外文翻译---城市形象略论.doc

浙江农林大学本科毕业设计（论文）the negotiated city imageandre janssonintroductionthe city is the prime locus of modern consumerism. first of all, it is the space in which most commercial centre are concentrated shops, restaurants, cultural establishments, sports arenas and so on. urban areas are the locations of economic and symbolic exchange. secondly, the city environment provides a forum for cultural impressions and expressions. as noted in the classical writings of simmel and benjamin, the metropolis incorporates an entire system of rooms, stages and passages where the reflexive individual can gain symbolic experiences, as well as manifesting his or her identity. thirdly, since the major cities also incorporate a majority of the culture industries, including most media firms, advertising agencies and design companies, they are also the epicenter from which a great share of the symbolic flows emanate. in contemporary society, significant shares of peoples cultural horizons are shaped by the images and messages arising in metropolitan contexts, many of which are geographically distant.finally,in the shape of travel destinations, cities are turned into the objects of direct consumption. the dominant image of the city, in terms of historical narrative, personalities, buildings, companies, etc., is normally consumed in a manner influenced by commercial actors, reinforced by mediated signs. professional image-makers are continuously working on the symbolic refueling of the city-as-commodity .however, the creation of the city image is not only a matter of cultural policy. what the city actually becomes, and how different groups experience it, depend upon the activities of social actors as well as systemic forces. for example, even though there are strong hegemonic forces, founded upon alliances between political, cultural and econ-omic actors, supporting a dominant image of the city, alternative and oppositional groupings are always challenging such points of view (see figure 1). currently, the clearest examples are definitely the international reclaim the streets and reclaim the city movements (see klein, 2000). and during the past few years, top-level political meetings such as the ones in seattle, prague, goteborg and genoa have led to world-wide media exposure of the intensified struggle over urban space in general and certain city images in particular.most of the research for the present study took place in the city of goteborg, sweden. however, as far as the aim of this article is concerned, the specific city is not important as such. the aim rather is to illustrate how any city image may be encoded, decoded and re-encoded through various forms of lifestyle practices. in particular, the article will focus upon three different modes of consumption, corresponding to halls notion of dominant, oppositional and negotiated readings. this is not to say that cities necessarily contain any clear-cut preferred meaning. as has just been argued, the city image is a complex and dynamic structure, whose encoders are found throughout society. all readings are somehow negotiated. nevertheless, from a marxist point of view one may argue that different ways of encoding and re-encoding the city hold different positions relative to the socioeconomic structures of society. developing this approach, it is interesting to see what happens to this structure in the post-modern era.the city of goteborgin spite of the general approach, a few introductory words should be said about the particular environment and image of goteborg. the city has about 500 000 inhabitants and is located on the swedish west coast. historically, the image of goteborg is marked by its ports, its ship-yards and its mechanical industries. being the nations face towards the north sea and the atlantic, this is the city from which the trans atlantic steamers once departed. it is also the home of companies like skf and volvo.however, like many other industrial cities, goteborg has during the past three decades gone through a kind of identity crisis. most of the ship-yards have closed down; the ports are not as busy as they used to be; and volvo cars is now a luxury brand within the ford motor company. this identity crisis is also expressed through several post-industrial tendencies. industrial areas, notably the former ship-yards, have been transformed into office space, apartments and hotels (like docklandsin london) and working-class neighbourhoods have been restored and gentrified. there is also a very dominant cultural policy taking form. the new image of goteborg is that of the event citya city that will attract major cultural events, sports events and industrial exhibitions. at the same time, contemporary image creators, architects and city planners are careful to preserve the historical heritage of goteborg. the modern narrative is the anchoring of the post-modern image.the empirical studythe study to be presented is based on both qualitative and quantitative interview data. first, an analysis has been made of ualitative interviews gathered within the research project cultural identities in transition (cit). a total of 41 respondents in the goteborg region were interviewed about their lifestyles in general and media consumption in particular. the interviews were carried out during 1997/98 at four different