132-133). The seminal influence of the rising rock culture in Manchester in the latter part of the 70s was Sex Pistols, a London band (Milestone 1996, 97-98). As Bernard Sumner of Joy Division recalls:
“I saw the Sex Pistols. They were terrible. I thought they were great. I wanted to get up and be terrible too.” (ibid.)
Manchester the popmodern city: a conscious strategy or did it just happen?
Does the transformation of Manchester result from conscious decisions or did it just happen? The fortunes of postindustrial or postmodern cities increasingly rest on culture and creativity in their image building, this assumed to have economical trade-offs. Culture as a “soft” industry (as a contrast to the traditional industry) is a major raw material for postindustrial societies (http://www.charleslandry.com/). The postmodern city reconfigures the metropolitan areas around selective connections of strategically located activities (Castells 1998, 144).
`where a bustling office and retail economy combines with a thriving and diverse cultural, entertainment, and visitor economy to provide a prosperity shared by the whole community' (City of Portland, 1991: 4).
This idea of diversity as presented in marketing of Portland is also applied in Manchester in order to attract lifestyle consumers. Cities compete and distinguish themselves by making themselves sites of consumption in which to satisfy demands for commercialized leisure, recreation and seeking for new experiences. (Lees 2003, 614.) Diversity promises a harmonious, win-win picture of future urban development that could attract a heterogeneous coalition of small business owners, corporate interests, arts and educational institutions, municipal officials and residents. (ibid., 622)
The strategic players essential to the forming of Manchester’s new identity are the labour-controlled local authority, the private sector, the Urban Development Corporation and the cultural intermediaries or the pop bohemians (Milestone 1996, 94). Much of Manchester’s recent inner-city activity has been fuelled by the urban development corporations and run by public-private sector partnerships, Task Forces and City Challenges.
The UK urban regeneration was imported into Britain in the early 1980s from the United States by the second Thatcher government. The targeted inner city areas in mostly Northern industrial cities were mainly held by the Labour party, and urban regeneration was to be seen as a response to post-war failure of socialist policies of the 1960s and 1970s. The Thatcher government wanted to encourage free enterprising for ideological reasons, this unfortunately being done at a time of a massive de-industrialisation. This urban regeneration was despised by the Left as a symbol of Thatcherism, hardly supported let alone implemented by the local governments for this reason. Later urban regeneration from the early 1980s was based on a conscious and explicit shift of the economic base from manufacturing to service industries (Mole 1996, 16-18). The Northern Urban Agenda aimed at upgrading the ailing industrial towns of Northern England since the mid-1990s (P. Hall 2002, 417-418). Manchester’s recreation as a cultural city was deeply involved with de-industrialisation and the re-imaging process associated with competition for inward investment (O’Connor & Wynne 1996, 71).
A new order?
How has the new cultural turn succeeded? In a study by Young and Lever (1997) it was found that rather few companies relocated to Manchester due to the Northern Urban Agenda, which used culture to promote the image of Manchester. However, Manchester has been quite successfully marketed to customers, referring to tourists. (T. Hall 2006, 94.)
Perhaps the main manifestation of urban renaissance is gentrification. Urban revitalization strategies aim to attract the middle-class back as residents and taxpayers, but also as consumers. Gentrification of the centre implies the shift from production to consumption, and such entrepreneurs as restaurants and (exclusive) shops are crucial to this. It happens within global economic shifts, including the increasing abstraction of the market, the internationalization of capital and the centrality of consumption to the structuration of the economic system. (O’Connor & Wynne 1996, 51-52)
The fordist spinning factories in Manchester have been replaced by post-Fordist ”pop” designers with flexible and specialist production methods (Purvis 1996, 118). The pop fashion designers are durably successful because they are embedded in their cultural scenes, with their consumers and with other cultural sectors, which, in turn are networked with intelligentsia (Magatti 1993, 35-36; O’Connor & Wynne 1996, 9; Milestone 1996, 102). Gentrification is not just about the redevelopment of the inner city areas, but it also provides a higher profile for groups within the new middle class not only as consumers but as well as producers and carriers of alternative and minority lifestyles by attracting them deliberately (O’Connor & Wynne 1996, 77). In Manchester, the new middle class should be replaced with bohemians (Milestone 1996, 105).
Factory for sale - “Hang out with rock stars”The plan by The Central Manchester Development Corporation (CMDC) to present the image of the new city to developers, private entrepreneurs and the people of Manchester, ear-marked the area between Castlefield and the centre of a large area of disused land and parking lots for a “cultural quarter”. Also a large Victorian goods warehouse was to be developed into a “Festival shopping centre”. The CDMC became a cultural intermediary by justifying cultural value to have economic trade-offs (O’Connor & Wynne 1996, 67).
Previously a working class area of Oldham street was neglected in the 60s and 70s as many workplaces closed and residents left. Later Manchester’s “youth cultural” scene has developed the area with shops, bars and clubs. Afflecks Palace, previously disused three story building, has been converted into low rental units for producers and consumers of the “pop” culture. And what has now become a gay village had previously been a neglected area. (O’Connor & Wynne 1996, 73-74.) An old warehouse can be converted into a hotel, advertising itself with the rock stars that had been sleeping there (Haslam 1999, xix).
In 1978, the fortunes of a run-down inner-city area of Factory club’s changed suddenly to the better by the launching of its Friday Nights; later on, one of the founders of the Factory set up a record company with the same name, exporting Joy Division. According to Bernard Sumner of Joy Division, the spatial and social dislocation in Manchester played a role in the formation of the sinister music of Joy Division. (ibid., xxiii-xxiv).
“The place I used to live, where I had my happiest memories, all that had gone. All that was left was a chemical factory. I realized then that I could never go back to that happiness. So there’s this void. For me Joy Division was about the death of my community and my childhood.”
If factories can be sold, traditions, values and societies are not for sale. The identity forming in the global information flow era takes forms of reactionarism, defensiveneness, fundamentalism, nationalism, territorialism and anti-commercialism. (Castells 1997, 65-66.) Re-emphasizing the locality as a source of meanings and identity is a counter-reaction to the globalization (Featherstone 1995, 95-96).
While football clubs represent societies, as transnational corporations they can be sold. When the American tycoon Malcolm Glazer bought the major share in Manchester United, the loyalist and localist supporters founded a new club, The United of Manchester. It can be seen as a reaction to the global capitalism, as an example of new rise of territorialism and anti-commercialism (http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=1961184755).
Manchester – a victim for a belated and deliberate Fordism
Due to booming economy – based on declining industries - of the post-WW II Great Britain, the underlying societal problems were neglected. “Cynics might compare the postmodern spectacle of Manchester’s canal, Whitworth Street and Piccadilly Village with the Potemkin villages along the river Niva, built to impress the Tsar and obscure the squalor and deprivation behind them”. Favouring of private over public consumption has lead to widening inequalities in income, wealth and life chances (Mole 1996, 40-43.)
The stalling of the continuous economic growth in the 1970s was perhaps nowhere as evident as in the UK towns. The labour government of 1964-1970 belatedly forged a Fordist mass scale system into Manchester when the Fordism was beginning to disintegrate. Local labour markets collapsed, whole areas declined and became dependent on declining subsidies from the state, student occupancy and underground economic activity (ibid., 23-27). Greater Manchester’s economy, its labor market and industrial structure, is still suffering from the consequences of a failed national political strategy. Its consequences are:
- continuous and massive loss of manufacturing employment
- service industry employment increases but not sufficiently to compensate for the decline in manufacturing employment, itself suffering job loss in the recession of the late 80s and early 90s
- the proliferation of poorly-paid and part-time work, especially suffered by women
- high aggregate levels of unemployment approaching 50% in some wards of the city, for some age groups and ethnic minorities. (Mole 1996, 31.)
