Imagining Final

The Book of the City of Ladies

The Book of the City of Ladies

• a narrative in which famous women, both historical and fictitious inhabit a city o their own where they live with joy and mutual respect

• the women crate an alternative to existing cities where they had no real place

• city also excludes certain possibilities : infamous and dishonorable women are denied a place

Imaginations and Cancellations

two intrinsically related practices

-e.g. if people imagine a place where they want to live, the choice of something (e..g is it collectively shared or privately owned) inevitably cancels out the other

Imaginations

• usually connotate positive effects

• only as imaginations appear (are made to appear) distinct from the cancellations they imply

Cancellations

→ to delete, rub out, cross out, to scrub, to cancel

indicates that actually existing built environments can be deleted

e.g. parks and Amsterdam Central Station

Reconceptualizing Imaginations

• instead of perceiving imaginations as inherently positive, optimistic and creative - imaginations are an aesthetic and ethical necessity

• critically examining what is lost or canceled out and how existing cancellations shape boundaries and possibilities of our imaginations

Importance of relation between Imaginations and Cancellations

• influential modernist urban designers give little thought to gender and ethnicity related inequalities

  → urban landscape intended to be a safe space for all often becomes unsafe for many

• discipline of geography gender biased in practice and theory

  → distribution of roles in people’s lived and imagined realities should be critically reconsidered

Supermodernity

(since 1960s)

• scholars paying attention to the destruction that comes with modernity and supermodernity

• connotates a modernity that has crossed its ultimate limit

• combination of an excess of consumption with an excess of destruction

Boomerang effect of modernity

people engineering the world think that they know what they are doing

but in reality have no idea of the forces they unleash or what they have canceled while building a world that is not fully theirs

Urbicide

the intentional destruction of urban environments - can also be the result of urban planning and renovation

Urban Humanities

focuses on how urban environments can change for the better

→ define a humanities approach to urbanism that promotes practices of sensing

Senses

people have sense, but only insofar as they use them

• because humans have lived in symbiosis with technology humans do not just have senses but also an abundance of technologies that enlarge, intensify and vectorize but also in some ways limit the human animal’s basis senses

• cities must be made sense of by using all of these senses using all sorts of technologies

• cities do not have a sense - they are to be made sense of through art, architecture etc

aesthetics

the total sensory perception of an entity that through this perception triggers affects and arouses interests

• more than a matter of beauty (city + pollution)

Humanities approach to architecture

• considers not how physical structures are built (matter for engineers)

• but how these structures are forms of expression, senseability and meaning

Space vs place

space if freedom

place is security

Three tools that propel imaginations and cancellations

1. Tropes

2. Media

3. Genres

Tropes

figures of speech that affect and inspire people, provoke modes of thoughts and vectorize sensibilities

• metaphor

• metonomy

• synecdoche

• personification

Metaphor

equating and comparing with something else (city with jungle e.g.)

create similarity across difference

Synecdoche

a part of a thing stands for a whole or the whole of a thing stands for a part (sykline stands for whole of new york)

Personification

attributing human characteristics to non human entities

Metonym

a word, name or expression used as a substitute for something else with which it is closely associated

Media

specific media operative in urban environments and urban environments themselves as media capable of connecting different spheres

Genres

forms of aesthetic organization

Humanities Approach to Urban Environments

1. How cities and their parts are thematized - how they are represented in literature, art, philosophy, cinema etc

2. How cultural force fields result in the construction of cities - urban design influenced by and reflect religion, history, politics

3. What cities mean to and do to their different inhabitants and how they can be analyzed, sensed, experiences and made sense of.

Hong Kong - political body

legislative council complex is Hong Kong’s political center and official administrative hub. In recent years people have taken to the streets around the complex to protest mainland China’s incursion on Hong Kong’s sovereignty, making those streets a political space in themselves (autonomous political body)

Body - network node - belt

→ define particular forms of connection within and between cities

Body: when a city is conceived of as a body we can attend to forms of connection between parts and wholes

Network nodes: conceiving of cities as network nodes,alternatively draws attention to the ways in which different urban environments reach out to each other in many different directions

Belts: how cities can be considered as relays connected along a single line

City as a body

• body politic is a metaphor : a collective of citizens is equated with a single human body

• snyecdoche: every individual has or is a body that is part of a collection of bodies

