Intervention d’Emanuela Guano (Department of Anthropology, Georgia State University)
« Creative Urbanity: Revitalization, Precariousness, and Hope in a Postindustrial City »
Argumentaire
Over the last several decades, the neoliberal valorization of urban aesthetics has become pivotal to the attempt to boost a local economy of tourism in many of Europe’s postindustrial cities. While much urban studies literature represents this process as a top-down intervention with invariably negative social ramifications, this paper draws on over 10 years of ethnographic research conducted in Genoa, Italy, to explore how members of an Italian educated, though largely precarious, middle class carved niches of meaningful self-employment at the margins of urban revitalization. By analyzing the affective bearing of neoliberal urbanism and the agency of under- and unemployed middle class individuals in re-making the city, this paper provides a template for the exploration of revitalization in postindustrial cities that foregrounds forms of grassroots participation in a rapidly rising tourist and culture industry. It also argues for a contextual approach to neoliberalism as well as an understanding of Europe’s urban cultures that adds nuance to the assessment of city-based consumption prevailing in urban political economy.
Infos pratiques : (Jeudi 7 juin 2018, Salle des artistes)
