Special Issue on Everyday Politics of Public Space, Space and Culture, Volume 22 Issue 3, August 2019
Articles
Preface: The Everyday Politics of Public Space
Mattias De Backer, Claske Dijkema, and Kathrin Hörschelmann
Abstract
While in the past two decades a rich literature has emerged about the politics of public space, many of these theoretical works and empirical studies consider public space interactions and behaviors against the backdrop of deliberative or representative politics. In this special issue, to which this article is the preface, we offer some reflections on how the everyday and the micro-level can be sites of political expression, leading inevitably to a critical discussion of the central assumptions regarding private/public space and its generational, gendered, classed, and “culturalized” construction. This analysis takes place with three theoretical axes in the background: Katz’s minor theory, anarchist theory on prefigurative politics, and Foucault, de Certeau, and Lefebvre’s work on power, knowledge, and place. © The Author(s) 2019.
“If You Can’t Hear Me, I Will Show You”: Insurgent Claims to Public Space
in a Marginalized Social Housing Neighborhood in France
Claske Dijkema
Negotiating Spaces and the Public–Private Boundary: Language Policies Versus
Language Use Practices in Odessa
Abel Polese, Rustamjon Urinboyev, Tanel Kerikmae, and Sarah Murru
Dutch-Moroccan Girls Navigating Public Space: Wandering as an Everyday
Spatial Practice
Patricia Wijntuin and Martijn Koster
A Prefigurative Politics of Play in Public Places: Children Claim Their Democratic
Right to the City Through Play
Penelope Carroll, Octavia Calder-Dawe, Karen Witten, and Lanuola Asiasiga
Regimes of Visibility: Hanging Out in Brussels’ Public Spaces
Mattias De Backer
