"Stitching the neighbourhood together at BUUR West - the enactment of a social infrastructure in Nijmegen Oud-West"
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2025-12-19
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en
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This research explores the labour and care practices that are put into maintaining a social infrastructure. This research is conducted during seven months of ethnographic fieldwork at BUUR West, including the shadowing of three employees during their workday. This master thesis aims to complement research done by others investigating the influence and role of social infrastructure on our cities. In this way, this thesis attempts to show why these spaces matter in the urban fabric, and why they should be maintained and protected.
What makes the neighbourhood café BUUR West different from a regular café is that visitors can take a seat without any further (financial) commitments or can join an activity. Researching the infrastructural labour of the social infrastructure at BUUR West identified four broad themes: physical maintenance; activity management; communication, outreach and being facilitating; and cooperation and professional anchoring. Both employees, volunteers and visitors are needed to carry out the different types of labour. For maintaining the social infrastructure, practices of care are in many ways intertwined with the aforementioned enactments and labour. BUUR West functions as an everyday non-institutional care space, where care practices are visible among colleagues, among visitors, and between the two groups combined.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen