Originality and Innovative Nature

The originality and innovative nature of this research project consist in proposing to explore culture-oriented directions of urban development. Cities of modern capitalism have historically relied on the criteria of quantitative change to direct their development. An introduction of criteria of development that would have qualitative character demands a paradigmatic change in approach to cities, culture and modernity. Urban, social, and economic development that would take orientation to culture as a criterion of its qualitative change has barely begun. This research project proposes to circumvent the theoretical discussions of modernity, capitalism and culture by concentration on urban spaces as points of interdisciplinary reference that can open new directions of multidisciplinary dialogue, multi-sited research and empirically grounded theorization. In this regard, sociology of space can apply on a variety of scales that range from that of a space of an exhibition or a performance to an urban space or a constellation of spaces of a city. While the media discourse around art biennials continues to be couched in economic, social and governmental terms, it is necessary to make a transition to the criteria that are proper to these events - these of culture-oriented qualitative criteria.

In this regard. the individualization of modern societies away from mass movements and towards individual experiences, even though the latter may cumulate into collective forms, also reformulate the texts that can serve as paradigmatic sources of inspiration for research into urban spaces. While quantitative criteria of social science correspond to the historical moment of mass society, the introduction of qualitative criteria into social research derives its validity from the confrontation with the individualized society of today. Moreover, the process of modern development, considered from the perspective of the spaces of opportuninities that it makes available (Schulze 2003), has continued unabated from its inception in the eighteenths century to the present moment. Consequently, while the priority of the early stages of development of modern capitalism has been the quantitative increase in the social, economic and political opportunities - one only needs to consider the growth in social rights, living standards and political participation over the last two centuries -, the yet to be widely perceived challenge of post-modern capitalism is the necessity of the shift to qualitative exploration of the spaces of opportunties already available that would go beyond the exclusive stress on growth (Schulze 2003).

A paradigmatic text for this challenge of literary turn in social sciences is Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. It is no coincidence that when sociological research into the relations between space and culture is concerned Proust's works provide a source of important insights (Bourdieu 1984; Shields 2003). Oriented towards exploration of missed opportunities, Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, as was called its earlier translation, raises the questions that quantitative research cannot answer that deal with personal encounter, artistic work, and aesthetic appearance (Schulze 2003). Art biennials show the way towards making these, previously highly individual, orientations into mass phenomena that demand innovative approaches to their conceptualization into models of urban development. The qualitative imprecision that this process invites constitute one of the major advantages of this research project that through multiple negotiations with its diverse subject matter, through its methodological tools of multi-sited and multidiscplinary comparison, and through its recourse to classical and contemporary sources of social and cultural theory makes a high degree of conceptual originality and research innovation possible.

The innovation that this research offers to put into practice stems from the growing sociological awareness of the necessity to open the discussion of the modernization of modernity (Beck 1994; Munch 1994, 1998; Schulze 2003) towards its self-referential, qualitative, and non-linear properties. This turns cultural competence into key area of emerging expertise for the present century (Schulze 2003). This orientation to culture favors community over society, work over product, and appearance over matter (Schulze 2003). These reference points converge on richly experiential encounters that embed urban spaces into global and local networks of cultural exchange (Rectanus 2002). However, the process of collective learning that permeates the everyday life of cities that in the process of inter-urban competition turn into event-cities of cultural encounters is yet to find its conceptualization on the level of urban space. This is the innovative value of this research project. It intends to draw on the state of the art in a wide variety of emerging and existing disciplines such as sociology of space (de Certeau 1987; Lefebvre 1971, 1991; Shields 2003), post-Enlightenment philosophy (Delanda 2001; Deleuze 1991; Perniola 1995, 2004a, 2004b) and German social and cultural theory (Benjamin [1941] 2001; Flusser 1991; Kracauer 1937; Schulze 2003; Simmel 1990).

The last two hundred years of Western modernity have caused the orientations towards quantitatively measured growth to become universal (Schulze 2003). The objective expression of these quantitative orientations towards the increase in material wealth, as expressed in economy geared to the production of consumer goods, has enabled representations of unambiguous growth. However this model of modernity has come at a price of routine thinking, rigid evaluations, and scholarly specialization. This research project successfully resists these tendencies by offering to discover valuable cognitive resources for the culture-driven development of modernity, to explore urban spaces of cultural possibilities of interdiscplinary dialogue and creativity, to conceptually probe the processes that assist in turning cultural preferences from potential into actual, and to add a cultural dimension to the developmental scenarios of modern capitalism (Schulze 2003). In other words, orientation towards cultural wealth has to be based on qualitative criteria that expand the frame of reference of common sense, that allow for the inclusion of ambiguity into the research processes of social science and interdisciplinary projects, and that are sensitive to the growing precedence of experience over utility, personality over skills, and associate over customer (Schulze 2003).

To sum up, the relations between space and culture gain increasing amount of theoretical and institutional attention. To this attest the foundation of the Space and Culture Journal, the contribution of the Space and Culture Reading Group to the international standing of the University of Alberta, Canada, where it is held, and the activeness of the Space and Culture blog on the internet. Parallel to these developments, there are interdisciplinary initiatives in Europe that pursue similar research directions such as the Metropolitan Studies Center and the Georg Simmel Center for Metropolitan Research in Berlin. This research project intends to foster connections among these pioneering centers of international scholarly excellence. Out of this rich institutional environment grew the future participation of Prof. Mario Perniola from the Tor Vergata University of Rome, Italy, whose development of philosophical reflection in the post-Enlightenment direction, of aesthetic conceptualization of contemporary culture, and of conceptual analysis of urban spaces will provide a broadly multidiciplinary addition to the capacities of the future research team around this project. This is especially true since I continue to be in contact with members of my former supervisory committee at the University of Alberta, Canada, and make many new scholarly contacts at my present post-doctoral position at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.