Everything Condensed and in own Words Flashcards
What is fordism?
A way of producing products for mass production of consumer goods.
What 3 principles did fordism allow for?
- Made way for a deskilled labour force
- It centralised manager supervision of the deskilled labour force
- Located capital in specific locations- Detroit, NYC etc to grow more industry/ business
Where did Fordism come about?
Henry Ford in Detroit- his use of the assembly line to produce vehicles easily and effectively.
What did the assembly line do?
Made jobs in the factories much more basic, it deskilled the labour.
Empowered the employers but not the employees- easily fire and hire.
Who did people like Ford and other mass producers supply to?
Whats todays market like?
They targeted the huge working class and middle class sector (the people that worked for them could buy what they made).
More niche market.
What does an “agglomeration of businesses” mean?
A build up of similar businesses of one industry in one location.
For example, car industry in Detroit, 1930s-1970s all car parts were built there.
No waiting around- very quick production.
When did Fordism take place?
1930s- 1970s
Why did Fordism hit a crisis in the 1970s?
1) In the Middle East, where the bulk of oil was controlled, the OPEC cartel formed which limited supply of oil to global economy. Drastically rising prices and shocking economy/ industry.
2) The rise in global industry competitors.
3) Overproduction
What are the main distinctions in post-Fordism?
1) It decreased overhead- meaning businesses could not afford their managers, required employees to supervise themselves (labour force taking responsibility for quality)
2) Limited stock- to keep costs low, if products sold THEN they would sell more (less risk).
3) “Just in time” production
4) Sourcing of products and labour elsewhere in the world where it’s cheaper
What is residential differentiation?
The tendency for similar activities and similar types of people to cluster together in cities
Burgess’ concentric zone model:
- Central business district (CBD)
- Zone in transition
- Zone of Workingmen’s homes
- Residential zone
- Commuter zone
Criticisms of Burgess’ concentric zone model
Quite old and was developed before the advent of mass car ownership.
New working and housing trends have emerged since the model was developed. Many people now choose to live and work outside the city on the urban fringe.
Every city is different. There is no such thing as a typical city.
Post-industrial society
Rise of service class
Shift from industrial manufacturing to service industries centered on information technology
High degree of autonomy (service class sells their skills)
Post-Fordism emerged why?
Saturated western markets did not require mass production (crisis of overproduction)
Corporations sought more flexible production techniques, involving advanced technology and reorganisation of labour
What is economies of scale?
A proportionate saving in costs gained by an increased level of production.
What is the Hoyt model?
Based on the Burgess model, but adds sectors of similar land uses concentrated in parts of the city.
Some zones, eg the factories/industry zone, radiate out from the CBD, e.g following the line of a main road or a railway.
Early accounts of community
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft (1887)
What are Gemeinschaft relations like?
When an informal community exists where the people are of similar culture and live together cooperatively. There is a sense of moral obligation to the group.
What are Gesellschaft relations like?
When a formal community exists that is highly competitive and based off of self interest. There is a complex division of labour that is goal oriented.
‘Human ecology’ - findings from the Chicago School of Human Ecology. Parker found that…
Competition in city.
Dominance of social groups.
Gentrification- one group would come in and replace another.
What was Bethnal Green?
What was it characterised by?
Bethnal Green in the 1950s was characteristic of Fordist living.
Organised labour (based around a ‘living wage’), and mass production/ consumption.
Role of place in shaping communities:
- Structures the daily routines of economic and social life; (functional)
- Structures people’s life paths, providing them with both opportunities and constraints;
- Provides an arena in which everyday, ‘common- sense’ knowledge and experience is gathered;
- Provides a site for socialisation and social reproduction.
- Barke and Farlane, 2001
The Rise of Community Planning in the UK
1944 Dudley Report
Promotion of ‘neighbourhood’ and community life a key feature of UK post-war planning efforts (allied with Fordist way of economic life)
The Rise of Community Planning in the UK
1947 Town and Country Planning Act
- All planning was to be subject to planning permission by local councils
- Local authority ‘development plan’
The Decline of Fordism (1970s…) from lecture
• Flexible Specialization
• Globalisation
• Growing demand by women to enter workforce
• Modern Consumerism- people wanted more niche products to develop identities.
• Neoliberal De-Regulation (state retrenchment)
Knox and Pinch, 2010
By the 1960s… (Gesellschaft relations)
The idealised notion of neighbourhood communities began to lose its appeal and came under scrutiny- greater recognition of the divided nature of society.