Besides the non-desirable social and economic consequences, the disintegration of Fordism also has lead to great cultural disruption, especially in the Northern towns, where identity has largely been based on manual and industrial labor. In his comparative analysis of responses to industrial competition in Italy’s Ticino Olana and Lancashire, Magatti found out that in Lancashire, “industrial transformation destroyed not only the traditional specialization in cotton but also local industrial identity” (Magatti 1993, 216-217)
Is Manchester a postmodern city or just postindustrial?
According to O’Connor and Wynne, there have been three interwoven main themes in the postmodern urbanity discussions in the 1980s and 90s:
1. A process of restructuring in which many of those activities deemed peripheral to the activity of the “productive” or “Fordist” city have now moved centre stage and become a major concern for cities; culture, consumption and image
2. A gentrification, whereby a reversal of the movement out of the city centre by the affluent classes results in a “re-centralisation” of previously “marginal” areas of the city centre
3. The process whereby previously “marginal” groups and their activities have been made central to the city and/or have made the city centre central to themselves – not just residentially, but also by their uses of the centre, and by such usage being promoted, by themselves or others, as a primary sign of the “centrality” of that centre. (O’Connor & Wynne 1996, 4.)
The new entrepreneurship meets the following challenges in a postmodern Manchester:
- do they (new cultural enterprises) represent a different logic of the city’s economy or are they marginal and superficial?
- is their potential scope and significance greater that is indicated in the statistics?
- are they anything more than the lifestyle choice of an unrepresentative, urban middle class? (Magatti 1993, 38-39.)
If Manchester is a postindustrial city, is it postmodern? In a Featherstonian sense it might well be. Firstly, if consumption has a growing importance in forming Manchester and its economy, as postmodern cities are characterized by the expansion of the cultural sphere and leisure consumption, spaces of play and entertainment (Featherstone 1991, 96-101). Not only the use value of products is consumed but also mediated cultural activities and signifying practices, signs and images. (Featherstone 1995, 75.)
An empirical research by Wynne (1992), emerging from a consultancy document by the regional arts board in conjuction with the local city economic regeneration agency, The Economic Importance of the Arts Cultural Industries in Greater Manchester (CER, 1989) examined new forms of cultural consumption and the construction of lifestyle in the contemporary Manchester. These forms were associated with the following trends:
1. the dramatic increase in the production and consumption of symbolic goods
2. the shift of consumption from use value to sign value
3. the destabilization of established symbolic hierarchies through the articulation of alternative tastes and styles
4. the rise of popular and commercial cultures as alternative forms challenging established “high culture”
5. the emergence of new urban spaces creating “play spaces” for new forms of sociability, leading to;
6. new forms of display and social mixing representing a movement away from rational goal directed activity, permitting a more playful, carnivalesque exploration of emotions – a preoccupation with the esthetization and “stylization of life” as opposed to more fixed lifestyles (Mole 1996, 4.)
Three significant results from this research suggest that:
1. the emergence of a “mix and match” lifestyle amongst the 18-35 age group who are the most prominent in the use of the cultural and leisure facilities of the city centre, usually associated with artistic, bohemian or counter-cultural milieus
2. the extension of the notion of “cultural intermediaries” from the new middle class to a much wider range of the population, through the increased involvement of popular culture in the creation of the new city centre sites of consumption
3. these new and extended forms of cultural consumption, characterized by rapid turnover and complex distinctions, were feeding directly into involvement in cultural production to supply these new markets (Mole 1996, 5.)
Secondly, we have to assume the everyday life in Manchester to be estetized, a typical condition in postmodernity, especially in large towns (Featherstone 1991, 23.) These towns are places for flaneurism, artistic and intellectual counter-cultures, bohemians and artistic avant-garde, being the essential intermediaries of meanings and experiences of places. (Featherstone 2001, 80-87). Nevertheless, gathering of bohemians, avant-garde and counter-cultures in big cities is nothing new. They were already found in big cities in the mid-19th century.
The displacement of the industries in the many industrial towns in 70s and 80s Britain suggests that if modernism is to be treated synonymously with industrialism, cities like Manchester are now certainly living a post-industrial era. However, Manchester will be unable to develop a sustainable post-Fordist economy without fundamental changes in policy and social institutions and support from local governments. If Jameson is right, it is not postmodern. If postmodernity is deemed to be a reaction for modernity, a proper postmodernity is an alternative to modernity, requiring a radical break of it. It is not a revised edition of modernity, modernity 2.0 or mature modernity. (Jameson 2002, 215.) Jameson uses the term of postmodernism as there is no better alternative available at the moment, neither for Jameson or for Manchester.
As for Jameson this break primarily is an aesthetic one rather than a break from social or societal conditions of modernity, he has no answer for the challenges of postindustrialism. In a Baudrillardian view, the current era is of a simulation, where social reproduction replaces industrial production as the organizing principle of the society. Labor is not primarily productive but a sign of one’s social position and way of life. (Kellner 1994, 7-9.)
It would indeed be out-of-place to claim that the collapse in industrial production and the erosion of industrial work based identities would represent anything else than a void in social relations, emptied meanings in everyday life and indeed in the deprived livelihoods of the many of the Manchester’s working class. There is nothing ironic in their fates. It would be absurb to claim that their everyday life world would be fittingly called as esthetisized, or that they would have become all of a sudden from consumers to producers of the public urban space. Besides, consumption is not just a matter of wants, desires, attitudes, culture etc.; but of money too! (Mole 1996, 42).
The entertainment industries that mark Manchester – football and music – employ by spin-offs in advertising, marketing and designing, as networking is typical of this branch (Haslam 1999, xv). Nevertheless, the scale importance of these spin-offs is exaggerated. Magatti suspects that post-Fordist economy would ever employ significantly in Manchester, the “celebrated cultural industries employing less than 1% of the workforce” (in 1992). And stamping of cultural industries or fashion as postindustrial is by no means unproblematic as they produce in their own rights as well (Magatti 2003, 31-34).
If the new centre of Manchester has gentrified into cosmopolitan and diverse, this is in a contrast with the largely unchanged livelihoods of its suburbs, with concentrated poverty, unemployment and intolerant tendencies (O’Connor & Wynne 1996, 71-72.)
From the effects Magatti refers to are excluded the impacts on Mancunians’ self-perception of their city as lifted up by the celebrated Prides of Manchester. The best known “palace” of the entertainment industries in Manchester, the football stadium of Old Trafford is a theatre of dreams indeed! (Moore 2003, 199).
SOURCES:
Best, George (2003): Scoring at Half-Time. Random House
Castells, Manuel (1997): The Power of Identity. Blackwell Publishers,Oxford
Castells, Manuel (1998): End of millennium. Blackwell Publishers,Oxford
Featherstone, Mike (2001): Postmodernisme og estetisering av hverdagslivet. In ”Magiske systemer” (2001). Edited by Skorstad, Atle and Nyre, Lars. Spartacus, Oslo.
Featherstone, Mike (1995): Undoing culture. Globalization, Postmodernism and Identity. Sage, London.
Featherstone, Mike (1991): Consumer culture and postmodernism. Sage, London.
Goodman, David and Chant, Colin (eds.) (1999): European Cities & Technology. Industrial to post-industrial cityThe Open University, published by Routledge
Haslam, Dave (1999): Manchester, England, The story of the pop cult city. Fourth estate, London
Holt, Nick, Lloyd, Guy: Total football (2005). Flame Tree Publishing.
Jameson, Fredric (2002): A Singular Modernity. Essay on the Ontology of the Present. Verso, London.
Kellner, Douglas (1994): Introduction: Jean Baudrillard in the Fin-de-Millennium. In Baudrillard. A critical reader. Blackwell, Oxford
Lees, Loretta (2003): The Ambivalence of Diversity and the Politics of Urban Renaissance: The Case of Youth in Downtown Portland, Maine. In IJURR, vol. 27 no. 3,pp. 613-634)
Luke, Timothy W. (1995): New World Order or Neo-world orders: Power, Politics and Ideology in Informationalizing Glocalities. In Global Modernities, edited by Featherstone, Mike, Lash, Scott, Robertson, Roland. Sage, London
Magatti, Mauro (1993): The Market and Social Forces: a Comparative Analysis of Industrial Change. In IJURR vol. 17 no 2, pp. 213-231
Mole, Phil (1996): Fordism, post-Fordism and the contemporary city. In From the Margins to the Centre. Cultural production and consumption in the post-industrial city. Edited by
Moore, Glenn (ed.) (2005): The Concise Encyclopedia of World Football. Parragon.
