Browsing by Subject "space"

The thesis concentrates on the visibility and the political recognition of transgender women (mak nyah) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Through the theories of recognition, concentrating on the questions of gender and recognition, the thesis looks into how the institutionalized transphobia, the criminalization of transgendered practices and the lack of gender recognition affect the transgender women/mak nyah, often referred to as the most visible part of the LGBT community in Malaysia. The study is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Kuala Lumpur between April and August 2017. The study rests on participant observation – carried out in various LGBT spaces, events, and the facilities of a Non-Governmental Organization – and on semi-structured interviews with a core group of 17 participants, including 14 members of the mak nyah community and three current and former workers of three key organizations working with the issues of sexual and gender rights. Participants come from multi-ethnic and multi-religious backgrounds, of which the majority are Malay Muslims. Since the 1990s, emerging from Hegelian legacy, there has been a resurgent interest in the notion of recognition. Recently in the field of political recognition, after the recognition theorists Charles Taylor’s (1994) and Axel Honneth’s (1995) publications, the new questions concerning the relationship of identity, politics, and gender recognition have been studied by social theorists and scholars such as Paddy McQueen (2015) and Eric Plemons (2017). These scholars discuss how gender is recognized in various surroundings and fields, including legal. Furthermore, they pose important questions, such as what happens when an individual’s lived experience falls outside of society’s 'normative' gender ideal. Taken further, it permits a closer examination of the relationship between individual and society, enables the observation of gendered spaces and their meanings, and allows the scrutiny of the public discourse. Furthermore, like Nancy Fraser (1990) and Michael Warner (2002) have demonstrated, in environments where such subjectivities are oppressed or excluded from the public sphere and the institutional world, alternative discourses and discursive spaces are created, known as counterpublics, serving as social and political areas for the marginalized groups. In the past decades in Malaysia, there have been legal and political constructions toward the non-heteronormative subjectivities and groups. In Malaysia’s two-court system, ‘transgendered practices’ are criminalized by the section of religious (Syariah) law criminalizing “cross-dressing” of Malay-Muslim backgrounded citizens and by a section of the national law that has been used for the arbitrary arrests and raids of transgender-identified persons based on “indecent behavior.” Malaysia that was formerly known as a site of “considerable fluidity and permeability in gender roles” (Peletz 2009), has now taken a completely different political approach to its sexual and gender minorities. This is partly a result of nationalist “Asian values” discourse that took root in the 1990s in various Southeast Asian countries and that views the non-heteronormative genders and sexualities as un-Asian. The political identity struggles that are characteristic of the post-independent Malaysia have had an enormous impact on the gender and sexual minorities of Malaysia and manifested in stigma, discrimination, criminalization, and violence. The thesis demonstrates that while the moral policing has shown signs of acceleration, it has also opened up new channels for the marginalized groups to speak up for themselves and about their issues; thus, the public visibility of their issues has increased. As the term 'transgender' is neither ahistorical nor acultural, it requires closer examination. Through the theories of sex and gender, the thesis looks into how Malaysian mak nyah have absorbed the global word transgender. The thesis also examines the topic of institutionalized ‘erasure’ by emphasizing the interlocutor’s experiences of health care. Moreover, by conjoining the theories of recognition with the concept of gendered spaces, the thesis shows how the interlocutors are altering their subject positions and gendered performances according to the spaces of interaction. Furthermore, the thesis suggests that the lack of institutional care has created self-organizing forms of agency, where the members of the mak nyah community are answering their own needs, because the current institutional services do not. Moreover, access to the 'safe spaces,’ and other communal spaces offer vital breathing spaces for the members of the community and within these spaces, they negotiate their identities and self-organize their institutional needs. More general level, the thesis shows that in spite of the strained social change, the public visibility of the issues of transwomen has created new opportunities for trans-identified individuals, such as opportunities to alter their public image.

