There is growing interest in attributing sacred value to the environment for its protection and management. Claiming the environment as sacred, however, is different from the environment in sacred sites. Sacred sites, places of heightened religious and spiritual significance, are found in all societies and visited by thousands of visitors. Visitor flows affect the environment in sacred sites in direct and indirect ways. Two distinct approaches can be identified in the discussion of impact on sacred sites: one focuses on the assessment of the physical environment and the other emphasises the effects on the cultural and sacred space. The first approach reports environmental problems such as deforestation, river pollution, and real estate development without supporting infrastructure of roads and environmental services including sewerage, water supply, and accumulation of waste, but fails to explain why these problems do not deter visitors whose numbers continue to increase. The second approach, by negating the physicality of the environment and relying on subjectivity of environmental discourses, avoids questions about environmental responsibility and management. Both these approaches do not consider how the environment in a sacred site is created. This thesis attempts to explain how the environment in the sacred site of Vrindavan is shaped by socio-economic, religious and political processes that take place within, and outside the site. By adopting a historical-spatial analysis, it shows how the trajectory of environmental change in Vrindavan is shaped by broader patterns of changes in political economy, religious patronage, pilgrimage travel and institutional developments. It examines the changes in the iv pilgrimage landscape of Vrindavan through three phases since its establishment as a pilgrimage site in the 15th century: pre-colonial (15th-19th century), colonial (19th-mid 20th century) and post-colonial (post-1947). It details the ways in which social, economic, political and institutional developments from the precolonial and colonial past are linked to some of the contemporary problems and how these are translated into fragmented institutional responses. The thesis examines the contemporary environment in Vrindavan in relation to the shifts in pilgrimage economy and interactions of various actors and institutions that control and manage it. It shows that the contemporary environment in Vrindavan is a poorly regulated market of religious entrepreneurs, tourism operators and real estate developers driven by the opportunities of religious tourism. The lack of institutions to regulate these activities and the inability to cater to the increased demand for environmental services contribute to the continued degradation of the religious urban space of Vrindavan. This institutional vacuum leads different actors to use contesting attitudes in absolving themselves from their responsibility towards environmental management and articulate discourses that reinforce the idea of environmental degradation in Vrindavan. The study illustrates that claiming the sacred and making the sacred/religious environment are two different things. It argues that understanding and addressing environmental degradation in a sacred environment requires an understanding of how sacred space is produced. It shows that the environment of pilgrimage is a dynamic process shaped by the activities, forms of control, perceptions, and representations of the actors involved in the production of sacred sites. The thesis calls for a comprehensive v spatial approach to address environmental change and sustainability issues in sacred sites by integrating concerns for maintaining the religious significance of the place with the physical transformations in sacred sites.

This study investigates the relationship between law and space by focusing on the role of the land-use planning system in producing the space of Australian urban regions. The primary aim of the project is to demonstrate the significance of the theoretical and sociological framework of Henri Lefebvre for an emerging field of socio-legal studies concerned with the relationship between law and geography. To this point very few contributions to this field have considered the theoretical connections between law and space in any depth. This thesis demonstrates how Lefebvre's sophisticated theory of the socially produced nature of space can broaden the scope of 'law and geography' research. It does so through a detailed survey of Lefebvre's work and a deployment of his ideas in a series of inquiries into the production of space in Australia. This endeavour is pursued in two stages. Part I of the thesis begins by examining how explanatory models within the social sciences have become increasingly concerned with the spatial dimensions of social life. This 'spatial turn' is reflected in a small, but growing literature within socio-legal studies which focuses on the interdisciplinary connections between law and geography. However the theoretical foundations of this field remain underdeveloped. Through an analysis of Lefebvre's writings, this thesis identifies an anti-reductionist methodological approach to space and its social production. This is used to establish a theoretical framework for the study of the spatial dimensions of law. Part II of the thesis uses this framework to address two questions about the law-space relationship. The first of these is concerned with how law is involved in the production of space. This is considered through three linked studies of the production, planning and legal regulation of space. The starting point for this investigation is the geographical site of suburbia. Lefebvrean categories are used to redescribe Australian suburbia as a form of abstract space - simultaneously fragmented, homogeneous and hierarchically organised. The thesis then argues that the land-use planning system in the post-war decades played a significant role in the development of this form of settlement space, by adhering to a form of bureaucratic thinking that Lefebvre characterises as the rationality of habitat. This rationality embodied technocratic functionalism, a visualised formalism and a structural imposition of expert