• the body politic is both political space and the collective body of citizens who make up that space

• personifies the collective, metaphorizing the political organization of a society as a single human body and attributing to this organization a human voice and mind even though properly speaking it lacks both

• historically defined as male : in the figure of the prince as an embodiment of his people

Body Politic principles

1. the individual member of a city belongs to a body that antecedes it

2. some individuals belong to the body while others are alien to it

3. in this body exist inescapable hierarchies that determine individuals functions, social positions and rights

4. (hidden) a body (whether anatomical or political) only functions when its constituent parts work together, subjecting themselves in service of the whole

Body politic as an animal

• head maintaining order amongst the instincts and urges generated in the body

• city becomes and entity which neednot be rational but which has material powers

Rigveda

a sacred Hindu text that discuess religion and politics

-body politic consists of four social classes: priests (mouth), warriors (arms), shepherds (thighs), peasants (feet)

Advice for Kings

• subjection of a body politic to a sovereign, supreme power

• legitimacy of his authority lies somewhere outside of himself, potentially in the divine (crown)

Stadtluft macht frei (City air makes you free)

freedom that you could gain by living in a city for a year and a day (?)

→ who granted city their rights

Network node

cities can never exist in isolation from their surroundings - they need natural resources and connections - formation of nodes, lines and gaps between and across cities

cities- nodes

surrounding regions - gaps

• networks through road connections, intercity connections

• results from top down forms of organization

• networks can be organized according to bottom up principles

Trope of the Belt

defines a variety of entities with particular shared characteristics as if they are connected across an imagined geographical domain

• belts are capable of uniting disparate elements and helping us to imagine these elements to be untied

• indicated all sorts of connective strips at regional, national, transnational and global levels

Belt examples

E.g. Bible Belt - this trope connects discrete entities (scattered Protestant villages) into a strip of territory between the provinces of Zeeland and Overijssel

E.g. Africa’s meningitis belt, an area particularly afflicted with meningitis

E.g. America’s Rust Belt, a strip of economically depressed former manufacturing centers in the country’s Northeast and Midwest

E.g. United States “Sun Belt” cities, a fast-growing and economically vibrant region in the south of the United States named for its characteristically sunny weather and mild winters.

E.g. China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a plan put forth in 2013 by the Chinese president Xi Jinping to increase China’s global influence through foreign infrastructure investments and trade. The term belt, in this plan, refers to a series of planned overland trade routes—a so-called “21st Century Silk Road”—from China to Europe via Central Asia.

Trail vs Road

• trail suggests a path formed by repeatedly pulling something along, displacing ground or otherwise leaving a mark

• road is actively broken up

• trail is made bottom up

• road is made top down

Atlanta

• repurposed former railway line into a a trail known as the Beltline

• envisioned to connect with other converted rail liens or trails

• nudges people into traveling from one part of the city to another not by car but by biking or walking

How tropes direct our senses

1. They provoke forms of thoughts through imaginations and cancellations making worlds understandable and workable

2. Tropes vectorize the ways in which people allow themselves to sense things

→ tropes organized material realities

“Concrete jungle” negative metaphor

• captures one’s mistrustful attitude towards the city

• connotes the city as a meeting of extremes

  • the jungle brings together the largest of trees and the smallest of insects, the smallest of trees and the largest of insects (in urban setting e.g. income inequality)

“Concrete jungle” positive metaphor

• connotes biodiversity and the interconnectedness of organisms and entities

• ecological but also social cultural diversity

• dense and diverse collection of people, histories, materials, artifacts and environments

• urban/industrial symbiosis

urban symbiosis

category referring to everything in the urban context (both living and non living) that exist in co dependence

Jungle characteristics

1. Predators and victims, proximity and structure of violence and danger

2. The meeting of extremes, or the issue of scale (trope of the jungle may severely morally legitimize income disparities by portraying them as natural)

3. ecological richness → density of diversity (in comparison to forest)

4. Symbiotic relationships (Frida Kahlo - interconnectedness of human beings and nature)

5. Exoticizing the city (ethics of representation in ethnography research - tendency to represent certain areas as exotically dangerous)

The City as a desert

A cause for depression, emotional fatigue, and isolation. Moving to a “quiet little town,” on the other hand, represents the possibility of finding (or perhaps, returning to) a warmer and more fulfilling alternative to urban life.

