Eighteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

The cityspace is a particular socio-political setting where a multitude of social actors and spatial identities flourish. The proximity of situated everyday practices can give way to both an inward looking exclusionary identity based on reactionary values, or an outward looking pluralist identity based on cosmopolitan principles. Such spatial dimension in the analysis of identities is especially relevant in local struggles that seek to define membership to the political community, where shared urban spaces become both subjects and objects in rewriting terms of belonging. This research is an attempt to unearth what makes it possible for a multicultural neighborhood like Veronetta to strive as a pluralist model of urban citizenship bringing together different migrant communities as well as sexual minorities, in the city of Verona known as the stronghold of far-right and ultra-Catholic groups who take pride in a resilient particularistic identity. A novel approach to urban ethnography is undertaken with the method of respondent-generated imagery. By asking participants with a variety of backgrounds to photograph the neighborhood they live in, the study seeks to illustrate how a pluralist understanding of belonging is constructed via urban spaces and everyday situated practices from the eyes of city-zens. Taken as communicative cues, these photos are then elaborated through in-depth interviews. In so doing, the research provides much needed insights onto concrete bottom-up processes of progressive community building in the everyday urban context, as well as how these processes are manifested in the material realities of the cityspace.