Search results

In advancing the academic discourse around the theory of field, place and space in ethnographic research, this paper proposes a carnal sociological reading of the meaning and form of the Lindsay Leg Clubs – third-sector community leg care centres for older adults with leg problems – as a therapeutic space-construct.

The paper draws on non-formulaic, polymorphic ethnographic research in the UK Lindsay Leg Clubs conducted through multiple on-site and extramural engagements with the Leg Club community between 2019 and 2023 and an interview with the Leg Club founder and president, Professor Ellie Lindsay OBE. Wacquant's (2015) reflexive, enactive ethnographic approach is applied to develop an intellectual and carnal know-how of Leg Clubs as therapeutic space-constructs.

The researcher's “flesh and blood” experience of the Leg Clubs reveals the importance of cognitive and embodied appreciation of sounds, smells, sights, movements, the structures of wound stigma, centre-stage physical bodies of members and the volunteers, the material arrangement of the place and the researcher's own visceral and intellectual, biographical relation to the fieldwork to understand the therapeutic form and meaning of Leg Club spaces.

Applying the carnal sociology approach to reveal the therapeutic form and meaning of the Leg Club spaces makes concrete the abstract distinctions between field, place and space in ethnographic research, hence advancing the discourse around the theory of field in ethnography. A carnal sociological reading of the Leg Club spaces has implications for an embodied understanding of broader community care spaces.

Economics laboratories have become the primary locations of experimental economics research by the 1990s. They were a result of a decade long development from ad hoc opportune places to dedicated, purpose designed spaces. The distinctive feature of the economics laboratory and its key instrument became networked computers running custom-built software. However, the history of the economics laboratory is not just a history of evolving technology. I argue in this article that it is mainly a history of learning how to build an experimental economics community. Only a functioning community was able to change a physical place to a laboratory space. The distinction between place and space originates in the work of Michael de Certeau and I use it to analyze the evolution of economics laboratories. To this end, I analyze the case of Austin Hoggatt’s Management Science Laboratory at Berkeley in the 1960s as it illustrates the indispensability of creating a community centered on the laboratory. In contrast, the laboratories in Arizona and at Caltech since the 1980s, and in Amsterdam since the 1990s have become successful spaces, because, unlike Hoggatt, they focused equally on community building as on infrastructure and technology. This gave rise to social infrastructure and division of labor in the laboratory space.

Starting from the hypothesis of an ordinary/extraordinary tension that drives the link between tourist places and non-tourist places, this paper discusses the issue of tourist spatial delimitations. Rather than take such an issue for granted, the paper argues that the author needs to understand how the different actors within the tourism system create specific delimitations and how tourists deal with these delimitations. To pinpoint these tourist spatial delimitations, this paper considers three types of discourses: the discourse of local promoters, the discourse of guidebooks and the discourse of tourists. The purpose of this paper is to explain not only the tourist delimitations established by these actors but also the concordance between the guidebooks’ prescriptions, the public actors’ strategies and the tourists’ practices. In this empirical investigation, the author uses the case of Los Angeles and focuses more specifically on the two main tourist places within the agglomeration: Hollywood and Santa Monica. The argument supports the idea that political actors tend to develop what the author could consider a tourist secession, as the author tends to precisely delimit the designated area for the sake of efficiency. Guidebooks, which the author must consider because they are true and strong prescribers of tourist practices, draw their own tourist neighbourhoods. Finally, most tourists in Los Angeles conform to these delimitations and do not venture off the beaten track.

This paper examines three types of discourses: the discourse of local tourism promoters, the discourse of tourist guidebooks and the discourse of tourists. The purpose of the study is to explain not only the tourist delimitations established by these actors but also the concordance between the guidebooks’ prescriptions, the public actors’ strategies and the tourists’ practices. To conduct this analysis, this paper relied on an empirical survey (Lucas, 2014b) whose methodology used a range of different techniques. First, interviews with Convention and Visitors Bureau managers were performed to understand the delimitations established by the institutional actors directly in charge of the tourist development of those places. Second, the second kind of discourse considered here is that in guidebooks. Los Angeles is often included in guidebooks about California in general, albeit with a much shorter number of pages. Although all guidebooks were considered, the study mostly focused on those specifically dedicated to Los Angeles (Time Out, Rough Guide and Lonely Planet) to conduct a thick analysis of their discourses and to note the spatial delimitations that they established. The author must regard guidebooks as the prescribers of practices because they represent a source of information for tourists. The aim is to determine how tourists follow – or do not follow – the recommendations of guidebooks. Third, to understand these practices, the paper considers numerous interviews (approximately seventy) conducted with tourists.

