Urbanities,
Vol. 4
·
No 2
·
November 2014
© 2014
Urbanities
106
relevant social meaning into a place imbued with greater collective significance. First, I
demonstrate how these young men experience themselves as ‘unplaced’, a condition which
entails two aspects. They are displaced from the social structure and kinship systems within
which their parents previously ordered their lives and from which they have drawn their social
identity. Additionally, the young men experience themselves as marginalised from the formal
education and employment structures of town. Following this, I show that it is through
practices of place making, which they refer to as ‘planting roots’, that these young men are
emplacing themselves in the Freswota area. ‘Planting roots’ includes such processes as
developing their own shared history, naming roads, building topogeny and developing their
own community social structure and social order. I argue that these processes are leading to
the emergence of a new phenomenon: primary town emplacement. By coming into
relationship with Freswota land, these young men are not only transforming it from virtual
no-place into some place, they are also transforming themselves from ‘unplaced’ persons into
emplaced ‘Freswota men’. I conclude that this is generating a new locative identity: it is now
the Freswota community rather than their parents’ home island places that is emerging as their
primary location of belonging and the source both of their sense of self and their social
identification. A central aim of this thesis is to draw attention to the positive and creative
ways in which unemployed young men, usually criticised and stigmatised as delinquents in
newly and rapidly urbanising contexts, are actively engaged in developing their community
and their relationships in order to live more viable and socially productive lives.
Dr Daniela Kraemer
is a research fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of
Toronto. She obtained her PhD in Anthropology from the London School of Economics in 2013.
Daniela’s research focuses on under-educated and under-employed young men and how they develop
community in Port Vila, Vanuatu. Daniela writes about social relationships with non-kin, development
of youth councils and community social infrastructure, building of shared experiences through reggae
music and marijuana, urban activism, how mobile phone practices are influencing transformations in
gender relationships, and how young people are transforming a place with no shared and relevant
social meaning into an urban place imbued with greater collective significance. Daniela is currently
preparing several articles for publication.
Name
: Benjamin N. Vis
Affiliation
: School of European Culture & Languages, University of Kent
Awarded
: 2013, University of Leeds
Mapping the Inhabited Urban Built Environment: The Socio-Spatial Significance of
the Material Presence of Boundaries through Time
This thesis develops a comparative methodology and research practice enabling the
interpretive social study of urban built environments (cross-culturally and diachronically). Its
contribution to comparative urbanism is framed specifically as a method for studying the
socio-spatial significance of the material presence of the composition of urban form
(conceptualised as boundaries) to the interactional process of human inhabitation. This
