Sanctuaries of the City: Lessons from Tokyo
Anni Greve
Language: English
Pages: 220
ISBN: 1138278556
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
This book proposes that we can learn from Tokyo about the instrinsic importance of in-between realms to an international culture: the sanctuaries. It argues that certain urban societies are more robust than others because they offer socio-spatial capacities that enable the development of skills for coping with modern forms of living. It studies places that may open the way to an international culture, namely market places, venues for performing arts and religious sites, which - with particular reference to the Durkheimian tradition - are considered here in their quality as sanctuaries. From its empirical analysis of such sanctuaries in Tokyo, this book develops a more general theory about mega-cities, urban sociability and identity.
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into something different through exchange’. To some extent Michel Foucault’s idea of the heterotopias can be used to obtain an insight into what, in more general terms, was at stake in the market place of the late medieval. He takes up this challenge from anthropology, starting with Victor Turner’s idea of the ritual space of liminality as a state characterized by ambiguity, openness and indeterminacy. From this perspective, heterotopias constitute a realm alongside the law of established order.
own that precluded not only a critical yet honest and reflexive assessment of its religious heritage, but even any public official reference to such a heritage. In the essay ‘What is tradition?’, the eccentric and engaging avant-garde sculptor Taro Okamoto (Okamoto 1963, in Smith 1997, 251) wrote as follows about the Japanese tradition, ‘the present does not exist because of the past. On the contrary we must regard the past as a premise of the present. All of us must discover the past in our own
decoupling it from anachronistic 1 David Chernilo (2007) points to the anti-communitarian character of the concept of organic solidarity. ‘In terms of social solidarity, the consequences of the division of labour were to be felt mostly at the national scale. However, the actual explanation of its emergence, key features and long-term development could only be achieved if conceived of as a world-scale phenomenon’. 8 Sanctuaries of the City contemporary categories’ in order to acquire a
at the intersection of this world and the other world in that they were held in front of temples during festivals. Furthermore, markets were spheres of transformation in that a commodity could be transformed into something different through exchange’. To some extent, Michel Foucault’s idea of heterotopias can be used to obtain an idea of what, in more general terms, was at stake in the market place of the Middle Ages. He takes up this challenge from anthropology, starting with Victor Turner’s
‘En forførers dagbog’, who explores the distinction between a good and a bad seducer. The competent seducer is the one who gives in to the play, as a ritual and game with its own rules, charms, snares, and lures, while the amateur is the one who cheats, like the false player in the card game. In his social theory, Baudrillard includes a second distinction, namely the one between the rules of the game and the law of order. From the viewpoint of the market place, social trust is when people stick