The countryside as a place of refuge is not a trope, but a tope. Topes, or topoi, are commonplaces: ideas or images that occur frequently in art in literature

Marx and alienation

In the middle of the nineteenth century, Karl Marx identified an intrinsic connection between industrial capitalism and the abysmal living conditions for workers. Marx argued that a consequence of these conditions was the pervasive experience of what he called social alienation. Alienation, for Marx, was a form of life in which individuals were unable to live to their full human potential due to exhaustion from long workdays of ten hours or more completing filthy and exhausting mechanical factory work

Trope of the jungle

• social alienation

  • Marx

  • urban life depicted as emotionally monotonous and lacking close communal ties

  • form of freedom compared to small town life?

• ecological deterioration

  • ecological consequences of urbanization

  • loss of biodiversity - transformation into a concrete dominated environment

    • disrupted water management resulting in water shortages

  • urban heat island effect - Cities tend to have higher temperatures than their surroundings due to the lack of vegetation and reduced evaporation. Heat waves and wildfires become more prevalent, posing health and safety risks

City and metamorphosis

It refers to the shift between different stages of being, as well as the variations in morphological patterns observed in urban environments globally. Modern cities share similar architectural characteristics, but with local variations.

Garden

• as an enclosed space

• seen as a way to organize and domesticate nature within the urban setting

• e.g. Canberra which is designed withing a garden setting

Urban Gardens

• historical context of urbanization and the rise of industrial capitalism -- led to overcrowded cities in Europe

• sought ways to revitalize the urban environment

  →garden city concept (Ebenezer Howard) influential -- influenced the design of Canberra

challenges of urban gardens

• suburban areas that emerged as a result where nature became confined to private gardens

• cohesiveness of the city was lost

• practical limitations

• exclusion

• American lawns - non native mono-culture which we lace with poisons to kill plants and insects

Palimpsest

• layered surface containing textures and signs that reflect how layers, through their erasure, come to interact with other layers. There are multiple layers in space and time, and the emphasis lies on temporality: an older layer shines through a newer one. The palimpsest might appear either a cancellation or an imagination, depending on one’s interests.

• layers of history and culture present in a city’s architecture, infrastructure and landscape

• multiple historical layers connote a cultural archive in the sense that in new urban constructions older cultural elements are kept and preserved

Spoliation

integral adaptation of buildings and as the reuse of construction materials salvaged from structures for erection elsewhere

Palimpsest example

• Basilica Cistern (Istanbul)

  • “recycled” columns of the cistern testify to a phenomena that characterize central Istanbul above ground as well: many buildings and other structures in the area contain historical layers

city as a palimpsest

calls attention to the fact that a city - its buildings, streets, sewage systems, parks or soil- always testifies materially to its past

palimpsest origin

referred to a medieval manuscript parchment that was reused by scraping off the old text and adding new text, resulting in traces of the original content remaining

In the context of cities, a palimpsest represents the visible remnants of previous structures and cultural elements beneath newer layers

Sigmund Freud and palimpsest

Sigmund’s Freud comparison of Rome to the human psyche

Freudian psyche contains layers—the conscious, the preconscious and the unconscious —Rome contains layers of historical traces, both visible and more hidden, that testify materially to the city’s past. (i guess the unconscious is more hidden)

palimpsest and nostalgia

feelings of melancholy and nostalgia.

It suggests that the erasure and transformation of the past through modernization processes can lead to a sense of loss and a longing for a bygone era.

Museums and archives can serve as counterpoints to these feelings by preserving and presenting elements of the past, offering a sense of belonging and agency.

Labyrinth relevance in urban environments

• suggests that arrival of technology (such as smartphones and navigation tools) has diminished the importance of the labyrinth s a metaphor for navigating dense and confusing cities)

• individuals can find way without getting lost

• maze more relevant?

perverse palimpsest

not the accidental covering of one line but a conscious unwriting or rewriting

Labyrinth

• cities and buildings can be a labyrinth

• intricate material organizations of space that provokes a search

• goal: make it to the center - spiritual journey

• e.g. Great Bazar in Istanbul - find subconscious of Istanbul - the spiritual element)

Labyrinth vs maze

A labyrinth has a center, a goal to be pursued by following a serpentine path. In a labyrinth, this path is also the way out.

The maze, in contrast to the labyrinth, has an entrance and an exit, but no center.

