Benjamin’s<i>Arcades Project</i>today: From the European metropolis to the global city

Goebel, Rolf J.

doi:10.1080/17449855.2011.614771

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Pusca (2010) describes this as the 'aesthetics of change', noting how change is reflected in Benjamin's descriptions of a rapidly transforming European modernity. The Arcades Project examines the Paris arcades as historical sites bringing together the past and present, local and cultural and moreover anticipating both hybrid and virtual cultures (Geobel, 2011).…”

Section: 'Aesthetics Of Change': Sociologists In the Shopping Mallmentioning

confidence: 99%

Welcome to the shopping revolution! Commodifying selfhood and rearticulating consumer capitalism at the Metro Centre, Gateshead

Casey

2023

The Sociological Review

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Drawing on original archive material from the Tyne and Wear Archives, this article examines the sociological significance of the Metro Centre shopping mall, built in Gateshead in North East England in 1986, at the time the biggest in Europe. It explores how the Metro Centre marked a call to accept the new and ‘prevailing ideals’ of consumption and represented a key moment for the reformulation of selfhoods as consumer identity practices. Adopting Walter Benjamin’s notion of the ‘hollow mould’ of modernity, the article positions the Metro Centre as an embodiment and material form of wider social, political and economic shifts. Its geographical location at the epicentre of British de-industrialisation is highly significant and marks a key moment where citizens and consumer selfhoods were fused. The shifting discourses around consumerism that occurred during this time, against the backdrop of the increasingly populist ideology of Thatcherism, set the foundations for the emergence of a new neoliberal consumer citizen, who was promised choice, personal growth and wellbeing via consumerism. I will show how new neoliberal ideals of aspiration and meritocracy became interwoven into a new language of consumption that was heavily promoted by the Metro Centre. In fact, the Metro Centre was pivotal in promoting new forms of social exclusion and new articulations of global capitalist production. The article concludes by proposing that the Metro Centre came to embody new neoliberal notions of social ‘worth’, value and inclusion entwined with engagement in new processes and practices of consumption.

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Section: 'Aesthetics Of Change': Sociologists In the Shopping Mallmentioning

confidence: 99%

Welcome to the shopping revolution! Commodifying selfhood and rearticulating consumer capitalism at the Metro Centre, Gateshead

Casey

2023

The Sociological Review

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“…He specifies that "culture" is not the single or even the dominant key to globalisation, but that "these transformations change the very fabric of cultural experience and, indeed, affect our sense of what culture actually is in the modern world" (2011, p. 489). Goebel (2011) argues that 19 th century Paris relied on non-Western imagery to help form its European identity. "Benjamin's Paris, the western capital of the 19 th century, reflects a crucial transition with respect to European urban modernity, where culture is still tied to local traditions even while already being affected by agents -world exhibitions, panoramas, the display and consumption of "foreign" commodities -that begin to break up the "natural" identity of culture and the local" (Goebel, 2011, p. 489).…”

Section: The Contemporary Flâneur In Tropical Asiamentioning

confidence: 99%

Tropical Flânerie & the Creative Asian City: a perambulation of literature

Chaudhury

Lundberg

2018

eTropic

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The flâneur became a literary figure of 19th century Paris and was taken up as a theoretical figure in the early 20th century. During these periods the city was undergoing massive social, architectural and infrastructural change. Today, the notion of the flâneur is experiencing a renaissance as cities are undergoing significant restructuring towards creative industries and economies. At the same time, two distinctive aspects of the theory of the flâneur are facing critique. One is to do with geography. The theory is based on cities of the global north, such as Paris, London and New York, and thus inherently entwined with the colonial metropole. The other aspect concerns gender. The flâneur invokes a masculine gaze, and the possibility of a female flâneuse remains under debate.The current century has been witness to the rapid growth of cities, including in the tropics and Asia. This literature review – in the style of a perambulation – explores flânerie with examples of tropical Asian cities. Singapore is of special interest as it strives to become a ‘renaissance city’ – a global city of the arts, based on creative industries and economies. As a theory and method of critically meandering the creative city, flânerie offers a way of engaging and contributing to an ethnography of urban life. Furthermore, such a method may usefully rework the notion of the gaze of the flâneur to include the use of photography.

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“…O argumento central é que o urbanismo ecológico é um movimento ou um conceito válido para promover a resiliência, a sustentabilidade e uma diversidade socioambiental que valorize as localidades, apresentando assim uma resistência a processos e padrões hegemônicos de um urbanismo globalizado. Ao mesmo tempo, se desvirtuado, pode prover uma ferramenta para a intensificação da lógica capitalista de produção do espaço urbano, criando uma fantasmagoria predatória e discriminativa de Arcades verdes (BENJAMIN, 1999;FENTON, 2020;GOEBEL, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionunclassified

Ecological Urbanism: metabolic rift and phantasmagoria

Figueirôa-Ferreira

Borchers

Fernandes

2022

RNGC

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This article seeks to contribute to the argument that Ecological Urbanism is a movement or a valid concept to promote resilience, sustainability and a socio-environmental diversity that values localities, presenting a resistance to hegemonic processes and patterns of a globalized urbanism. In this sense, a literature review and analysis was carried out regarding ecological urbanism itself, as well as the metabolic rift, in order to contribute to its ecological aspect and the phantasmagoria to approach its urban side. Defending the use of historical materialism in the analysis of urban space and the city, as well as the social, political, cultural and economic relations that permeate urban ecologies.

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Benjamin’sArcades Projecttoday: From the European metropolis to the global city

Cited by 5 publications

References 5 publications

Welcome to the shopping revolution! Commodifying selfhood and rearticulating consumer capitalism at the Metro Centre, Gateshead

Welcome to the shopping revolution! Commodifying selfhood and rearticulating consumer capitalism at the Metro Centre, Gateshead

Tropical Flânerie & the Creative Asian City: a perambulation of literature

Ecological Urbanism: metabolic rift and phantasmagoria

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