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Urban Alternatives Through Cooperation: Autonomous Geographies and Recreational Running in Sofia, Bulgaria

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Enabling Urban Alternatives

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Abstract

Based on an empirical study of recreational running clubs, this chapter offers a longitudinal view of ongoing material and discursive transformations associated with efforts to foster an alternative vision of life in the post-socialist urban context of Sofia, Bulgaria. In doing so, it contributes new understandings of autonomous geographies and attempts at fostering pluralistic alternative spaces across different urban contexts. Recreational running has the potential for creating alternative urban worlds through uses of space, bringing bodies together, and re-envisioning forms of collective practice. In identifying techniques for building new worlds through cooperation and re-envisioning corporeal politics, thinking with everyday utopias fosters the material and non-material methods of innovation, highlighting the potential of mundane actions to bring forth new urban worlds.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Coward (2012), who employs Nancy’s ideas to re-cast global urban citizenship and political subjectivity.

  2. 2.

    See Koch and Latham (2013) for techniques of domesticating urban space.

  3. 3.

    On the potential of movement and foregrounding corporeal perception, see Manning (2013).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. EuroHealthNet, Brussels, Belgium

    Andrew Barnfield

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  1. Andrew Barnfield
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Correspondence to Andrew Barnfield .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Danish Centre for Rural Research, University of Southern Denmark, Esbjerg, Denmark

    Jens Kaae Fisker

  2. Urban Studies URBEUR, University of Milano Bicocca, Milan, Italy

    Letizia Chiappini

  3. University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, NSW, Australia

    Lee Pugalis

  4. Dipartimento di Architettura e Studi Urbani, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

    Antonella Bruzzese

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Barnfield, A. (2019). Urban Alternatives Through Cooperation: Autonomous Geographies and Recreational Running in Sofia, Bulgaria. In: Fisker, J., Chiappini, L., Pugalis, L., Bruzzese, A. (eds) Enabling Urban Alternatives. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1531-2_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1531-2_8

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-13-1530-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-13-1531-2

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