The expeience of the youth and the production of social space: critical ethnography of the flanour in urban spaces (case study: Sanandaj)

According to Lefebvre’s theory of space, the dominance of capitalism on everyday life and its tendency to organize private/public life, leisure time, consumptive activities and symbolic interactions has always been actualized through managing spaces. The most obvious organized spaces in late modernity are urban spaces which can regulate and control the processes of sense-making, identification, getting pleasure and all the usual interactions of people. In Sanandaj, Pasdaran is the only street that owes these attributes and has a different atmosphere. This research attempts to analyze this special difference through relying on Lefebvre theory and using critical ethnography. For doing this and to describe the everyday experiences of flaneurs, we have used various techniques: deep interviews with flaneurs (18-26 age), direct observation, participatory observation and semiotic analysis of some images. The thematic analysis of data, gathered through interviews and participatory observation along with semiotic analysis of some images, show that practices, regulations and special representations in this street make individuals “subjects of emulation”, means that urban space as ideology has been successful in interpllating the youth to accept consumption discourse. This space, through “imposing micro disciplines”, makes the youth to accept a kind of everydayness that is structured according to the special regulations thoroughly. The youth “represent youth” in the context of this everyday life, but this is not a kind of resistance to the special practices and regulations. This space is dominated by capitalistic images and is not at all an open space.