O’Connor, Justin and Wynne, Derek. Aldershot.
O’Connor, Justin, Wynne, Derek (1996). Left loafing: city cultures and new urban economies of hedonism. In From the Margins to the Centre. Cultural production and consumption in the post-industrial city. Edited by O’Connor, Justin and Wynne, Derek. Aldershot.
Purvis, Sarah (1996): The interchangeable roles of the producer, consumer and cultural intermediary. The new “pop” fashion designer. In From the Margins to the Centre. Cultural production and consumption in the post-industrial city. Edited by O’Connor, Justin and Wynne, Derek. Aldershot.
Savage, Michael, Bagnall, Gaynor, Longhurst, Brian (2003): Suburbia and the aura of place. In Globalization and Belonging, Sage.
The Concise Encyclopedia of World Football. Parragon.
http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=1961184755. Downloaded in 16th April, 2009.
http://www.charleslandry.com/ . Downloaded in 16th April, 2009.
http://www.fc-utd.co.uk/index.php. Downloaded in 16th April, 2009.l
http://www.manchester.com/. Downloaded in 16th April, 2009.
http://www.manchester2002-uk.com/. Downloaded in 16th April, 2009.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/teams/m/man_utd/4541093.stm. Downloaded in 16th April, 2009.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SCwatt.htm. Downloaded in 15th April, 2009.
LITERATURE:
Landry, Charles: The Creative City (2000). Earthscan
Wynne, Derek (1992): The Culture Industry.
Manchester was probably the first town in the world to become known as an industrial town. By the mid-19th century it was known as the cottonopolis; now it is known as a foremost center of and trend setter in popular culture. Band Joy Division is perhaps better known for its influence than its music; the same can be said about its reincarnation, the New Order and the Smiths.
Football players David Beckham, and George Best already in the late 1960s were pop stars in their own rights. Indeed the fame of George Best in the late 60s was reminiscent of that of the Beatles (Best 2003, 175; 269), with whom Best socialized himself. Now perhaps the best known Mancunian is Cristiano Ronaldo, a Portuguese football player.
The transition of Manchester from a rusty industrial town into a postindustrial pop-city will be studied by using the definitions of postmodernity and postindustrialism by Mike Featherstone, Fredric Jameson and Jean Baudrillard. Also the importance of culture to the city branding will be studied.
As the Fordism and post-Fordism not only refer to production regimes but also to consumption patterns, cultural forms, individual and collective identities, and patterns of social and political regulation, this should result in a greater understanding of Manchester’s specificity (Mole 1996, 19-20). As Manchester is trying to seek pastures new after the collapse of the textile industries, the possible answer as the new main source of income is to be found in entertainment, investment, tourism and service industries (Haslam 1999, xi). As the industrial Manchester was defined by the daytime labor, and hooked on pleasure, now only the pleasure remains. Manchester now lives of consuming, not of producing (ibid., xiv-xvi). A Mancunian, Noel Gallagher of the band Oasis recalls his youth:
“When my generation left school, they had only three choices offered them: football, music or the dole. That’s why there are so many big rock groups from the North” (ibid., xxvii).
The dawn of the industrial town: Manchester the cottonopolis
Manchester didn’t rise from the ashes by the dawn of the industrialism. It existed already in the Roman era, but since the mid-16th century it gained in importance by the introduction of textile manufacturing, and its mechanization since the 1770s, furthermore contributed to setting up new manufactures in the Lancashire region. The seminal invention in this process was the steam engine by James Watt, first used in textile factories in 1783 (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SCwatt.htm). Manchester was the centre of the Lancashire region that was involved in the development. (Goodman & Chant 1999, 31-32.)
The networking of raw materials into Manchester and finished products into surroundings was made possible by then exceptionally developed transportation systems; the other towns of the region – such as Bolton, Bury, Rochdale, Oldham, Blackburn and Preston - were connected to Manchester by canals. A railroad in 1830 – one of first in the world -provided another connection for the Lancashire towns to Manchester and thus contributing greatly to birth of an industrial region. (ibid., 32-33; 43.)
However, the label of cottonopolis doesn’t do full justice to the industrial Manchester. It had a burgeoning engine industry, although largely fuelled by the needs of machinery in the textile industry. Although Manchester expanded during the heyday of textile manufacturing (from 70 000 in 1801 to 505 000 in 1891), still it employed less than one fourth of the men. (ibid., 34-35.)
The manufacturing process applied by the Manchester’s cotton industry might have had pre-Fordist features, as its textile manufactures concentrated each only in one stage of the spinning process (Mole 1996, 21). However, in scale it can’t be called as properly Fordist as it would have implied the domination of a few large, vertically integrated firms. The cotton industry in Lancashire was occupied by numerous small family companies.
By the 1920s the Lancashire cotton industry became forced out by American and continental producers, providing new products produced by using new technologies, in competitive price and quality. Even on the protected domestic markets it faced the rising, low-cost competition from India, Egypt and China, so indeed the decay of the Manchester’s cotton industry was due to Fordist mass production (Mole 1996, 22-23).
What about the cityscape of Manchester, then? Even the factories were overshadowed by warehouses in its urban space. The city was of extremes of poverty and wealth. Its centre was conceived as “dead” as it was filled with smoke. (Goodman & Chant 1999, 40.)
“Manchester is an agglomeration, the most extraordinary, the most interesting, and in some respects, the most monstrous, which the progress of society has presented. The first impression is far from favourable. Its position is devoid of picturesque relief, and the horizon of clearness. Amid the fogs which exhale from this marshy district, and the clouds of smoke vomited forth from the numberless chimneys, Labour presents a mysterious activity, somewhat akin to the subterraneous action of a volcano… All the houses, all the streets, resemble each other; and yet this uniformity is in the midst of confusion… The waters of the Irk, black and fetid as they are, supply numerous tanneries and dye-works…From this apparently indifferent combination, there results a great economy both of time and wealth in production. There is perhaps good reason for complaint that too little attention has been paid to the health and convenience of the inhabitants; of the want of public squares, fountains, trees, promenades, and well-ventilated buildings; but it is certain that it would be difficult task to devise a plan by which the various products of Industry could be more concentrated, or by which the manufactories should be brought nearer to the fuel which feeds them, or more accessible to facilities for disposing of the goods when manufactured… During the greater part of the day, the town is silent and appears almost deserted… You hear nothing but the breathing of the vast machines, sending forth fire and smoke through their tall chimneys, and offering up to the heavens, as it were in token of homage, the sighs of that Labour which God has imposed upon man. At certain hours of the day the town appears suddenly animated. The operatives going to, or returning from their work, fill the streets by thousands…but even at those times when the inhabitants relax from their arduous duties and give free course to their feelings, they lose nothing of that serious and angular stiffness, which a too exclusive occupation in industrial pursuits communicates to them… ” (Goodman & Chant 1999, 68-70; originally Faucher, L (1844): Manchester in 1844: its present condition and future prospects, London, Simpkin, Marshall, and Manchester, Abel Heywood, pp. 16-19, 90-93.)
Manchester for Europe – never mind London
The idea of Europeanness and cosmopolitanism and the aim of being number one in Europe or in the whole world is a way of by-passing the London’s cultural dominance. The Mancunian rock bands and football clubs are a source of pride for local people. Manchester United is not only the number one in England, but it aims continuously to be that in Europe and in the whole world. Manchester United is perhaps the best known football brand – or sports brand in the world, for that matter.
