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The City's Pleasures is the first historical investigation of the tremendous changes that affected the fabric and architecture of Istanbul in the century that followed the decisive return of the Ottoman court to the capital in 1703. These were spectacular times that witnessed the most extraordinary urban expansion and building explosion in the history of the city. Showing how architecture and urban form became involved in the representation and construction of a changing social order, Shirine Hamadeh reassesses the dominance of the paradigm of Westernization in interpretations of this period and challenges the suggestion that change in the eighteenth century could only occur by turning toward a now superior West. Drawing on a genre of Ottoman poetry written in celebration of the built environment and on a vast array of related textual and visual sources, Hamadeh demonstrates that architectural change was the result of a dynamic synthesis between internal and external factors, and closely mirrored the process of décloisonnement of the city's social landscape. Examining novel forms, spaces, and decorative vocabularies; changing patterns of patronage; and new patterns of architectural perception; The City's Pleasures shows how these exposed and reinforced the internal dynamics that were played out between a society in flux and a state anxious to recreate an ideal system of social hierarchies. Profoundly hybrid in nature, the new architectural idiom reflected a growing permeability between elite and middle-class sensibilities, an unprecedented degree of receptivity to Western and Eastern foreign traditions, and a clear departure from the parameters of the classical canon. Innovation became the new operative doctrine. As the built environment was experienced, perceived, and appreciated by contemporary observers, it increasingly revealed itself as a perpetual source of sensory pleasures.
A wise, passionate account of the pleasures of traveling solo In our hectic, hyperconnected lives, many people are uncomfortable with the prospect of solitude. Yet a little time to ourselves can be an opportunity to slow down, savor, and try new things, especially when traveling. Through on-the-ground reporting, insights from social science, and recounting the experiences of artists, writers, and innovators who cherished solitude, Stephanie Rosenbloom considers how traveling alone deepens appreciation for everyday beauty, bringing into sharp relief the sights, sounds, and smells that one isn't necessarily attuned to in the presence of company. Walking through four cities--Paris, Florence, Istanbul, and New York--and four seasons, Alone Time gives us permission to pause, to relish the sensual details of the world rather than hurtling through museums and uploading photos to Instagram. In chapters about dining out, visiting museums, and pursuing knowledge, we begin to see how the moments we have to ourselves--on the road or at home--can be used to enrich our lives. Rosenbloom's engaging and elegant prose makes Alone Time as warmly intimate an account as the details of a trip shared by a beloved friend--and will have its many readers eager to set off on their own solo adventures.
A fascinating history of nineteenth century Eastern Mediterranean port cities, re-examining European influence over the changing lives of their urban populations.
How does a subculture appropriate space within the dominant culture? What is the city's relationship to the body? Geographers from England and New Zealand apply queer theory in their consideration of the human body as a vehicle for understanding relationships between people and place. These provocative essays examine the body as an entity constricted by gender, sexuality, race, class, nationality, and disability. They also look at sexual identity as it relates to communities, and how humans "do" gender through regulated practices such as heterosexuality. Pleasure Zones tackles topics such as the politics of gay men's health; the relationship of sex and death to the city; erotic urban landscapes, and how public policy labels lesbians. Each essay attempts to reconcile queer theory and social and cultural theory with the discipline of geography. The result is an illuminating and accessible look at the formation of personal and collective identities. Building on two decades of geography that recognizes the body as a politicized site of struggle, and applying the perspective of the sexual dissident, Pleasure Zones brings a fascinating variety of human experiences into sharp relief.
There is no rawer human experience than sex, and in a city as diverse as New York, sexual experiences come in many forms. In the pre-Giuliani days, temptation flooded Times Square on theater marquees and neon signs. Behind unmarked doors downtown, more adventurous experiences awaited for those in the know. In The Soft City, the ethnographer Terry Williams, with the help of accomplices and informants, ventures deep into the underground world of sex in New York. The book explores different aspects of the “perverse space” of the city: porn theaters, sex shops, peep shows, restroom cruising, sadomasochism clubs, swingers’ events, and many more. Featuring field notes taken between 1975 and the present, The Soft City documents the ways that New Yorkers on the social periphery have thought about and pursued sex, whether for recreation or to make a living. It also presents an unconventional account of New York City’s many transformations, showing how the soft city—its people and their unique character—evolved in response to official and social pressures. Featuring Williams’s unmistakable portraits of the demimonde as well as the accounts of other ethnographers challenging themselves to dive into the city’s hidden crannies, The Soft City is as irreproducible as it is provocative.
Fantasy City analyses the post-industrialist city as a site of entertainment. By discussing examples from a wide variety of venues, including casinos, malls, heritage developments and theme parks, Hannigan questions urban entertainments economic foundations and historical background. He asks whether such areas of fantasy destroy communities or instead create new groupings of shared identities and experiences. The book is written in a student friendly way with boxed case studies for class discussion.
Now in paperback, a romantic love story by the great Brazilian writer Lóri, a primary school teacher, is isolated and nervous, comfortable with children but unable to connect to adults. When she meets Ulisses, a professor of philosophy, an opportunity opens: a chance to escape the shipwreck of introspection and embrace the love, including the sexual love, of a man. Her attempt, as Sheila Heti writes in her afterword, is not only “to love and to be loved,” but also “to be worthy of life itself.” Published in 1968, An Apprenticeship is Clarice Lispector’s attempt to reinvent herself following the exhausting effort of her metaphysical masterpiece The Passion According to G. H. Here, in this unconventional love story, she explores the ways in which people try to bridge the gaps between them, and the result, unusual in her work, surprised many readers and became a bestseller. Some appreciated its accessibility; others denounced it as sexist or superficial. To both admirers and critics, the olympian Clarice gave a typically elliptical answer: “I humanized myself,” she said. “The book reflects that.”
This book contains a collection of cutting-edge chapters that explore various connections between urban living, sexuality and sexual desire around the world. The key themes featured address a number of topical issues including: the controversies and debates raging around the evolution, defining patterns and appropriate regulation of commercial sex zones and markets in the urban landscape how gay public spaces, districts and 'gay villages' emerged and developed in various towns and cities around the world how changing attitudes to, and the usage of urban sexual spaces, as depicted in iconic television series such as Sex and the City and Queer as Folk, reflect the reality of working women's or gay men's changing life experiences. With detailed case studies, and a strong interdisciplinary appeal, this book will be a valuable reference for postgraduates and advanced students in the fields of cultural studies as well as human, urban and social geography. This book was previously published as a special issue of the journal Urban Studies.
With a new introduction for the paperback. London is a supreme achievement of civilization. It offers fulfilments of body and soul, encourages discovery and invention. It is a place of freedom, multiplicity and co-existence. It is a Liberal city, which means it stands for values now in peril. London has also become its own worst enemy, testing to destruction the idea that the free market alone can build a city, a fantastical wealth machine that denies too many of its citizens a decent home or living. In this thought-provoking, fearless, funny and subversive book, Rowan Moore shows how London’s strength depends on the creative and mutual interplay of three forces: people, business and state. To find responses to the challenges of the twenty-first century, London must rediscover its genius for popular action and bold public intervention. The global city above all others, London is the best place to understand the way the world’s cities are changing. It could also be, in the shape of a living, churning city of more than eight million people, the most powerful counter-argument to the extremist politics of the present.