The Urban Sacrifice: Notes on The Human Scale by Andreas Dalsgaard

The 2013 documentary The Human Scale explores how our processes of urbanization, particularly since 1960, have had major consequences at the human scale, in terms of community, connection, and quality of life. To express this, the movie visits several cities in different parts of the world that each highlight something lost from urbanization.

Figure 1. Movie Poster for The Human Scale. Image Source: IMDB; https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2414454/mediaviewer/rm1139254017/

This documentary shows how different parts of the world have arrived at the conclusion that it may be worthwhile complicating the markedly capitalistic mode of living and, depending on the circumstances that preempted this conclusion, illustrates the moves made in response to these notions. Interrogating why there is growing energy against our modern way of life relies heavily on what the price of convenience, luxury, possession, and other forms of capital accumulation has had on our social network and connectivity to those around us. In essence, the world we have created and still create through capitalism is not innately made to serve the totality of our needs as humans. In this, modernity could be seen as a movement that is not concerned with humanity or a movement predicated on removing people from their natural state of being. This documentary does a great job of revealing these issues but also offering reassurance that we still have time to change and positioning planners and other urbanists are the arbiters of this change moving forward. Because of this, the documentary has an ironic optimistic tone, as a planner, because it entails a big problem that is also localized enough to be tangible in practice.

All in all, The Human Scale was successful in alluding to issues within cities that have historically been ignored in favour of the push for urban capitalism. With its several case studies, it is very clearly grounded in experience and accounts for regional differences in the debate quite fluidly. As far as drawbacks, its vision is rather idealistic. Embracing the human scale makes sense from our current position, but probably will come with its own drawbacks. Nonetheless, I would recommend this movie for any burgeoning urbanists or any city dwellers who wants to talk to their neighbor.

Bourdieu and Wings of Desire: of field, material culture, and habitus

French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu describes the global social space as a field with both field of forces and field of struggles present. Bourdieu (1998) notes that as a field of forces, its necessity is imposed on agents who are engaged in it whereas agents, with differentiated means and ends according to their position in the structure of the field of forces, confront each other within field of struggles. I found Bourdieu’s logic of fields very intriguing and the study of Bourdieu’s fields evokes memories of a film I watched and enjoyed some couple years ago. It is German filmmaker Wim Wender’s Wings of Desire (1987). I would like to use this film – a form of material culture – as a lens to explore field, its complexity and multiplicity, and how material culture acts as a medium in delivering the notion of field.

Figure 1. The Field of Cultural Production (1993). In The Field of Cultural Production, a collection of Bourdieu’s major essays, Bourdieu provides extensive analysis and application of the construct of field. Image source: https://books.google.ca/  retrieved on July 25th, 2021.

Wings of Desire is about invisible, immortal angels who move through the divided city of Berlin, watching, listening, and comparing notes. The angels populate Berlin, listen to the thoughts of human inhabitants from atop and at times descend to comfort the distressed. Wings of Desire is a beautifully portrayed film in which it carries various messages, portrays the city of Berlin in a particular time period that swayed between realities and imaginations, and grants the audience the freedom of understanding and interpreting the film through different time-space lenses.

Taking this freedom, at the time when I studied Bourdieu and his theories the images of angels and Berlin kept coming back to me. I was thrilled to learn that by recapturing the film with Bourdieu’s notion of field, I was able to gain a deeper—or rather new—perspective on the vastness of Bourdieu’s logics and concepts. Bourdieu (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992) says that to think in terms of field is to think relationally and that what exist in the social world are relations, not interactions between agents. In the film, the guardian angels and the human inhabitants, each represent a field respectively, is in this relational relation. Angels can see, hear, and touch humans but they cannot interact with human beings. Humans, on the other hand, cannot see nor interact with but can feel the presence of angels. This further shows that field, as Bourdieu stresses, follows regularities that are not explicit and codified.

Figure 2. The field of angels. Damiel the angel looks down upon the inhabitants of the city of Berlin. Image source: https://medium.com/@willlcreasey/an-analysis-of-wings-of-desire-57abe62cf9a0  retrieved on July 25th, 2021.

Figure 3. Angel and the human inhabitant. While angels can comfort the distressed they cannot alter events. Image source: https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/singing-an-epic-of-peace-close-up-on-wings-of-desire  retrieved on July 25th, 2021.

