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Nomadic Bodies, Sedentary Bodies at the World Cities
Abstract Submissions Closed
RC54 The Body in the Social Sciences (host committee)
Language: English
Session Type: Oral
What, How, Why and Where the bodies of leaving people unlock the potential for culture and social links? The technological revolution, a new geopolitical landscape, shifting economic power bases, mass migration and, above all, environmental issues are all transforming the world as we know it. As these tectonic plates shift, the pressure is felt most intensely in cities.
This Session focuses on “the bodies at the World Cities” as basic “places” of social link. We ask ourselves: What will happen to the bodily habits through which we live the social space developing the abilities and customs necessary to interact with every different context or territory? Are we capable of living our body like our house and our house like our body? It is a very difficult question because it summarises the fundamental dispute between sedentary bodies and moving bodies that characterises the social space in general and, in particular, the Western one starting from the Greek polis.
Starting from the consideration of common sense as spatiality (Fuchs,2018), this Session proposes urban spaces as habits. These are the uses and customs from which the collective memory and identity of each different society (and/or social group) have been progressively modelled. Whilst the `new mobilities' literature (Hannam et al.: 2006) is critical of sedentarism per se the fixed, the undialectical, of being over becoming the question we set out to interrogate is, therefore, whether these critiqued ontologies are an inevitable part of a sedentary account.