• city: constant changes due to reconstruction and development

The labyrinth is connected to psychoanalytic connotations related to desires, anxieties, and voyeurism.

The maze represents the puzzle of navigating a complex urban environment.

• search for hidden secrets or experiences within the city (red light districts…)

Flâneur /Flânerie

Flâneur, a character that comes to life as an emblem of modernity: someone who has the time to stroll through the city without destination; an accidental reporter who provided material for new forms of mass entertainment.

Flânerie promoted a style of social observation which permeated 19th-century writing. Rather than reflecting the true conditions of urban life, he distracted readers from boredom.

layered nature of cities

physical infrastructure (such as water supply and sewerage systems) conscious and unconscious ways of experiencing the city.

The unconscious is compared to the hidden layers of a palimpsest, always present but not easily accessible. The sewerage system is mentioned as a dark domain, associated with the unconscious and hidden aspects of urban life.

example Les Misérables

sewerage system - where it serves as a refuge and a mirror to the world above, revealing the city's true nature.

Zones

• traffic zones

• free trade zones

• security zones

• parking areas

• Chernobyl exclusion zone

• each type of zone is governed by specific laws and regulations that restrict users and activities while allowing others

Exurban areas/exurbs

areas lying outside of a city center and its surrounding suburbs

free (economic) zone

not a space of absolute freedom. A free zone is only free in the sense given through particular regulations which define the scope of its freedom.

Non-places

• places that have no attributes that make them unique

• void of meaningful experiences

• space providing neither identity, nor relations, nor history

• places of non expectation, utter predictability

  • has functions (e.g. airports - allows travelers to consistently find their way smoothly no matter the airport)

Criticism theory of non place

Scholars from different disciplines argue that people can make any place meaningful and experience it as such. This guy Christopher Schaberg (The End of Airports) argues that while airports may have become increasingly similar and banal, they continue to provoke diverse and unexpected affects (one can be sensitive to differences between airports due to sentiments - happiness and nervousness).

Utopia

Utopia = u-, derives from the Greek οὐ (“ou-“), which means “not”, -topia, derives from the Greek τόπος (“topos”), which means “place.

Over the centuries some have mistakenly traced the first part of the word, u-, back to the Greek εὐ- (‘eu’), which means “good.”

Thus, in contemporary use, utopia suggests a good place that does not exist. Here, rather than a place lacking identity, a utopia is a place holding an unfulfilled promise. The fact that this promise is potentially fulfillable allows utopia to function as a trope of attraction and expectation

• realization of Utopian visions can often lead to dystopian outcomes and disillusionment

Dystopia

Dystopia = The dys- before topia comes from the Greek δυσ- (“dus-”), which means “hard,” “bad,” or “difficult.”

History has shown that attempts to realize idealistic plans often result in collective nightmares. E.g. It was a utopian ideal that not just the rich but all people be able to consume meat on a regular basis. Attempts to realize this ideal led to the rise of the global factory farming industry - turining the lives of countless billions of animals into living nightmares and becoming the greatest contributor to climate change

Enlightenment

Enlightenment provoked a fundamental shift in peoples’ orientation with regard to time. Until the eighteenth century, the major direction of temporal orientation was toward the past - the new approach recognizes the faults and corruption of the present, and it projects the ideal state of affairs into the future (trajectory of constant improvement toward an ideal future).

Utopia - different understandings

Ernst Bloch (german philosopher, 1900s, The Principle of Hope) argues that utopian thinking manifests as hope. Any act of hope for an alternative to the status quo is utopian.

Other way of understanding the term is as managed expectation, or what Lauren Berlant calls “cruel optimism.” Utopias project an alternative, realizable world

An utopian desire to master-plan a city or urban environment (rather than let it develop organically) is also an authoritarian desire. E.g. many suburban areas surrounding Paris illustrate the overlap of utopianism and authoritarianism. This streches back to the 19th century renovation known as the Haussmann Plan: entire neighborhoods of the poor destroyed to make way for a network of wide boulevards (btw, concept of cancellation).

Utopia, dystopia and the necessity of destruction

(in relation to the urban environment)

• utopian projects often imply destruction (destruction of existing worlds in order to make way for the new) -- seen as necessary and inherent aspect of utopian design

Utopia/Dystopia as metonomy and metaphor

The notions of utopia and dystopia each bring together two situations that are close in time or space, situations that are the same in that they indicate the same entity (eg. a city), but that are different in nature.