authority in planning decision-making. With the shift to a neoliberal state form in the last two decades, there have been significant changes to spatial planning. Through an analysis and critique of the Integrated Planning Act 1997 (Qld), it is demonstrated that under neoliberalism there has been a reformulation of the rationality of habitat. In particular, the Integrated Planning Act relies on two new formal strategies, the exchange form and the integrative form, in instituting its changes to planning practice. The exchange form abolishes the technique of land-use 'zoning' and increases the use of market mechanisms in the designation of spatial uses. The integrative form restructures the relationships between local and State government agencies and attempts to channel most forms of public participation into the early stages of policy formation. This thesis argues that rather than changing the spatial outcomes of land-use planning, by commodifying space and restructuring the hierarchies of state decision-making, the Integrated Planning Act will continue to reproduce the social relations of abstract space. The second question in Part II deals with how Lefebvre's ideas can contribute to critical thinking about public law in general. It is argued that while law plays a significant role as a producer of space through the planning system, processes of spatial production also shape and structure state institutions. Two areas of research which could benefit from a Lefebvrean theoretical framework are identified. The first area concerns explanations of the effects on public law of the reterritorialised state form that has emerged under neoliberalism. The second is the renewal of critical theory in public law. In particular, the thesis makes the case that the spatial contradiction between the use and exchange values that are attached to space, challenges the normative orthodoxy within public law scholarship which relies on the values of participation and accountability. This thesis contributes to socio-legal research in three important ways. Firstly, it uses Lefebvre's theoretical approach to develop a critical planning law, linking state planning to the process of the production of space. Secondly, the thesis uses Lefebvrean categories to link the study of public law to political struggles which surround spatial production. It suggests a new way for critical legal scholarship to conceptualise public law in terms of the relationship between state power and the inhabitance of space. Lastly, these inquiries demonstrate the importance and relevance of Lefebvre's social theory for the discipline of socio-legal studies. By grounding the concept of 'space' in material processes of production, a Lefebvrean approach provides an alternative to existing theoretical accounts within law and geography research and will deepen our understanding of the relationships between legal and spatial relations.

This essay intervenes in the politics of urban segregation in Stockholm. The main aim of the essay is to analyze and describe how advanced marginality and territorial stigmatization are expressed in the lived experiences of four unemployed youths, that have participated in a labor market training program located in the “social vulnerable” area Rågsved. With a theoretical framework based in Henri Lefebvre’s production of social space the empirical findings are interpreted in regard to how the youths produce social space in dialectical interplay with urban politics, advanced marginality, territorial stigmatization, and their local neighborhood. The empirical material in the study was collected through qualitative interviews with the youths. The method of interviewing, analyzing, and presenting the result is grounded in a phenomenological approach. The historical background for the essay is the politics of urban segregation that has emerged in the metropolitan areas of Sweden. The post-industrial society and advanced sectors in the economy are transforming the labor market, city landscape, and the requirements on workers. This deep transformation process has resulted in social exclusion and inequalities between different groups in the urban city. Unemployment and poverty has been concentrated to the urban periphery of the metropolitan city. The urban periphery is marginalized areas with high concentration of immigrant residents with post-colonial status. The Swedish Metropolitan Committee committed a proposal 1998 for a new urban politics in the beginning of the millennium, which main purpose was to intervene in the ongoing process of ethnic and socioeconomic segregation in the urban landscape. This political-institutional background, within the context of post-industrial society and neoliberal politics, situates the historical framework for the present study. The result in the study points out that the youths are in an insecure position in the contemporary labor market, and constantly reflect their ways of living through the dominated norms of active labor market policies. The youths participation in the labor market training program Rågsved Community Center are described as a positive experience, and they describe how they are fully recognized as individual subjects of the employees. Within the geography of urban segregation, the youths are constantly in a process of mental negotiating about how to determine the space of Rågsved. The space of the “social vulnerable” suburb Rågsved is produced by the youths in the conflict of territorial stigmatization and their feelings of belonging.  The main result from the study is that the youths lived experiences of participation in Rågsved Community Center reflects a political need for something different. They discredit the way that Arbetsförmedlingen approach them as unemployed and lack confidence in their methods. In the social space of Rågsved Community Center the youths are recognized as individuals and are also taking initiative to help their friends in Rågsved to find a way out of unemployment. These spatial practices in Rågsved produce a social space and constitute a local institution that could be an embryo for collective representation and organization in relation to urban segregation and youth unemployment in the urban periphery.

