Aims

To give students a reading scheule with which to analyse relations between the material features of space and ways of appropriating it - in respect of their social and cultural dimensions and in terms of identity.

Main themes

The aim of the course is an understanding of the status of space and of ways of regrouping peoples and their activities. Using the opposition that current language easily makes between town and country, the course will show how urbanisation (which will be understood as a process integrating spatial mobility to daily life) leads to a redefinition of the impact of different kinds of territoriality on social forms of exchange and forms of structuring relationships of forces.

Content and teaching methods

Content
The course will put forward an analysis of the social effects of space and spatial compositions on behaviours and representations by reference to social, cultural and personality systems. It will examine the process of urbanisation and the shift from a non-urbanised to an urbanised society. In the wide range of situations that will be studied, students will see how space, when seen as a mode of composition, mobility and various temporalities, functions in the arena of possible different social actors. Using a range of analyses as a basis, space will be seen as a global social factor that shapes the non-egalitarian dimension of social exchange.
The course will be in four parts:
1. villages and towns in a non-urbanised situation;
2. intermediary situations (industrialisation);
3. the urbanisation of towns/cities and the countryside;
4. towns and cities in the current context of globalisation.
Methodology
A professorial course with a reading component.

Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Pre-requirements: None.
Assessment: A critical presentation of some reading associated with certain aspects of the course.
Support: A basic reference book: Jean Remy and Liliane Voyé, "La ville : vers une nouvelle définition ?", Paris, L'Harmattan.
Supervision: By the teacher.

Other credits in programs