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Rhythms in the concrete: Re‐imagining relationships between space, race, and mediated urban youth cultures
Abstract
In this paper we describe a spatial approach toward leisure inquiry to report in part on a three‐year, arts‐based ethnographic study conducted through an urban recreation music program called The Beat of Boyle Street. Adopting the French philosopher/sociologist Henri Lefebvre's concepts of “rhythmanalysis” (2004) and the social “production of space” (1991), we question how young people produce and represent everyday urban spaces through leisure (e.g., hip‐hop musical practices), and explore how spatial inquiry informs ideas about leisure, youth popular cultures, and power relations. This focus emphasizes the politics of popular leisure as spatial practices; popular practices which produce social space. This paper broadens a number of under‐theorized and under‐explored aspects of leisure research, primarily in terms of social space, and additionally in terms of popular culture, racialized bodies and identities, and boundaries of difference.
... Unlike ethnicity, studies based on age and gender rhythms mostly try to understand the pace of daily life behind the varying rhythms. In their study, Lashua and Kelly (2008) investigate how young people produce and represent their urban spaces in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. This research offers insights into the ways young individuals interact with and shape the urban environment and offers valuable perspectives on urban youth culture and spatial practices. ...
... In addition to these, political organization studies focus on power relations in the city (Gibert-Flutre, 2021;Jenns, 2021;Reinekoski et al., 2023). Studies by Lashua and Kelly (2008), Lager, et al. (2016), and Walker et al. (2022, try to reveal the changing relationships of two different social groups in the city. It is seen that rhythms are used as common variables in addressing urban and social structures that are not based on quantitative data. ...
The primary aim of this paper is to thoroughly define the dialectical structure of the theory of rhythmanalysis, while at the same time providing a clear and detailed framework for the method it entails. To achieve this, the paper seeks to establish a useful link between Henri Lefebvre's theory of rhythmanalysis and its practical reflections in the context of urban studies, specifically under the umbrella of urban geography. The study then proceeds to classify selected works from the literature that can serve as guides within the framework of rhythmanalysis. A comprehensive analysis of the studies that use the rhythmanalysis approach as the basic research-analysis method has been conducted, systematically categorized under five critical concepts of urban geography: Location-Movement, Construction, Envisioning-Experience, Social-Political Organization, and Sites-Practices. Following theoretical and bibliographic analysis, this comprehensive approach highlights the scope, opportunities, and potential of rhythmanalysis while addressing its critiques, consolidating its conceptual foundations, and showcasing its relevance for urban studies. Through this detailed examination, the paper aims to make a significant contribution to the understanding and application of rhythmanalysis in the field of urban geography.
... These different forms of capital are negotiated through multiple practices that young people experiment with and experience together. Examples include fashion choices (König, 2008), romantic relationships (Clair, 2023), friendships (Metzler & Scheithauer, 2017), musical tastes (Bennett, 2000;Brett & Kelly, 2008;Straw, 1991), conflicts and fights (Lepoutre, 1997;Sauvadet, 2005), graffiti (Tadorian, 2001), going out (Chatterton & Hollands, 2003), and the "stylization of space" (Ferrero & Genova, 2019). Dating someone popular, wearing the "right" clothing brands, going to concerts by popular artists, and knowing how to fight (in the case of young men) all constitute symbolic resources in the stratified world of youth (Pasquier, 2005). ...
Drawing on a study of how young people in Switzerland appropriate urban public space, this article explores what we term “regimes of self-presentation” among youth in both online and offline spaces. We address issues of privacy and power that help shape such regimes by applying an expanded notion of street credibility that encompasses digital practices. Our concept of “digital street credibility” recognizes how, in today’s world, any social or cultural practices engaged in by youth have two potential types of audiences. One is physically present, consisting of other users of urban public space. The second audience is media-based, consisting of people with access to live or prerecorded digital content captured on smartphones and shared on social networks. This situation has forced young people to develop new and specific social conventions governing self-presentation. The article highlights the complex and perilous nature of visibility management. Where privacy and power relations are concerned, a very thin line separates behavior that enhances an individual’s social status from actions considered “embarrassing” or “cringe.” Our results show how, in the streets as well as online, acceptable forms of visibility are determined on the basis of digital street credibility. These findings suggest a need to reconsider young people’s understanding of privacy, as it relates to their leisure activities in urban and digital spaces.