They are both are metonymical in that they connect the future to the present on the basis of temporal or spatial contiguity. Therefore, one of the two can become a metonymic representation of the other. Also, they are both metaphors - they connect the future to the present on the basis of similarity and difference.

Through both metonymy and metaphor, utopia and dystopia are tropical vectorizations of sensibility which effect the representation of a present state in light of a potential future. This is much more than simply a play with meanings. Such vectorization of sensibilities serves productions of space. A situation that people do not know becomes more desirable than the one they do know.

Brasilia as an example of Utopia

• utopian construction that involved the cancellation of an already existing city

• construction of Brasilia meant the destruction of natural environment an its ecosystem

• Cancellation: as the new capital, Brasília cancelled out Rio de Janeiro as Brazil’s previous capital. Materially, cancellation of a natural environment and its ecosystems.

• Brasília has faced challenges and criticisms as it has developed over the years, with parts of the city experiencing issues such as privatization of public spaces and unplanned sprawl

• Brasília was built mostly by the so-called candangos, poor laborers from Brazil’s interior that were willing to travel to wherever their labor was needed. These laborers built Brasília in less than five years, but even as they constructed a splendid new capital, they also had to build their own homes on the outskirts of the city in non-planned areas omitted from the architects’ utopian design

dystopia or dissapointing

suggests that many situations described as dystopic may be better described as "disappointing" because they did not live up to their utopian aspirations. It argues that the term "dystopia" should be preserved for alternative life-worlds that have gone wrong and are often found in cultural representations.

Urban Outcasts

a study by a French sociologist Loïc Wacquant compares a region known in the United States as the “Black Belt” (area between Virginia and Texas known for fertile black soil and in which cotton was harvested by enslaved African Americans) to a region in France “Red Belt.” (where left-wing parties are politically dominant; in 1980s these areas were home to significant populations of blue-collar laborers). Comparing the two belts Wacquant demonstrates that the organization of the urban environment is intrinsically related to articulations of class, race and power

legal gray zones (in between places)

• found in airport transit zones, where travelers are exempt from certain laws and regulations

• embassies : represent specific countries, they also have a distinct identity and affordances for diplomats. In times of crisis, embassies have offered refuge to individuals seeking safety, turning them into contested spaces

Theatre (Media)

considering the place of cities as that of actors on a ‘world stage. urban environment as a theatrical space which structures social relations by casting different people in different performances and roles

• Sigmund Freud argued that an individual’s internal conflicts play out in a staged mental theatre

• In social and anthropological theory, the concept of theatricality connotes the process by which people construct their lives, relations, and identities by acting out what or who they are on the basis of the roles they have been given, or chosen

• Humans as visual animals: The human tendency to look at each other is brought to an extreme with the design and construction of theaters: architectural devices that are shaped in such a way as to facilitate a collective way of lookin

Theater example

Amsterdam city is actually theatrically organized, shaped much alike a theater layout (half-circle). On eastern and western sides of the city there would be shipyards (in parados areas). The Dam becomes the orchestra (the middle part of a theatre layout)

different ways of understanding the theater

used as a means of political disclosure, a way to keep the world at a distance, a medium for coping with reality, and a way to understand the mechanisms of the psyche, space for open debates and discussions

How can urban environments be considered as theatrical spaces?

• anthropological sense: people acting; citizens as both actors and audience

• multitude of activities or engagements happening

• design of cities/ architecture structure that relates to the idea of theatre

Inner theater

Inner theatre: e.g. when you recall a conversation you had with someone, recreate it in your head and contemplate on what you could have said

Media

means to connect different actors or spheres, for example self and world; private and public; reality and illusion; dividuals and scapes. Exchange of info. It does something to us. Media shape us.

Media as a cultural tecnhique

means that are used and have their own agency, changing worlds and human subjectivity - or human selves (Bernard Siegert). Sharing knowledge in time and space, generating collective memories (use of paper). E.g. car: a medium but at the same time a cultural technique: the car does something to us - the usage of car changes the way in which we live and functions.

Naples and Theater

parallel between the theatricality of Naples and the Brechtian theatrical approach. Brecht's theater aimed to provoke audiences to think, participate, and act, shifting the performance space from stage to podium. Similarly, the porosity of Naples' urban space allows for active participation and agency among its residents. The author also mentions Ernst Bloch, who saw Naples as a mixture of cultures and perspectives, and associated its rhythm with the music of Giuseppe Verdi.

