Abstract:Habit, memory, and the persistence of socialist-era street names in post-socialist Bucharest, Romania.
Abstract:The critical study of toponymy has paid considerable attention to the renaming of urban places following revolutionary political change. Such renaming is intended to institutionalize a new political agenda through shaping the meanings in everyday practices and landscapes.Renaming, however, may not always be successful and this article examines this issue with reference to a market in Bucharest, Roman… Show more
“…The theoretical perspective used in this paper combines the critical debates about the political power of street naming (Alderman and Inwood ; Azaryahu ; Azaryahu ; Light ; Yeoh ) with theories of popular response to streets renaming (Light and Young ). As Vuolteenaho and Berg put it:Exploring the power of naming in the construction of historical and contemporary landscapes, Critical Toponymies aims to show that to take language seriously can result in a productive relationship that avoids binary distinctions between theory and empirics or the material and discursive.…”
Section: Political Power Of ‘City‐text’ Renaming Popular Responses Amentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The focus on the users of place names (bottom‐up responses) is a required direction of study in critical toponymy. Among others, Azaryahu () and Light and Young () have called for more research into how place‐name changes are ‘received’ by ordinary people. Hence, analysing popular responses in street‐name changes is a new trend in toponymy studies and brings new insights to how the changes are perceived by local people in their everyday lives.…”
Section: Political Power Of ‘City‐text’ Renaming Popular Responses Amentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Our research seeks to expand knowledge of street renaming in post‐socialist states (Foote et al . ; Light ; Light and Young ; Palonen ) by examining the popular responses or how the local people's discourses are shaped in terms of critical perspectives on the street renaming and the politics of the practicality of the new names: the everyday ways in which people use, connect with and depend on street names.…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…By analysing the concerns of local people's responses to the use of the martyrs' names, we look to determine to what extent they have become familiar with and use the new names, how ‘the politics of practicality’ has the potential to interweave restitution and local conflict. The original contribution of this paper is on advancing the current debates on users of street names (see the role of ‘habits’ in street naming in Light and Young ), based on the bottom‐up responses to top‐down changes as a background for understanding the politics of practicality to the martyr naming.…”
The cultural politics of attributing names and the popular responses to the naming process of the urban landscape are core issues in 'critical toponymies' . In many Romanian cities there are place names that articulate a collective memory agenda with respect to the 1989 Revolution, and Timişoara stands at the forefront of streets bearing martyr names. However, there have been recent calls for more attention to the popular responses to place-naming practices. This paper explores these calls by addressing the issue of users of urban street place names. It also highlights the need to introduce the theory of 'the politics of practicality' in place-and street-name studies. We seek to explain if Timişoarians are (un)happy with the new 'martyr city-text' and how social justice and the contextualisation of the conflict as a case of the practical and the ideological are interrelated. By analysing the concerns of local service workers and by surveying local people's opinion on the use of the martyrs' names, we look to determine to what extent they accept or reject the new names and their use. In particular, pride and recognition versus everyday difficulties in martyr name uses produce major tensions at a local level. Therefore social justice (restitution) issues created local conflict over the uses of new names, and the politics of practicality in the martyrs' case shaped how political and symbolic changes are received by the people. This paper is developing and challenging previous work on place and street naming in geography by considering, beyond the understanding that conflicts over naming are symbolic or ideological, that ordinary citizens use, connect with, and depend upon street names in practical terms: they internalise and react differently to the costs of rewriting the city-text.
“…The theoretical perspective used in this paper combines the critical debates about the political power of street naming (Alderman and Inwood ; Azaryahu ; Azaryahu ; Light ; Yeoh ) with theories of popular response to streets renaming (Light and Young ). As Vuolteenaho and Berg put it:Exploring the power of naming in the construction of historical and contemporary landscapes, Critical Toponymies aims to show that to take language seriously can result in a productive relationship that avoids binary distinctions between theory and empirics or the material and discursive.…”
Section: Political Power Of ‘City‐text’ Renaming Popular Responses Amentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The focus on the users of place names (bottom‐up responses) is a required direction of study in critical toponymy. Among others, Azaryahu () and Light and Young () have called for more research into how place‐name changes are ‘received’ by ordinary people. Hence, analysing popular responses in street‐name changes is a new trend in toponymy studies and brings new insights to how the changes are perceived by local people in their everyday lives.…”
Section: Political Power Of ‘City‐text’ Renaming Popular Responses Amentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Our research seeks to expand knowledge of street renaming in post‐socialist states (Foote et al . ; Light ; Light and Young ; Palonen ) by examining the popular responses or how the local people's discourses are shaped in terms of critical perspectives on the street renaming and the politics of the practicality of the new names: the everyday ways in which people use, connect with and depend on street names.…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…By analysing the concerns of local people's responses to the use of the martyrs' names, we look to determine to what extent they have become familiar with and use the new names, how ‘the politics of practicality’ has the potential to interweave restitution and local conflict. The original contribution of this paper is on advancing the current debates on users of street names (see the role of ‘habits’ in street naming in Light and Young ), based on the bottom‐up responses to top‐down changes as a background for understanding the politics of practicality to the martyr naming.…”
The cultural politics of attributing names and the popular responses to the naming process of the urban landscape are core issues in 'critical toponymies' . In many Romanian cities there are place names that articulate a collective memory agenda with respect to the 1989 Revolution, and Timişoara stands at the forefront of streets bearing martyr names. However, there have been recent calls for more attention to the popular responses to place-naming practices. This paper explores these calls by addressing the issue of users of urban street place names. It also highlights the need to introduce the theory of 'the politics of practicality' in place-and street-name studies. We seek to explain if Timişoarians are (un)happy with the new 'martyr city-text' and how social justice and the contextualisation of the conflict as a case of the practical and the ideological are interrelated. By analysing the concerns of local service workers and by surveying local people's opinion on the use of the martyrs' names, we look to determine to what extent they accept or reject the new names and their use. In particular, pride and recognition versus everyday difficulties in martyr name uses produce major tensions at a local level. Therefore social justice (restitution) issues created local conflict over the uses of new names, and the politics of practicality in the martyrs' case shaped how political and symbolic changes are received by the people. This paper is developing and challenging previous work on place and street naming in geography by considering, beyond the understanding that conflicts over naming are symbolic or ideological, that ordinary citizens use, connect with, and depend upon street names in practical terms: they internalise and react differently to the costs of rewriting the city-text.
“…The biography of the city, covering urban planning, human geography or public space development typically evidences the ideological positions of the changing regimes and ruling elites. Recent studies are keen to explain the broader mechanism of post-socialism affecting the living conditions in Central and Eastern European countries (Tsenkova and Nedović-Budić, 2006;Light and Young, 2014;Stanilov, 2015). Outlining historical arguments and emphasizing the brutality of the politics -like the socialist regime in Romania, scholars rarely engage with spatial governance or critical urban theories (Nae et al, 2014;Patroescu et al, 2015;Suditu et al, 2015;Ghyka, 2015).…”
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