Session at the European Association for Urban History Conference: Cities in Motion 2020
Michel de Certeau defined space as ‘a practiced place’, created through human agency and action by the convergence of a variety of factors at a given moment. People use space, but it also defines them, shaping their sense of self and identity. This session examines how people moved around in their towns and how this movement both shaped and was shaped by the built and imagined spaces of the city.
Space is a constructed concept and through labelling and habitus plays an important part in urban identity. Central to habitus are gender and power. The relationship between space, and therefore towns, and identity was reflexive and reflected social organisation. Once bounded and shaped it was no longer neutral but gendered by the varieties of social interactions taking place between inhabitants, incomers and people passing through, and by the structures and ideological conceptions of gender, work, places, civic identity and point in time. They were spaces of social action so that the use and organisation of space both constructs and is constructed by social relations. Natt Alcock argued ‘the street geometrically defined by urban planning is transformed into a space by walkers.’ Simply walking the city, moving about it on daily activities, is a performance of belonging, which is built up and grows out of everyday practices, in which daily activities in the city are part of a process of appropriation and territorialisation. Personal familiarity with the city through everyday movement contributes to a sense of neighbourhood, civic identity and/or personal loyalty to the city. Ultimately, ‘space and place’ are central to understanding the cultural dynamics of towns. The kinds of spaces that developed, the places that people could and did use and the people who constructed them are all significant.
Papers could focus on how movement was gendered; how spaces were expropriated and contested by different groups; what barriers or opportunities existed to open up or close down movement in towns; the interaction between real and virtual movement (e.g. that imagined in guide books), or the rhythms and cycles of movement (daily, weekly, annual). Various kinds of movement/spatial practice can be addressed, such as politics, disorder, prostitution, crime, sociability, shopping, work, business or trade--legal or illegal.
- Spokesperson: Deborah Simonton, University of Southern Denmark
- Co-organizer(s): Gudrun Andersson, University of Uppsala | Jon Stobart, Manchester Metropolitan University
- Keywords: Space | Walking | Identity
- Time period: Premodern period (covering more than one period)
- Topic(s): Cultural | Other
- Study area: Europe