As London is by nature and history as the earlier capital of the British Empire essentially a cosmopolitan city, Manchester claims also cosmopolitan rights in a backward and rough Northern style. Yet it desperately imitates London or at least, relates itself to London and refers to London (Savage et al 2005, 132-133). The seminal influence of the rising rock culture in Manchester in the latter part of the 70s was Sex Pistols, a London band (Milestone 1996, 97-98). As Bernard Sumner of Joy Division recalls:
“I saw the Sex Pistols. They were terrible. I thought they were great. I wanted to get up and be terrible too.” (ibid.)
Manchester the popmodern city: a conscious strategy or did it just happen?
Does the transformation of Manchester result from conscious decisions or did it just happen? The fortunes of postindustrial or postmodern cities increasingly rest on culture and creativity in their image building, this assumed to have economical trade-offs. Culture as a “soft” industry (as a contrast to the traditional industry) is a major raw material for postindustrial societies (http://www.charleslandry.com/). The postmodern city reconfigures the metropolitan areas around selective connections of strategically located activities (Castells 1998, 144).
`where a bustling office and retail economy combines with a thriving and diverse cultural, entertainment, and visitor economy to provide a prosperity shared by the whole community' (City of Portland, 1991: 4).
This idea of diversity as presented in marketing of Portland is also applied in Manchester in order to attract lifestyle consumers. Cities compete and distinguish themselves by making themselves sites of consumption in which to satisfy demands for commercialized leisure, recreation and seeking for new experiences. (Lees 2003, 614.) Diversity promises a harmonious, win-win picture of future urban development that could attract a heterogeneous coalition of small business owners, corporate interests, arts and educational institutions, municipal officials and residents. (ibid., 622)
The strategic players essential to the forming of Manchester’s new identity are the labour-controlled local authority, the private sector, the Urban Development Corporation and the cultural intermediaries or the pop bohemians (Milestone 1996, 94). Much of Manchester’s recent inner-city activity has been fuelled by the urban development corporations and run by public-private sector partnerships, Task Forces and City Challenges.
The UK urban regeneration was imported into Britain in the early 1980s from the United States by the second Thatcher government. The targeted inner city areas in mostly Northern industrial cities were mainly held by the Labour party, and urban regeneration was to be seen as a response to post-war failure of socialist policies of the 1960s and 1970s. The Thatcher government wanted to encourage free enterprising for ideological reasons, this unfortunately being done at a time of a massive de-industrialisation. This urban regeneration was despised by the Left as a symbol of Thatcherism, hardly supported let alone implemented by the local governments for this reason. Later urban regeneration from the early 1980s was based on a conscious and explicit shift of the economic base from manufacturing to service industries (Mole 1996, 16-18). The Northern Urban Agenda aimed at upgrading the ailing industrial towns of Northern England since the mid-1990s (P. Hall 2002, 417-418). Manchester’s recreation as a cultural city was deeply involved with de-industrialisation and the re-imaging process associated with competition for inward investment (O’Connor & Wynne 1996, 71).
A new order?
How has the new cultural turn succeeded? In a study by Young and Lever (1997) it was found that rather few companies relocated to Manchester due to the Northern Urban Agenda, which used culture to promote the image of Manchester. However, Manchester has been quite successfully marketed to customers, referring to tourists. (T. Hall 2006, 94.)
Perhaps the main manifestation of urban renaissance is gentrification. Urban revitalization strategies aim to attract the middle-class back as residents and taxpayers, but also as consumers. Gentrification of the centre implies the shift from production to consumption, and such entrepreneurs as restaurants and (exclusive) shops are crucial to this. It happens within global economic shifts, including the increasing abstraction of the market, the internationalization of capital and the centrality of consumption to the structuration of the economic system. (O’Connor & Wynne 1996, 51-52)
The fordist spinning factories in Manchester have been replaced by post-Fordist ”pop” designers with flexible and specialist production methods (Purvis 1996, 118). The pop fashion designers are durably successful because they are embedded in their cultural scenes, with their consumers and with other cultural sectors, which, in turn are networked with intelligentsia (Magatti 1993, 35-36; O’Connor & Wynne 1996, 9; Milestone 1996, 102). Gentrification is not just about the redevelopment of the inner city areas, but it also provides a higher profile for groups within the new middle class not only as consumers but as well as producers and carriers of alternative and minority lifestyles by attracting them deliberately (O’Connor & Wynne 1996, 77). In Manchester, the new middle class should be replaced with bohemians (Milestone 1996, 105).
Factory for sale - “Hang out with rock stars”The plan by The Central Manchester Development Corporation (CMDC) to present the image of the new city to developers, private entrepreneurs and the people of Manchester, ear-marked the area between Castlefield and the centre of a large area of disused land and parking lots for a “cultural quarter”. Also a large Victorian goods warehouse was to be developed into a “Festival shopping centre”. The CDMC became a cultural intermediary by justifying cultural value to have economic trade-offs (O’Connor & Wynne 1996, 67).
Previously a working class area of Oldham street was neglected in the 60s and 70s as many workplaces closed and residents left. Later Manchester’s “youth cultural” scene has developed the area with shops, bars and clubs. Afflecks Palace, previously disused three story building, has been converted into low rental units for producers and consumers of the “pop” culture. And what has now become a gay village had previously been a neglected area. (O’Connor & Wynne 1996, 73-74.) An old warehouse can be converted into a hotel, advertising itself with the rock stars that had been sleeping there (Haslam 1999, xix).
In 1978, the fortunes of a run-down inner-city area of Factory club’s changed suddenly to the better by the launching of its Friday Nights; later on, one of the founders of the Factory set up a record company with the same name, exporting Joy Division. According to Bernard Sumner of Joy Division, the spatial and social dislocation in Manchester played a role in the formation of the sinister music of Joy Division. (ibid., xxiii-xxiv).
“The place I used to live, where I had my happiest memories, all that had gone. All that was left was a chemical factory. I realized then that I could never go back to that happiness. So there’s this void. For me Joy Division was about the death of my community and my childhood.”
If factories can be sold, traditions, values and societies are not for sale. The identity forming in the global information flow era takes forms of reactionarism, defensiveneness, fundamentalism, nationalism, territorialism and anti-commercialism. (Castells 1997, 65-66.) Re-emphasizing the locality as a source of meanings and identity is a counter-reaction to the globalization (Featherstone 1995, 95-96).
While football clubs represent societies, as transnational corporations they can be sold. When the American tycoon Malcolm Glazer bought the major share in Manchester United, the loyalist and localist supporters founded a new club, The United of Manchester. It can be seen as a reaction to the global capitalism, as an example of new rise of territorialism and anti-commercialism (http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=1961184755).
Manchester – a victim for a belated and deliberate Fordism
Due to booming economy – based on declining industries - of the post-WW II Great Britain, the underlying societal problems were neglected. “Cynics might compare the postmodern spectacle of Manchester’s canal, Whitworth Street and Piccadilly Village with the Potemkin villages along the river Niva, built to impress the Tsar and obscure the squalor and deprivation behind them”. Favouring of private over public consumption has lead to widening inequalities in income, wealth and life chances (Mole 1996, 40-43.)
The stalling of the continuous economic growth in the 1970s was perhaps nowhere as evident as in the UK towns. The labour government of 1964-1970 belatedly forged a Fordist mass scale system into Manchester when the Fordism was beginning to disintegrate. Local labour markets collapsed, whole areas declined and became dependent on declining subsidies from the state, student occupancy and underground economic activity (ibid., 23-27). Greater Manchester’s economy, its labor market and industrial structure, is still suffering from the consequences of a failed national political strategy. Its consequences are:
- continuous and massive loss of manufacturing employment
- service industry employment increases but not sufficiently to compensate for the decline in manufacturing employment, itself suffering job loss in the recession of the late 80s and early 90s
- the proliferation of poorly-paid and part-time work, especially suffered by women
- high aggregate levels of unemployment approaching 50% in some wards of the city, for some age groups and ethnic minorities. (Mole 1996, 31.)
