No places, our places.
Authors: Ivan Conte, Jasper van Gelderen EMMC “reCity” 2012 Course of Seminars and Critical Debates Professors Mónica García, Carmen Ferrer Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain
Abstract. Te present paper analyses and explains AugĂŠs non-places theory. Afer ofering Bauman's theory of liquid modernity as an alternative, including an important example of the pillar-society, the non-places theory is put under scrutiny considering that there is no place in the world that can be termed nonplace. What is a place for one can be a non-place for other stated AugĂŠ in a reaction to all criticism. Apart from this crucial limitation in his widely acclaimed theory, a modern extension to non-places is ofered. Internet can also have its own non-places. Te unsatisfable answers to explain the new emerging spaces are result of the liquid society, that is responsible for insecurity as a common feeling of our times.
As it ofen happens, we hardly change our mindset when we meet something unusual, or totally new. Tis also occurs when we approach last tendencies of our society, even though now we are more accustomed to sudden changes. Something similar happened with the emersion of new public spaces that constantly change our habits. Tis phenomenon has opened several debates within urban studies because of an urgent need to understand what is changing. In 1995, French anthropologist Marc Augé wrote his most famous work No-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, in which he introduced the term non-place for the frst time to the academic world. He described very carefully and extensively around the dichotomy of place and no place. A man withdraws money, is waiting on the highway, enters the airport and afer enters the airplane. All the while on the way from Paris to the airport, his reality is sufused with the advertising, the bright lights, digital displays, glass and polished walkways of places that are not quite places according to Augé, but which acquire their identity from their being on the way to other places. From this prologue of No-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity we get a good understanding of where Augé wants to take us. Supermodernity is creating socalled non-places. Tese non-places are the result of the excess of time, excess of space and excess of ego. “If place can be defned as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space which can not be defned as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place” (Augé 1995). In essence, places are spaces with relations, identity and history, whilst in that time cities were invaded of spaces based on mono functional activity, such as airports, shopping centres, hotels, theme parks and parking garages. It was a new way to conceive what our society was already able to do so, with some diferences. At frst, the design of these structures are homogeneous in every country. Tere is no link with the history, no relation with institutional power and, again, no social consideration. Tis is why several scholars wrote about the sensation of 'being elsewhere' (Sennet 1996; Bauman 2000). Secondly, these places preach the exaltation of ephemeral rituals symbolized by consumption. Although being relevant, these elements cannot be exhaustive to explain how daily life of millions of people has been so drastically transformed. Perhaps a third component might helps us more. Te fruition of these new spaces was not led by buying needs, but rather by the experience. Shopping malls and airports have been transformed in order to extend the time of the relation with customers. Within this framework, Augé was the frst to observe that those spaces were dominated by “a total absence of symbolic ties, and evident social defcits”(Augé 1995). Terefore, he coined them no places, a sort of negation (not its contrary) of what traditional places (as squares or public gardens) might allow. So, while traditional places are relational spaces with conficts and opportunities, no places are huge containers of passengers guided by function. In no places, variety and diversity are technically managed by the functionality and the eternal dilemma among freedom and safety is solved by an artifcial harmonization.