Secondary school staffrooms serve a genuine need for teachers not easily replaced by subject department workrooms, yet staffroom use in many schools has declined. As a result, some staffrooms are being turned into classrooms or even abolished altogether from secondary school designs. This dissertation investigates the causes and effects of the decline of secondary school staffroom use in a large Canadian school board. Henri Lefebvre’s spatial triad is applied to situate the investigation into spaces that are perceived, conceived, and lived. Staffrooms are analyzed as perceived spaces in the context of the production and reproduction of teachers’ labour, and the sub-communities of teaching found in workrooms. Staffrooms are viewed as conceived spaces by investigating their physical design and placement, as well as the role of secondary-level administrators in supporting or repurposing staffroom space. Staffrooms are understood as lived spaces by exploring how time, history, metaphor, and habit – especially habits formed in the early years of teaching – influence meaning for the users. Quantitative data drawn from a 23-question survey (256 responses) confirmed that although staffroom use had declined for the majority of respondents, secondary school staffrooms were still overwhelmingly considered to be necessary components of secondary schools even among non-users. The data analysis revealed that this decline was influenced by factors such as the isolated location of a staffroom, long distances from workrooms and classrooms to staffrooms, increased workloads, and habit. The findings of are supported by qualitative data in the form of 717 optional comments provided by survey participants, field notes from observing two secondary staffrooms: one inactive and the other frequently used, and through 26 semi-structured interviews held in five different staffrooms. It is my contention that staffrooms remain important to secondary school teachers as potential places for increasing perceptions of staff collegiality, providing opportunities for informal professional learning, developing cross-curricular connections, and managing teacher health and retention. The conclusion suggests how secondary school staffrooms might be reconfigured to better suit the needs of those who wish to use them.