locations: the inner city; the affluent western suburbs; the northern working-class suburbs; and, a rural village about an hours journey from goteborg. the reason for choosing particular districts was not primarily about enabling comparisons between neighbourhoodsalthough such comparisons often prove to be fruitful. the specific neighbourhoods were not of interest per se. however, starting in different neighbourhoods was a good way to structure the material, due to the segregated character of larger cities like goteborg. then, in all districts, respondents were gathered of different age, gender and occupation.in this analysis, the focus is upon those respondents who more or less actively take part in urban life. these are all found within the wider metropolitan area of goteborg, rather than in rural villages. nevertheless, the material is extremely rich and it is impossible to present it fully in a short article. therefore, in order to keep the discussion as clearcut as possible, the arguments are illustrated by means of just a few interesting cases.secondly, in order to locate the qualitative results within a more general pattern, the study utilises 1997 data gathered from the annual orvesto konsument survey, conducted by the sifo research institute. the survey is based on a quite extensive questionnaire covering a broad range of topics, focusing upon values, opinions, lifestyle practices, consumption habits, brand preferences, media habits and so on. since the orvesto survey compiles the answers from about 30 000 respondents (a representative selection of the swedish population between 15 and 79 years of age), the material can also be broken down into a great number of sub-categories without losing statistical significancewhich is a great advantage for those who want to identify and describe particular market segments. for the present purpose, only some basic tables are presented, illustrating how differ-ent value orientationsor what sifo terms risc segmentscorrespond to city-based consumption practices.1these value orientations are treated hereas statistical representations of the creative ethos, guiding people in their organisation of time, space and social relations. the ethos may thus be thought of as a lifestyle generating formula shaping, for example, consumption modes much related to where they livewhether the city is home or not. to some people, the city is a natural, taken-for-granted, everyday environment; to others, it is primarily the site of special events and public services. likewise, while some people find the liveliness of the city to be a major asset, others regard it as a threat to their ontological security. since the inner cores of metropolitan areas are rapidly changing places, it is not surprising that sophisticated lifestyles are found there. individuals oriented towards expansion (globalism) and change to a great extent found in city regions.this situation springs from a mutual relationship: while the dynamics of the city attract people with a particular ethos, the city environment (and all that comes with it in terms of commerce, public life, educational institutions, etc.) also functions as a socialisation agent, shaping this kind of ethos. making a closer comparison of the ga and ls segments (not presented in the table), one can conclude that, while the overall pattern of different life-stages is quite similar, the levels are very different. while the overall pattern suggests that people move to urban areas when they leave their parents home, and out of the city when they enter the family phase, the ga ethos is on the whole more city-based than is the lsethos. people within the ga segment are not only overrepresented among the young singles and couples living in the city; they also have their backgrounds in more urban areas (if we overlook the significance of generational shifts, which is a non-measurable factor without longitudinal data). however, in later lifephases, particularly during the period of family establishment, the differences between these two segments are smaller. in both groups, there is a tendency to move out of urban apartments and into houses in more suburban, or even rural, areasnotably among the ga segments. however, this reorientation towards family life and security does not necessarily imply that the basic ethosformed through family life, education and other socialisation agentsis altered. the ethos may still be founded upon the same ideals, but expressed in a different way, through a different lifestyle.this kind of socioeconomic approach may be applied not only to metropolitan areas as a whole, but also to inner-city areas, in terms of particular quarters and neighbourhoods. inner cities are typically diverse areas, involving a mix of public establishments and private dwellings, as well as a particularly heterogeneousandvolatile population. goteborg is no exception to this rule. turning to the official statistics, one finds that the inner-city districts are populated by more one and two-person households than the goteborg average, and that incomes are neither particularly high nor particularly low (statistical yearbook goteborg 1996). the inner city is a meeting-place, or a meltingpot for cultural and economic capital, as well as for dominant, alternative and oppositional modes of consumption (see andersson and jansson, 