Anderson (1983) ‘Imagined Communities’
All nations are “imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each they carry the image of their communion” (Anderson 1983)
Antagonism across the UK from the 50s-70s?
Many workers who came from British colonies faced discrimination
1958 race riots in Nottingham and London
1960s and early 70s - many instances of racism in the unions — discrimination against black workers and even racist strikes in UK.
What is Crisis Communality?
Where people feel and express concern with order, conformity and social homogeneity (Knox and Pinch, 2010: 191).
- Often involves cultural identity politics.
- Mediated by power relationships: – Issues of dominance and oppression
- Exclusion of groups who transgress (or are expected to transgress - Cresswell).
What is ‘Othering’?
– the process of perceiving or portraying someone or something as intrinsically different or alien.
– binary of self and other (“not one of us”)
– class, ethnicity, disability, religion
Example of ‘othering’?
Jim Crow Laws- The segregation of public schools, public places, and public transportation.
Unlike many of global capitals, London’s…
rich and poor are distributed in a way that makes the city resemble a patchwork quilt.
However, increasingly, polarisation of the rich and poor has started to accelerate
What can gated communities do?
- Offer a false sense of security
- Can become a target
- Can create community hostility – ‘ghettos of affluence’
- More about prestige and aspiration than fear of crime?
- Could undermine public services
- Can cause ghettos outside
What are spatial practises?
the acts, routines, rituals, actions, movements, and uses (of space) that are carried out by people (often in their daily lives).
What is Internal Cohesion?
When people – especially minorities – feel threatened… they often have a strong demand for internal cohesion. (Knox and Pinch 2010: 172)
Identify four principal functions for the congregation (or clustering) of minority groups.
- Defence- Northern Ireland – Fall’s Road (working-class protestant and Catholic communities)
- Mutual Support- ‘Gay communities’ San Francisco – Castro District
- Cultural preservation- Harlem Renaissance NYC- a flowering of African- American literature and art in the 1920s.
- To facilitate ‘Attack’
2 trends have characterised urban society in the ‘Post-Fordist’ era
- Regime of Flexible Accumulation
- ‘Splintering Urbanism’
- Graham and Marvin, 2001
- Regime of Flexible Accumulation
‘Self-illusory hedonism’ (Campbell, 1987)
Identities and lifestyles were created through consumption
More and more counter cultures (a way of life and set of attitudes opposed to or at variance with the prevailing social norm)
- Splintering Urbanism: Geographies of Polarisation
Polarisation can refer to the proportions in the occupational structure.
Expansion of both low-paying and high- paying service sector jobs, is leading towards the decline of middle-incomes.
What is Cyberspace?
“the electronic medium of computer networks, in which online communication takes place.” (Dictionary.com, 2006)
Most definitions include some sort of mention to computer networks (Woolley, 2005)
4 categories of cyberspace?
The Internet- Kitchin creates a distinction between the internet and virtual reality
Virtual Reality- an actual sensory experience of digital space
Telecommunications- important in the provision of access to the internet, particularly in the developing world
The internet of things- connects not just people but objects
Metaphor or reality?
Cyberspace acts as a sort of metaphor for an almost alternate universe we exist in apart from our real, physical world (Wonderopolis.org, 2017)
Words like ‘virus’ no longer just have biological connotations, merging the two ‘worlds further (Cicognani, 1998)
Spaced as we know it is being redefined, so much so cyberspace is now considered to be real space for many people (Campbell and Shapiro, 1999)
Globalisation and cyber space
Reducing distance
Creating reliationships
Global village
Tahir Square- Cairo, 2011: Arab spring happened
Youth protest groups protests in Tahir Square in early 2011
Twitter was important in instigation and made it easier to assemble people and organise (80,000)
Occupy movement
New York
1,000s of people joined in the movement
Galvanised through digital communication
Connectivity and Protest
Two things social media can do:
- Networking and organisation
Enables very broad and quick communication - Mobilising and congregating
(Jeffrey Juris, 2012)
Presentation of self in cyberspace
We adopt different roles in different circumstances
Papachrissi, 2010
Structuralist vs. Post-Structuralist
(Knox & and Pinch 2-3)
Underlying social structures order our lives Vs. Individual human capacity to effect change
Strategy vs. Tactics
De Certeau sees strategy as the techniques of the powerful to effect structure.
Tactics are those actions which sneak around or even challenge these structures.
Ben Highmore (2008) What is happening when white men go to curry-houses to order the spiciest curries they can?
“aggressive food consumption” xenophobic?
The possibility for intercultural exchange?
