Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism

Ballymun in Dublin, one of the most famous of Europe's grandiose housing estates, has had an especially dramatic history since it was first built in 1965. At the heart of the unfolding drama has been a series of conflicts between the spatial imaginations of the state officials and planners who designed, built, and managed the initial estate and who are currently undertaking its wholesale regeneration, and the place-making activities of the local residents who have inhabited, endured, and occasionally sought to reclaim this space. Concerned to prise open some fresh ways of thinking about the hyperextension of “abstract space” into everyday life, this article presents a reconstruction of the history of space and place in Ballymun. In their exploration of the onslaught of abstract space, critical human geographers have drawn upon a wide range of social theorists including Benjamin, De Certeau, Debord, Deluze, Foucault, Giddens, Habermas, Heidegger, Jameson, Weber, and, of course, Henri Lefebvre. Str...

/pdf/sartre-s-circular-dialectic-and-the-empires-of-abstract-y3hxefiw9x.pdf

Sartre's Circular Dialectic and the Empires of Abstract Space: A History of Space and Place in Ballymun, Dublin

Cities have been substantially and unevenly reshaped through processes of economic restructuring, long cycles of investment/disinvestment across built environments and the neoliberal realignment of urban governance over recent years. Within this often contradictory context, grassroots interventions have taken on new importance and meaning as people seek to influence the future of their localities and their cities. However, it is important to remain critically aware of the challenges and risks for different forms of community action within these changing structural and contextual conditions. This paper draws from a long period of research into and involvement with tenants and community organisations in local authority estates in Dublin. It offers methodological reflections on some varieties of action research. It then explores the evolution of community action in the inner city focused on issues around housing and the urban environment. The paper offers insights to the achievements of and limits to different forms of community action within a changing policy environment in a city undergoing rapid transformation. Residents of St Michael's Estate are just getting to grips with the consequences of the announcement on Monday 19th by Dublin City Council that the Public Private Partnership regeneration deal it had with McNamara/Castlethorn Construction to develop St Michael's Estate will not go ahead as planned. Locals are angry and disappointed about this development… as soon as profit margins narrowed PPP collapsed like a deck of cards.

Contested urban environments: perspectives on the place and meaning of community action in central Dublin, Ireland

Introd uction Over recent decades, far-reaching economic restructuring processes have produced shifting pallem s of development and inequality with contrad ictory implications for the work and li ving conditions of people lmd communities across d ifferent regions, cities and places. The socio-spatial structure of production (manufacturi ng and service industries) has been reorgani sed radically on a globa l scale, becoming much more fl exib le, a keyword distinguishing the current phase in thecapitalisl space economy. The main shifts arc generally traced to the economic crisis o f the I 970s. a period when the post-war ' Fordist' boom came to a hal t, hit by the combined shocks of the OPEC oil crisis. economic stagnation and inflation and declining profitability in the core industrial sectors, Among other processes, capital began to ' migrate' in a highly mobile fashion, seeking a 'spatial fi x' to restore profit rates (sec, for instancc, Bluestone and Bennett, 1982. 1988 ; Scott and Storper. 1986; Castells, 1989, 1998; Massey, 1995). Facilitated by extraordinary technological progress over the same period, particularly the advances in informational and transport capacitics (e.g. widebodied cargo jets), it was possible 10 reorgan ise production lines across regional and national boundaries, decentralising more labour-intensive fu nctions to take advantage of geographic differences in labour markets. notably lower wages and the availability of a large pool of surplus labour or of more vulnerable workers (such as women, children, rural migrants, ethnic minorities, immigrants elc.). Insofar as these general processes have produced very different outcomes at different geographical points (for example the de-industrialisation of core regions . the e mergence of newly indu stri a liz ing cou ntries a nd the decpening marginalisation of the peripheral. or ' least developed' countries), this emergent economic geography can be interpreted as the manifestation of uneven development at various scales.

Economic geographies of rhe urban system: top-down, bottom-up trajectories of development and change in Dublin's inner city

Handle everyday research tasks with reliable, citation-backed results

Your personal Research Agent to handle research tasks with citation-backed results

Popular Tasks used by Researchers

How can I help with your research?

Meet SciSpace

Get more enhanced response by uploading the PDFs you want me to reference.

No relevant PDFs in your library

SciSpace is the AI research assistant for academics. Run systematic literature reviews on 280M+ papers, and write papers with cited sources. Trusted by 1M+ students, PhDs & researchers.

SciSpace | AI for Research

Analyze PDFs

Code & Manuscripts

Funding & Grants

Literature & Patents

Medical & Clinical Data

Systematic Review

Visualize & Present

Web & Data

Build a Google Scholar-like website for your research.

Build a website

Create charts and images for your research

Create a Chart

Write a paper for submission to a journal

Draft a manuscript

Patent Search

Design eye-catching scientific posters in minutes.

Scientific Poster Generation

Systematic Literature Review

One task is running at the moment. Your messages will be shown right after.

Drag and drop or click here to browse

Loved by <highlight>1 million+</highlight> researchers

Extract a list of specific topics and their sources from unstructured text

Topics

Compare and analyze relevant papers that matches with your search

Papers

Get insights from PDFs and bookmarked papers from your library

My library

Recent searches

Try searching for:

Catch AI-generated content in scholarly and non-scholarly content

{ai} Detector

Ai Writer

Get PDF Summaries, highlighted text explanations 

Chat with PDF

Effortlessly create in-text citations and bibliographies in APA and 2,500 other formats

Citation generator

Get explanations, summaries, and answers on academic papers

Ease up your research workflow with {scispace}'s cohort of exciting AI tools

Elevate your academic writing skills and convey your ideas the way you want

Paraphraser

Explore our range of reading and writing tools

Your file is being prepared and should be ready in a few minutes. If it's a large file, it might take a bit longer. You can close this window, and we'll email you the file when it's done.

You have reached a maximum limit of <strong>{limit}</strong> columns in the table. Remove at least <strong>1</strong> column to add or create another one.

Michael Punch

Author Tools

Chat about Author

Papers

Economic geographies of rhe urban system: top-down, bottom-up trajectories of development and change in Dublin's inner city