Besides the non-desirable social and economic consequences, the disintegration of Fordism also has lead to great cultural disruption, especially in the Northern towns, where identity has largely been based on manual and industrial labor. In his comparative analysis of responses to industrial competition in Italy’s Ticino Olana and Lancashire, Magatti found out that in Lancashire, “industrial transformation destroyed not only the traditional specialization in cotton but also local industrial identity” (Magatti 1993, 216-217)
Is Manchester a postmodern city or just postindustrial?
According to O’Connor and Wynne, there have been three interwoven main themes in the postmodern urbanity discussions in the 1980s and 90s:
1. A process of restructuring in which many of those activities deemed peripheral to the activity of the “productive” or “Fordist” city have now moved centre stage and become a major concern for cities; culture, consumption and image
2. A gentrification, whereby a reversal of the movement out of the city centre by the affluent classes results in a “re-centralisation” of previously “marginal” areas of the city centre
3. The process whereby previously “marginal” groups and their activities have been made central to the city and/or have made the city centre central to themselves – not just residentially, but also by their uses of the centre, and by such usage being promoted, by themselves or others, as a primary sign of the “centrality” of that centre. (O’Connor & Wynne 1996, 4.)
The new entrepreneurship meets the following challenges in a postmodern Manchester:
- do they (new cultural enterprises) represent a different logic of the city’s economy or are they marginal and superficial?
- is their potential scope and significance greater that is indicated in the statistics?
- are they anything more than the lifestyle choice of an unrepresentative, urban middle class? (Magatti 1993, 38-39.)
If Manchester is a postindustrial city, is it postmodern? In a Featherstonian sense it might well be. Firstly, if consumption has a growing importance in forming Manchester and its economy, as postmodern cities are characterized by the expansion of the cultural sphere and leisure consumption, spaces of play and entertainment (Featherstone 1991, 96-101). Not only the use value of products is consumed but also mediated cultural activities and signifying practices, signs and images. (Featherstone 1995, 75.)
An empirical research by Wynne (1992), emerging from a consultancy document by the regional arts board in conjuction with the local city economic regeneration agency, The Economic Importance of the Arts Cultural Industries in Greater Manchester (CER, 1989) examined new forms of cultural consumption and the construction of lifestyle in the contemporary Manchester. These forms were associated with the following trends:
1. the dramatic increase in the production and consumption of symbolic goods
2. the shift of consumption from use value to sign value
3. the destabilization of established symbolic hierarchies through the articulation of alternative tastes and styles
4. the rise of popular and commercial cultures as alternative forms challenging established “high culture”
5. the emergence of new urban spaces creating “play spaces” for new forms of sociability, leading to;
6. new forms of display and social mixing representing a movement away from rational goal directed activity, permitting a more playful, carnivalesque exploration of emotions – a preoccupation with the esthetization and “stylization of life” as opposed to more fixed lifestyles (Mole 1996, 4.)
Three significant results from this research suggest that:
1. the emergence of a “mix and match” lifestyle amongst the 18-35 age group who are the most prominent in the use of the cultural and leisure facilities of the city centre, usually associated with artistic, bohemian or counter-cultural milieus
2. the extension of the notion of “cultural intermediaries” from the new middle class to a much wider range of the population, through the increased involvement of popular culture in the creation of the new city centre sites of consumption
3. these new and extended forms of cultural consumption, characterized by rapid turnover and complex distinctions, were feeding directly into involvement in cultural production to supply these new markets (Mole 1996, 5.)
Secondly, we have to assume the everyday life in Manchester to be estetized, a typical condition in postmodernity, especially in large towns (Featherstone 1991, 23.) These towns are places for flaneurism, artistic and intellectual counter-cultures, bohemians and artistic avant-garde, being the essential intermediaries of meanings and experiences of places. (Featherstone 2001, 80-87). Nevertheless, gathering of bohemians, avant-garde and counter-cultures in big cities is nothing new. They were already found in big cities in the mid-19th century.
The displacement of the industries in the many industrial towns in 70s and 80s Britain suggests that if modernism is to be treated synonymously with industrialism, cities like Manchester are now certainly living a post-industrial era. However, Manchester will be unable to develop a sustainable post-Fordist economy without fundamental changes in policy and social institutions and support from local governments. If Jameson is right, it is not postmodern. If postmodernity is deemed to be a reaction for modernity, a proper postmodernity is an alternative to modernity, requiring a radical break of it. It is not a revised edition of modernity, modernity 2.0 or mature modernity. (Jameson 2002, 215.) Jameson uses the term of postmodernism as there is no better alternative available at the moment, neither for Jameson or for Manchester.
As for Jameson this break primarily is an aesthetic one rather than a break from social or societal conditions of modernity, he has no answer for the challenges of postindustrialism. In a Baudrillardian view, the current era is of a simulation, where social reproduction replaces industrial production as the organizing principle of the society. Labor is not primarily productive but a sign of one’s social position and way of life. (Kellner 1994, 7-9.)
It would indeed be out-of-place to claim that the collapse in industrial production and the erosion of industrial work based identities would represent anything else than a void in social relations, emptied meanings in everyday life and indeed in the deprived livelihoods of the many of the Manchester’s working class. There is nothing ironic in their fates. It would be absurb to claim that their everyday life world would be fittingly called as esthetisized, or that they would have become all of a sudden from consumers to producers of the public urban space. Besides, consumption is not just a matter of wants, desires, attitudes, culture etc.; but of money too! (Mole 1996, 42).
The entertainment industries that mark Manchester – football and music – employ by spin-offs in advertising, marketing and designing, as networking is typical of this branch (Haslam 1999, xv). Nevertheless, the scale importance of these spin-offs is exaggerated. Magatti suspects that post-Fordist economy would ever employ significantly in Manchester, the “celebrated cultural industries employing less than 1% of the workforce” (in 1992). And stamping of cultural industries or fashion as postindustrial is by no means unproblematic as they produce in their own rights as well (Magatti 2003, 31-34).
If the new centre of Manchester has gentrified into cosmopolitan and diverse, this is in a contrast with the largely unchanged livelihoods of its suburbs, with concentrated poverty, unemployment and intolerant tendencies (O’Connor & Wynne 1996, 71-72.)
From the effects Magatti refers to are excluded the impacts on Mancunians’ self-perception of their city as lifted up by the celebrated Prides of Manchester. The best known “palace” of the entertainment industries in Manchester, the football stadium of Old Trafford is a theatre of dreams indeed! (Moore 2003, 199).
SOURCES:
Best, George (2003): Scoring at Half-Time. Random House
Castells, Manuel (1997): The Power of Identity. Blackwell Publishers,Oxford
Castells, Manuel (1998): End of millennium. Blackwell Publishers,Oxford
Featherstone, Mike (2001): Postmodernisme og estetisering av hverdagslivet. In ”Magiske systemer” (2001). Edited by Skorstad, Atle and Nyre, Lars. Spartacus, Oslo.
Featherstone, Mike (1995): Undoing culture. Globalization, Postmodernism and Identity. Sage, London.
Featherstone, Mike (1991): Consumer culture and postmodernism. Sage, London.
Goodman, David and Chant, Colin (eds.) (1999): European Cities & Technology. Industrial to post-industrial cityThe Open University, published by Routledge
Haslam, Dave (1999): Manchester, England, The story of the pop cult city. Fourth estate, London
Holt, Nick, Lloyd, Guy: Total football (2005). Flame Tree Publishing.
Jameson, Fredric (2002): A Singular Modernity. Essay on the Ontology of the Present. Verso, London.