... The representations of space, according to Lefebvre (1991, p. 50), leave a limited margin for representational space to displace the former and achieve symbolic force; yet, the latter is capable of disrupting the expected forms of social practice in a conceived space. For instance, young people are able to reimagine or reconstruct spaces through their social interactions with peers, such as using spaces for their own priorities instead of what is expected from them (Lashua and Kelly, 2008;Sharpe, Lashua and van Ingen, 2019). ...
Sport has received an increasing amount of attention in Turkey’s developmental actions throughout the 21st century. Since its re-establishment in 2011, the Ministry of Youth and Sports (MYS) has invested in infrastructure and institutional developments, such as hosting international sport competitions and investing in athlete development. Together with 32 football stadiums and 2,000 neighbourhood-type sport fields, the MYS has built over 300 youth centres across the country since 2012. Although this has increased participation in sport competitions in Turkey, the low figures of youth participation in sport activities lead us to question the legacy of sport for development investments in Turkey. The youth centres, for instance, can be defined as one of the major initiatives of the Turkish government aiming to contribute to community sport participation. Using Lefebvre’s theoretical toolbox on the production of space, our analyses of qualitative research conducted in three youth centres provide insights on the government’s neoconservative and sport-related objectives and the actual outcomes. Our findings suggest that the youth centres face the risk of unsustainability due to their physical distance from disadvantaged communities, lack of personnel and inconclusive vision to implement long-term community transformingprograms for young people.
... The representations of space, according to Lefebvre (1991, p. 50), leave a limited margin for representational space to displace the former and achieve symbolic force; yet, the latter is capable of disrupting the expected forms of social practice in a conceived space. For instance, young people are able to reimagine or reconstruct spaces through their social interactions with peers, such as using spaces for their own priorities instead of what is expected from them (Lashua and Kelly, 2008;Sharpe, Lashua and van Ingen, 2019). ...
... In fact, some leisure scholars have used ethnographies to explore under-theorised relationships between space and subcultures. For example, Lashua and Kelly (2008) have questioned how Aboriginal young people represent everyday urban space through hip-hop performances and practices. Likewise, Spracklen and Spracklen (2014) have raised the issue of how the subcultural authenticity of older, more established, post-punk Goths is being lost as space (specifically Whitby, the 'home of Dracula', which is now marketised as a 'spooky town') appears to evolve under the increasing visibility of mainstream tourism. ...
The world of leisure is a sensual reality, especially strong with the odours of what the French cultural historian Alain Corbin gave the name ‘the foul and the fragrant’, and their emotional affects. Yet, when it comes to unpacking leisure in a critical way the significance and complexity of the olfactory system of institutions and norms is largely overlooked in leisure studies. What is more, although smell is something that shapes our leisure and which we all instinctively recognise it buckles under the pressure of leisure studies obsession with the visual and the verbal. It is with this in mind that this paper, drawing on my own ethnographic research, offers a critical assessment of the ways in which the olfactory system emerges in a form of leisure known as urban exploration. One important way of defining urban exploration would be to say that its adherents have the need for authentic leisure experience which is, for the most part, unmediated by deodorisation. As well as being viewed as ‘deviant’, ‘abnormal’ or ‘heterotopic’ - and because of this - urban exploration takes advantage of the olfactory system as it is used to stimulate fears, pleasures and the broader imagination as a different ‘taste’ of life is experienced. Following an introductory episode that draws the reader into the world of a group of urban explorers that is oozing with the earthy smells of decay and the honey tang of piss, the first section of this paper employs the seminal work of Corbin to unpack how modernity, which never ceases to evolve and transform, continues to have a powerful influence on social space and the olfactory system. What emerges from this discussion, though, is the suggestion that it is the other side of modernity (the one that operates under a certain poetics of putrefaction) that is also the perfect breeding ground for inflaming both the magical and painful feelings of nostalgia by exploiting this olfactory system. Thereafter, using Tony Blackshaw’s concept of the mundane and spectacular, the paper goes on to expand this idea by arguing that ‘the foul and the fragrant’ play a crucial role in the creation of heterotopic social space and its essential performativity.
