In and of an urban time : (re)imagining the (im)possible limits of time, knowledge and the city

• Main Author: Bradley, Lisa
• Published: University of Glasgow 2015
• Subjects: 307.76; H Social Sciences (General)
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.650386

In the broadest sense this work is concerned with processes of cultural construction in the contemporary city, and their connections to the framing, recording and concrete manifestation of society and its ills. Acknowledging the academy to be a productive site in this regard this thesis takes a somewhat meta-theoretical approach, engaging with dominant analyses of urban problems and the methodological approaches they entail. My specific focus is on understandings of time and modes of temporality – crucial factors in the organisation of urban society but which appear largely naturalised in both everyday life and the academy. Attempting to uncover some of the ways in which the socially constructed nature of time has become invisible in these contexts, my aim in this work is to recast time and temporality as critical factors in the formation of urban culture and the organisation of urban society, which warrant detailed future study. Beyond that, this work seeks to establish this case as an impetus for the examination of other absences in urban knowledge production, and a renewed urban imagination. To this end I have designed a methodological approach of autoethnographic rhizoanalysis. I have rhizomatically analysed the urban studies canon for the (non)presence of time and temporality within its dominant texts, practices, performances and methods; and I have performed everyday and experimental autoethnography, as I have continued to make sense of time and temporality as a member of both the contemporary culture that experiences time as naturalised, and the academic culture which seeks to construct knowledge of the city. Along the way this work has also engaged with the craft of academic work, as I have worked to uncover some of the everyday assumptions and practices which may serve to maintain and strengthen hegemonic ideas of the nature of time, temporality and truth. As a counter to the ways in which existing approaches may limit rather than expand urban imaginations I have made a hand-embroidered, patchwork quilt to accompany this written thesis. This object allows for an alternative way of experiencing and performing this work as it relates to processes of knowledge production and cultural construction, of and in the contemporary city.