Kellner, Douglas (1994): Introduction: Jean Baudrillard in the Fin-de-Millennium. In Baudrillard. A critical reader. Blackwell, Oxford
Lees, Loretta (2003): The Ambivalence of Diversity and the Politics of Urban Renaissance: The Case of Youth in Downtown Portland, Maine. In IJURR, vol. 27 no. 3,pp. 613-634)
Luke, Timothy W. (1995): New World Order or Neo-world orders: Power, Politics and Ideology in Informationalizing Glocalities. In Global Modernities, edited by Featherstone, Mike, Lash, Scott, Robertson, Roland. Sage, London
Magatti, Mauro (1993): The Market and Social Forces: a Comparative Analysis of Industrial Change. In IJURR vol. 17 no 2, pp. 213-231
Mole, Phil (1996): Fordism, post-Fordism and the contemporary city. In From the Margins to the Centre. Cultural production and consumption in the post-industrial city. Edited by
Moore, Glenn (ed.) (2005): The Concise Encyclopedia of World Football. Parragon.
O’Connor, Justin and Wynne, Derek. Aldershot.
O’Connor, Justin, Wynne, Derek (1996). Left loafing: city cultures and new urban economies of hedonism. In From the Margins to the Centre. Cultural production and consumption in the post-industrial city. Edited by O’Connor, Justin and Wynne, Derek. Aldershot.
Purvis, Sarah (1996): The interchangeable roles of the producer, consumer and cultural intermediary. The new “pop” fashion designer. In From the Margins to the Centre. Cultural production and consumption in the post-industrial city. Edited by O’Connor, Justin and Wynne, Derek. Aldershot.
Savage, Michael, Bagnall, Gaynor, Longhurst, Brian (2003): Suburbia and the aura of place. In Globalization and Belonging, Sage.
The Concise Encyclopedia of World Football. Parragon.
http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=1961184755. Downloaded in 16th April, 2009.
http://www.charleslandry.com/ . Downloaded in 16th April, 2009.
http://www.fc-utd.co.uk/index.php. Downloaded in 16th April, 2009.l
http://www.manchester.com/. Downloaded in 16th April, 2009.
http://www.manchester2002-uk.com/. Downloaded in 16th April, 2009.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/teams/m/man_utd/4541093.stm. Downloaded in 16th April, 2009.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SCwatt.htm. Downloaded in 15th April, 2009.
LITERATURE:
Landry, Charles: The Creative City (2000). Earthscan
Wynne, Derek (1992): The Culture Industry.
keskiviikkona 25. maaliskuuta 2009
Blom, Svein: økt bokonsentrasjon blant (ikke-vestlige) innvandare i Oslo – er toppen snart nådd?
Ifølge Svein Blom, fra 1988 til 1998 har antallet ikke-vestlige innvandrare doblet seg i Oslo (fra 30 000 til 65 000), mens antallet vestlige innvandrare har vokset fra 18 000 til 21 000. Også andelen ikke-vestlige innvandrare har doblet fra 6,5% til 13%.
I 1998 var 35% av innvandrerne i Norge bosatta i Oslo. Mer spesifikk, andelen er 23% nå det gjelder innvandrare fra øst-Europa, mens den var 41% blant ikke-vestlige innvandrere. Det betyr at de ikke-vestlige innvandrarna er litt over gjennomsnitt konsentrert seg i Oslo.
Att innvandrare fra Norden og andre vestlige land er mindre konsentrert til hovedstaden, kan skyldes at de har hatt en mer spredt arbeidsmarked, parforhold med en nordmann og at deres innfallsport til landet sjeldnere har gått via hovedstaden. I tilllegg troligvis kan nettverking inom en etnisk grupp bidra positivt til arealvis konsentrasjon av innvandrare an en viss etnisitet.
Det finns forskjeller mellom innvandrare av olika drivkrefter bak flyttingen. Flyktinger er lokalisert mer spredt, mens arbeidsinnvandrare er konsentrert til Oslo.
Oslo er dock ikke noen homogenisk by; det finns betydelige forskjell mellom de ulike bydelerna og –parterna. Mens halvparten av ikke-vestlige innvandrare bor i indre øst eller i de nye drabantbyene, halvparten av vestlige innvandrare er bosatt i indre eller ytre vest. Blom fortsatt påpeker at fordelingen av øst-europeanare sammenlikner fordelingen av ikke-vestlige innvandrare.
En interessant kontribusjon i Bloms artikkel var introduksjonen av dissimilaritetsindeksen. Det målar andelen hvor stor del av befolkningen måtte flytte til en annen bydel for at de skal vaere likt fordelt (når referansegruppen er nordmenn) mellom bydelene.
For eksempel: hvis vi tar en simplifisert eksempel, hvor Oslo vær tudelt mellom jevnstore deler - den østliga og den vestliga delen - og hele befolkningen skilt mellom norske og ikke-norske og det finnes 500 000 norske og 50 000 ikke-norske i byen, og av de norske bodde 270 000 tusen mennesker i vest og 230 000 i øst, det betyr at det måtte være bosatta kun 5 000 innvandrare i vest og 45 000 i øst. At prosentandelingen mellom vest og øst et for norske 54-46 og for ikke-norske 10-90, leder til at dissimilaritetsindeksen av ikke-norske er 44 (54-10 eller 90-46).
Hvis dissimilaritetsindeksen brukes som indikator for segregering, hva leder det til? Ifølge en svensk undersøkning av Andersson-Brolin, kulturell avstand til det (svenske) samfunnet er avgjørende i segregering. I tillegg er økonomiske forhold viktige. Gjennomsnittlig går D-indeksen ned på 3 poeng når inntekten øker med 10 000 kroner for ikke-vestlige innvandrare. For vestlige og øst-europeiske går den ned kun på 1 poeng. For meg var uklart, hvilken period Blom brukte her for å måle inntektsforskjellene; kanskje et år?
En absolutt integrasjon betyr en komplett usegregasjon. Ifølge Blom, botid fungerer som en indikator på økonomisk og kulturell integrasjon. Lengst botid og lavest D-indeks har de nordiske landene, Tyskland, Polen og Ungarn, mens I motsatt hjørne finnes Somalia og Irak med kort botid og Sri Lanka og Vietnam med lengre botid.
Att ikke segregasjonen sinker raskere ved økt inntekt og formue, tyder på f.eks. vennskaps betydning i boligmarkeden, lokal tilgang til religiøse og etniske tjenester, diskriminering i boligmarkeden og lokale myndigheters beslutninger og rutiner.
Nabolagsindikatorer er avgjørende for integrasjon. Blom bruker indikatorer på språkbeherskelse som integrasjonsindikatorer. Disse er følgende:
- andelen som snakker norsk mest hjemme
- andelen som aldrig har lest en norsk avis de siste 12 månedene
Likevel er den andre indikatoren ukomplett. Hvis man ikke slett kan lese, leser man ikke norske aviser.
En annen gruppe integreringsindikatorer Blom brukte var indikatorer på sosial kontakt med nordmenn. Disse var følgende:
- om innvandreren har en god norsk venn
- om barna har venner med samma språk- eller innvandrerbakgrunn
Den første indikatoren er vanskelig å definiere. Hva er en nordmenn? Ifølge denne fortolkningen, definieres det etter språket man bruker mest; hvis man snakker noen norsk språk som hovedmål, er man norsk. Men, hvilket språk man bruker, varierer i ulike kontekster.
Sosiale kontakter er i hverfall avgjørende i integrering og også i språkbruk. Jo større innvandrergruppen er, desto därligere kan de norsk, konkluderer Blom.
I 1998 var 35% av innvandrerne i Norge bosatta i Oslo. Mer spesifikk, andelen er 23% nå det gjelder innvandrare fra øst-Europa, mens den var 41% blant ikke-vestlige innvandrere. Det betyr at de ikke-vestlige innvandrarna er litt over gjennomsnitt konsentrert seg i Oslo.
Att innvandrare fra Norden og andre vestlige land er mindre konsentrert til hovedstaden, kan skyldes at de har hatt en mer spredt arbeidsmarked, parforhold med en nordmann og at deres innfallsport til landet sjeldnere har gått via hovedstaden. I tilllegg troligvis kan nettverking inom en etnisk grupp bidra positivt til arealvis konsentrasjon av innvandrare an en viss etnisitet.
