The urban section, the situated ambiances, and the “evidential paradigm”:: tools for fabricating a shared view on the city

Abstract

This article presents a theoretical discussion about the heuristic value of the descriptive instruments of the city in the research on situated ambiances, which is based on a reflection on the urban section and the epistemological model that Carlo Ginzburg named “evidential”. This reflection was carried out in the context of an interdisciplinary field research on the issue of domestic waste collection in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. First, we characterize the disperse and heterogeneous elements – related to subjects and the built space – that the section permits gathering as “clues”, which allows the visualization of an ambiance, conceived as a unity. Following that, we discuss the theoretical status of that unity, conceived as a structure. For this purpose, we introduce the distinction between real object and object of knowledge, as proposed in the beginning of the 20th century by the founder of modern linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure. Through such a distinction, we seek to avoid a conception of space that is founded on a substantialist idea of “totality”. Based on such considerations, the urban section will not be defined as a “representation of the space” (a real object), but rather as a “registry of a view” on it (a theoretical object). Lastly, as a writing technology, the urban section will be characterized as a tool for fabricating a shared view on the city. In this sense, it could contribute to establish a common ground of debate for the various and heterogeneous disciplinary fields and registries of knowledge about the sensory experience summoned by the notion of ambiance.