This talk offers an in-depth analysis of “spatializing culture,” an idea that grew out of my work on the Latin American plaza (Low 2000) and Deborah Pellow’s (2002) ethnography of West African socio-spatial organization and institutions. Through subsequent research and theory-building “spatializing culture” has evolved into a multi-dimensional framework that includes social production, social construction, embodied, discursive, emotive and affective, as well as translocal approaches to space and place. By “spatialize” I mean to produce and locate—physically, historically, affectively and discursively—social relations, institutions, representations and practices in space. “Culture” in this context refers to the multiple and contingent forms of knowledge, power and symbolism that comprise human and non-human interactions; material and technological processes; and cognitive processes including thoughts, beliefs, imaginings and perceptions.
Spatializing culture is useful not only as a conceptual framework; it also provides a powerful tool for uncovering social injustice and forms of exclusion. Further, as the ethnographic examples will illustrate, it can facilitate public engagement because spatial analyses offer people and their communities the means for understanding the everyday places where they live, work, shop, and socialize. Spatializing culture is not only a scholarly endeavor, but offers a basis for neighborhood activism such as opposing or modifying architectural, planning and design interventions that have the ability to destroy the architectural centers of social life, erase cultural meanings from the landscape, and restrict local participation in the built environment.
Сета М. Лоу – Профессор Антропологии, Психологии окружающей среды, Географии и Женских исследований в Высшей школе Городского университета Нью-Йорка (The Graduate School and University Center, CUNY). Директор Исследовательской группы по изучению общественных пространств (The Public Space Research Group).
Сета М. Лоу – одна из наиболее авторитетных и широко цитируемых в мире городских антропологов, бывший президент Американской антропологической ассоциации. Основная тема ее исследований – городские общественные пространства. На протяжении долгого времени она проводила полевую работу на площадях, пласах и в парках Европы, Южной и Северной Америки, и других регионов. Помимо академических исследований Сета Лоу также вовлечена в реализацию проектов по созданию комфортных и доступных городских пространств с учетом локальных контекстов.
Среди наиболее известных ее работ On the Plaza: The Politics of Public Space and Culture (2000); The Anthropology of Space and Place: Locating Culture with D. Lawrence-Zuniga (2003); Behind the Gates: Life, Security and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America (2004); Politics of Public Space with Neil Smith (2006).
В октябре 2018 года под ее редакцией вышла антология The Routledge Handbook of Anthropology and the City – читайте рецензию на работу от Елены Трубиной – «Вовлеченная Урбанистическая Антропология: Соединяя Исследования и Жизнь Сообществ» (2019).
На русский язык переведена ее книга Пласа: Политика общественного пространства и культуры (2016) – интервью с Сетой Лоу после выхода русского издания в Strelka Magazine.
Лекция - на английском языке.