Museum canopies and affective cosmopolitanism : cultivating cross-cultural landscapes for ethical embodied responses

Steven Schorch, Emma Waterton, Steve Watson

Research output: Chapter in Book / Conference PaperChapter

Abstract

In his article 'The cosmopolitan canopy', Elijah Anderson (2004) describes contemporary urban landscapes as those strongly affected by the forces of globalization, migration and industrialization. In Anderson's terms, public spaces in the United States have inevitably become racially, ethnically and socially more diverse; at the same time, those markers of difference have simultaneously contributed to the division of cityscapes into ethnic neighbourhoods and the resultant separation of social groups. This line of thinking reflects Mike Featherstone's (2002) comments on the significance of the city in cosmopolitan dispositions, Ulrich Beck's (2002) concept of cosmopolitanization as a kind of internalized globalization within the nation-state and Saskia Sassen's (2000, p. 153) characterizations of the city as a contested space where wealthy elites and low-income others jostle for space, each transnational in character but embedded and competing in specific places. The existence of Anderson's 'cosmopolitan canopies', however, enables people who are often confined to their ethnic group or social class to 'encounter others' and thus potentially develop a 'cosmopolitan appreciation of difference' (2004, p. 28; our emphasis). Anderson, (2004, p. 28) goes on to identify such settings or 'canopies' within the urban context of Philadelphia in the USA, including areas such as 'the Reading Terminal, Rittenhouse Square, Thirtieth Street Station, the Whole Foods Market, and sporting events'; surprisingly, museums do not feature on his list.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationHeritage, Affect and Emotion: Politics, Practices and Infrastructures
EditorsDivya P. Tolia-Kelly, Emma Waterton, Steve Watson
Place of PublicationU.K.
PublisherRoutledge
Pages93-113
Number of pages21
ISBN (Electronic)9781315586656
ISBN (Print)9781472454874
Publication statusPublished - 2017

Keywords

  • museums
  • cosmopolitanism
  • sociology, urban

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