1,721,034 research outputs found
Urban renewal, immigration, and contested claims to public space: The case of Piazza Garibaldi in Naples
No full textThis article examines the relationship between immigration and urban renewal in Naples during the 1990s through the conflicting representations and uses of Piazza Garibaldi, a large piazza located in front of the city's central railway station. As well as the hub of the city's public transport network, since the mid-1980s this piazza has been the multifunctional space for a number of immigrant groups. Re-envisioned as the 'gateway' to the city's regenerated centro storico (historic centre) during the 1990s, the piazza became a focus of public debates on security, tourism and, in particular, immigration. I examine how these issues intersected with political discourses about a renewed sense of citizenship in redefining the piazza as a strategic but problematic public space. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and analysis of local newspaper reports, the article looks at the ways in which the piazza has been appropriated by different immigrant groups for social and economic purposes, and how, at the same time, they have been excluded from discourses about a 'new' Naples
The politics of the piazza: The history and meaning of the Italian square, by Eamonn Canniffe
No full textNessun abstrac
Stop Pasolini! Excavating the social underbelly of a ‘gentrifying’ neighbourhood in Rome
Full text linkAs Pigneto becomes increasingly associated with gentrification in local, national and international imaginaries, both from celebratory and critical standpoints, ideas about the neighbourhood tend to get collapsed into a predetermined set of signifiers. This is not to deny that
gentrification is very real in Pigneto or that it is not embroiled in instances of structural and symbolic violence. Rather, it is simply to point out that any attempt to understand a gentrifying neighbourhood will be wholly inadequate if the narrative approach clings to class and political identities that no longer exist or perhaps never existed in the first place
Moroccan City Festivals, Cultural Diplomacy and Urban Political Agency
Full text linkOver the last two decades, cultural festivals have been established and consolidated in cities across Morocco. Their proliferation has coincided with the reign of Mohammed VI, well known as an enthusiastic and extremely wealthy patron of the arts, and the concomitant state-controlled democratization of Moroccan politics and society. Drawing on two examples—the Marrakech International Film Festival and the Mawazine music festival in Rabat—this article interrogates the ways in which festivals and the urban scale combine to function as vehicles for cultural diplomacy. Contra the common tendency in recent policy debates that perceive the city (with or without its administration) as an active agent in translocal cultural relations, I argue for a more nuanced perspective that understands the urban festival as a diplomatic platform through which the cultural politics of the state are rescaled and where a range of actors contest ideas about the local, national and global trajectories of society and cultural life
An irreconcilable first-place: the precarious life of tourism and heritage in a southern European historic centre
No full textThis article discusses the ambiguous relationship between heritage tourism and everyday life in the historic centre of Naples. This area, long characterised by a lower-class residential population and intermittently considered off-limits to tourists, has over the last two decades become the focus of a burgeoning heritage tourism industry. The article adopts the idea of precariousness–understood contra conventional formulations as a condition that elicits both anxiety and emancipatory release–in order to make sense of the allure and repulsion that the historic centre exerts in tourist encounters with the city. Through three examples–a bus sightseeing tour, online responses to a New York Times article about Naples and local people’s perceptions of a pedestrianised piazza as a tourist contact zone–the article illustrates how the historic centre as a tourist destination is constituted by a mix of foreboding and excitement; where affective experience tends to trump the monumental gaze. Thinking in terms of precariousness not only underlines the contradictory role that this area plays in the local production of cultural heritage but also poses a challenge to those accounts that see in the advent of a visitor economy the inevitable ‘museumification’ and gentrification of historic centres
Fuggifuggi: Memories of an Earthquake (documentary film)
No full textQuesto documentario racconta l'impatto del terremoto del 1980 in due quartieri popolari del centro storico di Napoli (Montesanto e i Quartieri Spagnoli) attraverso i ricordi degli abitanti e il materiale televisivo di repertorio. Le storie dei personaggi si intrecciano nella narrazione, ricostruendo i propri vissuti ma anche le ambiguità, le tensioni e le assurdità che carratizzarono l'avvenimento e il periodo che ne segui. Il terremoto non fu soltanto un evento da cui trarre un ricco repertorio di storie e aneddoti personali, ma continua a essere fonte di memoria sulla vita della Napoli "popolare" degli ultimi venticinque anni
Ethnographic reflections on oppositional heritage discourse in two post-earthquake Italian cities
No full textThis article explores the politicisation of cultural heritage during the aftermath of the 1980 earthquake in Naples and the 2009 earthquake in LAquila. It begins by critically addressing the positions of Tomaso Montanari and Salvatore Settis, two prominent heritage intellectuals at the forefront of national campaigns to restore the damaged historic centre of LAquila. Both have been instrumental in shaping an oppositional heritage discourse in Italy that underscores the civic virtues of the nations cultural patrimony while simultaneously railing against its marketisation. Reflecting upon observations in LAquila, where locals involved in protests at government inaction have been scolded by fellow inhabitants for their lack of obeisance to cultural heritage, and drawing on longstanding ethnographic research in Naples, where heritage campaigns against redevelopment in the historic centre in the 1980s were later incorporated into an ambitious regeneration agenda, the article argues that this oppositional heritage discourse is not only premised upon idealist notions of collective identity but also, as a result of its attempts to legislate the boundaries of heritage citizenship and its disavowal of philologically incorrect relationships with historic centres, it ultimately provides tacit support to the very same neoliberal urban processes against which it claims to take a stand
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