In this dissertation’s study of virtual reality (VR), I focus my attention on two prominent types of VR: real virtualities and virtual realities. I argue that both are composed of performative acts of spatial production and that through the study of those acts, researchers can isolate and describe the difference between these two tropes of virtual reality. My thesis focuses on Henri Lefebvre’s theorisation of social space as the most detailed and appropriate spatial theory for such a process while Victor Turner’s liminal theory of social and ritual performance provides the necessary performative methodology to complement Lefebvre’s. My use of these theories allows researchers to identify the difference between social spaces that produce new spaces and practices, and those which reinforce the spatial paradigm that generated them. The process of identifying these differences further clarifies Lefebvre’s complicated description of social space, but it also provides a platform for researchers to distinguish between the two different types of virtual reality. Through a detailed examination of three ostensibly different examples of VR, I argue that virtual realities ought to be considered primarily as realities made virtual while real virtualities should be discussed as virtualities made real. In doing so this thesis advances the study and application of Lefebvrean thought whilst opening up new directions for virtuality studies. I have chosen to explore three case studies that, through their difference, foreground their spatial and performative nature. By focusing on distinctly different and atypical case studies, I highlight the methodology described in this project and its suitability (or otherwise) for discussing VR. Focusing firstly on Google, I explore the virtual reality of the World Wide Web, perhaps the most ubiquitous example of a virtual reality. The sheer pervasiveness, uptake and constant evolution of the World Wide Web means that it requires constant academic attention. Google is the page through which a staggering 53.3% of Web users access the Internet and to say that most people are actually browsing Google’s web instead of the actual web is by no means an under statement. Google, like all other search engines, has its own formula for determining results and rankings for search queries. Google is not, as many people would like to think, an objective map of the Internet. It relies so heavily on users’ data in relation to their search query (which pages they click on, how long they spend there, whether they click back) that apart from the virtual algorithms that it uses to articulate the process Google could be said to be constituted solely by the real world practices of its users. Secondly I explore an example of the other type of VR, a real virtuality. Though the Gothic cathedral may not traditionally fall under the rubric of virtuality studies, the building itself provides an excellent example of the interaction of space and performance required to bring into existence that which was not there before. The Gothic cathedral is a concrete resolution of the actual/virtual dialectic and provides a unique opportunity to test my methodology’s ability to describe both types of VR and highlight the distinction between them. Whereas much of what constitutes virtuality studies centres on what I am calling the virtualisation of reality (online chat rooms, virtual banking, etc) – spaces that represent virtual others of real world entities, the Gothic cathedral represents the reverse of this: the realisation of a virtuality. The Gothic cathedral is unique in the context of this thesis for it is first and foremost a physical building rather than an onscreen other. It is a real virtuality in this thesis because, while concrete, there are some aspects of its reality that remain essential rather than formal and are dependent upon parishioners’ performance in order to be made ‘real.’ The final case study of this project represents the future usefulness of my methodology. In following up the work on exploring the suitability of describing a Gothic cathedral alongside Google, the last chapter of my dissertation explores the suitability of describing theatrical space as a VR. Similar to the Google chapter, this chapter focuses on a digital VR tool recently developed by Joanne Tompkins at the University of Queensland called the Online Theatre Project. The Online Theatre Project (OTP) represents a unique approach to the documentation, digital conceptualisation and archival problems that present themselves to a working theatre company in its everyday practice. The OTP is a server-based modeling and archival tool that allows users to draw, model and design their theatre production in real-time and then house their data on a remotely accessible server. Any notional description of theatrical space is necessarily a slippery one, given the relative youth of such studies and this project positions itself in this ever evolving debate by suggesting that the Online Theatre Project actually provides a description of what theatrical space entails where others have not. This thesis argues that VR space is dependent upon a constant spatial and performative production process. It illustrates how Lefebvre’s conceptualisation of the production process is most suitable for describing that production process and argues that re-imagining Lefebvre’s definition with the assistance of Turner’s everyday performative theory of liminality affords researchers the chance to differentiate between real virtualities and virtual realities. In doing so this thesis advances the study of VR, by proving that it is possible to discuss such complicated subjects in spatial and performative terms instead of the dominant real or un-real ones. Further, I outline the necessary adaptation of Lefebvre’s spatial triad that can be undertaken to prove its usefulness in many other aspects of VR studies.