... As I showed through my experiences at Circle community garden there is a certain relational power as we become wakeful to the historicized and familiar rhythms, practices and narratives of self and leisure. In doing so, we as leisure practitioners and scholars can attend to ourselves and the Eurocentric meta-narratives of our field as calibrators of tension, not in opposition to, but essential to identifying, opening up, and supporting across diversity (Lashua & Kelly, 2008;Sarris, 1993). This understanding of tensions across leisures suggests that everyday repetition, such as the productive pace of myself, has the potential to both support and honour diversity as well as reinforce Eurocentric hierarchies of leisure and leisure space. ...
Through the metaphor ‘gardening in tension-filled rows’ this article unpacks how an inner city Edmonton community garden (Circle), as narrated by the author, was experienced as always in tension to the complex and multivariate stories of gardening and leisure that surrounded him. The use of autobiographical narrative inquiry and poetic form offers the author a vantage for critical self-reflection of his participation at a community garden in a predominantly urban Aboriginal community. Using Lefebvre’s spatial triad developed in his book The production of space, I highlight how I shaped, and was shaped by, the relations I ventured into as a researcher-practitioner, and person at Circle community garden. This article asks the audience to rethink how leisure research/practice ventures into communities and alongside people to question how leisure programming and research resonates with the people and communities involved.
... However, our own understandings have been deeply inspired by the theoretical insights of Henri Lefebvre (1991), Loic Wacquant (2007, 2006, and the spatial dimensions in the work of Frantz Fanon (2005Fanon ( , 2008. These works detail how hegemonic power actively produces and reproduces difference as a key strategy to maintain modes of social and spatial division that are advantageous to its continued empowerment and authority (Kipfer, 2007;Lashua and Kelly, 2008;Van Ingen, 2003). Whereas Sampson deploys elaborate statistical analyses, which is valuable and insightful, he dismisses scholarship that has laid the foundations of work about cities, neighborhoods, race and poverty. 1 Anthony Orum, also a leading Chicago researcher who has published significant work on the politics of race and urban space, reviewed Sampson's book. ...
This paper spotlights the sporting lives of young people who live in ‘Redcrest’, a public housing community in the Niagara region of Canada. We report on data culled from neighborhood-centric documents (municipal data, planning council reports, media coverage) and ethnographic fieldwork (interviews, community mapping, go-alongs) collected over eight months with 14 young people. This paper also offers a critique of Robert Sampson’s work on neighborhood effects and draws on the theoretical insights and urban scholarship of Henri Lefebvre, Loic Wacquant, and the work of postcolonial scholar Frantz Fanon, who further understandings of racism as a spatial relation. At the center of this research are narratives that highlight that public housing projects, negative stigma notwithstanding, can be good places to live. The results highlight the various contradictions and tensions experienced by young people living in Redcrest, specifically their experiences with neighborhood stigma, racism and Islamophobia, and how this impacts their sporting lives.
... As Ben Highmore puts it, 'rhythmanalysis is dedicated to the living, breathing, dynamic existence of cities ' (2005: 157). For these reasons, especially in the light of renewed interest in materiality, rhythmanalysis as a method has gained considerable attention in recent scholarly work (see Smith and Hetherington 2013;Chen 2013;Lehtovuori and Koskela 2013;Stavrides 2013;Wunderlich 2013;Simpson 2012;Edensor 2010;Vergunst 2010;Lashua and Kelly 2008;Edensor and Holloway 2008;Highmore 2005). Lefebvre (2004) broadly defines rhythms as the connections between space, time and energies. ...
Australia’s Gold Coast typically positions itself as a luxurious, upmarket resort city or a family-friendly, ‘fun in the sun’ holiday destination. At the same time, the Gold Coast lifestyle is often associated with hedonism, sexuality and excess. Yet the city is also home to over half a million residents whose daily lives – work, education and leisure – routinely take place within and against these powerful and familiar representations. Thus, the city’s identity can be seen as constituted by a series of conflicting ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ narratives. The ‘official’ narrative is produced by how the city markets itself to tourists, and comes to include popular imaginaries of place that these representations construct and perpetuate. Beyond this, however, residents produce varied and multiple ‘unofficial’ narratives through their engagements with the actualities of their locality as well as with its metanarratives. Surfers Paradise, as the main tourist hub and entertainment precinct of the Gold Coast, is a site of convergence for these competing narratives. Drawing on Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis, this article explores how conflicting narratives and disjunctions in identities of place manifest themselves in spatial practice in Surfers Paradise.
