TY - JOUR
T1 - Picturing Urban Green Attachments
T2 - Civic Activists Moving between Familiar and Public Engagements in the City
AU - Blok, Anders
AU - Meilvang, Marie Leth
PY - 2015/2/13
Y1 - 2015/2/13
N2 - In this article, we explore the cultural-political tensions and ambiguities of urban ecology, by way of following how activists move and translate between ‘familiar’ and ‘public’ engagements in the green city. Empirically, we locate our exploration in and around Nordhavnen (The North Harbor), a large-scale sustainable urban development project in Copenhagen. Invoking Laurent Thévenot’s pragmatic sociology of ‘regimes of engagement’, we sketch a culturally sensitive approach to urban ecological activism, highlighting the critical moral capacities involved in building new forms of ‘commonality in the plural’ in the city. In particular, we stress the role assumed in such engagements by various image-making practices, as means for activists to express, share and render publicly visible a range of embodied urban attachments. Pragmatic sociology, we conclude, may contribute to a novel understanding of urban politics as inclusive learning processes, more hospitable to a wider diversity of familiar attachments to cities and their ecologies.
AB - In this article, we explore the cultural-political tensions and ambiguities of urban ecology, by way of following how activists move and translate between ‘familiar’ and ‘public’ engagements in the green city. Empirically, we locate our exploration in and around Nordhavnen (The North Harbor), a large-scale sustainable urban development project in Copenhagen. Invoking Laurent Thévenot’s pragmatic sociology of ‘regimes of engagement’, we sketch a culturally sensitive approach to urban ecological activism, highlighting the critical moral capacities involved in building new forms of ‘commonality in the plural’ in the city. In particular, we stress the role assumed in such engagements by various image-making practices, as means for activists to express, share and render publicly visible a range of embodied urban attachments. Pragmatic sociology, we conclude, may contribute to a novel understanding of urban politics as inclusive learning processes, more hospitable to a wider diversity of familiar attachments to cities and their ecologies.
KW - Faculty of Social Sciences
KW - civic activism
KW - familiar attachments
KW - Laurent Thévenot
KW - pragmatic sociology
KW - urban ecology
U2 - 10.1177/0038038514532038
DO - 10.1177/0038038514532038
M3 - Journal article
SN - 0038-0385
VL - 49
SP - 19
EP - 37
JO - Sociology
JF - Sociology
IS - 1
ER -