Month: May 2011

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Barcelona’s new mayor, in a barrio that doesn’t fit him well

25/05/2011 admin 0
We always liked this photo. In 2004, who is now the new mayor of Barcelona visited Bon Pastor neighborhood: this photo was taken in the casa barata of some friends (and informants) of ours. What is really interesting here is the presence, we might call it, of the different kind of people portrayed. The man on the right, the grandfather, the girl, look solid, real, strong. The politician in the middle seems like he was cut out and sticked on a scenario that doesn't fit him: it makes him feel unconfortable, like he didn't know how to behave. Some places make the power feel unconfortable; and the power - rightwing or leftwing, it's the same - tries by all means to wipe them out.
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“Right to the City” congress in Hamburg, june 2-5, 2011

12/05/2011 admin 0
The Network "Right To The City" Hamburg invites to collective confusions, encounters and diversions. At different places spread over the city, on 2 – 5 June 2011 a lot of planned and unplanned activities will take place. Join us and * create situations & crowds * roam through the city & discuss through the night * celebrate on the concrete & analyse the urban abyss * disassemble your very own practices & save utopian potentials * join us at the "Right To The City Congress" and bring along your neighbours. Take a look at THE THESES TO THE CONGRESS
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Poblenou 03-08 (Barcelona about Barcelona)

09/05/2011 admin 0
POBLENOU 03-08: Video realized by Suporttotal, gathering part of the visual work done by Jordi Secall during the years 2003-2008 in Poblenou. Photos of historical moments like the evictions and demolitions in the alleys now part of Parc Central, images of can Ricart and La Escocesa still alive, the biblical entrance of Makabra in can Ricart, and other more recent ones filmed in video, like grafitis on the roof of former Caminal art workshop, or the eviction of a family in calle st. Francesc in summer 2008. 11 frenetic minuts of music, video and photos.
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Other worlds exist

04/05/2011 admin 0
[/caption] Maybe anthropology is slowly dropping its positivist burden and stepping towards the contemporary world. In Low and Merry's opening article of Current Anthropology's recent supplement Engaged anthropology, diversity and dilemmas (2010), the authors highlight how little attention the peers who reviewed the article payed to the problem of objectivity and neutrality, until now required to legitimate any ethnographic research. Maybe scholars are slowly recognizing that personal and political engagement in the struggles and demands of the communities studied represent an enrichment, not an obstacle to the production of cientific knowledge. As Micheal Herzfeld (2010) notices in Gentrification, engagement and the neoliberal hijacking of history, it is an ethical duty of anthropologists to show alternative possibilities to neoliberal cynism, and to make them accessible and understandable to the public.
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Two new books about Barcelona

02/05/2011 admin 0
These two freshly published books by Chiara Ingrosso provide new insights on Barcelona's urban and architectural history: the first analizes the city transformations from Franco's dictatorship to future urban plans; the second draws a route around four neighborhoods, Barceloneta, Poblenou, La Mina and Bon Pastor. Both of them are illustrated with Mario Spada photographies, and, as a whole, they show the catalan capital very different as how it is usually represented in Europe and in the whole world, underlining its several dark sides.