OVERVIEW

The course aims at investigating, in a sociological perspective, the main social, economic and cultural processes that transformed  contemporary city redefining its actual morphology and very experience. In outlining the main social effects and territorial impact of these dynamics, a special attention will be devoted to the analysis of residual urban spaces and places, by assuming them as the backstage of the official image each city globally communicates.

AIMS AND CONTENT

LEARNING OUTCOMES

The course aims at providing students with conceptual and analytical tools in order to critically reading the socio-economic, cultural and communication processes investing contemporary society and urban experience.

LEARNING OUTCOMES (FURTHER INFO)

The course will provide students with theoretical and practical/descriptive tools to critically detecting the main processes of transformation affecting contemporary city,by focusing on their actual territorial impact. Particularly, conceiving space as a specific lens or trace, students will be fostered to consider the stratified nature characterizing every single urban place, thus acquiring a critical consciousness of the cultural, political and economic processes that invested and modified it.

TEACHING METHODS

The course is conceived as splitted in two different moments: a first and more extended one, mainly theoretical and organized on frontal lectures, even recurring to images and visual documents, where to outline the main issues at stake in contemporary urban studies; a second, shorter one, organized as a workshop and  based on reading  groups on texts provided by the teacher, where to outline collective researches on specific urban sites and practices, through the methodological approaches developed by social ethnography.   

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

According to the intertwined perspectives developed in the fields of urban studies, sociology of cultural processes, and communication social theories, the course will outline a series of dynamics characterizing the current, globalized and contradictory urbanization processes. By firstly focusing on homologizing processes (urban sprawl, postfordist transition, gentrification dynamics, real estate market, symbolic economy, cultural policies, big events), the attention will be therefore devoted to the backstage of the official image of the city, focusing on the multiplication of urban boundaries as well as of residual places apparently excluded from these processes, such as informal spaces, vacant lots and terrain vagues.  On behalf of these assumptions, a series of sites and situations will be detected where to develop specific collective researches and investigations.

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

Basic texts: 

U. Rossi, A. Vanolo, Geografia politica urbana, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2010;

M. Guareschi, F. Rahola, Forme della città. Sociologia dell’urbanizzazione, Agenzia X, Milano 2015

Further texts - one to be chosen among:

D. Harvey, Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution, Verso: London - New York 2013;

S. Zukin, Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Place;  Oxford University Press: New York 2010

A. Coppola, Apocalypse town, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2011;

H. Lefebvre, Il diritto alla città, Ombre corte, Verona 2015

TEACHERS AND EXAM BOARD

Exam Board

FEDERICO RAHOLA (President)

LUCA GUZZETTI

LESSONS

LESSONS START

Monday, September 26th 2016

Class schedule

SOCIOLOGY OF CULTURAL AND COMMUNICATION PROCESSES

EXAMS

EXAM DESCRIPTION

Attending students have to participate to reading groups and, at the end of the course, to make an individual or collective presentation where to discuss a research autonomously realized whose argument will be established together with teacher; as an alternative, they may take am oral test concerning the arguments of the course and the  recommended books . Non-attending students will have to take an oral exam concerning recommended books.

ASSESSMENT METHODS

Both in case of individual or collective presentations of specific researches, and in case of a speech, the exam will verify student’s appropriate knowledge and comprehension of the main social and spatial dynamics at stake in global urbanization processes, attesting his/her ability to read with a critical gaze the transformation processes investing urban territories.

Exam schedule