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Ballet amidst fences: placelessness and place-attachment in one Prague suburb

Publication at Faculty of Humanities |
2010

Abstract

Jenerálka,a settlement at the outskirts of Prague,has been recently undergoing the most profound change in its history.Since 1989 it has become a target for developers offering luxurious dwellings “in one of the greenest parts of Prague” while near the city centre.Jenerálka Due to the change brought by development projects, in Jenerálka old and new intermingles into a visual/material assemblage that points at what is hidden under the surface–the overall socio-economic change of the last two decades.In the paper I employ insights on place of two phenomenological geographers–D. Seamon (1980) and E.

Relph (1976)–in order to analyse the material component of the change and to offer new way of understanding it.My understanding of Jenerálka is based phenomenological and visual analysis and on ethnographic methods targeting the socio-spatial practices of its inhabitants resulting in what Seamon calls place-ballet and its potential absence resulting in the situation Relph terms “placelessness”.