VISMEM · Visualising memories of violence in urban places: gender and wellbeing in Istanbul
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2016-10-01 → 2018-09-30
- EU contribution
- €195,455
- Participants
- 2
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-ST
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Visualising memories of violence in urban places: gender and wellbeing in Istanbul
Visual investigations of urban memory within cultural geography fall short in providing explanations for the personal and embodied nature of memory-place interactions. VISMEM project filled this gap by investigating the impact of place-based memories of ordinary violence among diverse Istanbul residents for their current use and sense of wellbeing in urban space. It also had a strong methodological focus and interrogated the utility of visual methods for understanding that impact. The project’s primary aim was to examine violence as a mode of doing, that is, as power to violate rather than as something that happens. To support this argument, it developed the notion of “ordinary violence” as a framework to map violent memories as extended human material embedded in bodies and im/mobilising them in particular ways in everyday life. Smartphone photography, walking and video editing were integrated as methods to draw connections between ordinary sites of violence and to examine where violence takes place and how it appears in Istanbul's hyper-polarised everyday settings and routines.Through its methodological and conceptual innovations, the project resulted in new knowledge that activates an embodied and situated understanding of ordinary violence and addresses the in/visible, non-/event dichotomies that permeate existing theories of violence. VISMEM explored the nexus of memory-place-violence along three interrelated formulations. These formulations also correspond to the individual rationale of the project’s written deliverables; The material, embodied extension of memories in residents' conception of ordinary violence and related patterns of movement and belonging in the city; The under-explored potential of visual methods, video in specific, as a means of interrogating memories; The factors that influence individuals' differential sense of violence.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Evidence shows that violence in urban areas affects women of all ages, socio economic and cultural backgrounds in particular (WHO 2014). The immediate and extensive costs of violence targeting women perpetuate the existing gender hierarchies by setting boundaries on women’s movement, mobility, presence: that is, on their use of urban space. In addition to restrictions in mainstream social life, gendered violence is a systemic source of experiencing helplessness, humiliation, and distress which overall are a fundamental component of women’s wellbeing. VISMEM will investigate the impact of place-based memories of violence among diverse women for their use of urban space, and interrogate the utility of visual methods for understanding that impact. More precisely, the study uses visual methods to explore diverse women’s everyday negotiations of space in Istanbul, focusing in particular on their movements in relation to three research sites where forms of violence against women have occurred. VISMEM’s overall objective is to develop a conceptual framework and visual tools for multisector policy and research engagement with memory as a key means to locate, assess, and ameliorate women's differential experience of violence and wellbeing in the city. Women in different social and spatial settings remember (and forget) the physical and mental effects of violence through personal experience and through popular accounts of its effects. The differential workings of memory in turn have implications on the lived experiences and wellbeing of a city's current (and future) residents/visitors. Yet, the nexus of memory, place, gender remains disconnected from the multisector urban agenda on difference, inclusion, and wellbeing. VISMEM will provide transferable knowledge and policy-related results on the relation between gendered violence, memory, and will greatly improve our understanding of place memory as a focus in achieving gender-goals in urban social and spatial integration.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD · OxfordCoordinatorUnited Kingdom
- THE OPEN UNIVERSITY · Milton KeynesUnited Kingdom
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union