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Non-Lieux. AI generated image Introduction When Marc Augé introduced the concept of the non-place in Non-Lieux , his aim was not to lament the loss of tradition but to describe a transformation in the texture of everyday experience. Airports, motorways, hotel chains, and supermarkets were not marginal anomalies; they were emblematic spaces of what he called surmodernité . These environments organized movement, access, and identity through procedures rather than narratives, instructions rather than stories. Three decades later, non-places have not disappeared. Yet the conditions under which they operate—and are experienced—have changed. Revisiting Augé today invites a renewed question: what happens to symbolic mediation when everyday life is increasingly organized by systems that not only regulate circulation, but also anticipate, address, and respond? Non-Places and the Solitary Subject Augé famously distinguishes anthropological places from non-places by their relation to identi...

Gen Z Stare  and  Non-Places. AI image Introduction When Marc Augé introduced the concept of the non-place in the early 1990s, he offered anthropology a way of thinking about spaces defined not by shared memory or symbolic density, but by circulation, regulation, and transience. Airports, highways, supermarkets, and hotel chains appeared not as marginal sites but as emblematic expressions of what he termed surmodernité . These spaces were saturated with signs and instructions, yet marked by a striking absence of dialogue. More than thirty years later, non-places remain a familiar feature of everyday life. What has changed is not their prevalence, but their mode of address. In recent years, a behavioral phenomenon often labeled in popular discourse as the “Gen Z stare” has attracted attention: a neutral, opaque gaze, marked by delayed or minimal response when one is directly addressed. Rather than dismissing this posture as rudeness or disengagement, this article proposes t...