A variety of qualitative approaches – underlined by diverse postpositivist, postmodern, poststructuralist, and interdisciplinary perspectives – are employed by scholar’s in the field of leisure studies that influence the use of non-traditional qualitative methodologies. In this article, we discuss why novice researchers (such as graduate students or neophyte researchers) studying leisure contexts should engage in and build a legacy of utilizing non-traditional methodologies within their research. We provide a brief review of literature and an overview of our own experience conducting research utilizing (1) the methodological bricolage; and (2) autoethnography. We discuss our experiences of two novice researchers in the field of leisure who utilized non-traditional qualitative methodologies, and, building on contributions from scholars in the field of leisure who have advocated for a diversification and robust knowledge base, discuss and advocate for the use of non-traditional research approaches in leisure studies as something to be celebrated by inquiring, novice researchers. We conclude by suggesting that building a legacy of engaging in non-traditional methodologies by novice researchers offers potential to contribute to the dynamic and reflexive field of leisure.
Khat-chewing, a controversial leisure activity within the Somali diaspora in Britain, has received little attention within the academic field of Leisure Studies. This paper reports on ethnographic research to provide insights into the unique locations where young British-Somali men chew khat, exposing the liminal qualities of such localities. The paper begins with an overview of the contentious position khat-chewing occupies within Somali communities in Britain, highlighting reasons why young British-Somali men hide their association with the leisure practice. The discussion that follows considers how young male khat users conceptualise spatial environments, exposing how these locations temporarily produce a dual sense of privacy and sociality. The ambiences of such temporary leisure spaces remain open to the prospect of discovery, resulting in the use of discretionary tactics to maintain a sense of secrecy. In this context, we discuss how khat-chewing offers a sense of cultural identity and belongingness while also marking young British-Somali men as outsiders – even within their own communities.
Grime music represents a much-maligned leisure culture within contemporary British society, a point exposed by calls for the genre to be banned. This paper puts forward a perspective that challenges such a rigid interpretation by revealing how certain forms of Grime can be read as moral, exposing the manner in which such music encourages listeners into education, diverting them from the perils of gang violence and drugs. However, the paper narrates how this more ‘respectable’ form of Grime finds itself confined to the annals of dark leisure, through examining the contours of power that run through contemporary society, explored through the auspices of synoptic control. Here, the paper calls for a more contextual analysis of Grime that focusses on defining the moral messages that individual artists express rather than relying on the essentialist principle of categorising the whole genre in a negative manner.
This chapter offers an exploration of the dynamics and interrelationships of leisure, identity, and politics in a conceptual framework of spatiality, territoriality, and becoming. Taking the work of Deleuze and Guattari (Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and schizophrenia, 2009, A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia, 2011) as our guiding philosophical and theoretical orientation, we attempt to provoke a subversive imagination coupled with a pragmatics useful for thinking, feeling, and living differently within our contemporary, late capitalist moment where social, economic, and political powers tend to impinge and subordinate movement toward justice, equality, and equity. Urging geopolitical understandings of identity and encouraging cartographic practices of leisure inquiry, we call for active engagement to smooth the striated space of leisure to engender greater diversity, equity, and justice. Ultimately, this chapter introduces concepts we deem sufficiently forceful, imaginative, and subversive to challenge common conceptions of leisure, identity, and politics and break open possibilities for greater variegation and diversity in how leisure scholarship approaches these concerns.
This chapter unpacks the dynamic interplay of leisure, social space, and belonging by examining how leisure relations are negotiated and contested in the production of social space. Drawing on the seminal work of Henri Lefebvre and Judith Butler, the chapter demonstrates how social space in leisure settings encourages and discourages certain forms of social interaction and gives form to social structures and ideologies that have implications for belonging. In particular, the text interrogates social space for its role in normalizing the authority of specific social groups, setting out spatial boundaries, and functioning as a symbol of social values. Readers are encouraged to undermine the false division between physical and conceptual space by comprehending the concrete and abstract jointly. To this end, the chapter discusses the possibilities of space in which individuals, through their leisure, can engage in emancipatory and/or discriminatory practice.
