Ambivalent Architectures

Violence in public places

Cerwyn Moore
University of Birmingham

This article examines the contested nature of political violence in public places, with a special focus on stadiums. The focus on the built environment sheds light on the role of architecture as a way of articulating identities, and in inscribing different forms of both the ‘political’ and the ‘everyday’. The paper draws on a series of examples offering a reading of the symbolic role of buildings. The paper then moves on to examine examples of violence in stadiums, so as to highlight the ambivalent nature of the built environment, when turning to sites of violence and sites of repression.

The full article is available as a PDF document: click here.

© borderlands ejournal 2010