MARK GRAHAM and LISSA NORDIN, Anthropologists, Stockholm University
Lars Mikael Raattamaa, Architect and Poet
Moa Tunström, Cultural Geographer, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm

Video part 1

Video part 2

Abstract

Based on an ethnographic study of Hammarby Sjöstad, Stockholm, this symposium explores the relevance of the concept of community to contemporary urban sustainable development. The concept of community is ubiquitous within policies and discussions of sustainability but its meaning and implications are not always fully spelled out or scrutinised. Graham and Nordin examine the kinds of
community that exist in Hammarby Sjöstad and to what extent they are compatible with central tenets and assumptions surrounding the city.

Mark Graham is a social anthropologist at Stockholm University. He leads the project Model City: Community and Sustainability in Hammarby Sjöstad financed by FORMAS. The project provides a critical evaluation of the rhetorical and normative way in which the community concept is used within discourses of sustainable urban development. Lissa Nordin is a collaborator on the project. She is a social anthropologist at the Centre for Gender Studies, Stockholm University. Her earlier research has examined forms of community, local development, identity, class and masculinity in northern Sweden.

LARS MIKAEL RAATTAMAA, Architect and poet

MOA TUNSTRÖM, Cultural Geographer, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm