Processes of encountering: locating urban mental health in the entanglements of weak social relations, material elements and normative orders

Abstract Based on long-term ethnographic research in a neighbourhood in Berlin, Germany, this article develops processes of encountering as an ecological concept for analysing the relations between urban life and mental health. Drawing on go-alongs and qualitative interviews, I show how weak and seemingly absent social relations, oftentimes elusive material elements and the inherent normativity of social situations are ubiquitous components of urban life, and highlight their importance for mental health. Processes of encountering functions as an analytical heuristic that describes how urban environments emerge in the entangling of these three components, and grasps the affective qualities emanating from these entanglements. The concept advances an ontological account of the urban and locates mental health ecologically: Rather than treating urban environments as stable entities ‘out there’ or focusing these elements as isolated variables, the concept empirically unpacks how complex urban environments are constituted, and understands mental health as an effect of these constitution processes.