Public Space and the Study of Urban Territories

An online seminar to be given  on Thursday 07 December 2023 Time: 12:30-13:30 (UTC+00:00 – Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London.)

Abstract:         

In this lecture, Professor Brighenti seeks to introduce territoriology as a research approach and a sensitivity that can be applied to the study of public space. He explores the intersection between social theory, ethnography, human geography and design as helpful to study territorial productions in the making. Each territory is shaped by imaginational and figurational forces of social life as they get incorporated into a set of materials. Starting from this assumption, he would like to illustrate a few cases and possible applications in the field of urban studies.

To get the Zoom link, pls contact ARCHI Research <ARCHI-research@cardiff.ac.uk>

The Social Logic of Leadership

A reading of Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness through Fascist and Aberrant Leadership
Abstract. In this piece, we puzzle about the social logic of leadership through the lens of the movie Triangle of Sadness (2022), directed by the Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund. We flesh out a distinction between two modes of leadership, which we call, respectively, fascist and aberrant, and elaborate on how these are seen at work in the film. Phenomena of leadership, we suggest, illustrate the workings of social logic ex vivo, and offer exquisite examples of how intensities intervene in social interaction, giving rise to the tensive states in which the local protagonists of interaction are caught.

Keywords: social theory, social interaction, social logic, social intensities, leadership

–> Contact me if interested in reading the draft!

… but no city of philosophers

Following the law of separation of the old Herbert Spencer, the selection of heterogeneous talents and vocations was bound to take place of its own accord. In fact, at the end of a century there was already underground in course of development and continuous excavation a city of painters, a city of sculptors, a city of musicians, of poets, of geometricians, of physicists, of chemists, even of naturalists, of psychologists, of scientific or aesthetic specialists of every kind, except, strictly speaking, in philosophy. For we were obliged after several attempts to give up the idea of founding or maintaining a city of philosophers, notably owing to the incessant trouble caused by the tribe of sociologists who are the most unsociable of mankind.

Gabriel Tarde, Underground Man

The external form

We notice that, in a relationship between two people, the external form is rarely an adequate expression of its inner intensity. This inadequacy results from the fact that the inner relations develop continuously, while the external relations develop in a spasmodic fashion.

Georg Simmel, 1900

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