Recherche par auteur > Ruepke Joerg

Urbanity, as this panel is exploring, is not just the reflection of larger numbers of people and interactions and higher density. The ascription of an urban character to a place and the performance of urbanity by certain or even a majority of actors is possible in very small settlements or under the conditions of low-density urbanism. In all these cases, the urban seems to be characterized by ambivalences, that is constitutive tensions. These include that situationally or certain segments of people advocating unity and diversity in terms of people reckoned as belonging to the place, that they favor far-reaching connectivity and autonomy and separation, that they stress tradition and innovation. Processional practices have been typically studied as attempts to appropriate and dominate, to create and organize space. Guided by the notion of urban ambivalence, this contribution will explore the urbaneness of processions in more detail, looking at the larger temporal frame and its spatial setting, the different agents involved and their interactions, and at the different meanings and knowledge produced in such practices. For reasons of time, the Roman triumph will be used as the main case study.