This book is about popular music and place, principally cities. From Charlie Gillett’s (1970) The Sound of the City and Iain Chambers’ (1985) Urban Rhythms to more recent work such as Krims’ (2007) Music and Urban Geography, attention to popular music has allowed various soundings of the often unfathomable aspects of urban life. Cities have been spaces of musical fascination at least since Herman Melville wrote in 1849 of a visit to Liverpool:
In the evening, especially when the sailors are gathered in great numbers, these streets present a most singular spectacle, the entire population of the vicinity being seemingly turned into them. Hand-organs, fiddles and cymbals, plied by strolling musicians, mix with the songs of the seamen, the babble of women and children and the whining of beggars. From the various boarding houses… proceeds the noise of revelry and dancing.
(Du Noyer, 2007, p. 1)
Hip hop and heavy metal are two music cultures that resonate with young people worldwide (Higgins, 2009; Hill and Spracklen, 2010). The complex and paradoxical flows of globalized and technological music have sustained and inspired local communities while exposing them to social, economic, and competitive pressures. The focus on globalizing flows and local-global intersections often leaves invisible the specific and material everyday lives of local artists and fans. Theorists who examine the rise of the city or urban theory often focus on the opportunities, the openness, and the encounters with difference (Merrifield, 2013), and glide past the friction of the worldly encounter (Tsing, 2005) that is filled with desires for the fruits of globalization which overlooks how existing everyday life practices are (re)shaped by globalization.
Using a social justice youth development (SJYD) framework, this paper explored how urban recreation centers function as "just spaces" for youth and their communities. Utilizing evidence from a photovoice project, a method in which photographs were taken to visually depict the performance of hope, this article examined the experiences of a single case, Sara. Drawing upon Sara's experiences, we examined the importance of recreational spaces in facilitating critical components of SJYD. Findings suggest centers, such as the YMCA, become important islands of hope for marginalized youth and it is imperative leisure scholars and policymakers recognize this critical link. Additional research is needed to understand how these spaces assist youth in responding to larger political and economic forces in their communities.
We addressed the positive and negative factors that influence the health and wellness of urban Aboriginal youths in Canada and ways of restoring, promoting, and maintaining the health and wellness of this population. Fifty-three in-service professionals, care providers, and stakeholders participated in this study in which we employed the Glaserian grounded theory approach. We identified perceived positive and negative factors. Participants suggested 5 approaches-(1) youth based and youth driven, (2) community based and community driven, (3) culturally appropriate, (4) enabling and empowering, and (5) sustainable-as well as some practical strategies for the development and implementation of programs. We have provided empirical knowledge about barriers to and opportunities for improving health and wellness among urban Aboriginal youths in Canada. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print March 19, 2015: e1-e10. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2014.302481).
Taking inspiration from French sociologist and philosopher Henri Lefebvre’s theory of ‘rhythmanalysis’, the author advocates new ways of thinking about the impact of natural disaster on the bodies and everyday mobilities of those who continue to live in disrupted spaces. Drawing upon interviews conducted with residents living in Christchurch, New Zealand, before, during and after the devastating February 2011 earthquake, she explains how this ‘arrhythmic’ experience forced many to rethink the importance of sport and physical activity in their everyday lives, and for their affective connections to space, place, family and community. She describes how some committed action sport participants adopted highly creative practices in order to continue their participation in sports such as surfing, skateboarding, mountain biking and climbing. In so doing, the familiar rhythms of recreational sport helped some cope with the many stresses of daily life during the long process of recovery, and contributed to the rebuilding of personal and collective identities, affective relationships with place, and a sense of belonging in post-disaster geographies.
This paper explores the spatial practices of public engagement through the consideration of an audio walk project that took place in Ebbw Vale in the summer of 2010. In the current political climate public engagement is often seen as a universal good, a way of demonstrating the productive dialogues that exist between ‘experts’ and their manifold publics. As studies in science communication have shown, however, this is a little misleading, for the term ‘public engagement’ masks a great diversity of projects and initiatives, which vary in the degree, methods and effectiveness of their engagement. In this paper, we argue that what is missing from many of these critiques is an attentiveness to the ‘placing’ and ‘spacing’ of our public engagement practices: where we work, who we work with and how we work all affect the nature, meaning and effectiveness of public engagement. Drawing on the idea of spatial practices, this paper explores the situated doing of the Ebbw Vale audio walk project.