In this dissertation’s study of virtual reality (VR), I focus my attention on two prominent types of VR: real virtualities and virtual realities. I argue that both are composed of performative acts of spatial production and that through the study of those acts, researchers can isolate and describe the difference between these two tropes of virtual reality. My thesis focuses on Henri Lefebvre’s theorisation of social space as the most detailed and appropriate spatial theory for such a process while Victor Turner’s liminal theory of social and ritual performance provides the necessary performative methodology to complement Lefebvre’s. My use of these theories allows researchers to identify the difference between social spaces that produce new spaces and practices, and those which reinforce the spatial paradigm that generated them. The process of identifying these differences further clarifies Lefebvre’s complicated description of social space, but it also provides a platform for researchers to distinguish between the two different types of virtual reality. Through a detailed examination of three ostensibly different examples of VR, I argue that virtual realities ought to be considered primarily as realities made virtual while real virtualities should be discussed as virtualities made real. In doing so this thesis advances the study and application of Lefebvrean thought whilst opening up new directions for virtuality studies. I have chosen to explore three case studies that, through their difference, foreground their spatial and performative nature. By focusing on distinctly different and atypical case studies, I highlight the methodology described in this project and its suitability (or otherwise) for discussing VR. Focusing firstly on Google, I explore the virtual reality of the World Wide Web, perhaps the most ubiquitous example of a virtual reality. The sheer pervasiveness, uptake and constant evolution of the World Wide Web means that it requires constant academic attention. Google is the page through which a staggering 53.3% of Web users access the Internet and to say that most people are actually browsing Google’s web instead of the actual web is by no means an under statement. Google, like all other search engines, has its own formula for determining results and rankings for search queries. Google is not, as many people would like to think, an objective map of the Internet. It relies so heavily on users’ data in relation to their search query (which pages they click on, how long they spend there, whether they click back) that apart from the virtual algorithms that it uses to articulate the process Google could be said to be constituted solely by the real world practices of its users. Secondly I explore an example of the other type of VR, a real virtuality. Though the Gothic cathedral may not traditionally fall under the rubric of virtuality studies, the building itself provides an excellent example of the interaction of space and performance required to bring into existence that which was not there before. The Gothic cathedral is a concrete resolution of the actual/virtual dialectic and provides a unique opportunity to test my methodology’s ability to describe both types of VR and highlight the distinction between them. Whereas much of what constitutes virtuality studies centres on what I am calling the virtualisation of reality (online chat rooms, virtual banking, etc) – spaces that represent virtual others of real world entities, the Gothic cathedral represents the reverse of this: the realisation of a virtuality. The Gothic cathedral is unique in the context of this thesis for it is first and foremost a physical building rather than an onscreen other. It is a real virtuality in this thesis because, while concrete, there are some aspects of its reality that remain essential rather than formal and are dependent upon parishioners’ performance in order to be made ‘real.’ The final case study of this project represents the future usefulness of my methodology. In following up the work on exploring the suitability of describing a Gothic cathedral alongside Google, the last chapter of my dissertation explores the suitability of describing theatrical space as a VR. Similar to the Google chapter, this chapter focuses on a digital VR tool recently developed by Joanne Tompkins at the University of Queensland called the Online Theatre Project. The Online Theatre Project (OTP) represents a unique approach to the documentation, digital conceptualisation and archival problems that present themselves to a working theatre company in its everyday practice. The OTP is a server-based modeling and archival tool that allows users to draw, model and design their theatre production in real-time and then house their data on a remotely accessible server. Any notional description of theatrical space is necessarily a slippery one, given the relative youth of such studies and this project positions itself in this ever evolving debate by suggesting that the Online Theatre Project actually provides a description of what theatrical space entails where others have not. This thesis argues that VR space is dependent upon a constant spatial and performative production process. It illustrates how Lefebvre’s conceptualisation of the production process is most suitable for describing that production process and argues that re-imagining Lefebvre’s definition with the assistance of Turner’s everyday performative theory of liminality affords researchers the chance to differentiate between real virtualities and virtual realities. In doing so this thesis advances the study of VR, by proving that it is possible to discuss such complicated subjects in spatial and performative terms instead of the dominant real or un-real ones. Further, I outline the necessary adaptation of Lefebvre’s spatial triad that can be undertaken to prove its usefulness in many other aspects of VR studies.

