Overview
- Provides a multidisciplinary approach to the study of Barcelona and its development
- Delivers a timely and interesting account of cultural policy and the neoliberal Barcelona subject
- Addresses issues of contemporary governmentality through a Marxist and Foucauldian structuralist tradition
Part of the book series: The Contemporary City (TCONTCI)
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About this book
This book argues the crucial role of culture and cultural policies in defining the notion of urban citizenship in Barcelona since 1979. Through analysis of official documents, municipal publicity campaigns, sport – including the Olympic Games and Barcelona F.C – and film, Balibrea makes sense of the city as a global cultural destination and reveals how such transformation impacts local inhabitants.
Scrutinizing municipal discourses on culture from the late 1970s, this interdisciplinary work unveils how ideas of the function and nature of citizenship articulate changing definitions of the city, from model to brand. Over the course of topics such as: tourism, social democracy and urban regeneration, Balibrea constructs an original argument for how the Barcelona image mobilizes neoliberal fantasies of subject transformation. A wide-ranging study, this book will be of great interest to scholars of urban geography, sociology and cultural studies.
Scrutinizing municipal discourses on culture from the late 1970s, this interdisciplinary work unveils how ideas of the function and nature of citizenship articulate changing definitions of the city, from model to brand. Over the course of topics such as: tourism, social democracy and urban regeneration, Balibrea constructs an original argument for how the Barcelona image mobilizes neoliberal fantasies of subject transformation. A wide-ranging study, this book will be of great interest to scholars of urban geography, sociology and cultural studies.
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Keywords
- Barcelona
- Olympic Games
- Barcelona Football Club
- governmentality
- subjectivation
- branding
- volunteers
- grassroots movements
- urban social movements
- Foucault
- civility
- anti-francoism
- Mediterranean sociability
- consensus
- electoral campaigns
- neoliberal subjectivity
- postindustrial city
- transition
- urban geography and urbanism
Table of contents (15 chapters)
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Front Matter
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In Theory: The Subject of Culture
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Front Matter
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The Olympic Framework
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Front Matter
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Back to Work: Governing the Creative City
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Front Matter
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Be Yourself Out There: Inhabiting Barcelona for the Global Market
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Front Matter
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Reviews
“This book delivers a deep meditation on the contradictions surrounding participatory municipal discourse. Deftly working at the crossroads of cultural, political, social, economic and urban discourses, she returns us from abstractions driving the neoliberal creative city to the people of Barcelona themselves. With urban citizenship as the common ground for analyzing pre-democratic activism, (post-)Olympic processes, sports, and visual images, the book’s combination of theoretical savvy, historical specificity and insight into local-global residence is unparalleled.” (Benjamin Fraser, Hispanic Studies Professor, Editor, Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, Co-Editor, Hispanic Urban Studies book series)
“Balibrea’s study of the diverse actors and producers of Barcelona’s urban identity is a fascinating read. Describing a range of important cultural fora, including the construction of the cultural policy of the post-Francoist city government, the citizenship practices inculcated duringthe planning and staging of the 1992 Olympics, and the identity politics behind FC Barcelona, the book provides a nuanced, and intellectually nourishing, analysis of how we have come to understand this celebrated city. This is a very significant study, and useful more broadly for anyone who wants to really understand how the cultural politics of cities is about more than just flagship museums and creative districts.” (Donald McNeill, Professor of Urban & Cultural Geography, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Mari Paz Balibrea lectures on Spanish Cultural Studies at Birkbeck, University of London, where she directs the Centre for Iberian and Latin American Visual Studies. She has published widely on contemporary Barcelona, including the articles Barcelona, from Model to Brand, Becoming Mediterranean: The Resignification of the Sea in Post-Industrial Barcelona and Urbanism, Culture and the Post-Industrial City: Challenging the ‘Barcelona Model’.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Global Cultural Capital
Book Subtitle: Addressing the Citizen and Producing the City in Barcelona
Authors: Mari Paz Balibrea
Series Title: The Contemporary City
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53596-2
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan London
eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-137-53595-5Published: 08 September 2017
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-349-71050-8Published: 06 November 2020
eBook ISBN: 978-1-137-53596-2Published: 29 August 2017
Series ISSN: 2634-5463
Series E-ISSN: 2634-5471
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: IX, 311
Number of Illustrations: 3 b/w illustrations
Topics: Human Geography, Cultural Studies, Urban Geography / Urbanism (inc. megacities, cities, towns), Urban Studies/Sociology, Sociology of Culture