7. Narratives of conflict and attachment

The city is characterized by the multitude of people and potential uses, wants and need, constantly in conflict with each other. Cities are places for dwelling, business and leisure, for citizens and endless number of non-human species. We narrate how we relate to urban communities, and what city’s past, present, and future are for us. These narratives are about attachment to both physical urban places as well as people and urban communities. And they tell others, why attachment in these particular social and material arrangements should be held valuable even by people outside them.

Urban planning, development, activism, and even everyday living requires navigating these narratives, and navigating the attachments to places and communities they entail. This in turn means reconciling between their radical divergence, choosing which narrative to hold meaningful and whether to accept the connection between these narratives and material ’truth’. Big questions are how these narratives are framed and justified, and how the outcomes of these debates shape city.

This working group invites presentations dealing with urban conflicts, participation, activism, and conspiracies, and the roles narratives play in these. We welcome both empirical and theoretical contributions. The contributions can either deal with narratives directly and as an analytical tool or be connected to the theme more metaphorically – we also welcome presentations dealing more broadly with conflicts in the urban sphere. The working group is organized by Centre of Sociology for Democracy (Univ. of Helsinki). Presentations can be held either in Finnish or in English, please indicate your wish!