Thus, in these two examples, the author has distinguished powerful delimitations of the tourist places created by promoters through their discourse, which provides information on how they promote the place through urban planning. This tourist staging, and all the specific processing of the place, contributes to a clear distinction between these places and the rest of the urban environment, allowing a very precise definition. The distinction is made from one street to another. However, these delimitations are mainly defined by the practices of the tourists: they have a very selective way of dealing with the public space of the two places concerned. They validate, update and thus make relevant the limits established by the institutional operators, sometimes performing even stricter operations of delimitation. This way of dealing with space is observed in the urban planning and in the discourses on the tourist places expressed in the guidebooks. There are no tactics to bypass, divert and subvert the spatial configuration settled by local authorities and guidebooks; tourists do not attempt to discover new places or to go off the beaten track (Maitland and Newman, 2009). Yet, this is not the only explanation for the way in which tourists occupy a place. Although the guidebooks perform the operations of delimitation and rank places (insisting on one place over another and highlighting what should be seen, where to go, etc.), they also exhaustively present the practices that one can perform, and how tourists deal with space either hints at their disregard of these tools or at individuals’ selection based on the information given. In Hollywood, as in Santa Monica, while the guidebooks exhaustively enumerate the numerous sites that might be interesting for tourist practices, the author observes a very important and discriminating concentration of these tourist practices within a precisely delimited perimeter, respectively, the Walk of Fame and the Ocean Front Walk: tourists walk from one street to another and from a full to an empty space. Thus, the author can support the idea that how tourists cope with space are temporary, delimited by highly targeted practices and restricted only to a few tourist places.

What about the ordinary/extraordinary dialectic? Most tourists do not look for something ordinary; yet, the entirety of what could be considered as “extraordinary” in one metropolis is not included in its tourism space. On the contrary, tourist places can also be seen as “ordinary.” Nevertheless, there is clearly a distinction observed through the discourses, but also in the practices, between an “inside” and an “outside” and between something extraordinary and one’s ordinary environment. One can interpret this result as an actual confirmation of the classic combination (tourist/sight/marker) that constitutes a “tourist attraction” (MacCannell, 1976, p. 44), which concerns a very specific way of dealing with space in Los Angeles. Tourists do not practice Los Angeles as the author might assume that they would typically practice other metropolises, e.g. strolling down the streets randomly. The two places examined in this paper are open to that kind of practice. One can consider that these places have a higher degree of urbanity than the average area of Los Angeles precisely because there are tourists. The density in terms of buildings is (relatively) more important and accompanied by a narrative construction of the urban space (the historic dimension of the buildings), and the public space has undergone specific urban planning and given special consideration, at least greater consideration than elsewhere. In these places, the author finds a concentration of population – the metropolitan crowd – that is otherwise very rare in Los Angeles. However, the tourists seem to have a limited interest in these attractions. These classic characteristics of urbanity do not seem to be regarded positively by a certain number of tourists and are not taken into consideration by tourists. This observation contrasts somewhat with the idea that dwelling touristically in a metropolis primarily entails the discovery of its urbanity (Equipe MIT, 2005). Discovering Los Angeles does not consist of experiencing the local society and of exploring the urban space but, rather, of performing specific practices in Los Angeles (seeing the Hollywood sign and the Stars and walking along the famous beaches). Two approaches can help us understand this gap: considering Los Angeles as a specific case or considering that the spatial configuration of Los Angeles enables us to bring out the logic at work in other metropolises but that would be too complex to distinguish here. Perhaps, the author finds both elements, and this reflection must invite the author to continue the discussion on the logic of tourists’ practice of metropolises: are they really looking for a maximal urbanity during their metropolitan experiences?

The concept of a creative place has been considered by experts, but a review of the research background shows that the definitions provided for creative place are different, and the factors that make an urban space a creative place are not clear. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the concept of creative place and to extract the indicators that make an urban space considered a creative place.

By extensive library studies and using a specialized panel, 59 items in the form of 12 indicators were extracted as identifiers of a creative place and a researcher-made questionnaire was prepared and tested in a case study. Data analysis of this study was performed in two stages by using the factor analysis method in R software.

