Sociological Cultural Studies

Sociological Cultural Studies

Phenomenology of "Time-Life" in Ardabil Urban Society

Document Type : .

Authors
farhad farhad 1
Fereidoun babaei Aghdam 2
Hassan Mahmoudzadeh 2
1 PhD. Geography and Urban Planning, Planning and Environmental Sciences, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran
2 Faculty of Geography and Urban Planning, Faculty of Planning and Environmental Sciences, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran
10.30465/scs.2024.49822.2902
Abstract
Introduction
On the one hand, the city has a meaningful and symbolic reality. The city creates a kind of temporal/spatial continuity that appears through meanings. Each of the urban elements, including people, groups, relationships, spaces, objects, etc., can be considered as meaningful and interpretable signs that create more or less extensive semantic networks. On the other hand, the city is still a social reality. Here, the city is ultimately a result of the set of relationships between social actors, and therefore, there is a belief that the formation of urban spaces and relationships follows from these relationships.
Everyday life is considered the focal point of contemporary sociological analysis to understand the worlds of citizens. In the necessity of a new sociological understanding of everyday life, it is said that by developing critical knowledge about everyday life, we must go beyond the mere description of the problematic activities of social agents within specific social networks. With the intertwining of space and time and the existence of discrete components of time (past, present and future) like the timing of the modern era, we can have different representations of the concept of space-time in the city of Ardabil. Along with this space-time, the basic element that becomes important and necessary in the current era is everyday life. Just as the meaning (space-time) is different, life is also different. The city of Ardabil, with its contemporary geographic-sociological spaces, is suitable for the present phenomenological analysis as a lived urban place.
Materials & Methods
We consider the city of Ardabil as the context and Lefebvre's spatial trialetic theory as the text. With the conflict of man in the city, or in other words, the subject with the space, we reach the origin of the phenomenology of space production. Phenomenological reference points are also revealed in basic terms: the perceived, the conceived, and the lived. A reasonable epistemological starting point for understanding space is the position of the embodied subject. The production of space is inseparably related to the subject, at the same time it is irreducible to it.
Discussion & Result
Future in the past as life in vertical proportion
The word and concept of "if" is indicative of the conditional life of a kind of world in the city of Ardabil. The symbol of this life-world is the "root" of the tree. The root as the unconscious includes the past, present and future. Everyday life here is an order of behavior arising from a hierarchical process. Socio-economic structure and production is the result of what employers offer.
Future in linear routine as life in horizontal proportion
Modern thought always promotes linear time. A past that is no more; the future that will come. In this life-world, man and the present time are assumed to be like a tree trunk, which grows to a certain radius every year. Employers use all their efforts to accumulate profit from space-time. Social rules, after trying to represent the so-called realistic terms, ignore all the surrounding conditions and turn society into a neutral and determinable element.
Rhythmic life as future in the present
The future in this life-world is nothing but what is happening now. Under the existence of social space, everyday life finds a collective result. This is different from the repetition and length of life and is something "other". The sum of people and the sum of effective social forces in everyday life are organized under the social atmosphere. In this situation, the society is not only using the mirror to see its situation, but it is putting it in front of the government and the state economy to see itself. The meaning of daily life will be nothing but the reflection of social light (in terms of visual sense) and pleasant musical weight (in terms of hearing sense).
Conclusion
This everyday life of citizens in accordance with the internalized time allows the realization and emergence of life-worlds that make today's urban society a plurality in a meaningful unity. The present research has analyzed these life-worlds by internalizing the meaning of time and life of citizens. In these life-worlds, the urban society of Ardabil as a whole contains a triple schema of life-time.
The vertical life-world: the domain of the environment. Here, the citizen of Ardabil is found as an object, passive. The horizontal life-world: is an arena of modernist representation. The citizen of Ardabil emerges who thinks and retrieves and represents the environment in his mind. Rhythmic life-world: is a space that distributes power (representation) in a network. Rhythm occurs in space and space finds its true meaning. All places are present here and everything comes together here: subjectivity and objectivity, abstract and concrete, real and imaginary, knowable and unthinkable, repetitive and differential, structure and agency, mind and body, conscious and unconscious, everyday life and endless history.
Keywords
Ardabil
Phenomenology
Time
Everyday Life
City
Subjects
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Sociological Cultural Studies
Volume 17, Issue 1 - Serial Number 59
Spring 2026
Spring 2026
Pages 469-490

  • Receive Date 26 August 2024
  • Revise Date 21 December 2024
  • Accept Date 22 December 2024
  • Publish Date 22 May 2026