On South Bank: The Production of Public Space

Public realm ethnography: (Non-)Participation, co-presence and the challenge of situated multiplicity

“…1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 iii Low (2000: 16) sums this challenge up neatly, recording in some fieldnotes from Plaza de al Cultura how '[t]here is so little activity that it is hard to be a participant observer.' iv Low's (2000) field sites are two plazas (Parque Central and Plaza de la Cultura) in downtown San Jose, Costa Rica; Degen's (2008) field sites are Castlefield (Manchester) and Raval (Barcelona); Jones's (2014) field site is London's South Bank;and Kim's (2015) field sites are the sidewalks of two neighbouring neighbourhoods in Ho Chi Minh City. v See Dines (2018) for a discussion of 'contextual diversity' in public realm research.…”

“…As in the preceding examples, in terms of ethnographic fieldwork this methodology has direct observation or 'looking' (ibid 2015: 8) at its heart, but seeks to supplement this with interviews with sidewalk vendors (and also police and ward officials) 'in situ ' (ibid 2015: 15) in order to be able to understand, as well as describe and enumerate, social uses of the sidewalk (ibid 2015: 87). Notably, as is the case in Low (2000) and Jones (2014) in particular, Kim (2015: 97-99) describes an 'iterative' approach to the fieldwork carried out by her and her research assistants. First, an extensive survey of a selected sidewalk was conducted to map the space before systematic observations of the same sidewalks over fixed periods of time were conducted in order to 'outline the configuration of…activity happening on the sidewalk' (ibid 2015: 92) and to develop categories of sidewalk use.…”

“…At this point it is worth noting that while there is a growing number of empirical studies of the public realm conducted in the ethnographic tradition, in many of these there is a notable lack, bordering of absence, of attention to the practicalities of the methodological (and, in particular for this paper, fieldwork) approach taken. This is particularly the case in journal articles, but also applies to monographs in which the account of fieldwork or research procedures provided is typically restricted to a short section of the book 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 In the discussion that follows, therefore, I review the accounts of fieldwork methods provided in the write-ups of four prominent public realm ethnographies ( (Low [2000], Degen [2008], Jones [2014] and Kim [2015]. Substantively, they concern public realm settings both in the global north (Degen 2008;Jones 2014) and global south (Low 2000;Kim 2015) iv .…”

“…This is particularly the case in journal articles, but also applies to monographs in which the account of fieldwork or research procedures provided is typically restricted to a short section of the book 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 In the discussion that follows, therefore, I review the accounts of fieldwork methods provided in the write-ups of four prominent public realm ethnographies ( (Low [2000], Degen [2008], Jones [2014] and Kim [2015]. Substantively, they concern public realm settings both in the global north (Degen 2008;Jones 2014) and global south (Low 2000;Kim 2015) iv . These geographical variations are important considerations given notions of 'graduated publicness' (Bodnar and Molnar 2010), and the 'differentiation by function and audience' (Bodnar 2015: 2099) between public spaces according to their location (both at the city and global scales).…”

“…Mattson and Duncombe 1992;Duneier 1999;Low 2000;L'Aoustet and Griffet 2004;Makagon 2004;Dines et al 2006;Holland et al 2007;Watson and Studdert 2007;Degen 2008;Watson 2009;Anderson 2011;Darieva, Kaschuba and Krebs [eds.] 2011;Dines 2012;Brudvig 2014;Jones 2014;Kim 2015) as part of a wider interest in 'spatialized' forms of ethnography (Low and Lawrence-Zúñiga 2003;Low 2017).…”