The factors of “competitive advantage (economically)”, “freedom”, “attractiveness”, “entrepreneurship and professionalism”, “culture and art”, “vitality”, “diversity”, “distinction”, “participation”, “reconstruction, nobility and infrastructure”, “meaning” and “creative experiences” are important as identifiers of creative place, respectively. The evaluation of the case study showed that the total score of creative places in this urban space is 69.6 (out of 100) and “meaning” gained the most point in this urban space.

The factors of this research can be provided to architects and urban planners as identifiers of a creative place and a case study can be evaluated in terms of the degree of compliance with creative place identifiers.

This exploratory study, a Ph.D. dissertation completed at the University of Western Ontario in 2013, examines the materially embedded relations of power between library users and staff in public libraries and how building design regulates spatial behavior according to organizational objectives. It considers three public library buildings as organization spaces (Dale & Burrell, 2008) and determines the extent to which their spatial organizations reproduce the relations of power between the library and its public that originated with the modern public library building type ca. 1900. Adopting a multicase study design, I conducted site visits to three, purposefully selected public library buildings of similar size but various ages. Site visits included: blueprint analysis; organizational document analysis; in-depth, semi-structured interviews with library users and library staff; cognitive mapping exercises; observations; and photography.

Despite newer approaches to designing public library buildings, the use of newer information technologies, and the emergence of newer paradigms of library service delivery (e.g., the user-centered model), findings strongly suggest that the library as an organization still relies on many of the same socio-spatial models of control as it did one century ago when public library design first became standardized. The three public libraries examined show spatial organizations that were designed primarily with the librarian, library materials, and library operations in mind far more than the library user or the user’s many needs. This not only calls into question the public library’s progressiveness over the last century but also hints at its ability to survive in the new century.

The purpose of this paper is to reconceptualize space as a field of struggles between multiple agents.

The author draws from field theory and uses visual methods to explain how graffiti shapes how neighborhoods are branded and aligned with creative city redevelopment plans.

By exploring space/place as field, the author moves beyond the structure/culture dichotomy to explain both place making and displacement.

The findings suggest gentrification is not an abstract force, but rather the outcome of struggles to define place and attract new, consuming populations to the neighborhood.

Sociologists share a long and rich tradition of associating opportunity with space that traces back to W.E.B. DuBois’ research on the seventh ward in The Philadelphia Negro (1899). More recently, sociologists have reified space and have attempted to distinguish place as an outcome of human experience. How space and place is reproduced remains unclear. This paper contributes toward the understanding of space, place-making and displacement.

Attempts to prove, in this second chapter of the author’s monograph, that with a new research programme, it is possible to build a methodological bridge between economics and all other natural sciences and the scientists should address this challenge. Reviews basic principles that govern nature, including Einstein’s findings along with such luminaries as Copernicus, Newton, Galileo and Jeans. Concludes that the future is safe, as a new generation of scientists is now emerging in the East and the West, and that the new methodology should provide enough space for new roads, ideas and interpretations, which may occur in the future. Closes by saying a new spirit should be initiated in economics and transplanted into natural sciences.

There is a double crisis in modern science and in particular in physics and mechanics. Among others Einstein and Stephane Lupasco, in the 1930s, warned about this crisis. The Quantum Theory cannot be reconciled with the Relativity Theory. Specifically there is a gap (cleavage) between micro – and macro‐physics and mechanics. Parallel or beneath there is also a second crisis derived from a discontinuity (again a cleavage) between classical and modern science, that is between two previous revolutions. A new research programme of a simultaneous equilibrium versus disequilibrium approach, initially applied in economics has now been extended to include natural sciences. It is the question of a new, more comprehensive methodology which is actually a sui generis synthesis between classical and modern heritage. The rigorous application of the new research programme leads to the organisation of an Orientation Table, that is, a methodological map of all possible combinations (systems). The Table shows, without any exaggeration, a few revolutionary results. For instance, with the help of the Table, modern science or the second revolution (Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg) does not appear contradictory but rather complementary to classical science or the first revolution (Newton, Lavoisier). The Kuhnian thesis to the contrary is disproved and the second crisis is solved. With the help of the Universal Hypothesis of Duality (the basis of the Orientation Table), matter and energy, at the micro – and macro‐level, appear in a double form (the Principle of Duality): stable (equilibrium) particles and unstable (disequilibrium) waves. The strong interactions from modern physics are associated with the law of gravitation (attraction) or stable equilibrium which governs stable matter and energy. The weak interactions are associated with the law of disgravitation (dispersion or repulsion) including entropy or unstable equilibrium which governs unstable matter and energy. In this way the first crisis is also solved.