Accommodation: Keeping discord at bay in order to hold together
This article re-examines the pragmatist issue of publicity through the lens of the relationships between urban public space and the political process. It proposes, first of all, to examine how the sociology of urban public spaces, inspired by ecological and pragmatist approaches, links urban experience and democratic experience. It then questions this connection on the basis of an inquiry into the relations of coexistence of communities within a Brussels public space. The ecological concept of “accommodation” that Robert E. Park developed in the 1920-30s is put to the test in descriptions of the experience of situations where socially distant worlds coexist, or even cohabit, in close spatial proximity. The mutual aversion of their members is contained. Accommodation is accompanied by an inhibition of the processes required for a collective problematization of the conditions of living together. Taking up this concept is an invitation to re-examine the ethics of hospitality in city’s public spaces and to cast a more anxious look at the democratic virtues of urban publicity.