Abstract
This chapter brings together the lessons learned about how store owners and their businesses foster positive interactions – a social “more” – among neighborhood residents. It substantiates the appropriateness of viewing store owners as socially important figures whose business activities contribute to local social life – by building places where community is practiced. Drawing on the deep ethnographic data described in previous chapters, it offers a grounded (emerging) theory focusing on the micro-interactions in the stores, summarizing how the manifold interactions described in previous chapters cumulate into new patterns of belonging and understanding in everyday urban life.
“Karl-Marx-Straße is not as anonymous as it seems. Behind the curtain, it does work” (Flower Store Owner, l. 195 f.). The quote refers to the belief held by the interviewed store owners that although Karl-Marx-Straße conveys a rather anonymous impression for outsiders, there is behind the scenes mutual cooperation and social interaction and a sense of community between the store owners.
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Steigemann, A. (2019). Conclusion: “Lifting the curtain” of Karl-Marx-Straße’s Places where Community is Practiced. In: The Places Where Community Is Practiced. Stadt, Raum und Gesellschaft. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-25393-6_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-25393-6_8
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Publisher Name: Springer VS, Wiesbaden
Print ISBN: 978-3-658-25392-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-658-25393-6
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