Carolin Genz
Carolin Genz is currently PostDoc / Research Faculty at the Department for Cultural and Social Geography at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin and Associate in the Collaborative Research Centre 1265 "Re-Figuration of Spaces" in the project area "Knowledge of Space" at Technische Universtität Berlin. As an urban anthropologist in the intersecting fields of social anthropology, human geography, and urban studies, she constantly develops ethnographic methods to capture the socio-spatial constitution of embodied urban practices. She is a co-founder of the "Urban Ethnography Lab". Her research focuses moreover on spatial practices of resistance, housing, and gender. She is Academic Advisory Council for Gender Mainstreaming and Diversity for the Senate Department of Urban Development of Berlin.
Ph.D. thesis (2015-2019): "Protest as social praxis. An ethnography of protest and network practices of elders in the light of the housing crisis."
Institute for Cultural and Social Geography | Humboldt-University of Berlin
Urban Ethnography Lab | Georg-Simmel Center for Metropolitan Studies | Berlin
Supervisors: Prof. Ilse Helbrecht and Prof. Ignacio Farías
Ph.D. thesis (2015-2019): "Protest as social praxis. An ethnography of protest and network practices of elders in the light of the housing crisis."
Institute for Cultural and Social Geography | Humboldt-University of Berlin
Urban Ethnography Lab | Georg-Simmel Center for Metropolitan Studies | Berlin
Supervisors: Prof. Ilse Helbrecht and Prof. Ignacio Farías
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Papers by Carolin Genz
The publication was supported by the KOSMOS Program, Excellence Initiative of the Humboldt-University of Berlin, organized by the Urban Ethnography Lab, in cooperation with Harvard University, the University of Toronto.
For further information please visit: www.urban-ethnography.com © Urban Ethnography Lab, 2018
Organizers: Aylin Yildirim Tschoepe (Convener), Carolin Genz (Convener), Silvia Balzan
On collaborative digital space, we workshop on the issues at stake in current urban research, and identify particularities and similarities through which we question dichotomies in scholarship.
The first session introduces an image-based platform on which we can discuss and build visual narratives through our research. Next, we will engage in what we refer to as “Urban Mosaic,” a collaborative technique to tease out spatial and/or conceptual issues, pose critical questions. It also will allow the group to draw connections that speak to shared concerns and interests when it comes to the study of the urban in our various regional and (inter)disciplinary fields.
During the second session, we critically map and bring our experiences and observations to a common table in the form of a collective digital artefact. This brings us to a reflection on the issues and potential of collaborative research and the use of image-based methods to facilitate collaborative research projects. We will also consider the potential and pitfalls of the digital for collaborative/ participatory fieldwork (in times of crisis) and discuss shared interests of the lab group toward next steps this lab encounter can lead us to.
The threefold analysis focuses on the relations between an actively engaging civil society, the real estate market and the city government (Non-Governing, Füller, 2018). In this triangle, the question of how to engage in times of acceleration is more relevant than ever (Rosa 2005). As the mills of politics grind slowly when it comes to citizen participation in urban settings, the actors are developing new digital forms of collaborative urban resistance practices and strategies (e.g. social media governance) to compensate their limitations in local settings, fast economic growth on the global real estate market and political power structures.
For an international comparative case study, I focus on actors in Toronto (Parkdale Community) and Berlin (Retiree Rebels, Moabit) to work out their connections, thresholds and changes in the currently accelerating processes of urban housing markets. How do civil actors cope with the speed of neoliberal urban transformation processes in urban everyday life? What are new forms of practices to establish visible weight and counterbalance the power of neoliberal conditions in urban settings?
This paper devotes scholarly attention to a (rather unusual) protest group and its transnational connections. The "Retiree Rebels" in Berlin e.g. represent a large demographic of the city's population: seniors. With their age, "time" is extremely limited in that area of tension. To cope with the limitations of their age and the fast-growing markets is one of the main challenges I want to highlight. I will use the concept of Rhythms-Analysis (Eléments de Rythmanalyse, Lefebvre 1992) and present analysis concepts to explain the relation between space and time with a new approach on „ social space-time“ (Raumzeit, Weidenhaus 2015).
RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2018
Urban Timescapes and the Politics of Speed (1)
Panel Convenors: Gunter Gassner (Cardiff University, UK), Richard Bower (Cardiff University, UK)
Panel: Collectivecity (the right to the city: 50 years later)
Berlin is considered to be a ‘tenant’s city’ with relatively low-cost housing options. However, recent developments show increasing foreign real estate investment and the sale of public property by the city. At the same time, more and more activists arise to reclaim their right to the city and create new forms of collaborative cultures.
The case study brings to light the activist’s urge for collective action against neoliberal development processes, which affects the city and its housing market in Berlin. Building networks and collective protest practices are central for Berlin's housing grassroots movements, such as established protest initiatives like "Kotti & Co", "Bizim Kiez" and the "Retiree Rebels" of Moabit. The last two years have seen an increasing effort to build up a citywide network in order to support each other with access to knowledge on urban resistance strategies, resources for appropriating urban public space and collective action within social media networks and on the streets. These grassroots movements are local actors trying to increase their clout against global players. They attempt to form urban resistance collectives to counterbalance their disadvantages such as local settings, limited financial and human resources and uneven power structures. However, this case study will make the point that they have so far not achieved their goals.
Accordingly, I analyze the dynamics of collective resistance of urban communities seeking to oppose the effects of the global real estate market on a local base by initiating a citywide network proclaiming the right to affordable living and housing in the city of Berlin. I want therefore to debate the current status of the right to the city - 50 years after Henri Lefebvre demanded in his essay the quality of urban life as a right for everyone, and the city as a place for development and opportunity, a place for cultural exchange (Lefebvre ([1968]1996, Holm 2011). Henri Lefèbvre's theoretical ideas offer an urban ethnographical approach to questions of contemporary relevance: How can urban development be fashioned to suit everyone? Further, what can local citizens achieve in terms of urban development and political processes through their collective urban resistance practices? How can they connect and develop long-term structures?
ON BERLIN:
Berlin is considered to be a ‘tenant’s city’ with relatively low cost housing options. However, recent developments show increasing foreign property investment and the sale of public property by the city. At the same time, more and more activists arise to reclaim their right to the city and create new forms of collaborative cultures. The questions about affordable housing and alternative spaces away from a capitalist logic are central for contemporary Berlin and its development: How do we want to live in the future? How can we create affordable living space on a long term? And how do we provide opportunities for self-determination and new cooperative ways of living?
„Stadtentwicklung und –mitgestaltung“, organisiert durch das
Georg-Simmel-Zentrum für Metropolenforschung, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
http://hautvonhellersdorf.tumblr.com
Can new methods be developed to capture urban dynamics and transformation processes? How can an interdisciplinary perspective between ethnography and geography help us?
ABSTRACT | As an urban ethnographer doing research in the field of human geography, Carolin Genz was speaking about new crossroads when it comes to research methods in the urban field – this is to be understood as an interdisciplinary approach on both sides: Geographers doing Ethnography to capture everyday urban life; and Ethnographers doing Geography during the rise of Big Data and urban analysis. Finding tools to structure and materialize our own sensing through creative ways of visualization is one approach to find the blind spots and culturally meaningful spaces and places in urban context. How can we uncover the knowledge people already incorporate and their perceptions of the city? One can write field notes as densely and reflexively as possible, following the influence of Geertz’ (1973) Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture.” Another approach would be to map it. Mapping (Cognitive Mapping) helps in getting access to interpretations of symbolic structures of the city (Greverus 1972, 1994). A map can be understood as “legible notes.” Mapping helps to enter spatial and social structures of the urban fabric and figure the meaningful spaces and places of districts and neighborhoods as well as our own blind spots. During the talk, Carolin Genz gave insights into the various forms and different types of mapping approaches.
For the upcoming workshop day, Carolin Genz created the “Fold-Up Mapping Booklet” to achieve the scale of tangible materialization. Next to Cognitive Mapping the urban ethnographic data only becomes “thick” in the following three layers: (1) Mapping by drawing spatial observations; (2) Writing by structured field notes; and (3) Walking & Talking by using words and language to explain the collected data e.g. Go-Along Method (Kusenbach 2003). Only in the three layers of this methodological research approach can the urban ethnographic data become “thick.” At the end of her talk, Carolin Genz was pointing out the interdisciplinary research gaps in the intersection of Urban Anthropology and Geography.