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Bricks, Mortar, Memories: Neighbourhood and Networks in Collective Acts of Remembering

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  • Talja Blokland

Abstract

How is place‐making as a tool for the formation of social identities related to categories, networks and categorical networks? How do people use the built environment and hence, following Massey, create places in space? Such questions are asked to reverse the usual way of looking at urban neighbourhoods. The neighbourhood in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, where the ethnographic research for this article was conducted, is not taken for granted. The symbolic meanings and practical uses the neighbourhood has today and has had over the past 75 years are discussed in relation to class and social networks. Local networks, grounded in everyday activities, provided a sense of class‐based familiarity when the shipbuilding industry (1900–60) reigned. This did not necessarily produce communities as people imagined them, but it did produce quite local, and categorical, networks. However, such catnets on the local level can no longer be taken for granted, if they ever could. This article addresses how elderly people within a neighbourhood use the built environment to: (1) produce new local networks (by using local facilities as meeting points) and new social identifications with others; (2) imagine a community by developing a sense of ‘localness’ rather than ‘class’ as a shared category, although they have a similar class position; and (3) produce collective memories and, in the process of this production, format the neighbourhood symbolically. In doing so, they reduce the multi‐layered identities of earlier times to a one‐dimensional memory of the working‐class community which is equated with the neighbourhood. This enables this group of elderly people to make sense of their contemporary, changing social environment. Comment la fabrication d’un lieu peut‐elle façonner des identités sociales liées à des catégories, des réseaux et des réseaux catégoriques? Comment les gens utilisent‐ils l’environnement bâti, créant ainsi des lieux dans l’espace – si l’on en croit Massey? En posant ces questions, on inverse la manière courante d’observer les quartiers urbains. Le quartier de Rotterdam où a été réalisée l’étude ethnographique pour cet article n’est pas puis au tant que tel: les sens symboliques et les usages pratiques qu’il a aujourd’hui et a eu durant les 75 dernières années sont examinés en fonction des classes et des réseaux sociaux. Les réseaux locaux, fondés sur le quotidien, ont créé une certaine familiarité fondée sur les classes à l’époque florissante de l’industrie navale (1900–60); sans produire forcément des communautés telles qu’on les imagine, il en a résulté des réseaux très locaux et sectoriels. Cependant, ces ‘sectorieux’ locaux ne peuvent plus ?tre considérés comme naturels, s’ils ne l’ont jamais été. L’article montre comment les personnes âgées d’un quartier exploitent l’environnement bâti: premièrement, pour créer de nouveaux réseaux locaux (en utilisant les implantations existantes comme points de rencontre) et de nouvelles identifications sociales avec autrui; deuxièmement, pour imaginer une communauté partageant une catégorie basée sur la ‘localité’ plutocirc;t que la ‘classe’, m?me si elles sont d’une position de classe similaire; troisièmement, pour générer des souvenirs communs et, ce faisant, donner au quartier une configuration symbolique. Elles ramènent ainsi les identités antérieures, qui comportaient plusieurs niveaux, à une mémoire à une dimension de la communauté ouvrière, laquelle équivaut au quartier. C’est ce qui permet à ce groupe de personnes âgées de comprendre son environnement social contemporain en évolution.

Suggested Citation

  • Talja Blokland, 2001. "Bricks, Mortar, Memories: Neighbourhood and Networks in Collective Acts of Remembering," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(2), pages 268-283, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:ijurrs:v:25:y:2001:i:2:p:268-283
    DOI: 10.1111/1468-2427.00311
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    Cited by:

    1. Camilla Lewis, 2017. "Turning houses into homes: Living through urban regeneration in East Manchester," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 49(6), pages 1324-1340, June.
    2. Talja Blokland, 2009. "Celebrating Local Histories and Defining Neighbourhood Communities: Place-making in a Gentrified Neighbourhood," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 46(8), pages 1593-1610, July.
    3. Norma Schemschat, 2021. "Refugee Arrival under Conditions of Urban Decline: From Territorial Stigma and Othering to Collective Place-Making in Diverse Shrinking Cities?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(23), pages 1-17, December.
    4. Brian Doucet & Ronald van Kempen & Jan van Weesep, 2011. "‘We're a Rich City with Poor People’: Municipal Strategies of New-Build Gentrification in Rotterdam and Glasgow," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 43(6), pages 1438-1454, June.
    5. Alice Mah, 2010. "Memory, Uncertainty and Industrial Ruination: Walker Riverside, Newcastle upon Tyne," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(2), pages 398-413, June.
    6. Dina Vaiou & Rouli Lykogianni, 2006. "Women, Neighbourhoods and Everyday Life," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 43(4), pages 731-743, April.
    7. Graham P. Martin, 2005. "Narratives Great and Small: Neighbourhood Change, Place and Identity in Notting Hill," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(1), pages 67-88, March.
    8. Sophie Yarker, 2018. "Tangential attachments: Towards a more nuanced understanding of the impacts of cultural urban regeneration on local identities," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 55(15), pages 3421-3436, November.
    9. Van Assche, Kristof & Gruezmacher, Monica & Granzow, Michael, 2021. "From trauma to fantasy and policy. The past in the futures of mining communities; the case of Crowsnest Pass, Alberta," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    10. Julia Bennett, 2014. "Researching the Intangible: A Qualitative Phenomenological Study of the Everyday Practices of Belonging," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 19(1), pages 67-77, February.

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