This paper explores a documentary film‐making approach to leisure scholarship and practice. Two films – Crossing the Line (2007) and Crossing the Line: Northern Exposure (2008) produced by young people to address issues of violence and the politics of place – provide the specific focus of the paper. These films illustrate youth perspectives of neighbourhoods; both documentaries share the processes of their production, and both aim to spur discussion about overlooked socio‐geographical boundaries that lead to youth exclusion and violence. In the Crossing the Line films, the style of interactive, reflexive documentary film‐making presents opportunities to create dialogue, introduce young people to creative and expressive projects and new skills, and empower young people to speak out about the local issues that affect their lives and leisure. By framing some theories of documentary film‐making, the paper suggests that leisure scholarship also ‘cross the line’ to engage with broader concerns and participatory approaches.
This paper represents musical remixing practices as a means of conducting leisure research. Our research engaged urban Aboriginal-Canadian youth through The Beat of Boyle Street, a music technology program used to teach young people how to produce their own remixes. Through this program we developed a “research remix” of narrative, Indigenous and arts-based ethnographic methods attuned to processes of making sense through making music. We examined the ways young people (re)produced not only songs but also stories, cultures and identities. Our research remix connects leisure practices and popular cultural processes by informing understandings of music and leisure in young people's lives.[Supplementary materials are available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Leisure Sciences for the following free supplemental resources: sound clips of El Jefe remix (a capella), “Broken Home,” “Street Life,” and “Turning Point (a capella).”]
Soundtracks traces the relationships between music, space and identity-from inner city 'scenes' to the music of nations-to give a wide-ranging perspective on popular music. It examines the influence of cultures, economics, politics and technology on the changing structure and geographies of music at local and global levels. Taking music from its role as an expression of local culture in indigenous societies to its gradual evolution towards a global music industry, this work pays particular attention to the complex spread of world music from reggae to zouk and beyond. Containing an impressive and comprehensive range of global case studies Soundtracks takes an innovative approach to the complex and changing relationships between music and space to provide a genuine global assessment of the power and pleasure of popular music in its many forms.
It seems that a new paradigm is being formed within the social sciences, the ‘new mobilities’ paradigm. Some recent contributions to forming and stabilising this new paradigm include work from anthropology, cultural studies, geography, migration studies, science and technology studies, tourism and transport studies, and sociology. In this paper we draw out some characteristics, properties, and implications of this emergent paradigm, especially documenting some novel mobile theories and methods. We reflect on how far this paradigm has developed and thereby to extend and develop the ‘mobility turn’ within the social sciences.
Much of the existing writing on youth, sub, or counter-culture has adopted a predominantly textual or semiotic approach, focusing on subcultural style, in particular, and the resistant or confrontational meanings that such styles are said to convey. In so doing, however, this literature has tended to neglect the lived experiences of those involved, or, as Ken Gelder puts it, ‘what they actually do’ (Gelder 1997b: 145). This point has been frequently noted elsewhere (see, for example: Cohen 1997 [1980]; Gelder 1997b; Muggleton 1997). What this chapter seeks to address is a more specific aspect of this overall neglect: the tendency to overlook, or accord insufficient attention to, the way in which subcultural practices are articulated through or on the bodies of the actors concerned.
The study of therapeutic landscapes (locations where place works as a vector of well-being) has generated substantial international interest. Drawing from Henri Lefebvre's prolific writings on space, this article extends the concept of "landscapes of social relations" as an often-overlooked form of therapeutic landscapes.Consequent to this undertaking, this article examines the health experiences of members of the Toronto Front Runners, a running club for sexual minorities. Specifically, I underline the need for an interpretive analysis that examines notions of pluralism, multiple voices, and difference within therapeutic landscapes in order to highlight the ways in which social inequalities affect health.
In this paper we provide an introduction to the theme of 'The place of music'. We discuss previous work on music by geographers before tracing themes of universality and particularity through classical and popular musics. We consider issues of economy, society, polity and culture in the 'universal' and 'national' musics of the classical tradition, the modern global popular music industry and 'alternative' popular musics. The intention is to show a range of possible themes and styles for geographical work on music.