Thesis (J.C.L.)--Catholic University of America, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 59-61).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2006. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 363-372). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Submitted by Automa??o e Estat?stica (sst@bczm.ufrn.br) on 2017-04-17T22:13:57Z No. of bitstreams: 1 MarciaSilvaDeOliveira_TESE.pdf: 170022326 bytes, checksum: 202a50f1668327c507a8edf2ae0ca68a (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Arlan Eloi Leite Silva (eloihistoriador@yahoo.com.br) on 2017-04-19T20:56:22Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 MarciaSilvaDeOliveira_TESE.pdf: 170022326 bytes, checksum: 202a50f1668327c507a8edf2ae0ca68a (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-04-19T20:56:22Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 MarciaSilvaDeOliveira_TESE.pdf: 170022326 bytes, checksum: 202a50f1668327c507a8edf2ae0ca68a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-12-12 / A presente tese trata da din?mica socioespacial que construiu historicamente o bairro de Nova Descoberta, na cidade do Natal/RN, a partir da segunda metade do s?culo XX. Para isso, aborda a rela??o entre a constru??o do Bairro e da Vida de Bairro e ampara-se no embasamento te?rico-metodol?gico elaborado pelo fil?sofo e soci?logo franc?s Henri Lefebvre, quando prop?e uma leitura da vida social urbana que se descortina no bairro enquanto fragmento privilegiado ou n?cleo de vida social somente compreendido na rela??o com a cidade. Parte do seguinte questionamento: como incluir o espa?o diferencial, pensado por Henri Lefebvre, na an?lise do bairro e da vida de bairro a partir do estudo da realidade de Nova Descoberta? E levanta como hip?tese a afirma??o de que a exist?ncia e a realidade do bairro de Nova Descoberta s?o determinadas e somente explicadas pelo movimento simult?neo e contradit?rio do seu espa?o concebido, percebido e vivido. Para isso, constr?i uma an?lise do bairro de Nova Descoberta como espa?o diferencial, produzido na converg?ncia e na simultaneidade de diferentes l?gicas e dimens?es que se descortinam na produ??o do seu espa?o e fundamenta-se nos estudos do citado autor franc?s acerca do bairro, da vida cotidiana e da vida social urbana, bem como do seu m?todo dial?tico regressivo-progressivo, que prop?e an?lises espa?o-temporais de confronta??o entre a vida moderna, o passado e o poss?vel, se afirmando como uma pesquisa qualitativa, amparada na realiza??o de entrevistas, observa??es in loco, tomada de imagens, consultas em ?rg?os p?blicos e em antigos registros do campo emp?rico. Percorrendo trilhas de investiga??o que ajudaram a entender a forma??o do bairro na cidade, mostramos o processo de consolida??o dos n?cleos iniciais de ocupa??o, Nova Descoberta e Morro Branco, e nos deparamos com a constru??o de um bairro institucionalizado, mas tamb?m percebido e vivido a partir das tramas e redes do vivido que sustentam a mem?ria individual e coletiva, a no??o de pertencimento e a identidade consolidada do espa?o de vida do morador na cidade. Nesse contexto, as novas descobertas realizadas confirmaram nossa hip?tese de que Nova Descoberta, enquanto bairro oficial da cidade, somente pode ser compreendida em sua totalidade como espacialidade concreta, como unidade institucionalizada e como n?cleo de vida social, ou seja, como produto da din?mica simult?nea e contradit?ria de produ??o do seu espa?o concebido, percebido e vivido, que permitiu sua leitura como espa?o diferencial. Constata??o que nos permitiu afirmar que o atual bairro institucionalizado de Nova Descoberta, apresenta duas refer?ncias socioespaciais diferenciadas, Nova Descoberta e Morro Branco, que apontam para a conviv?ncia, por vezes conflituosa, entre o bairro oficial e o bairro cotidiano, onde um n?o nega o outro, mas a ele se soma como parte de uma mesma realidade. Enfim, o trabalho destaca a possibilidade de habitar o bairro como resgate e reafirma??o da vida social urbana, contribuindo para estudos posteriores acerca da rela??o bairro-cidade, vida cotidiana-vida social urbana, na cidade atual. / The present thesis considers the social-spatial dynamics that historically constructed the neighborhood of Nova Descoberta in Natal, Brazil, from the second half of the twentieth century. To make it possible, the thesis addresses the relation between the neighborhood construction and the neighborhood?s life, and supports itself in the theoretical-methodologic basement created by the french philosopher and sociologist, Henri Lefebvre, that