The translocal street: shop signs and local multi-culture along the Walworth Road, South London

摘要

In this paper, we look at the different ways that visual signscapes along an inner London street producesudparticular types of translocal connections to different spaces and places that are physically distanciatedudyet symbolically proximate. We are particularly interested in examining these signscapes for the waysudthat they evoke particular connections between migrant entrepreneurs and a diverse clientele, betweenudthe colonial pasts and postcolonial presents, between the ordinary and the global city, and betweenudeveryday livelihoods and economic exchanges. We suggest that these signscapes are translocal since theyudevoke material and embodied links between the street and its neighbourhoods, while at the same timeudconnecting the street to a wider spatial network of routes/roots which the migrant entrepreneurs haveudtaken to establish their livelihoods on the street. Thus the Walworth Road, a place where a multiplicityudof connections are made between different places through these signs, becomes the node or location ofudparticular types of mobility and migration undertaken by migrants and their clients. It becomes a translocaludstreet as it situates mobile actors and identities within the physical and social forms of economicudexchange, shop front displays and signage. The local ‘multi-culture’ on this street is made and remadeudthrough these particular connections which are material, embodied, everyday and ordinary.