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Alternative Spaces of Cultural Consumption. An Analysis of Bucharest Urban Culture

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Becuţ A. G.

International Review of Social Research

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2016

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vol. 6

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issue 2

73-79

EN

In the last years, many pubs, bars and restaurants began to include in their offer cultural activities. Some cultural institutions also began to attract the public by offering a „leisure” space in the proximity, by association with private firms. This relatively recent phenomenon raised several specific questions about the identity of these spaces, the profile of their audience and the relation between artist, public and space, but also general questions about the emergent relation between economic and artistic sectors. The aim of this article is mapping the independent cultural urban spaces in Bucharest. On one hand we shall highlight the specificity of these hybrid spaces. On the other hand, the article analyses the customers’ attributes depending on age, education and occupation. At last, the manner of negotiating the culture-business relation between the participants, the established limits and the tensions and strategic alliances give more information on how economic and cultural spheres are and can be integrated.

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Interrogating spaces of and for the dead as ‘alternative space’: cemeteries, corpses and sites of Dark Tourism.

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Young C., Light D.

International Review of Social Research

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2016

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vol. 6

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issue 2

61-72

EN

This paper considers spaces associated with death and the dead body as social spaces with an ambiguous character. The experience of Western societies has tended to follow a path of an increased sequestration of death and the dead body over the last two centuries. Linked to this, the study of spaces associated with death, dying and bodily disposal and the dead body itself have been marginalised in most academic disciplines over this period. Such studies have therefore been simultaneously ‘alternative’ within an academic paradigm which largely failed to engage with death and involved a focus on types of spaces which have been considered marginal, liminal or ‘alternative’, such as graveyards, mortuaries, heritage tourism sites commemorating death and disaster, and the dead body itself. However, this paper traces more recent developments in society and academia which would begin to question this labelling of such studies and spaces as alternative, or at least blur the boundaries between mainstream and alternative in this context. Through considering the increased presence of death and the dead body in a range of socio-cultural, economic and political contexts we argue that both studies of, and some spaces of, death, dying and disposal are becoming less ‘alternative’ but remain highly ambiguous nonetheless. This argument is addressed through a specific focus on three key interlinked spaces: cemeteries, corpses and sites of dark tourism.

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Fluxus Spaces as Alternative Cultural Spaces. A social cartography of the urban cultural scenery

86%

Manta A.

International Review of Social Research

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2016

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vol. 6

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issue 2

80-90

EN

There is a growing research interest in cultural spaces and their urban regeneration potential. Discussions about these spaces can be found in the literature under concepts such as: art spaces (Grodach, 2011), cultural spaces (Alexander, 2003), creative spaces (Becker et al, 2009), cultural laboratories, free spaces (Polleta, 1999), yet little research examines them from a dynamic perspective which integrates approaches from different disciplines. Through the methodological lens of bricolage and by mixing methods from mental geography, psychology and sociology, this study explores the alternative cultural spaces in terms of its pluralism, managing to identify a new conceptual framework, the fluxus space. Fluxus spaces are cultural spaces situated at the intersection of public-private, old-new, informal-formal, legal-illegal expressions, playing an important role in artistic development and in the urban and community regeneration processes.

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3 International Review of Social Research

1 Becuţ A. G.

1 Light D.

1 Manta A.

1 Young C.

3 2016

Alternative Spaces of Cultural Consumption. An Analysis of Bucharest Urban Culture

Interrogating spaces of and for the dead as ‘alternative space’: cemeteries, corpses and sites of Dark Tourism.

Fluxus Spaces as Alternative Cultural Spaces. A social cartography of the urban cultural scenery