Power and capital play critical roles in understanding the structure of the field. Species of capital and the field coexist in that the value of the capital hinges on the existence of a field whereas capital confers a power over the field. In the angel field, species of capital that is efficacious includes, for example, immortality and the freewill to fly. In the human beings field, the species of capital that allow humans to wield a power and to exist in such field are those of economic, social, cultural, and symbolic capital. Further, it is also through this different species of capital found across the various field that brings struggles to participants in a field. Power is empowered by species of capital; however, with the volume and structure of capital engaging in a constant dynamic, i.e. an increase or decrease in the total volume of capital and/or a change in capital composition, conflict and competition emerged which brings upon struggles. These struggles, through the eyes of the angels in the film, are intensely present in the field of human the angels are watching. Through angels’ notes and accounts one can see how force and struggles coexist in a field and it is this relation of force and struggles that induces transformations and changes.

Figure 4. The struggles in the field of human inhabitants. Angels witness the struggles along with those struggling. Image source: https://glassbeadjournal.com/2020/09/23/wings-of-desire-1987/  retrieved on July 25th, 2021.

These dynamics found in field is further elevated by Bourdieu when he proposes the concept of dynamic borders. Bourdieu explains that every field also constitutes a potentially open space of play with dynamic borders and these are, in addition to granting a field the fluid nature, the stake of struggles within the field itself (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992). Damiel, one of the guardian angels, falls in love with the trapeze artist. He goes night after night to the circus where she performs above the centre ring and he follows and listens to her doubts and vulnerability. When Damiel decides to descend into time, he is at this dynamic border of his field, struggling and struggled, and eventually gains the power to enter a different field.

Figure 5. The trapeze artist Marion. Damiel the angel falls in love with human—a lonely and vulnerable trapeze artist. Image source: https://bampfa.org/event/wings-desire-3 retrieved on July 25th, 2021.

Note that Bourdieu often uses the term “the feel for the game” when he describes habitus. Though not discussed together when Bourdieu uses the analogy of a “game” to depict his understanding of field, one can see the relational force that bounds the two together. For Damiel the angel, he posses this habitus, this feel for the game, that allows him to navigate in a specific field; however, when the desire to feel the game of a different field grows and comes into play with the relations of force in his field, Damiel finds ways to gain the “admission fee”, as Bourdieu and Wacquant described, to the human being field.

Figure 6. Entering another field. Damiel turns into human. Marion attracts him but the city of Berlin attracts him, too. Image source: https://www.dw.com/en/wings-of-desire-wim-wenders-restored-masterpiece-revives-divided-berlin/a-43598808 retrieved on July 25th, 2021.

Humans feel. Damiel the angel wants to be able to touch, smell and be a part of things. Damiel wants to feel. He asks Cassiel, the other angel, how it would feel to feel—to be able to feed a cat, or get ink from a newspaper on your fingers. What makes being human beings appealing – the tangible and intangible complexity of humanity – is perhaps the exact rationale when Bourdieu states that field, as complex as it can be, promotes a mode of construction that has to be rethought anew every time.

References

Bourdieu, P. (1998) “Appendix. Social Space and Field of Power” in Practical Reason in the Theory of Action. Malden MA: Polity. 31-34.

Bourdieu, p. (1990) “Structures, habitus, practices” in P. Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice. Standford, CA: Stanford University Press. 52-79.

Bourdieu, P., L.J.D. Wacquant (1992). An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

200 Meters Film: Geo-political Urban Fragmentation

Urban fragmentation has been a dominant inherent feature of cities today, it is “A key tribute of the spatial structure of cities”. Urban fragmentation, whether we admit it or not, is a direct consequence of urban sprawl often associated with higher-income cities. However, one should pause for a moment when this phenomenon is driven by geo-political situation and when an apartheid system is celebrated and passed on through urban planning practices. 

This example was successfully portrayed in the UNESCO-medal-winning film “200 Meters'', by Ameen Nayfeh, where urban fragmentation is entangled with the concept of the right to the city. The film tells the story of a Palestinian father who lives 200 meters away from the rest of his family due to unique living conditions. Owing to the separation wall that divides their city into two fragmented sides, the father has to line up in long queues on a daily basis, so as to cross through checkpoints to reach his family's side. Each portion of the city along the wall falls under different jurisdictions (Palestine/Israel), distinguishing between people’s rights living on different sides. Here, the question of the right to the city arises, highlighting the geography of immobility controlling the Palestinian side, for the supposedly “security purposes”. The climax of the film is reached, when the once 200 meters daily journey of the father turns into a 200 km road trip. Due to the expired permission to cross the checkpoint, the father has to resort to “illegal” smuggler to make it to the other side, rushing to see his son who had a car accident. 

With that being said, urban fragmentation is not only an indication of higher-income cities. It could, also, be utilized as a planning tool that renders a city as unjust and exclusive. When intertwined with an apartheid system, it would create a marginalized population, depriving them from equal access to urban resources. 

A scene from the ”200 Meters” film, where the father looks desperately at his family house located behind the separation wall. Image Source: https://www.film-rezensionen.de/2020/09/200-meters/ retrieved on July 10th, 2021