Places, Collectivity and appropriation forms in the contemporary city: a reading from collective expressions in Natal
collective social expressions; temporary redetermination; urban collective space.
In the last decades, a few researchers of social life have shown some concerns regarding the loss of meaning at the concept of common and collective and its spatial effects, such as the creation of shopping centers and the decreased use of public spaces as streets and plazas. In spite of that, a new movement can be noted, a movement that adds new usages, new practices and new meanings to already existing spaces. These movements seem “sprayed” at the urban space, ready to move from one place to another. Its comprehension is still incomplete and split in existing literature, once it appears, sometimes, as social movements and, sometimes, as insurgencies or cultural counter-hegemonic acts. Specifically in Natal, collective urban spaces have been receiving attention from groups or individuals who claims from these spaces a new use, a redefined one or new practices. Within the contradiction of a society that shows itself as individualistic and at the same time has collective demands for public meaning, this paper has as a goal the comprehension of temporary attribution of new meaning to urban collective spaces of Natal/RN. First, the uses and counteruses of the space were sought in well-known written media and social media. Once identified, the latter intention was to discuss the role of space and its “roughness” at the identified social movements’ objectives, relating them to the urban surroundings in which they settle, using mapping as a tool. A second approach includes a depending to the study of some of the events detected, in a manner that allows to comprehend in what ways the urban collective spaces acquire new meaning depending to which place they settle and the intentions behind its occurrence. At last, it becomes possible to discuss and understand the different natures of urban collective spaces’ new usages, revealing something not fully understood, but that has outcomes and effects in space.