proposes a vison of an urban social life that uncover into the neighborhood as a privileged fragment of a social life core, only understood in its city relationship. The thesis starts from the following question: how to include the differential space, thought by Henri Lefebvre, into the analysis of the neighborhood and neighborhood?s life from the study of the Nova Descoberta reality? And it raises as hypothesis, the claim that the existence and the reality of Nova Descoberta district is determined and only explained by the simultaneous and contradictory movement of its conceived, perceived and lived space. The thesis constructs an analysis of Nova Descoberta as a differential space, produced by the convergence and simultaneity of different logical and dimensions that uncover into its space production and bases itself in the study of the quoted writer about the neighborhood, the everyday life and the urban social life, as well as his regressive-progressive dialectical method that proposes spatial-temporal analysis of the confrontation between the modern life, the past and the possible, affirming itself as a qualitative research, based in interviews, in loco observations, images capturing, public agencies consulting and in old empirical scope registers. Walking through research tracks that helped us to understand the formation of the district in the city, we show the process of consolidation of the initial cores of occupation of Nova Descoberta and Morro Branco, and we face the construction of an institutionalized perceived and lived neighborhood from the networks of living that support the individual and collective memory, the notion of belonging and the residents? consolidated identity of the living space in the city. In this context, the new discoveries realized confirmed our hypothesis that Nova Descoberta as an official part of the city can only be understood in its totality, as a concrete spatiality, as institutionalized unity and as the core of social life. In other words, as a product of simultaneous and contradictory dynamics of production of its conceived, realized and lived space that allowed the perception of the neighborhood as a differential space. This finding, allowed us to affirm that the current institutionalized district of Nova Descoberta presents two different social-spatial references: Nova Descoberta and Morro Branco, that points to a coexistence, sometimes conflicting, between the official and the everyday neighborhood, where one does not negate the other, but adds itself to each other as part of the same reality. Finally, the paper highlights the possibility of inhabiting the neighborhood as redemption and reaffirmation of urban social life, contributing to further studies on the relations between neighborhood and town, daily life and urban social life into the city currently.

Den här uppsatsen har som syfte att utifrån Gun-Britt Sundströms roman Student -64 (1966) undersöka hur en författare genom beskrivningar av platser och rum formulerar en stadsmyt och därmed även konstruerar en viss identitet för personerna inom den. Utgångspunkten var att det finns en viss myt om Uppsala som studentstad, och att denna skildras i bland annat skönlitteraturen. Genom att fokusera på myten om studentstaden Uppsala och identiteten som student har också frågan om vilken funktion myten om staden har för studenten varit i fokus. För att genomföra undersökningen har en motivstudie baserat på rumsliga teman genomförts, som resulterade i en kartläggning över vilka platser som förekommer i romanen samt hur ofta de nämns. Det teoretiska ramverket som användes bestod huvudsakligen av Henri Lefebvres teorier om socialt rum och hur vi skapar rum genom tre olika slags erfarenheter: fysisk, mental och social, som vi får antingen genom rumsliga praktiker, representationer av rum eller genom representationella rum. Resultatet av undersökningen visar att Sundström i Student -64 gestaltar ett antal platser i Uppsala där protagonisten Sagas rumsliga praktiker kommer till uttryck. Platserna relateras till Sagas sociala erfarenhet och det hon som kallar för ”uppsalastämning”, vilket är en del av den historiska myten om Uppsala som Sundström anknyter till.  Därmed bidrar hon till att befästa myten genom att bygga på det representationella rum som är studentstaden Uppsala i sin helhet, samtidigt som hon omformulerar myten i en modern tolkning genom att skapa nya representationella rum. Dessa rum visar sig också möjliggöra en viss studentidentitet, samt en utveckling inom denna som i sig bidrar till att myten kan fortsätta leva.