A Walk Through Cultural Landscapes

On Thursday, October 1 at 19:00, join us for a seminar exploring how urban space is shaped and what it can tell us about our society.

A cultural landscape is not simply a neutral backdrop to human life. City centers and residential outskirts, avenues and squares, architectural innovations and abandoned spaces embody social relationships and inequalities, cultural codes, and “collective memory.” Human routes, everyday practices, and new technologies transform these spaces into a constantly evolving network of people, objects, and meanings.

Together, we’ll try to read this “cultural map.” We’ll explore how natural and urban landscapes interact and why some cities develop one way while others take a completely different form.

We’ll also discuss social topography — from the social margins and underground culture to higher education and low income — and examine how social hierarchies become visible in urban space.

Another topic will be the nonverbal aspects of cross-cultural communication: how culture shapes bodily practices and techniques, including personal-space boundaries, gestures, ways of walking, sports, and much more. These practices are simultaneously shaped by the cultural landscape and contribute to transforming it.

The evening will be led by Veronika Gennadyevna Ponomareva (Tselishcheva) — a social anthropologist, sociologist, PhD in Sociology, lecturer in sociology, social and cultural anthropology, cross-cultural communication, and other humanities disciplines, as well as the author of monographs and academic publications.

She also leads the project “Pro-заброшенное,” dedicated to informal youth practices of exploring and reclaiming abandoned spaces in St. Petersburg.