A Few Durable Civilities: Between a Bean Casserole and a Cheese Crepe

This is a brief appreciation of the physical & metaphorical travels of the late French sociologist, Sylvia Ostrowetsky. A Brazilian casserole & a French crepe are used as symbols of her destinations. Her geographic travels included Aix-en-Provence, the northeast of Brazil, New York City, & Israel, while her intellectual travels included identity, representation, semiotics, aesthetics, beauty, ugliness, Marxism, capitalism, & urbanism. Whether Ostrowetsky was lecturing on the social sciences or economics, her presentation had a deeply poetic quality, which was a pleasant change of pace for her academic & nonacademic audiences alike. Her view of civilization, & cities in particular, was a paradoxical one, as she conceived of an urbanized space as being a fortress within which many different types of freedom were possible. This homage concludes with the author's personal statement, in which he avers that he & Ostrowetsky will always be neighbors, particularly in her sociological sense of the word. R. Young