FONTENELLE, Isleide Arruda. A cidade midiática sob o signo do consumo: a produção de uma sociabilidade da indiferençaThe midiatic city under the consumption sign: the production of a sociability of indifference. Estud. pesqui. psicol. []. 2007, 7, 2. ISSN 1808-4281.

This article approaches the relationships among city, consumption, sociability and indifference, based upon an analysis of the city conception in the automobile era, taking the architectural design of snack bars that grew along the American highways as reference. The historical evolution of those snack bars - from the peak of the modern architecture, to the post-modern spectacle stage -, demonstrates how the city turned into merchandise and how this has corroded the public space. That privatization transforms the city in means for consumption. If, on one side, that demonstrates how the city has integrated the capitalist ideal; on the other side, it reveals how that integration has occurred based on the "safety ideal". That ideal, that in the beginning has exalted the urban individualism, comes, today, under the form of fear that surrounds the city. However, there is a continuity relationship among those two moments: the search of safety as protection against the other, leading to the sociability of indifference

: Consumption; Safety; Community; Sociability; Indifference.

        · |     · |     · ( pdf )