Stage vs podium

Scenes and actors on a stage are to be heard and watched, as they act out the plot. The podium, however, is open to audience participation

“Disneyfication”

the urban landscapes turn more and more into an attraction park-like spaces; attractive cities must offer spectacles, shows etc. to survive. It is a transformation (as of something real or unsettling) into carefully controlled and safe entertainment or an environment with similar qualities

newspaper and radio

• media connecting the private and the masses

• chicago and cario

Al-Ahram newspaper headquarter (Cairo)

• monumental newspaper building → symbolizes the power of the press

• its surrounded by significant highways → illustrates the connection between news and public discourse

The newspaper century

• existed in various forms since late 17th century (Japanese vendors sold yomiuri)

• growth of newspaper industry (19th century) enabled by new technologies like the railway and telegraph)

• telegraphs connected spaces and made possible exchanges of information so rapid that time seemed to have disappeared

→ “time space compression” that comes with modernity

• dominance of newspapers as a medium lasted up through the 1930s - then challenged by radio

• local news : developing independent local news has historically been a form of resistance against colonialism

Importance of newspapers

• Reporting and shaping - power of the press to not only report on but also shape public discourse

• dominance and money - became highly visible venues for shaping national and urban identities especially when rivals competed for national dominance

• urban selves - forums for public disputes and propelled new imaginings of collective urban selves - newspapers as cultural techniques with which urban selves, national selves and political constituencies could be formed

• politics -can be political and cultural forces through the visuals they contain (thus vectorizing sensibilities and triggering affects in particular ways)

• educating - dominant actors in the development of societies becoming more and more literate (did not extend to African Americans at the time - African american newspapers became sources of information and resistance))

• connecting - national newspapers were instrumental in making large and diverse populations of strangers believe that they were common members of a nation - imagined communities

How much control can newspapers have?

e.g. Chicago

• 1863 - Democratic aligned Chicago Times was shut down by the Union army for publishing material deeply critical of the war and the Union

• took the intervention of Abraham Lincoln who affirmed the right to a free press by reversing the Times shutdown to prevent the incident from spiraling out of control

New Urban spaces and the link between public and private

daily newspapers created a mediated connection between the spheres of self and world - could reach into individual readers’ private domestic spaces while simultaneous connecting their thousands of readers together into a widely dispersed collective

Tribune Tower

• headquarters of not only Chicago Tribune but also the larger Tribune Company which also owned radio and television stations

• shaped the urban landscape

• influenced the world of comic books, cinema and television series (fictional city of Gotham influenced by U.S. newspaper culture and neo-gothic architecture of cities like New York and Chicago

Creating city auras

• newspapers gave city streets a new aura and function

• gave street vendors and kiosks a new role as places for informal public meetings and debates

Re-defining cafes

• places to exchange knowledge, participate in public meetings and engage in public debate

• in previous times knowledge exchanged in cafes was often hearsay

• newspapers brought extensive amount of information (whether reliable or not) into the cafe for debate

• authorities sometimes stationed spies in these establishments to gather intelligence on public sentiment

polyphony

→ the coming together of different voices and perspectives in one text or medium

-suggests that sounds, and the radio was a dominant medium in its ability to present a multiplicity of sounds and perspectives that had an effective impact on audiences

Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft (Tönnies)

Gemeinschaft: community - specifically kinship based sort of human organization

Gesellschaft: society (transactional and individualized environment) (more dominant in urban life leading o alienation and disconnection)

On a positive note, while cities can make people feel lonely, they also allow their residents to live anonymously and exercise certain freedoms that would have not been available in the space of the Gemeinschaft. Urban life may involve various forms of dissociation, but these can sometimes have their positive aspects.

Why is it important? - because urban life had become marked by the presence of a new category of people : the masses - who were radio adressats

radio - powerful tool

addressing and manipulating he masses

e.g. Egyptian singer who was propelled to fame by a radio podcast

-political relevance: it made political leaders capable of projecting their voices into the private life-worlds of masses of people

-also as a form of entertainment

Masses

masses have their own independent power - but are not sovereign or legal powers

crowds may be manipulable but are only partly controllable in their movement and growth