CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2015
| Author | Balazs, Anna |
|---|---|
| Title | Walking Towards Europe: The silent production of Cluj-Napoca |
| Summary | The present work explores the potential of individual agency to act in a space produced by the structural forces of consecutive historical periods, and the role of social memory in influencing the direction of individual practice. I study the activity of urban walking tours in the Romanian city of Cluj-Napoca, where conflicting ethno-national histories result in a clash of social memory, constituting urban space as an object of opposing intepretations. Using Michel de Certeau’s theory of everyday practices, I regard urban walking tours as a form of silent production that recreates urban space in its own ways while being determined by the structure which produced that space. Focusing on the narratives of the walks, I explore how they use parts of the historical and spatial legacy of Cluj to create their own version of the city, and their position in the field of social memory affects their interpretation. I argue that both projects aim to reproduce Cluj as a place of diversity and cultural significance, realizing the agenda of postsocialist urban restructuring which recreates the city as a center of consumption; at the same time, I show how conflicting historical narratives intervene in the process, resulting in a specific dynamics between discourses of nationalism and multiculturalism. |
| Supervisor | Dafinger, Andreas; Naumescu, Vlad |
| Department | Sociology MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2015/balazs_anna.pdf |
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