On the plaza: the politics of public space and culture

Setha M. Low,On the Plaza: The Politics of Public Space and Culture, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000, 274 pages (paper).Reviewer: Pamela J. DowneUniversity of SaskatchewanThis book offers a highly readable and quite interesting historical and ethnographic narrative of plaza life and public space in San Jose, Costa Rica. Drawing on over twenty years of fieldwork in Parque Central and Plaza de la Cultura (the two most central plazas of Costa Rica's capital), Setha Low addresses three fundamental questions throughout the course of the book: (1) Why is public space culturally and politically important--particularly urban civic spaces such as the plaza in Latin American cities? (2) What are the theoretical under-pinnings of the relationship of space and culture, that is, of spatializing culture? (3) How are individual narratives, ethnographies and histories interwoven into a loose fabric in which fragments of experience and memory are juxtaposed with theory and interpretation? (pp. 34-35). For the most part, Low succeeds in convincing readers of the importance of plazas as meaningful public spaces in Costa Rican society and of the significance of the spatialization of culture. Her commendably nuanced readings of historical process, contemporary interactions and ethnographic mapping represent a more insightful appreciation and knowledge of Costa Rican cultures than her previous work in the area and this book is sure to be of value to a broad range of readers.On the Plaza consists of four discrete sections, beginning with an introduction (Part 1) that establishes the context for analysis with excerpts from the author's fieldnotes and an interspersion of photographs. This is an engaging strategy that allows the reader to feel connected to the fieldwork experiences and the challenges of initial observation. The anthropological study of public space is immediately humanized with the personal--and stark--comments about the perceived ugliness of the bandstand in Parque Central and the apparent youthfulness of Plaza de la Cultura. This lends great salience to the more pedantic introduction to the central analytical concepts of spatializing culture and the meanings of place that follow. The greatest strength of this introductory section, however, is the succinct but inclusive discussion of methodology that includes and explanation of method, observation, interview and historical documentation, ethnohistorical archival research, photographic documentation and analytic strategy. This discussion, which preludes the similarly revealing methodological insights that are scattered throughout the text, stands as an excellent example of methodological rigour and innovation, and would be well suited for any undergraduate course on ethnographic methodologies.Part II: Histories comprises three chapters which, together, present the historical processes influencing the design, use and interpretation of the Costa Rican plaza. The first chapter in this section examines the sociopolitical and economic history of Costa Rica and San Jose, with particular attention given to the interaction between physical space and the absolute as well as abstruse power structures of society. Low provides a reasonably sound overview of the general Costa Rican context and, like others, she successfully echoes the arguments against the prevailing view of Costa Rica as an historically egalitarian, homogenous nation free from political conflict and discontent. However, the disappointing brevity of this discussion, particularly that pertaining to the ways in which nationalism has informed the shaping of Costa Rica's public cultures, results in a lack of detail and theoretical sophistication. This cursory treatment of national context is fortunately offset by a far more in-depth and interesting exploration of San Jose as the supposedly modern and progressive vanguard of Costa Rican society, class structure and political activity. …