The Places Where Community Is Practiced: How Store Owners and Their Businesses Build Neighborhood Social Life

Description

In this open access publication, the social cohesion of urban neighborhoods and their residents is examined, which is often viewed as vulnerable since increased mobility, individualization, wider socio-economic and demographic changes have fundamentally altered the basis for everyday social interaction in urban neighborhoods. Anna Steigemann gives scholarly attention to the concrete places where neighborly interactions still take place and to how these interactions affect local community building. She illuminates and explores the ordinary everyday interactions and social practices in and around shops and gastronomic facilities on a shopping street in Berlin-Neukölln, revealing how these businesses are important places where community is practiced, but also why they are increasingly threatened by commercial and residential gentrification. Front Matter ....Pages I-XIII Introduction (Anna Steigemann)....Pages 1-11 The Meso-Level: Social Life and Trade on a Metropolitan Shopping Street (Anna Steigemann)....Pages 13-48 Theories of the Ground: The Sensitizing Theoretical Concepts (Anna Steigemann)....Pages 49-80 Realities on the Ground: Sampling Process and Methodology (Anna Steigemann)....Pages 81-111 Grounding the Social Life Worlds – The Case Businesses’ Material Space and Social Context (Anna Steigemann)....Pages 113-176 Businesses as Spaces where Community is Practiced? The Socio-Spatial Features for “talking about everything,” “coming down,” and “staying in touch” (Anna Steigemann)....Pages 177-242 Store Owners that Offer “More” – Public Characters on Changing Karl-Marx-Straße (Anna Steigemann)....Pages 243-297 Conclusion: “Lifting the curtain” of Karl-Marx-Straße’s Places where Community is Practiced (Anna Steigemann)....Pages 299-310 Back Matter ....Pages 311-325