No places are promoting a kind of controlled freedom able to reduce the potential of human interaction. In fact, in such spaces, we do not need to be accepted because everybody can get in, respecting some elementary rule. As Richard Sennett (1996) stated, there is “No need to negotiate since we are all of the same mind.” Another renowned scholar who took part in this debate was the famous sociologist Zygmunt Bauman. In his work Liquid Modernity talks about 'purifed spaces' saying that “the diferences inside, unlike the diferences outside, are tamed, sanitized, guaranteed to come free of dangerous ingredients - and so be unthreatening. Tey can be enjoyed without fear: once the risk has been taken out of the adventure, what is lef is pure, unalloyed and uncontaminated amusement. Shopping/consuming places ofer what no 'real reality' outside may deliver: the near-perfect balance between freedom and security” (Bauman 2000). We have to consider that in that time glottalization’s process had not yet revealed its real power and a sharp contrast between diferent cultures was therefore still evident. But may we say that no places do not belong to our culture? According to Bauman's thought, in any sphere of our life, we can easily observe that contemporary man has abandoned a condition of stability, permanence, immutability, usually related with a 'solid state', while he acquired features of fuidity and adaptability typically associated to a 'liquid state'. Even though defnitions as post-modernity, post-industrial, post-democracy, post-politics, are not sufcient to describe and more important explain contemporary society, they tried to underline how our society is getting rid of schemes belonging to the past (Bauman 2000). A good example of these schemes of a solid state is the so-called pillar-society that was creating clear rules for daily life in the Netherlands. Similar pillar societies, but to a lesser extend, could be found in countries like Belgium and Austria. Diferent religions kept the Dutch society for several ages divided. In the beginning of the 1960s 40,4 percent of the Dutch were Roman Catholic according to the census. Tey formed the biggest group or pillar of the Dutch society. Te second group were the Dutch Reformed (28,3 percent). 9,3 percent of the people belonged to the Calvinist Churches. Other religious groups such as Evangelical Lutherans, Mennonites, Remonstrants, Israelites and many others, accounted for only 3,6 percent of the population. Te last group, 18,4 percent of the Dutch, was ofcially not connected to any kind of church or religion. Te social bounder of the pillar-society did not exactly match the borders of these formal memberships. From social-political point of view three main groups could be distinguished: the catholic pillar, the protestant-christian pillar and the 'general' pillar. Tese three pillars lived socially but not geographically each one of them in their complete own world, distant from the other pillars (Lijphart 1990). Kruijt (1965) describes a pillar as a multiple, integrated complex of organizations or institutions of civil society with an ideological base. Te pillarization of the Dutch society was most visible in the political landscape. Each pillar was represented by one or more political parties but more important almost everyone actually voted for a party representing their pillar. So the result of elections were for a long time completely predictable and thus stable. Te pillarization was also
clearly visible with the employers' and employees' organizations that were very important. Te majority of people were member of the Catholic, Protestant or Organized Workers party. Furthermore the media were also segregated. Each pillar had its own newspapers, radio and later TV-channels. One could say that the pillarization manifested itself in every part of organized daily life: one was supposed to marry someone from the same pillar, chose a sports club from the own ideology, and last but not least attend a school within the own group. Education was maybe the most crucial element of the pillar-society. Here young children could be shaped and developed as a product of their ideology. Universities were maybe the only institutions that could be seen as neutral. Nevertheless students associations were again divided by the diferent ideologies (Lijphart 1990). So all spaces belonged to a certain group or pillar of society and therefore they were places. As a result of globalization, processes of democratization, emancipation, the pillars slowly started to fade away. Individuals no longer take decisions because they belong to an ideological group, but on base of their own ideas. People start to become members of organizations from outside the own pillar. Tey do not necessary stick anymore to the rules of the own pillar. Te infuence of television and other mass media was very important to the process of depillarization. Tey allowed people to take knowledge and points of view and ideas from the others. Spaces start to become more anonymous as a result (Augé 1996). Tey do not longer belong to a certain group. “A growing sentiment of disaggregation among people is being conjugated to a process of depersonalization that we can call anonymity” (Korstanje 2009). Anonymity is what Augé observed very well being anthropologist. He looked with a diferent eye on the way we travel today. It is a very interesting observation since it is something so clear and obvious but nobody before decided to write an academic work about it nor to develop a new theory concerning the new emerging spaces. In opposition to the past times wherein travels could be characterized by an encounter between guests and hosts, super-modernity very well created sites wherein personal relationships with otherness are being replaced by visual attractions. “Te way airports and bus stations work today as places wherein no involvement and indiference marks the concerns of daily travelers”. (Korstanje 2009). Important to note is that this growing anonymity is also a consequence of the massive growth of the tourism industry. Today 600 millions of arrivals are registered annually, whereas in 1950 that number was only for 25 millions (Urry 2007). So Augé gave us very interesting new insights with his non-places theory, however, our main problem with Augés theory is that he does not give us the tools how we can decide weather a space is a place or a non-place. And how can a place become a non-place? Since places are deemed as a product of social practices circumscribed to a determined tradition, it is impossible to argue that there are places which somehow transform them-selves in non-places. Airports for example like many other constructions have a name and are inserted in a history, a culture that likely travelers do not know but it does exist. Moreover, sites can take