This master’s thesis explores spatial and aesthetic experiences and placemaking in two public spaces in Malmi and Malminkartano in Helsinki. It focuses on two case studies through ethnographic fieldwork in order to evaluate the added value of placemaking in the urban planning practices of the City of Helsinki from the citizens’ perspective. The case studies shed light on the possibilities and risks of placemaking, especially in the context of Helsinki neighbourhoods that are subject to densification and suburban regeneration projects. This research was commissioned by the Strategic Urban Planning Department of the Urban Environment Division of the City of Helsinki. This thesis explores three research questions. It aims to understand how the observed placemaking projects affected the spatial and aesthetic experiences in the public spaces in question. It also examines what kind of attitudes arose among informants regarding public space, placemaking, densification and urban planning in the context of the studied neighbourhoods. Lastly, it assesses the potential of placemaking to improve the spatial and aesthetic experience of public spaces in neighbourhoods undergoing suburban regeneration projects. The theoretical framework of this research utilises theories and viewpoints of human geography and philosophy of urban aesthetics. Building on the study of place and space, it employs the concepts of spatial and aesthetic experience to examine sensory perceptions in public spaces. Additionally, it continues the culture and tradition of qualitative urban planning research. The data was gathered through ethnographic fieldwork during the span of the studied placemaking projects between July and October 2021. The fieldwork entailed participant observation, informal interviews and conversations with informants and autoethnographic observations of sensory, spatial and aesthetic experiences in public space. In addition to the ethnographic data, placemaking theory was utilised to formulate the analyses and results. Based on the data, the observed placemaking case studies had a moderate effect on the spatial and aesthetic experiences in the public spaces in question. However, they raised valuable discussions about local viewpoints and provided important place-based knowledge for urban planners. The ethnographic process revealed both accepting and antagonistic narratives within the local communities regarding densification and the urban planning practices of the City of Helsinki. The latter attitudes did not, however, seem to negatively affect the informants’ conceptions of the studied projects or placemaking generally. Instead, place-driven attempts at making public spaces greener, livelier and more engaging were almost unanimously accepted and welcomed. Consequently, placemaking is proposed here as a viable method to develop and improve the experience of public spaces among citizens in neighbourhoods undergoing suburban regeneration projects. Based on the gathered data and theoretical reasoning, this thesis argues that placemaking is an urban development approach, method and philosophy that can create added value to conventional urban planning practices in Helsinki. Placemaking can improve the experience of public space by vitalising its experiential and sensory qualities, and thus complement technocratic urban planning and construction processes. Placemaking can provide planners with place-based knowledge about local conditions and aspirations that is useful for long-term planning goals. Placemaking can be utilised as a participation method that gives citizens more agency and shows faster impact than other means of participation, further empowering them to reclaim public spaces for communal uses. Placemaking can make public spaces safer and more pluralistic by broadening their usership and increasing vulnerable groups’ presence. By engaging in community-driven placemaking, the City of Helsinki can improve its public spaces in multiple ways and develop its current participatory and urban design practices in alignment with its strategic goals of enhancing the quality of life for its citizens.

Tiivistelmä – Referat – Abstract This partly autoethnographical study of homelessness within highly mobile people asks if the meaning of home changes and how it changes when people do not have a fixed point of dwelling. It aims to shed light onto the question of space and place within social studies. This thesis combines personal narrative with semi-structured interviews in order to provide better understanding of the seemingly simple concept of ‘home’. The fieldwork was conducted in multiple locations around the world, following the mobile lifestyles of people working within the yachting industry. As the thesis focuses on the lifestyles of elites, it provides a different perspective to homelessness as the studies that focus on forced homelessness do. The ‘spatial turn’, which started in the late 1980’s, has changed the perception of space and place not only within anthropology but in other fields of academia as well. This thesis looks at how this theoretical approach has affected the way that space and place is reflected in everyday life. Utilising discourses from mobility and transnationalism studies, the aim is not to present highly mobile people as disconnected from place but, instead, to show how place and space are still meaningful. The analysis of different spatial perspectives concentrates on three different aspects: home as a dwelling place, home as a community and home as a nation. Through these approaches, the thesis makes the concept of home easier to understand. Another important element that this thesis reveals is how anthropologists should not forget the temporal aspect of life while putting more emphasis on spatiality. The thesis argues that only by combining these two elements, we can fully comprehend the implications of mobile lifestyle. Without the temporal aspect, the understanding of homelessness remains partial. Drawing from previous ethnographic studies of lifestyle migration, this thesis contributes to the discourse of rootedness and the implications of leaving one’s homeland. Identity and nomadic lifestyle are in a constant dialogue with each other, affecting the life trajectories of the “elite homeless”. This thesis looks at how time changes its shape, when life consists of short periods of time in multiple different locations. The interview material amplifies the paradox of the need for a permanent home and the urge to keep travelling. The thesis aims to show how once uprooted, the ability to relocate and return to location bound lifestyle becomes problematic. This thesis also aspires to show how autoethnography can be a useful tool for anthropologists. The writer’s personal experiences act as the structure around which other ethnographic material and the theory build on. As autoethnography is not widely used method in anthropology, the thesis looks into the history and two main branches of autoethnography.