Making Neighbor Relations Through Materialities and Senses

Abstract

Many scholars have turned to neighboring, or neighbor interactions and practices, as an open-ended process rather than a finished ideal. In doing so, they have disrupted the romanticization of the neighborhood as a community-driven and stable space. Through this lens, the proximity of dwelling is seen just as a possibility for social contact rather than a crucial characteristic of neighbor relations. Amid the rapid transformations in contemporary urban environments, neighbor relations as spatial practices are shaped and mediated by multiple forces. Based on five research cases from Brazil, Denmark, Finland, and Russia, this Special Issue, “Materialities and Senses of Neighboring,” explores how neighbor relations are shaped by material and sensory practices in the context of urban housing and localities. This editorial introduction to this Special Issue of Space and Culture highlights the main points of how the foregrounding of material and sensory aspects contributes to the studies of neighbor relations. It then shows how the cross-cutting themes of shared materiality, housing geometry, sensoriality, and imaginaries interplay in the contributors’ articles to develop the overarching idea of the collection.