Negotiating Social Space

Small and micro enterprises have been an important theme in development thinking since 1950s, yet for a variety of reasons East African governments and administrations have been sceptical about their role in their own countries' development. While many constraints have been lifted by the more liberal policies of the 1990s, many micro entrepreneurs and their labourers, primarily women, are still fighting for an enlarged social space. The papers in this book describe these strategies of negotiation between rural micro enterprises and the new liberalised rural economy.

Digital literacy practices have often been celebrated as means of transcending the constraints of the physical world through the production of new social spaces. At the same time, literacy researchers and educators are coming to understand all the ways that place matters. This volume, with contributors from across the globe, considers how space/place, identities, and the role of digital literacies create opportunities for individuals and communities to negotiate living, being, and learning together with and through digital media. The chapters in this volume consider how social, cultural, historical, and political literacies are brought to bear on a range of places that traverse the urban, rural, and suburban/exurban, with emphasis placed on the ways digital technology is used to create identities and do work within social, digital, and material worlds. This includes agentive work in digital literacies from a variety of identities or subjectivities that disrupt metronormativity, urban centrism (and other -isms) on the way to more authentic engagement with their communities and others. Featuring instances of research and practice across intersections of differences (including, but not limited to race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, and language) and places, the contributions in this volume demonstrate the ways that digital literacies hold educative potential.

Urban sidewalks, critical but undervalued public spaces, have been sites for political demonstrations and urban greening, promenades for the wealthy and the well-dressed, and shelterless shelters for the homeless. On sidewalks, decade after decade, urbanites have socialized, paraded and played, sold their wares, and observed city life. These uses often overlap and conflict, and urban residents and planners try to include some and exclude others. In this first book-length analysis of the sidewalk as a distinct public space, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and Renia Ehrenfeucht examine the evolution of the American urban sidewalk and trace conflicts that have arisen over its competing uses. They discuss the characteristics of sidewalks as small urban public spaces, and such related issues as the ambiguous boundaries of their 'public' status, contestation around specific uses, control and regulations, and the implications for First Amendment speech and assembly rights. Drawing on historical and contemporary examples as well as case study research and archival data from five cities - Boston, Los Angeles, New York, Miami, and Seattle - the authors focus on how the functions and meanings of street activities have shifted and have been negotiated through controls and interventions. They consider sidewalk uses that include the display of individual and group identities (in ethnic and pride parades, for example), the everyday politics of sidewalk access, and larger political actions (including Seattle's 1999 antiglobalization protests), and examine the complex regulatory frameworks that manage street and sidewalk life. The role of urban sidewalks in the early twenty-first century depends, the authors conclude, on what we want from sidewalk life and how we balance competing interests.

In Negotiating Space in Latin America, edited by Patricia Vilches, contributors approach spatial practices from multidisciplinary angles. The volume advances innovative conceptualizations on spatiality and treats subjects that range from nineteenth century-nation formation to twenty-first century social movements.

This is an examination of how and why medieval kings declared certain properties immune from their own power. The author argues that they were not compelled by weakness, but rather by a need to show strength and reaffirm status and exercise authority, and that we need a new understanding of the political and social exchanges of the period. The declaration of immunities were really instruments used by kings and bishops to forge alliances with the noble families and monastic centres which were the essence of their authority.

In the 1990s, a new wave of globalization changed the field of cultural production in many African countries and paved the way for major new cultural events. In particular, during the last two decades, an ever growing series of art and cultural centers were and still are being established - often against the background of broader national (art) histories and the historic prominence of the state as the primary patron of the arts. In considering the historical genealogy of these 'new spaces, ' this book examines: the infrastructures and public spaces they create, the theoretical discourses they tap into and explore, the aesthetic and (cultural) political debates they stir, the role they play in the field of cultural institutions and cultural activism, and their relations with state and municipal institutions. (Series: African Art and Visual Cultures - Vol. 2) [Subject: African Studies, Cultural Studies, Art

Cities have always been arenas of social and symbolic conflict. As places of encounter between different classes, ethnic groups, and lifestyles, cities play the role of powerful integrators; yet on the other hand urban contexts are the ideal setting for marginalization and violence. The struggle over control of urban spaces is an ambivalent mode of sociation: while producing themselves, groups produce exclusive spaces and then, in turn, use the boundaries they have created to define themselves. This volume presents major urban conflicts and analyzes modes of negotiation against the theoretical background of postcolonialism.

Professor Ian Livingstone is one of a small group of British development economists who have achieved international renown and recognition. The objective of this book is to pay tribute to his life's work, particularly those aspects which related to key but challenging development issues. These issues include, at a broad level, the understanding of the economic forces determining the development of low income economies, more detailed micro work on agricultural development (irrigation in particular), decentralisation and local government finance, small scale enterprises, and large scale manufacturing development. Themes running through his work relate to his over-riding concern for rigour and for socio-economic justice. Ian Livingstone consistently used the traditional tools of economic analysis as a means to increase understanding of development issues - in a way which was, itself, just as radical as the contributions of political scientists and sociologists. This volume has been produced with similar aims.