“What can I hope for?” Sociology of Hope and Law in Urban Studies

Abstract

The article shows how the concept of "hope" in the space of urban everyday 9 life suggests the way to analyze fluid urban social interactions. The conceptualizations of hope in urban studies remain rather vague, therefore the article proposes redefining of hope and the techniques for the implementation of hope. The conceptualization of "techniques of hope" is grounded on to Simmel's definition of hope in social interactions and to the anthropological research, where hope acts either as a legal element or as an epis-temological method. To test the efficiency of the proposed conceptualization of the "techniques of hope", the article examines two pure cases of the "ideal villa" and the "vernacular ensemble". The cases represent the work of two forms of urban knowledge: transcendent or self-knowledge. Each case shows how the techniques of hope connect the material and social in the urban space and allow them to coexist. The functioning of the techniques of hope in each case depends on two methods of regulation: technical (the geometry of the villa or the urban grid) and social (common law and nonwritten rules). The results of the analysis of two cases are tested on two empirical situations. Switching between different types of knowledge in these situations demonstrates how urban actors combine different types of knowledge. To translate their hopes into social interactions, actors turn to urban technical regulations and mobilize fluid jurisdictions that localize the application of technical norms.