Det finns forskjeller mellom innvandrare av olika drivkrefter bak flyttingen. Flyktinger er lokalisert mer spredt, mens arbeidsinnvandrare er konsentrert til Oslo.
Oslo er dock ikke noen homogenisk by; det finns betydelige forskjell mellom de ulike bydelerna og –parterna. Mens halvparten av ikke-vestlige innvandrare bor i indre øst eller i de nye drabantbyene, halvparten av vestlige innvandrare er bosatt i indre eller ytre vest. Blom fortsatt påpeker at fordelingen av øst-europeanare sammenlikner fordelingen av ikke-vestlige innvandrare.
En interessant kontribusjon i Bloms artikkel var introduksjonen av dissimilaritetsindeksen. Det målar andelen hvor stor del av befolkningen måtte flytte til en annen bydel for at de skal vaere likt fordelt (når referansegruppen er nordmenn) mellom bydelene.
For eksempel: hvis vi tar en simplifisert eksempel, hvor Oslo vær tudelt mellom jevnstore deler - den østliga og den vestliga delen - og hele befolkningen skilt mellom norske og ikke-norske og det finnes 500 000 norske og 50 000 ikke-norske i byen, og av de norske bodde 270 000 tusen mennesker i vest og 230 000 i øst, det betyr at det måtte være bosatta kun 5 000 innvandrare i vest og 45 000 i øst. At prosentandelingen mellom vest og øst et for norske 54-46 og for ikke-norske 10-90, leder til at dissimilaritetsindeksen av ikke-norske er 44 (54-10 eller 90-46).
Hvis dissimilaritetsindeksen brukes som indikator for segregering, hva leder det til? Ifølge en svensk undersøkning av Andersson-Brolin, kulturell avstand til det (svenske) samfunnet er avgjørende i segregering. I tillegg er økonomiske forhold viktige. Gjennomsnittlig går D-indeksen ned på 3 poeng når inntekten øker med 10 000 kroner for ikke-vestlige innvandrare. For vestlige og øst-europeiske går den ned kun på 1 poeng. For meg var uklart, hvilken period Blom brukte her for å måle inntektsforskjellene; kanskje et år?
En absolutt integrasjon betyr en komplett usegregasjon. Ifølge Blom, botid fungerer som en indikator på økonomisk og kulturell integrasjon. Lengst botid og lavest D-indeks har de nordiske landene, Tyskland, Polen og Ungarn, mens I motsatt hjørne finnes Somalia og Irak med kort botid og Sri Lanka og Vietnam med lengre botid.
Att ikke segregasjonen sinker raskere ved økt inntekt og formue, tyder på f.eks. vennskaps betydning i boligmarkeden, lokal tilgang til religiøse og etniske tjenester, diskriminering i boligmarkeden og lokale myndigheters beslutninger og rutiner.
Nabolagsindikatorer er avgjørende for integrasjon. Blom bruker indikatorer på språkbeherskelse som integrasjonsindikatorer. Disse er følgende:
- andelen som snakker norsk mest hjemme
- andelen som aldrig har lest en norsk avis de siste 12 månedene
Likevel er den andre indikatoren ukomplett. Hvis man ikke slett kan lese, leser man ikke norske aviser.
En annen gruppe integreringsindikatorer Blom brukte var indikatorer på sosial kontakt med nordmenn. Disse var følgende:
- om innvandreren har en god norsk venn
- om barna har venner med samma språk- eller innvandrerbakgrunn
Den første indikatoren er vanskelig å definiere. Hva er en nordmenn? Ifølge denne fortolkningen, definieres det etter språket man bruker mest; hvis man snakker noen norsk språk som hovedmål, er man norsk. Men, hvilket språk man bruker, varierer i ulike kontekster.
Sosiale kontakter er i hverfall avgjørende i integrering og også i språkbruk. Jo større innvandrergruppen er, desto därligere kan de norsk, konkluderer Blom.
keskiviikkona 18. maaliskuuta 2009
Kvinnornas stad
Den feministiska stadsforskningen har intresserat sig för stadsstrukturens könsdelning samt dess inverkan på könsrollerna och upplevandet av stadsrummet.
Många stadsforskare menar att den nutida stadens egenart betecknas av konsumerism. Det existerar få konsumtionsfria utrymmen i städerna och sådana planeras inte heller i något större omfång. Den dominerande inriktningen i vår samhällsplanering tar sin utgångspunkt i en funktionell indelning av stadsstrukturen. Mellan klockan åtta och klockan fyra antas invånarna vistas antingen hemma i bostadsförorterna eller på arbetsplatserna i kontors- eller industriområdena och kvällar och veckoslut befolkar de köpcentren. Köpcentren uppförs antingen i stadskärnan eller på en bilresas avstånd i stadens periferi och däremellan bildar bostadsorterna sociala vakuum.
Den feministiska stadsforskningen hjälper oss förstå hur olika aktörer inom stadsplaneringen har olika intressen och brukar olika makt. Barnen lider brist på lekplatser, eftersom man speciellt i stadens centrum hellre använder rummet till mer ekonomiskt eller imagemässigt gynnsamma ändamål. Barnens lott som “den Andra” i staden understryks också bland annat i stadens proportioner, vilka är planerade för vuxna, samt i ett trafiksystem som centrerar kring bilism och utgör en direkt fara för barn som rör sig oförutsebart och är svåra att få syn på från en bil. De rörelsehindrade kämpar fortsatt för sin rätt till en hinderfri stadsmiljö, även om förbättringar åstadkommits bland annat genom att Kalle Könkkölä har vetorätt i Helsingfors byggnadsnämnd.
Kvinnans roll som “den Andra” tar sig uttryck främst i förverkligandet av en stadsstruktur som bygger på bilism. Speciellt i amerikanska bilstäder där invånarna bor i spridda egnahemsområden isoleras kvinnorna i hemmen. Om det inte finns fungerande offentliga transportmedel och mannen kanske kör familjens enda bil, begränsas kvinnans domän oundvikligt till hemmet och gårdsplanen. En sådan stadsplanering stöder ett rolltänkande där kvinnans uppgifter begränsas till hemmets skötsel och fortplantning och isolerar kvinnan från näringslivet och hela samhällslivet. I Finland är det visserligen vanligare än i USA att kvinnorna aktivt deltar i arbetslivet, men problemet är nog förståeligt ändå: Om arbetsplatserna och hemmen hålls isär, blir speciellt kvinnorna marginaliserade. Detta strider mot den ursprungliga trädgårdsstadens sociala ideal om att vara självförsörjande gällande arbetsplatser, vilket betydligt skulle underlätta speciellt kvinnornas möjligheter i arbetslivet.
I Finland tävlar städerna öppet om de stora kärnfamiljerna genom att prioritera planerandet och byggandet av stora familjebostäder. Detta syns även i Helsingfors stadsplanering och bostadspolitik. Denna tävlan om barnen, framtidens skattebetalare, förs helt öppet och legitimt.
Vem är stadsbo och vilka rättigheter har stadsbon? Den feministiska stadsforskningen har nytolkat begreppet medverkan och de roller som vanligtvis förknippas med medverkan och deltagande. Vanligtvis indelas stadsplaneringens huvudsakliga aktörer i stadsplaneringstjänstemän, förtroendevalda politiker och invånare. I bakgrunden verkar dock vanligtvis också näringslivets intressen, även om man ofta väljer att maskera, dölja eller tiga om dessa, för att inte riskera att stadsplaneringspolitikerna och tjänstemännen känner sig kränkta eller misstänkliggjorda. Det borde trots allt stå klart för alla att till exempel stora köpcenter aldrig planeras enbart med syftet att höja den kommunala arbetskrafts- och servicekapaciteten generellt. Pengar finns alltid med någonstans i bilden och påverkar till exempel vilken grynder som får köpa stadens mark och genomföra
projektet och vilken affärskedja står bakom det nyuppförda köpcentret.
