Emotions and Social Experiences in the Cities Today. Part I

The transformations of capitalism on a global scale involve profound reconfigurations in the ways of planning and organizing cities and the social ways of dwelling and feeling them. The suburbanization of the metropolis, the transnational flows of people, and the socio-spatial and racializing segregation –just to name some significant processes that accompany the "generalization of the urban" as a planetary dynamic– not only imply substantial transformations in the forms of production and consumption of the city, in the strategic revaluation of spaces or the establishment of new urban centralities. They also have a radical impact on the experiences and emotions of the people and groups that live in the cities of the Global North and South.

The pioneering work of Fustel de Coulanges about the Ancient City, Fourier's Phalanstery, Simmel's studies on modern and monetarized metropolises, or Lefebvre's critique of "space fetishism" proposed in the mid-20th Century are just a few “classical” references that show that emotions have had a significant place in the social theory as a comprehensive dimension of urban practices and processes.

This Session seeks to be a space for critical reflection on the dynamics that emotions assume in today's cities. We propose sharing research results and promoting dialogues between different theoretical, methodological, and epistemological perspectives that pose urban emotions and experiences as a substantive point of articulation for analysing current social structuring and change processes.