This article returns to an earlier discussion on `sport and space' that began in a 1993 special issue of the International Review for the Sociology of Sport. In this article I initiate a discussion and debate that aims to move spatial inquiry beyond a focus on `place' in order to more clearly link the relation between identity and the spaces through which identity is produced and expressed. Reframing the focus to include a broader cultural analysis enables sport sociologists to more closely examine the geography of social relations. In particular, this article considers how relations of gender, sexuality and race are produced, negotiated and contested in social space. This discussion is largely situated in the work of French theorist Henri Lefebvre and contextualized in the recent `spatial turn' in sport sociology.
This article discusses soundscapes created by young people participating in The Beat of Boyle Street, an in-school recreation-based project that teaches inner-city, at-risk youth to make music using computers and audio production software. Participants are predominantly Aboriginal youth, ages 14 to 20, living in poverty and confronting other challenges, including disabilities, addictions, parenting issues, racism, homelessness, and the vicissitudes of life “on the streets.” The soundscape compositions young people create tell stories that speak to the importance of what young people actually do with popular culture in their everyday lives, particularly with hip-hop music and style. Three soundscape examples provided indicate how young people (a) use and negotiate popular culture, (b) politically use and contest city spaces, and (c) act as “border crossers.” These points call attention to the power of popular cultural practices as leisure and provide insights for working with young people in recreational contexts.
This article introduces and evaluates the go-along as a qualitative research tool. What sets this technique apart from traditional ethnographic methods such as participant observation and interviewing is its potential to access some of the transcendent and reflexive aspects of lived experience in situ. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in two urban neighborhoods, I examine five themes which go-alongs are particularly suited to explore: environmental perception, spatial practices, biographies, social architecture and social realms. I argue that by exposing the complex and subtle meanings of place in everyday experience and practices, the go-along method brings greater phenomenological sensibility to ethnography.
Activities and pursuits in leisure worlds often occur within subcultural contexts. Subcultural studies, however, have often premised the formation and existence of subcultures on the local. Wider local cultures have often been thought to have an impact on these subcultures. Even where subcultures have been ‘imported’ into a particular locality from another local setting, the focus has often been on how the subculture has been ‘localized’ by the ‘importing’ locality. This study offers an alternative perspective on leisure subcultures, with reference to the advent of the Internet as a new Information and Communication Technology (ICT). The Internet will be shown here to allow subcultural identities to be made flexible, where various local subcultural identities are able to fuse into a global subcultural identity, or retain their local flavours, as the situation permits. The case study of hip‐hop music consumers in Singapore and their involvement in virtual communities on the Internet will be used to show the fluidity in identity formation and maintenance brought about by this new ICT. It will be shown here that local cultures and the globalized hip‐hop culture which is associated with African American culture is evoked variably according to the specifics of the interactions of these hip‐hop consumers in virtual communities.
In this paper I investigate the manner in which Apple iPod users re‐inscribe their experiences of commuting through the use of music. I argue that the new technology of MP3 players gives users unprecedented power of control over their experience of time and space. They do so by managing their mood and orientation to space through the micro‐management of personalised music. The paper analyses iPod users’ management of daily urban experience through the use of empirical examples, locating the impulse to use mobile media such as the iPod in patterns of domestic media consumption. It draws upon a variety of urban and social theorists ranging from Sennett, Adorno and Lefebvre.
Within human geography, the meeting between art matters and cultural politics has been a predominantly visual affair. However, this article argues that sound is as important as sight for the project of geography, and that music has as secure a place as the visual arts in the study of social life. For example, while cultural studies of Renaissance Italy have focused on the way that landscape painting encapsulates the political economy of the period, I consider why the ‘truths’ of the time were nurtured as much by filling space with sound as by depicting place on canvas. Similarly, although painters are able vividly to depict the impact of industrialization on the English landscape, by exploring the spaces of music – a more neglected route into the historical geography of modern Britain – I suggest there is more to the link between art and industrialism than first meets the eye. Finally, building on maps of race and racism drawn up from ethnography, narrative and visual representation, I tease out the contested terrain of music, and identify it as a medium through which those whose condition society tries its best not to see can begin to make themselves heard.