1998).obviously, what most urban-dwellers have in common is a comparatively greater number of visits to shops, restaurants, cultural events and so on. in particular, the kinds of establishment that are specifically associated with urban space and a dynamic urban lifestylelike boutiques and smaller cornershops (for example, 7 eleven stores) and more luxurious department stores that are attractive places in which to stroll (like the exclusive swedish chain nk)are more often visited by city-dwellers than by people in general. in particular, they are frequented by city-dwellers oriented towards globalism and/or alteration (table 2). these commercial spaces may be regarded as the loci of metropolitan life par excellence, enabling lifestyles of impulse and phantasmagoria (see ritzer, 1999). stores that are open almost around the clock, and stores offering extensive designer-decor spaces of relative anonymity, cater for impulses of the moment as well as for hedonistic life-planning. they also manifest the temporal and spatial image of urbanityan image decoded and reencoded by its population.among the cit respondents, the polarity between economic and cultural capital, as well as between dominant and oppositional modes of consumption, is well illustrated. furthermore, it is possible to discern a negotiated mode which problematises the opposition between culture and marketa mode that may be labelled post-modern. the following three sections deal with each of these ideal types, using a few of the respondents as examples. at the centre of discussion are three men of comparable age: 36-year-old market administrator yngve, 46-year-old musician soren and 49-year-old hairdresser jerry. some additional quotes will also be used to flesh out the picture. in terms of the risc segments, these respondents correspond roughly to the iga, cga and ga segments respectively. what they have in common is the typically urban orientation towards globalism and alteration. but their approaches to the city diverge.concluding remarksas this article has attempted to illustrate, the tension between dynamism and stability, and between dominant and alternative/oppositional modes of consumption, makes the city image a quite complex, even contradictory, constitution. leading ametropolitan lifestyle may refer to many different things, and the positions that cities in general, as well as particular cities (like goteborg), hold as cultural referents vary between different groups. the present study has concentrated upon those groups and individuals that actively take part in the formation of urban places, markets and images through their consumption practices. introducing principal distinctions between dominant, oppositional and negotiated modes of consumption, it has pointed to the symbolic struggles that saturate urban development in all its aspects.one must not expect to find these three modes in any clear-cut form, though. they are to be understood as ideal types. as suggested by the qualitative interview data, a plethora of variations may be distinguished. taking a closer look at the lifestyles and life-worlds of single individuals, one finds that things are more ambiguous and volatile than suggested by theory or quantitative classifications. nevertheless, categorisation holds the strength of making the world analytically comprehensible. and the combination of survey data (risc) and qualitative interviews strengthens the validity of the arguments.additionally, the findings suggest that the current efforts put into urban image-making and branding are both self-generating and somehow peculiar. since every new marketing message is contested by the pluralism of urban social lifethe decoding and reencoding processes taking place among the urban publicthere can never be a final, intersubjectively shared city image. rather, the social contradictions of the city reproduce a governmental need to formulate clearcut attributes and values that can promote the city. in other words, the more contradiction and negotiation there are, the more resources may be put into image-making. and, the more effort that is put into the diffusion of a dominant image, the more image-creation must actually overlook the authentic complexities of social life. 城市形象略论andre jansson简介城市主要是推崇用户至上主义的。首先，它是空间中的大多数商业中心集中-商店，餐馆，文化场所，体育场馆等。城市地区的位置，经济和象征性的前变化。其次，城市环境保护提供论坛文化展示和表达。正如在古典文书材料齐美尔与本杰明，都市纳入整个系统的房间，阶段和通道在反思：个人可以获得象征性的经验，以及表现他或她的身份。第三，由于主要城市也有很多文化产业，包括大部分媒体公司，广告公司和设计公司，他们也是从这一丰富的象征性的流量。现代元社会的重要份额，人们的文化视野所形成的图像和信息中产生的大都市-文本，其中许多是重要的地理分布。最后，在形状的旅游目的地，城市变成了对象的直接消费。主要的城市形象，在历史的叙事，人物，建筑公司等，通常是在消费方式受商业演员，加强中介了的迹象。专业影像创作者不断在象征性的难民旅行的商品化城市。总之，作为城市景观的祖笔记给物质和象征形式的反对党-吐温市场和地方。市场的压力不断复制各种控制恒压的地方繁殖稳定性。然而，创造城市形象不仅是一个重要的文化政策。这个城市实际上成为，和不同群体的经验，取决于活动关系的社会行动者以及全身的力量。例如，尽管有强大的霸权力量，建立在铝-电器之间的政治，文化和经济行为者，支持一个主导的城市形象，替代和对立集团-是永远的挑战等角度。大多数研究为本研究发生在城市，瑞典。然而，就本文的目的而言，具体的城市是不重要的。目的是说明任何城市形象可能被编码，解码和重新编码，通过各种形式的生活方式的做法。特别是，本文将侧重于三个不同的消费模式，相应的大厅的概念主导，对立和协商式阅读。这并不是说，城市必然包含任何明确的首选的意思。作为刚刚被认为，城市形象是一个复杂的动态结构，其编码器被发现在整个社会。所有读一些-如何谈判。然而，从马克思主义的角度可以说，不同的方式编码和再编码的城市有不同的相对位置的社会-经济社会结构。发展这种方法，它是有趣的，看看这个结构在后现代时代。哥德堡市案例尽管一般的做法，一些应该说的话有关的特定环境与形象哥德堡去。该市有大约500000居民和位于瑞典西海岸。从历史上看，哥德堡的特点是其港口的船舶修造企业及机械行业。作为国家面朝着北海和大西洋，这是该市从大西洋汽船曾离去。它也是国内公司一样，skf公司和沃尔沃。然而，像其他许多工业城市，哥德堡已在过去的三年里经历了一种认同危机。大多数的船舶修造企业倒闭；该端口不忙的他们被；和沃尔沃汽车现在是一个奢侈品牌在福特汽车公司。这个身份危机也表示，通过几个工业十-趋势。工业区，尤其是前船舶修造企业，已转化为写字楼，公寓及酒店（如伦敦）和工人