CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2023
| Author | Teona Ivashchenko |
|---|---|
| Title | Communal Hallways of Tbilisi: Thinking Spatially on Everyday Life of Urban Neighbourhoods |
| Summary | A communal hallway is not a frequent discussion topic in everyday life nor in the academic literature. Its impact on everyday urban life is mostly unnoticeable. However, a transitional political, social, or economic period in the state reveals its importance. Changes in society, state policies, and infrastructure reveal that the transitional space between the public and private cannot be transformed without consequences. Therefore, it is not a mere background for social interactions. Based on this, my thesis tries to analyse the everyday experience of neighbourhoods in communal hallways My ethnographic analysis is based on the comparison of the physical and social conditions of three types of communal hallways in Tbilisi: pre-Soviet, Soviet, and post Soviet. For the theoretical discussion, I follow Henri Lefebvre’s spatial triad of perceived, conceived and lived spaces (Lefebvre 1991). I conceptualise a communal hallway as a social space (Lefebvre which is produced, but, at the same time has an agency in the everyday life of urban neighbourhoods in Tbilisi. I argue that a communal hallway is simultaneously a place for power disposition, a symbolic space for memory and perception of different temporalities, a context for intimate neighbourhood practices as well as for formal interactions and finally a source of personal emotions too. |
| Supervisor | Kowalski Alexandra; Markkula Johanna |
| Department | Sociology MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2023/ivashchenko_teona.pdf |
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