diferent symbolism depending on the role every actor play within the site. To take again the example of the airport, it can acquire a deep emotional sense for employees as well as for migrants and expatriates who return to their own countries afer a long absence. For these people an airport means much more than a simple territory without character (Korstanje 2009). Furthermore we have problems with the absence of electronic media in Augés NoPlaces: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. Technology completely changed the world, thus places, in particular during the past few decades. In the beginning of the 1990s when he wrote his work there was still no important role for Internet nor mobile phones in peoples daily life, that allow them to be in contact with each other everywhere at anytime. In other words, all people can act social now in every place including Augés classical non-places. We use places how we want to use them, indirectly we claim places to be our spaces with our phones and computers. However there was not yet this type of communication technology available twenty years ago, the infuence of mass media on people such as television was and is still today of crucial importance. Augé is almost complete unaware to this and does not take it into account with his theory. Electronic media are in our point of view essential to a non-place: the whole world happens on TV and more and more on the Internet. Afer important brands of global consumerist culture such as McDonalds, Ikea, Hilton and Starbucks that arose the past few decades and can be seen as typical non-spaces in the physical space, – wherever you go in the world these places look almost exactly the same – the Internet or virtual space perhaps also has its own non-places. “Google, YouTube, Facebook and all other major portals and social networking sites help users navigate online spaces with interfaces that, like the airport, can be considered places of transition, of constant fow and change” (Navas 2009). Question remains weather we can call these virtual spaces non-places? Marc Augé accepted that his frame-work shows some limitations. However it was never his intention to pose a place as something positive and a non-place as something to be interpreted negatively. For him place never been an empirical notion. In his posterior book entitled as toward anthropology of contemporary Worlds he stresses that “what for one is a place can be a non-place for other and vice-versa. An airport for example is conditioned to the involving eyes of passenger who occasionally are en-route whereas inversely for workers this standpoint will vary substantially on”. Moreover, "It is necessary to attempt to characterize whatever is new in the contemporary world and, in my opinion, what is new is a change of setting, a shif in references, which implies that spaces are no longer perceived in the same way (Augé 1998). In other words, there is no place in the world that can be named non-place or emptied of sense. Any sites where people pass or reside are spaces with less or more symbolic liaison. However, the answer to our question how a site can be pointed out as a non-place still remains unresolved. If every space can be a place it does not matter weather we are dealing with airports, shopping centres or squares. We should be fnally convinced that the
physical aspect of space cannot provide us any answers about uses and experiences that people have in their real life’s. People's behavior is not permanently established and they use to change as consequence of a cultural fact. We believe that there is a clear difculty to describe our present using classical defnitions and, in order to avoid any misunderstanding, we should come back to look at reality as ethnographic observers and perhaps we will see how much borders are becoming evanescent. Of course we are not using squares as agora and, even in term of quantity, we use this places less than before. Rather, even when we go, we are ofen moved by single function: shopping, exhibitions or simply going from A to B. Nevertheless, it is a fact that architecture is becoming auto referential. In many cases it is the expression of particular interests rather than public ones. Besides, traditional places are becoming selective and they are more rarely involved in the construction of collective identity. It is difcult to establish a relation between Plaza de la Virgen in Valencia and Valencian teenagers. In this context, we believe that no places are surely gaining consideration in the production of our identity that, diferently than before, is becoming a nomadic one. As Bauman wrote: "Inside their temples the shoppers/consumers may fnd, moreover, what they zealously, yet in vain, seek outside: the comforting feeling of belonging - the reassuring impression of being part of a community"(Bauman 2000). In the solid modernity, majority of society’s conceptions aimed at transforming the metropolis (as a miniature of society) into a meticulously planned, transparent, predictable and order-stamped world such as Le Corbusier’s utopian vision of La ville radieuse. But now there is not the same ambition and there is no longer any guiding notion that considers that a public space has to be a collective common terrain for the delight and the beneft of all the citizens. Terefore we believe that Bauman's theory of liquid modernity (Bauman 2000), in which nobody is managing anymore to control reality and in which there is no longer an idealistic vision, provides us a better explanation to understand society and its new emerging spaces although his idea of contemporary society is rather pessimistic. Our liquid society inevitably leads to insecurity as a common and recognizable feeling of our times. "Insecurity afects us all, immersed as we all are in a fuid and unpredictable world of deregulation, fexibility, competitiveness and endemic uncertainty".
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