Picturing Urban Green Attachments: Civic Activists Moving between Familiar and Public Engagements in the City

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 -