Communication, Culture, and Making Meaning in the City
Ethnographic Engagements in Urban Environments
Contributions by Emma Agusita, Eric Aoki, Julia Aoki, Jon Dovey, Craig L. Engstrom, Kathleen M. German, Joy Yang Jiao, Ryan M. Lescure, Jolene Mairs Dyer, Shawn Sobers, Martin Whiteford, Ayaka Yoshimizu, Joanna Zielińska Edited by Ahmet Atay, Jay Brower
Publication date:
10 October 2017Length of book:
242 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksISBN-13: 9781498531931
As communicative, cultural, and political spaces, cities present a vast array of racial, ethnic, national, sexual, and socioeconomic experiences around which human communities take shape. This shaping forms a germinal point of mass cultural life. City planners decide where buildings and neighborhoods are developed, which ultimately affects who residents interact with, how they get there, and why they choose city life. From these experiences, boundaries and possibilities arise that define cultures of “the city.” In Communication, Culture, and Making Meaning in the City: Ethnographic Engagements in Urban Environments, contributors focus on theorizing the notion of “the city” as a communicatively constituted cultural space, drawing on situated, reflexive ethnographic examinations of “the city” to show the complex and varied ways in which cities produce social meaning.
Atay and Brower have brought together compelling ethnographic accounts from a variety of fascinating cities. The communicative dimensions of urban spaces are revealed through the interpretation and critique of human existence where planning and order meet improvisation and fluidity.