Where Is Culture in Rome? - Global Rome: Changing Faces of the Eternal City - page 241

that has increasingly governed the city on a global scale (harvey 1989). in a post-
political framework, contestation is replaced by techno-managerial planning, the
disappearance of spaces of dissent, and the development of depoliticized public
space (swyngedow 2009). This means that, as theorized by lefebvre, the right to
the city “legitimates the refusal to allow oneself to be removed from urban reality
by a discriminatory and segregative organization” (lefebvre 1996, 195). The right
to the city is becoming the “constitution or reconstitution of a spatial-temporal
unit, of a gathering together instead of a fragmentation” (ibid.). This right is as-
serted through the restoration of public spaces, or better a construction of a new
common space, within a climate of conflict touching several fields, for example,
culture. but, what is culture? we cannot assume culture has a single meaning
(Zukin 1995). summarizing williams's (1983) analysis, mitchell pointed out that
the term culture had come to be used in three different ways in scientific and
common discourse: (1) a general process of intellectual, spiritual, and aesthetic
development; (2) a particular way of life, whether of a people, a period, a group,
or humanity in general; (3) the works and practices of intellectual and especially
artistic activity (mitchell 1995). social center activities are located within all three
definitions proposed by williams. moreover, it is very hard to separate culture
from economics and politics (mitchell 1995). Cultural goods are openly integrat-
ed as commodities in the market-based circulation of capital, and the power to
frame things symbolically turns into a form of material power (Zukin 1995). Cul-
ture is socially constructed and always contested, and it is thus best understood
as a process, a set of relationships that gain efficacy as they are reified. what if the
term culture becomes a means for representing power relations? (mitchell 2000).
again, we turn to power relations and through culture, we can turn our attention
to considering participation. is there culture without participation? although the
answer is trivial it opens new discussions; in fact, if people do not participate in
the production of their culture, colonialism emerges. but, what is participation?
“participation is a popular buzzword in contemporary urban studies” (silver et
al. 2010, 453). for some, it implies a support of democratic deliberation for the
public good, while for others, it represents grassroots resistance to elites' top-
down control and neoliberalization (silver et al. 2010). participation has to be
contextualized within increased trends of inequality and modifications in gover-
nance structures that amplify the roles of the private sector as provider of social
and cultural services. in combination, these trends have altered the relationships
between citizens, as well as between citizens and governance structures. These
new relationships, in turn, have significant implications for the ability of all citi-
zens to gain access to the city's resources. Thus, when discussing the experience
of social centers, we are challenged to reconsider general questions that are too
often neglected, such as those of power relations and the right to the city. to be
more precise, we have to critically engage with the ways in which power relations