SITUATIONAL PLACES © The authors 2014 Geograiska Annaler: Series B © 2014 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography 1 SituAtionAl plAceS: REThINkINg gEOgRAPhIES Of INTERCULTURAL interAction in Super-diverSe urBAn SpAce by peter dirksmeier, ilse Helbrecht and ulrike Mackrodt dirKSMeier, p., HelBrecHt, i. and MAcKrodt, u. (2014): ‘Situational places: rethinking geographies of intercultural interac- tion in super-diverse urban space’, Geograiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 96 (4): 1–14. ABStrAct. cities in general and public urban spaces in particular have re-emerged as important places where strangers from differ- ent social and cultural backgrounds interact. the growing number of intercultural encounters assumed by contemporary urban stud- ies calls for a theoretical examination of how these encounters are conducted. in this article we therefore critically examine the in- terplay between cultures, strangers, performances, encounters, and urban built environments. this means bringing together the the- oretical ideas of super-diversity, culture in world society, and sit- uational places. the article argues that intercultural interactions between strangers in cities – and elsewhere – shape the cultural conditions of contemporary world society. First, super-diversity is discussed as a cultural reality of world society. drawing on empir- ical evidence from psychology, intercultural interactions between strangers are then demonstrated to be part of ritualized cultural ne- gotiations. Finally, the notion of situational places is put forward as the conceptual nexus between these cultural encounters and the ur- ban environment. this perspective allows the integration of bodi- ly performances between strangers, spatial and situational context, and the resulting places of encounter. Keywords: interaction, super-diversity, situational places, encoun- ter, culture, strangers Introduction in current discussions on urban places, a classic fo- cal point of urban sociology and geography has re- surfaced. cities, as valentine has argued, are ‘being reimagined as a site of connection’ (valentine 2008, p. 324). rather than being seen as highly segregated, hierarchically structured spaces that separate, cit- ies in world society enable encounters between dif- ferent social and cultural groups; at the same time cities diminish the possibility of encounters due to the increasing privatization of formerly public ur- ban spaces and the increasing segregation of mul- tiple publics. in this article we examine from a conceptual perspective this interplay between interactions be- tween strangers, their ritualization, performances and the material cultures of cities as key features of the contemporary Western metropolis, arguing that the speciic and temporary relationship of these phe- nomena in urban space create ‘situational places’ (dirksmeier and Helbrecht 2010, p. 39). Situational places could be deined as situated performances of interactions between strangers arising out of bod- ily encounters in urban space. Following Sarah Ahmed’s claim that ‘encounters between embod- ied others hence involve spatial negotiations with those who are already recognized as either familiar or strange’ (Ahmed 2000, p. 24), with the idea of sit- uational spaces we aim to contribute to the elaborate debate in current geographies of urban encoun- ter (e.g. laurier and philo 2006a, 2006b; valentine 2008; clayton 2009; Wessel 2009; dirksmeier and Helbrecht 2010; Hemming 2011; Matejskova and leitner 2011; Wilson 2011; Andersson et al. 2012; leitner 2012; valentine and Waite 2012; valentine 2013; valentine and Sadgrove 2014), thereby re- lecting on the role of culture and super-diversity (vertovec 2007) in world society (Burton 1972; luhmann 1990; Meyer et al. 1997). the communicative conditions of world soci- ety foster interactions between strangers and, conse- quently, facilitate relections on interactions between strangers as mundane instances of cultural emer- gence. Here we use the term emergence in its clas- sic sense as ‘a cumulative change, a change in which certain characteristics supervene upon other charac- teristics, these characteristics being adequate to ex- plain the occurrence on their level’ (pepper 1926, p. 241). our main thesis, outlined in detail in the fol- lowing sections, contends that interactions between strangers in cities are rituals (Goffman 1967; collins 2004) involving bodily practices and performances in urban space which shape cultures of encounter in cities. the aim of this conceptualization is two- fold. First, it enables us to think of encounters be- tween strangers as a hinge between an individual’s behaviour, cultural norms, and social commerce – which, of course, includes questions of power. this