Rhys-Taylor (2013)
Disgust and Distinction
The squirm of disgust is linked to distinctions of class and modernity.
Cultural sources
Looking at the way that popular culture interacts with society
Beyond institutions of power
e.g. Comic books, Jason Dittmer
Material culture
What are the objects that you deal with in day to day life
How to apparently boring objects play a role in society at large?
Ethnography
Being in the world!! Studying society from a street level perspective Focussing on a small scale perspective Mitchell Duneier Sidewalk (1999) Pink (2013) Doing Ethnography
Objects are reliant on
Human beings for their existence
Objects in turn form us
Materiality is an integral part of culture
“Opposed”- you can’t disentangle the two, you need one to understand the other
Selfie stick
Constantly engaged in representing ourselves- taking a photo of ourselves in a way that we would be otherwise unable to do
Tells how important it is our desire to curate our identity
Created in response of a social tendency
Why are things important?
Material culture reflects our society
Society is formed by material objects
Our economy is (was?) based on material things
Built infrastructure is the backbone of society
Material culture reflects societal values.
Which things to we value the most?
How are our cultural and social priorities reflected in material culture?
Our economy rests on material culture
The foundations of our economy remain material
The value of everyday objects changes in relation to a number of basic commodities.
How do we approach the study of objects?
Value
Symbolism
Sensorial
Activity
Value – Marxist approach
Marx called value “Congealed Labour-time”
What something is worth is the total amount of effort that went into it- a manifestation of human effort
Symbolism – Semiotic approach
Roland Barthes used this as the basis for ‘semiology’ a reading of culture and objects on the basis of what they mean. Mythologies (1957)
Sensory – sensorial approach
Sensory/sensual epistemology – knowledge derived from the body
Active – agency approach
What if we think of objects as active instead of passive?
Agency (Gell 1998)
An example of how to investigate a commodity chain.
Illuminates Labour, Eating culture, Geopolitics of trade, and more…
Follow the thing: Papaya (2004)
Who picks and grows them? – working conditions, agency Who trades them? - Economic value How are they advertised? -Cultural meaning What are they like to eat? Sensorial
Geography of the High Street Key events
Electric avenue: first street in London to be lit up with electricity
Bon marche: first purpose built department store in Britain
1841 Brixton was semi-rural
During the 19th century- a train line opened, birth of commuter culture and created the birth of suburbs.
Women and the Geography of the High Street
Employment for women
Acceptable places for women to spend their leisure time
Public but inside
Shopping Mall
Modern forms of consumption have grown to new kinds of space in the city.
Private spaces that feel public
Large glass constructions
Spaces of liberation and of control
Liminal space- between things- between public and private- ambiguous. You can do anything you want but you’re also under constant threat.
Surveillance panopticon micropowers (Foucault)
Shopping centres are designed to promote a specific form of behaviour.
Disciplined not by the institution but by members of the public who take on a disciplinary role.
Control in Ordinary Streets
Places in the city that don’t have this sense of control, true public spaces
Rights and permissions
The concept of land ownership is complex
Even “Public Land” is essentially owned by the Crown
Many roads follow rights of way through land owned by others
In modern developments “public” is increasingly wholly private e.g. Olympic site
When was the term gentrification first used?
Ruth Glass German émigré first used the term in 1964.
Criticisms of gentrification
Tendency just to focus on middle-class Slater (2006). Social fallout of gentrification amongst lower class forced to move out.
Can you apply term that was oringally just for London to all over the world? Lees (2016)
Culture vs production debate
Ley: changes in consumption behaviour have changed the way cities are lived in (1986)
Smith: changing land use structured by uneven investment and profit drive.
(1979)
“It does not matter whether production or consumption is viewed as more important in driving gentrification, so long as neither is completely ignored”
(Slater 2011:575)
Brick Lane Case Study
Alexander (2011)
Brick lane has been home to a working class community, shaped by waves of migration. Cereal killer cafe targeted...
Shoreditch Case Study
Harris (2012)
Light industry, warehouses, small factories in Shoreditch 80s/90s
Made it an environment which young artists could make in their own image
Rise of the creative class
Florida (2002)
Developers and governments actively attempting to attract ‘creatives’
What are Carceral cities?
Foucault compared modern cities to a panoptican- a design of building where people can be observed centrally and may not know they are being looked at - example is a prison.
Modern cities are like this as you are constantly being observed by passers-by, security firms or cctv.
Constant observation = individuals behave how the state wants them to behave as they fear being judged.
This fear of judgement then creates the carceral city
