Urban practices as sacramental rites. Notes on the use of the categories of practice and appropriation

Journal title TERRITORIO
Author/s Ferdinando Fava
Publishing Year 2014 Issue 2014/68
Language Italian Pages 4 P. 35-38 File size 1189 KB
DOI 10.3280/TR2014-068005
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Starting with the use of the categories of practice and appropriation to understand and restore the lived experience to the urban space, the author examines the cognitive import of both, highlighting the risks of using them unwisely. The over-determination of meaning in the notion of practice, like the spectres of the established order and ownership that loom ever large over the idea of appropriation, reduces the scope for different interpretations of the meaning established in the many diverse ways of experiencing the urban environment. The critical awareness of their semantic field and the assumption of the conceptual tensions within the two categories contribute, though, in the ethnographic gesture, to extending their cognitive potential, which intimately concerns what is possible politically (different ways to run cities) and epistemologically (beyond function and possession).

Keywords: Urban practices; appropriation; own

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Ferdinando Fava, Dei fatti urbani come fatti sacramentali. Note circa l’uso delle categorie di pratica e di appropriazione in "TERRITORIO" 68/2014, pp 35-38, DOI: 10.3280/TR2014-068005