“Rädslans geografi” handlar om erfarenheter av och speciellt undvikande av sådana platser som anses farliga och som särskilt kvinnor inte vågar röra sig ensamma på i fruktan för fysisk kränkning (trots att faktum är att män råkar ut för mer anonymt våld i städerna än kvinnor). I Helsingfors är t.ex. Kajsaniemi-parken ett exempel på ett stadsrum som ofta upplevs skrämmande. Samma gäller andra liknande platser med “skuggområden” och skumma buskage, där nästan ingen rör sig under den mörka tiden av dygnet. Om en plats får ett farligt rykte fungerar detta som en
självförverkligande profetia: då folk inte rör sig på en plats, så anses detta vara en farlig plats, varvid man i ännu högre grad undviker att roar sig där. Detta har använts som ett argument för att hålla stadsparkerna snygga, välskötta och välbelysta. I Finland har rädslans geografi forskats speciellt av Hille Koskela. Själva termen är lanserad av Anja Snellman, vars bok med samma namn
också filmatiserats av Kaisa Rastimo.
Platser betecknar inte enbart lägen, knytpunkter i ett nätverk av longitud och latitud. Platser konstrueras även genom sociala processer, där platserna tillknyts olika betydelser och tolkningar till exempel: är denna plats ägnad för handel, vistelse, eller enbart betraktande?) Platsers betydelse och natur samt maktkampen mellan olika aktörer som vill härska över en plats kan också förändras över tid. Ett exempel är stadsdelen Berghäll i Helsingfors, som från att närmast ha fungerat som förvaringsplats för fattiga arbetare med tiden ändrat karaktär och image och blivit en internationell smältdegel för trendmedvetet cityfolk.
Olika aktörer har olika möjligheter och makt att definiera stadsrummets betydelse och användning. I stadsplaneringen märks detta genom att svagare grupper, såsom barn, mänskor med nedsatt rörelseförmåga eller kvinnor beaktas i ringa grad. Mer om detta har forskats och skrivits av bl.a. Doreen Massey.
Många stadsforskare menar att den nutida stadens egenart betecknas av konsumerism. Det existerar få konsumtionsfria utrymmen i städerna och sådana planeras inte heller i något större omfång. Den dominerande inriktningen i vår samhällsplanering tar sin utgångspunkt i en funktionell indelning av stadsstrukturen. Mellan klockan åtta och klockan fyra antas invånarna vistas antingen hemma i bostadsförorterna eller på arbetsplatserna i kontors- eller industriområdena och kvällar och veckoslut befolkar de köpcentren. Köpcentren uppförs antingen i stadskärnan eller på en bilresas avstånd i stadens periferi och däremellan bildar bostadsorterna sociala vakuum.
Den feministiska stadsforskningen hjälper oss förstå hur olika aktörer inom stadsplaneringen har olika intressen och brukar olika makt. Barnen lider brist på lekplatser, eftersom man speciellt i stadens centrum hellre använder rummet till mer ekonomiskt eller imagemässigt gynnsamma ändamål. Barnens lott som “den Andra” i staden understryks också bland annat i stadens proportioner, vilka är planerade för vuxna, samt i ett trafiksystem som centrerar kring bilism och utgör en direkt fara för barn som rör sig oförutsebart och är svåra att få syn på från en bil. De rörelsehindrade kämpar fortsatt för sin rätt till en hinderfri stadsmiljö, även om förbättringar åstadkommits bland annat genom att Kalle Könkkölä har vetorätt i Helsingfors byggnadsnämnd.
Kvinnans roll som “den Andra” tar sig uttryck främst i förverkligandet av en stadsstruktur som bygger på bilism. Speciellt i amerikanska bilstäder där invånarna bor i spridda egnahemsområden isoleras kvinnorna i hemmen. Om det inte finns fungerande offentliga transportmedel och mannen kanske kör familjens enda bil, begränsas kvinnans domän oundvikligt till hemmet och gårdsplanen. En sådan stadsplanering stöder ett rolltänkande där kvinnans uppgifter begränsas till hemmets skötsel och fortplantning och isolerar kvinnan från näringslivet och hela samhällslivet. I Finland är det visserligen vanligare än i USA att kvinnorna aktivt deltar i arbetslivet, men problemet är nog förståeligt ändå: Om arbetsplatserna och hemmen hålls isär, blir speciellt kvinnorna marginaliserade. Detta strider mot den ursprungliga trädgårdsstadens sociala ideal om att vara självförsörjande gällande arbetsplatser, vilket betydligt skulle underlätta speciellt kvinnornas möjligheter i arbetslivet.
I Finland tävlar städerna öppet om de stora kärnfamiljerna genom att prioritera planerandet och byggandet av stora familjebostäder. Detta syns även i Helsingfors stadsplanering och bostadspolitik. Denna tävlan om barnen, framtidens skattebetalare, förs helt öppet och legitimt.
Vem är stadsbo och vilka rättigheter har stadsbon? Den feministiska stadsforskningen har nytolkat begreppet medverkan och de roller som vanligtvis förknippas med medverkan och deltagande. Vanligtvis indelas stadsplaneringens huvudsakliga aktörer i stadsplaneringstjänstemän, förtroendevalda politiker och invånare. I bakgrunden verkar dock vanligtvis också näringslivets intressen, även om man ofta väljer att maskera, dölja eller tiga om dessa, för att inte riskera att stadsplaneringspolitikerna och tjänstemännen känner sig kränkta eller misstänkliggjorda. Det borde trots allt stå klart för alla att till exempel stora köpcenter aldrig planeras enbart med syftet att höja den kommunala arbetskrafts- och servicekapaciteten generellt. Pengar finns alltid med någonstans i bilden och påverkar till exempel vilken grynder som får köpa stadens mark och genomföra
projektet och vilken affärskedja står bakom det nyuppförda köpcentret.
“Rädslans geografi” handlar om erfarenheter av och speciellt undvikande av sådana platser som anses farliga och som särskilt kvinnor inte vågar röra sig ensamma på i fruktan för fysisk kränkning (trots att faktum är att män råkar ut för mer anonymt våld i städerna än kvinnor). I Helsingfors är t.ex. Kajsaniemi-parken ett exempel på ett stadsrum som ofta upplevs skrämmande. Samma gäller andra liknande platser med “skuggområden” och skumma buskage, där nästan ingen rör sig under den mörka tiden av dygnet. Om en plats får ett farligt rykte fungerar detta som en
självförverkligande profetia: då folk inte rör sig på en plats, så anses detta vara en farlig plats, varvid man i ännu högre grad undviker att roar sig där. Detta har använts som ett argument för att hålla stadsparkerna snygga, välskötta och välbelysta. I Finland har rädslans geografi forskats speciellt av Hille Koskela. Själva termen är lanserad av Anja Snellman, vars bok med samma namn
också filmatiserats av Kaisa Rastimo.
Platser betecknar inte enbart lägen, knytpunkter i ett nätverk av longitud och latitud. Platser konstrueras även genom sociala processer, där platserna tillknyts olika betydelser och tolkningar till exempel: är denna plats ägnad för handel, vistelse, eller enbart betraktande?) Platsers betydelse och natur samt maktkampen mellan olika aktörer som vill härska över en plats kan också förändras över tid. Ett exempel är stadsdelen Berghäll i Helsingfors, som från att närmast ha fungerat som förvaringsplats för fattiga arbetare med tiden ändrat karaktär och image och blivit en internationell smältdegel för trendmedvetet cityfolk.
Olika aktörer har olika möjligheter och makt att definiera stadsrummets betydelse och användning. I stadsplaneringen märks detta genom att svagare grupper, såsom barn, mänskor med nedsatt rörelseförmåga eller kvinnor beaktas i ringa grad. Mer om detta har forskats och skrivits av bl.a. Doreen Massey.
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