Panelstories: Ethnography of Space (Re)production at Černý Most Modernist Housing Estate

Panelstories: Ethnography of Space (Re)production at Černý Most Modernist Housing Estate. Mgr. Michal Lehečka Abstract: The dissertation focuses on spatial environment of socialist modernist housing estates. Based on data collected during a 10year long fieldwork in multiple modernist housing locations, it explores dominant ways of spatial (re)production of Černý Most housing estate in Prague. Thanks to its ownership and ethnic structure Černý Most represents an ideal fieldwork site where both long term and contemporary phenomena resulting from the post-socialist transformation can be detected, described and analysed. After 1989, former socialist modernist cities have undergone a plethora of political, economical and social changes and disruptions. These changes continuously uncover an ongoing interaction between the initial egalitarian and collectivist heritage of the housing estate as well as its ambiguous and fragmented property structure. Spaces of the estates are continuously (re)produced through various manifestations of actors' territorial claims. The spatial changeability is best described by Henri Lefebvre's notion of socio-material (re)production of space and his widely used concept of spatial triad (Lefebvre 1991). Transformation of housing estates is therefore (re)produced through (in)visible..