This research presents an autoethnographic strategy for self-reflection by sharing stories consistent with Indigenous methodologies and establishing a frame for re-mixing leisure theory. As an autoethnographic study, we reflect on how we have been engaged, changed, and challenged to rethink understandings of leisure and ourselves as leisure scholar-practitioners as a result of listening to rap music, especially composed by Aboriginal young people. We pause on questions related to how Aboriginal young people challenge leisure theory and its relevance to their lives through their rap and hip hop performances.
This article explores fictional cinematic representations of the world of white female adolescents in the USA. It argues that Hollywood has disseminated an oversimplified image of teenage girlhood that reinforces the notion that girls participate only peripherally in the daily life of exterior urban spaces. An analysis of nine Hollywood teen movies, from the 1980s and the 1990s, reveals a limited palette of spaces appropriated by predominantly white middle-class American adolescent girls. The analysis, within the broad categories of retreat space, liminal space, and interaction space, suggests alternatives for understanding how adolescent girls use urban space.
Despite roots in acoustic ecology and soundscape studies, the practice and study of soundscape composition is often grouped with, or has grown out of the acousmatic music tradition. This can be observed in the positioning of soundscape compositions juxtaposed with acousmatic music compositions in concert programmes, CD compilations and university syllabuses. Not only does this positioning inform how soundscape composition is listened to, but also how it is produced, sonically and philosophically. If the making and presenting of representations of environmental sound is of fundamental concern to the soundscape artist, then it must be addressed. As this methodological issue is outside of previous musical concerns, to this degree, we must look to other disciplines that are primarily engaged with the making of representation, and that have thoroughly questioned what it is to make and present representations in the world today. One such discipline is ethnography. After briefly charting the genesis of soundscape composition and its underlying principles and motivations, the rest of the paper will present and develop one perspective, that of considering soundscape composition as ethnography.
Since the early 1990s, Henri Lefebvre's theory of the social production of space has become widely used by Anglophone academics to understand contemporary urban processes in the Western world. This article argues that care must be taken in transporting Lefbevre's theoretical framework from one context to another. When applied in places like U.S. cities, it must be contextualized in relation to significant sociospatial processes, especially race. It is also argued that when the racialized geographies of U.S. cities are taken into account, Lefebvre's work—with its focus on the role representation plays in the production of space—aids our understanding of contemporary urban processes. The article develops this argument through an engagement with the racialized public spaces in and around downtown Lexington, Kentucky. The killing of an African-American teenager by a White police officer and the ensuing violence and commentary, especially two editorial cartoons, provide the opportunity to contextualize Lefebvre's theory. Furthermore, the case allows us to understand the role racialized representations of space play into the construction of urban geographies. The paper concludes by emphasizing the role of the body in Lefebvre's understanding of space and suggests that his twin notions of “the right to the city” and “the right to difference” hold out hope for the grassroots development of antiracist urban public spaces.
The geography of religion can be explored from a number of different perspectives. This paper takes an autobiographical approach to explore the numinous experience of God from the point of view of a practising Christian geographer. Such geographical aspects of faith experience remain an under-researched area. The context for the exploration is an academic conference in the city of Bologna, which became, in turn, an experience of religious tourism, a pilgrimage and an unexpected encounter with God. It is contextualized in terms of debates on identity, the nature of pilgrimage, memorials of death, and time–space continuums and fractures.
This paper outlines a framework for a critique of Henri Lefebvre's notion of the social production of space, undertaken around five intersecting themes: language and meaning, the separation of space and time, the processes of production and construction, empowerment and value, and space and place.
This study of Canadian Mohawk youth examines the complex construction of hybrid identities, by looking at the interaction between their consumption of western media/ culture and local Native traditions and customs. The article poses the question, to what extent does western youth culture as expressed in TV, film, music and sport get taken up and moulded around a more contemporary Native youth identity? Utilising theoretical notions of hybridity and hegemony, and a mixed methodology of questionnaire data and focus group interviews, the study argues that young Mohawks actively consume global youth and popular media cultures strategically in ways that both reinforce and extend their Native and youthful identities. Particularly popular is the appropriation of a range of black cultural forms drawn from the Afro-American experience, such as the adoption of rap music for instance. At the same time, issues of power reflected through gender relations, inequality and racism, and the domination of American over Canadian culture, also impact on the formation of Mohawk youth identities and pose challenges to building bridges between traditional customs and the modern world.