On the Plaza : The Politics of Public Space and Culture: Fid-Bau Portal

On the Plaza : The Politics of Public Space and Culture

Low, Setha M

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of illustrations -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Part one: Introduction -- Chapter 1: Notes from the field. A personal account -- Chapter 2: Public Space and Culture. The case of Latin American plaza -- Part two: Histories -- Chapter 3: The history of plaza in San José, Costa Rica. The political symbolism of public space -- Chapter 4: The European history of the plaza. Power relations and Architectural Interpretation -- Chapter 5: The indigenous history of the plaza. The contested terrain of architectural representations -- Part three: Ethnographies -- Chapter 6: Spatializing culture. The social production and social construction of public space -- Chapter 7: Constructing difference. The social and spatial boundaries of everyday life -- Chapter 8: Public space and protest. The plaza as art and commodity -- Part four: Conversations -- Chapter 9: The park and the plaza in Costa Rican literature. Imagine places -- Chapter 10: Conversations on the plaza. Remembered places -- Chapter 11: Public space, politics and democracy -- Appendix: Recent Costa Rican Presidents and their terms -- Bibliography -- Index

Friendly gossip, political rallies, outdoor concerts, drugs, shoeshines, and sex-for-sale—almost every aspect of Latin American life has its place and time in the public plaza. In this wide-ranging, multi-disciplinary study, Setha M. Low explores the interplay of space and culture in the plaza, showing how culture acts to shape public spaces and how the physical form of the plaza encodes the social and economic relations within its city. Low centers her study on two plazas in San José, Costa Rica, with comparisons to public plazas in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. She interweaves ethnography, history, literature, and personal narrative to capture the ambiance and meaning of the plaza. She also uncovers the contradictory ethnohistories of the European and indigenous origins of the Latin American plaza and explains why the plaza is often a politically contested space