Мodes of Temporality in the Narratives about the Accessibility of the Urban Environment

Мodes of Temporality in the Narratives about the Accessibility of the Urban Environment


Yarskaya-Smirnova V.N.

Dr. Sci. (Philos), Prof., Director, Scientific and educational regional center for monitoring research of Yuri Gagarin State Technical University of Saratov, Saratov, Russia. yarskayasmirnovavn@sstu.ru

Yarskaya-Smirnova Ye.R.

Dr. Sci. (Sociol.), PhD, Full Prof., Director of the International Laboratory for Social Integration Studies, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia elena.iarskaia@gmail.com,

ID of the Article: 8507


The research was supported by the Russian Science Foundation, project No. 18-18-00321.


For citation:

Yarskaya-Smirnova V.N., Yarskaya-Smirnova Ye.R. Мodes of Temporality in the Narratives about the Accessibility of the Urban Environment. Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya [Sociological Studies]. 2021. No 2. P. 92-102




Abstract

.Expanding the accessibility of space and the environment is one of the central tasks of social policy and public attention, strengthening equality and justice. At first glance, such a problem is primarily revealed in spatial metaphors, such as barriers, restrictions, access, borders. However, spatial logic allow us only partially to explain the phenomena of oppression and emancipation, inclusion and exclusion. The social model allows us to map and identify the disabling contours of the spatial environment, but underestimates the patterns of oppression produced by temporal factors. The article reveals the cognitive possibilities of the temporal turn in studies of the accessibility of the urban environment for people with disabilities. The analysis is based on qualitative interviews in four Russian cities with activists from among people with disabilities. The authors consider the opinions of informants about how relations with social and physical environment evolve over the years, and what changes occur in the moments of everyday interaction. We are talking about such macrostructural characteristics of temporality as age, season, obsolescence and updating of technologies, changes of political priorities. Other modes of temporality are the changes in social attitudes, the intensity of collective actions, the transformation of the perception of accessible environment. The prospect of everyday temporality is revealed at the micro level of social interactions, in which the rhythms of urban life are violated and reconfigured, subjectivity is revealed, and acts of exclusion and inclusion occur. People with disabilities, our contemporaries and interlocutors, in their narratives, revealed the connection between moments of time and social phenomena and processes, reflected the changes occurring in themselves and the environment in the processes of their interactions.


Keywords
temporality; time; disability; activists; city; mobility; everyday life; qualitative interview; walk along interview
Content No 2, 2021