Gill Valentine (2008) Living with difference: reflections on geographies of encounter

Social geography

Summary

Summarises literature on "the encounter"

People often act out of cultural upbringing in a certain way. This does not mean they do not respect the other person.
Create different spaces of encounter. This is ok but you will always have to include certain groups.
Refers to 'micro-publics of encounter' coined by Ash Amin as 'politics of connectivity'
- Need to understand which types of encounters are looked for by whom and whom would avoid these as well
Valentine discusses prejudice; many people are prejudiced
- Especially when socio-economic changes occur and people are feeling threatened
The narrative of people needs to be included to understand why they feel these particular things
- Understand the process through which communities become antagonised and defensive
Remember that the organised encounter is something a lot of people do not feel happy about

Quotes

"...., this urban etiquette does nog equate with an ethics of care and mutual respect for difference" (p.329)

"...., Ash Amin (2002) recognized that proximity on its own is not enough to bring about social transformation. Rather, he argued that we need to create spaces of interdependence in order to develop intercultural understanding" (p.330). --> "micro-publics of everyday social contact and encounter"

"They represent sites of purposeful organized group activity where people from different backgrounds are brought together in ways that provide them with the opportunity to break out of fixed patterns of interaction and learn new ways of being and relating (Amin 2002)" (p.331)

"As such, these encounters are not completely incidental like meetings on the street, but neither are they organized and purposeful as 'micro-publics' (p.331)

"We need to think more carefully, therefore, about which types of encounters are sought; and by whom, and which are avoided, and by whom" (p.332)

"...then how can this connectivity be sustained and scaled up in both space and time beyond these moments" (p.332)

"In other words, in the context of negative encounters minority individuals are perceived to represent members of a wider social group, but in positive encounters minority individuals tend to be read only as individuals" (p.332).

"The reason that such individual everyday encounters do not necessarily change people's general prejudices is because they do not destabilize white majority community-based narratives of economic and/or cultural victimhood" (p.333)

"...more emphasis needs to be placed not just on immediate contact experiences, but on how people's accrued histories of social experiences and material circumstances may also contribute to their feelings about encounters from both sides" (p.333)

"The danger is that contemporary discourses about cosmopolitanism and new urban citizenship, by celebrating the potential of of everyday encounters to produce social transformations, potentially allow the knotty issue of inequalities to slip out of the debate" (p.333)

"... employing methodological techniques that are not commonly used in researching geographies of encounter, such as life histories, biographical interviews or intergenerational studies" (p.334)

Gill Valentine

Formele omschrijving

Gill Valentine (2008) Living with difference: reflections on geographies of encounter

Schema: ZHDSM scheme, Context: ZHDSM context
Verwant: ZHDSM The encounter

Referenties

Living With Difference, Valentine, Gill, 2008.