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Article published In:
The Political Economy of Linguistic Landscapes
Edited by Johan Järlehed, Tommaso M. Milani and Tove Rosendal
[Linguistic Landscape 9:3] 2023
► pp. 268–285

Geographies of inequalities

Bourdieusian intersubjectivity in people-in-place-centered Linguistic Landscape Studies

ORCID logo | Dalarna University
Theoretically positioned at the intersections between human geography, ethnography of space and place, and Linguistic Landscape Studies (LLS), this ethnographically grounded study mediates a dialogue between LLS and Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology and shows how the intersubjective dimension of the habitus provides a powerful lens with which to explore the people-place relation, central to disentangling the political economy of language and place. Inspired by existing ethnographically and people-centered LLS, the study is set in Maputo city, well-known for its enduring social and spatial division from colonial to postcolonial times. The analyses foreground the people-place relation in different sites across the material and non-material urban geographies. By relocating LLS, the study challenges modernist notions of divides, foregrounding the often-neglected invisible embodied dynamics of conflicting schemata – fundamental to the understanding of the reciprocal people-in-place relationship and the spatialization of inequalities, thus offering a rich and thick LLS.
Keywords: Linguistic Landscape, political economy, intersubjectivity, Bourdieu, ethnography of space and place, coloniality, habitus, embodiment, spatialization, urban geographies
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical stances
  • 3.Multidisciplinary datasets and methodological approaches
  • 4.Geographies of inequalities
  • 5.Discussion and concluding remarks
  • References
Published online: 7 August 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ll.22043.rei
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