Kaschuba W. Neighborhood and Quarter: the New Forms of Urban Publicity
Wolfgang KASCHUBA — Doctor, Professor, Ehemaliger Direktor, Leiter der Abteilung „Integration, soziale Netzwerke und kulturelle Lebensstile“, Berliner Institut für Migrationsforschung (Germany, Berlin)
E-mail: office.bim@hu-berlin.de
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ABSTRACT. The essay deals with one of the major topics located at the intersection of the author’s research interests and his past political activities, which is the influence of urban everyday life and communities on the development of citizen initiatives and activism, including the political one. The text provides a reflection based on the author’s observations of urban everyday life and its transformations in the district of Berlin-Kreuzberg, where he has lived for twenty five years. His observations in other European cities are also brought for the comparison. Analyzing the development of European cities in the post-war twentieth century, from the predictable decay of a city as a living environment to its revival in the twenty first century, which is expressed in the transformation and revitalization of the urban environment, the author demonstrates how the diversity of culture and cultures in urban quarters brings the growth of their symbolic value and relevance and initiates the activities of the civil society in the fields of politics and identity, turning the quarters into spaces for political and everyday discussions and various civil movements. It is a big city’s quarter that provides an environment where a neighborhood association of people, similar to a rural one, is achieved along with an opportunity to keep a distance, which is typical of urban space. This makes a balanced coexistence of different lifestyles and cultures possible and eventually demonstrates the success of integration processes.
KEYWORDS: city, urbananthropology, lifestyles, quarter, quartercom munities, citizeninitiatives, every day life
УДК 394: 347.471(1-21)
DOI 10.31250/2618-8600-2019-2(4)-6-22