Mobile Imaginaries, Portable Signs

Global Consumption and Representations of Slum Life

Dados Bibliográficos

ID5762017
AutoresUli Linke (Rochester Institute of Technology, autor correspondente)
Ano2012
Volume14
Fascículo2
Páginas294-319
Data de publicação2012-05-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoTourism Geographies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1461-6688 • E-ISSN: 1470-1340
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14616688.2012.633218
OpenAlexW1982413056
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas23
Referências citadas28

This essay explores how iconic representations of slum life are produced for transnational consumption in Europe. The focus is on the manner in which the logics of spectacle and entertainment have come to organize images of urban poverty. The use of slums as global entertainment spectacle requires that core images be detached from social life to produce a repertoire of free-floating emblems and signs that can be variously deployed, assembled, appropriated and discarded, depending on shifting cultural desires in a capitalist commodity market. The research suggests that a limited register of signs is recycled by artists, photographers, urban critics and private entrepreneurs, some of whom have built faux-shantytowns as theme parks in global cities such as Zurich, London and Berlin. The 'bare life' of these informal cities is branded for consumer publics that can afford to refashion their social identities by physical or symbolic contact with the portable icons of poverty

Advertising · Aesthetics · Art · Business · Commodity · Consumption (sociology · Economic growth · Economics · Emblem · Entertainment · Media studies · Political science · Population · Poverty · Slum · Social science · Sociology · Spectacle · Visual arts · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Public Spaces through Art · Urban Planning and Governance