Redai dili (Dec 2023)
Spatial Embodied Experience and Rhythm Analysis in the Everyday Life of a Traditional Community in a Metropolis: An Auto-Ethnographic Study
Abstract
The study of everyday life has gained attention across various disciplines in the context of modernity. This study utilizes Lefebvre's rhythmanalysis to explore the everyday experiences of residents in the Xiguan Community, a historically significant residential area in western Guangzhou undergoing urbanization and tourism development. Adopting an emic perspective, this study employed auto-ethnography to depict the daily rhythms and spatially embodied experiences of the author, a native resident of the Xiguan Community. By incorporating reflective and self-narrative elements and comparing them across generations, this approach provides first-hand knowledge and self-awareness. This research offers an insider's comprehensive understanding of the effects of urbanization and tourism on residents' everyday lives. Informed by Lefebvre's rhythmanalysis, this analysis incorporates spatial and temporal dimensions, with a specific emphasis on residents' experiences of spatial embodiment and their engagement with everyday rhythms. The study reveals two key findings: First, urbanization and the commodification of landscapes have created a constructed "the present" in traditional communities, displacing the meaningful "existence" of everyday life. Certain spaces within these communities have detached from residents' everyday lives, serving urban and tourism purposes, and leading to partial alienation in spatial and temporal dimensions. These spaces represent the simulacra and fragments of residents' everyday lives, lacking subjectivity, temporality, and wholeness. Over time, the "existence" that embodies the meaning of residents' everyday lives has been squeezed out by structural forces such as urban renewal and community tourism. For tourists, these landscapes may serve only as replicas of attractions, devoid of the essence of residents' everyday lives. For the residents, these community spaces have become manifestations of instrumental rationality and commodification. Second, this study highlights that traditional community residents' bodies are disciplined and governed by the instrumental rationality of urban production and the invisible rhythms of the tourism industry. In large cities, the significance of individual bodies in traditional urban communities is often overlooked, as bodies become tools for creating value through work. Individuals adjust their everyday rhythms based on urban settings' production rationality and efficiency priorities. This undermines the bodily rhythms that align with natural cycles and prompts residents to distance themselves from traditional communities. While the older generation in the Xiguan Community experiences overlapping leisure time and shares community spaces, fostering solid social relationships, the younger generation faces longer working hours, extended commuting distances, and more individualized leisure time. As a result, there is a lack of synchronization in leisure rhythms among neighbors. The embodied rhythms of traditional community residents have shifted from a state of harmony with natural rhythms and community spaces to being governed by the instrumental rationality of urban production and invisible rhythms of the tourism industry. This study provides an emic and longitudinal perspective to the investigation of spatial experiences and embodied rhythms in urban and tourism development. The use of auto-ethnography amplifies residents' voices and calls for greater consideration of local daily life. These findings emphasize the importance of incorporating residents' everyday experiences into the planning and development of sustainable communities and tourism.
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