4th International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Emotional Geographies
1-3 July 2013 at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands
Session title and chair
Session Title
Sense of place and the city
Session Chair name
Affiliation
tba
Session presentation details
Presentation 1 Title:
Youth and adult geographies collide
Presentation 1 Abstract
'The image' depicts a man with a dark complexion, arms opes as through
ready to embrace the viewer, the photographer, his smile a sly bent betrays
his gesture. While working with youth in Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada on a
collaborative research project many images were created. In some cases, the
youth participants brought along their borrowed cameras into places that an
academic, a researcher, an adult could simply not go. In the image described
above, the youth participants returned to the group to describe their images.
When they spoke of the man, they replied that he was overly friendly and that
he was simply 'offering them drugs.' When this same story was retold to a
group of adults, educators and community planners, some took a very
protectionist stance and chided me for the apparent danger I had subjected
the youth to. This papers explores the landscapes of emotions and flow by
way of this example where youth move freely through the city gaining access
to layers and experiences unavailable to adults, while adults respond with
vehement disapproval that the naive youth will experience a great harm. This
paper reflects on a scenario in need of further exploration, as it fell outside of
the scope of (Forthcoming. Lozowy, Shields, Dorow. Cameras Creating
Community, Canadian Journal of Sociology).
Author name
Author affiliation
Andriko Lozowy
University of Alberta, Canada
Presentation 2 Title:
Maps of emotion : The representation of emotionthroughcartography
and the production of spatial sensitive approach
Presentation 2 Abstract
This communication aims to realize one of the evolutions of contemporary
cartography. A certain number of artistic cartographers are turning toward
representing the sensitive dimensions of areas. In order to do this, these maps
have certain autonomy and have taken certain liberties with respect to the
rules and conventions of traditional cartography. This communication aims to
presents the constructive elements of these “emotional maps.”
These emotional maps recount them as spatial experiences. They also do a
fine job in showing the experience of the intellectual journey. These are the
maps of spaces in which one lives. They show perceptions. Where are these
images born? What are they looking to show about perception? How do they
show it? Can we qualify them with individual, collective images? Are they
subjective, objective images? This communication will allow us to engage
these questions. For this study, we have assembled a certain number of pieces
that seemed to us to bring out the same cartographic intention: the desire to
map the emotional dimensions of the spaces. These pieces were not put
together at random in a particular publication. The collection of these
documents was done in various publications and on the basis of data from
landscape and architectural schools. If on one end the sphere of art produces a
large part of the corpus, the landscapers, architects and some professors in
human sciences produce another important part of the corpus. The corpus
thus reunites images of different natures. In effect, the map is reflection and
communication tool, and in the present case, it permits one to interpret and to
make sensible emotions, which comes from the space. All of these images
carry a spatial memory on emotions, the nature of which this proposition will
allow us to define.
This reflection remains the major site of my doctoral work. I will present my
method of analysis of this corpus. With these methodological points of
reference, we can compare the maps from different perceptibility areas. This
mapping epistemology will turn toward the idea of the map as an object in
perpetual social and cultural evolution, which can make appropriations the
indefinite object of enriching our knowledge of emotions.
Author name
Author affiliation
Elise Olmedo
University of Paris 1-Panthéon Sorbonne
Presentation 3 Title:
The spirit of place- colonial heritage in indonesia
Presentation 3 Abstract
The lived experience of residents in postcolonial cities provides a
contemporary understanding of these distinctive cultural landscapes as
colonial heritage is often contested. Heritage conservation policies are
implemented and change the sense of place but the meanings assigned by
officials differ from those of residents. Using qualitative methods this case
study shows that residual colonial infrastructure has layered heritage
meanings. Heritage meanings are related to national identity and to personal
memories that are connected to colonial infrastructure. The link between the
colonial infrastructure and the colonial period has faded; new functions have
altered the meanings of these places. Residual colonial heritage important to
the new identity is linked to symbols and heroes of independence. What was
once part of the colonizing other is now part of the unifying identity of their
new nation.
Author name
Author affiliation
Robbert Zuiderveen
University of Groningen
Presentation 4 Title:
Salman Rushdie’s Bombay: The Migrant’s City of Transience
Presentation 4 Abstract
Although Salman Rushdie’s novels reflect the “unsolidity of the solid ground”
of the migrant’s consciousness and the places in his novels are sites of
interconnections and flows, they do not illustrate the placelessness of
globality. Instead, Rushdie’s places exist as situations of emotions arising out
of the moments of the everyday. This paper will focus on the landscape of
Bombay, as it appears in his novels such as Midnight’s Children (1981), The
Moor’s Last Sigh (1995), and The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999) in which
the city is an all pervasive presence despite the near absence of physical
description. However, the process is further complicated as Rushdie’s Bombay
is inhabited by a hybrid floating population for whom the city is one of the
stops in their extended journey. This quality of transience is transferred on to
the city, which lives in a grand way but only for a while. Rushdie shows that
the migrants’ “right to the city” in its political implications such as claims to its
centrality and the power to remake it lies effectively in the fleeting moments
of living and desiring the city. This paper argues that the otherwise illusory
emplacement of the city is brought about by the affective ties of its
inhabitants, which acts as a means of disalienation.
Author name
Author affiliation
Anjali Gera Roy
Department of Humanities of Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of
Technology Kharagpur
Madhumita Roy
Short biographical note for presenters
Andriko Lozowy
Andriko Lozowy’s current research considers the Canadian Oil Sands through a
method of photographer-researcher towards individual and collaborative
practices of resistance. As a doctoral student at the University of Alberta –
Andriko has been fortunate to be stationed at the Northern gateway. His work
is currently in multiple stages, as a dissertation Icons of Oil, as well as parsed
out as articles; Reframing the Canadian Oil Sands, Patchett & Lozowy,
Imaginations: Sept 2012; Cameras Creating Community, Lozowy, Shields,
Dorow, Canadian Journal of Sociology: Forthcoming 2013; Mashups: Youth
Culture, Shields, Lozowy, (Theory, Culture and Society Online, Forthcoming).
Mega-Haulers, Encyclopedia of Consumption and Waste: 2012; PhotographerResearcher, Lozowy, Space & Culture, Under Review).
Madhumita Roy
Anjali Gera Roy
Robbert Zuiderveen
Anjali Gera Roy is Professor in the Department of Humanities of Social Sciences
at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. She has published essays in
literary, film and cultural studies, translated short fiction from Hindi, authored
a book on African fiction, edited an anthology on the Nigerian writer Wole
Soyinka and co-edited another on the Indo-Canadian novelist Rohinton Mistry.
She co-edited a volume of essays Partitioned Lives: Narratives of Home,
Displacement and Resettlement (Delhi: Pearson Longman 2008) on the Indian
Partition of 1947 with Nandi Bhatia. Her new book Bhangra Moves: From
Ludhiana to London and Beyond (Aldersgate: Ashgate 2010) examines
Bhangra’s transmutation into global dance music. She investigated the
relationship between global musical flows and diasporic identity formation on
a Senior Research Fellowship of the Indo-Canadian Shastri Institute in 2007
and researched Bollywood’s transnational flows as a Senior Research Fellow at
the Asia Research Institute National University of Singapore in 2008-2009 and
2010.