Creating a hybrid sense of belonging in Copenhagen: – a case study on Facebook

TY - ABST

T1 - Creating a hybrid sense of belonging in Copenhagen

T2 - The languagecultural conceptualisation of ‘belonging’

AU - Monka, Malene

PY - 2015

Y1 - 2015

N2 - In the paper I examine how a cultural event (tilting at the ring) traditionally associated with the periphery of Denmark is transferred to the capital of Copenhagen. This transfer was initiated by a group of mobile youngsters originally from Southern Jutland now living in Copenhagen. After the first event, a Facebook-community was set up to organize and promote succeeding events. By analyzing empirical data from Facebook I point to how the participants draw on a range of ‘languagecultural practices’ (Cornips & de Rooij in press) to re-contextualize the rural tradition to an urban setting. I discuss whether and how the two dimensions of ‘belonging’ (Antonsich 2010), i.e. place-belongingness and politics of belonging, are made relevant by the participants. The connection to Southern Jutland is pointed to in several ways: linguistically by using dialect orthography, materially by pointing to local products and culturally by enacting the competition (Coupland 2014). Yet, I argue that the participants do not create a copy of the activity as it is played out in its original setting, rather it is ascribed a certain urban coolness, which might be a way of demonstrating hybrid senses of belonging to both Southern Jutland and Copenhagen.

AB - In the paper I examine how a cultural event (tilting at the ring) traditionally associated with the periphery of Denmark is transferred to the capital of Copenhagen. This transfer was initiated by a group of mobile youngsters originally from Southern Jutland now living in Copenhagen. After the first event, a Facebook-community was set up to organize and promote succeeding events. By analyzing empirical data from Facebook I point to how the participants draw on a range of ‘languagecultural practices’ (Cornips & de Rooij in press) to re-contextualize the rural tradition to an urban setting. I discuss whether and how the two dimensions of ‘belonging’ (Antonsich 2010), i.e. place-belongingness and politics of belonging, are made relevant by the participants. The connection to Southern Jutland is pointed to in several ways: linguistically by using dialect orthography, materially by pointing to local products and culturally by enacting the competition (Coupland 2014). Yet, I argue that the participants do not create a copy of the activity as it is played out in its original setting, rather it is ascribed a certain urban coolness, which might be a way of demonstrating hybrid senses of belonging to both Southern Jutland and Copenhagen.

M3 - Conference abstract for conference

Y2 - 9 June 2015 through 10 June 2015

ER -