Abstract

I reflect on the moral geography of the metropolitan area of Guadalajara from an analysis of the advertising strategies perceived from the routes traveled on board public transport; Through participant observation exercises, urban drifts, and semi-structured interviews, I highlight the links between landscape, bodies, and morality, with their respective political correlates. As a result, I show the structuring role that these communicative strategies have in the configuration of identities and the moral territorialization of contemporary metropolises based on the differential distribution of socio-political representations based on lifestyles and consumption.

Keywords: moral geography, urban imaginary, landscape, advertising, transit

Passerby Imaginaries: Outdoor Advertising and Its Relationship to the Guadalajara's Moral Geography

I reflect on Guadalajara metropolitan area's moral geography through an analysis of advertising strategies glimpsed on public transportation trips. Using participatory observation exercises, urban wanderings and semi-structured interviews, I underline connections between landscape, bodies and morality alongside their respective political correlates. As a result, I demonstrate the structuring role these communications strategies exert in identity configuration and the moral territorialization of contemporary metropolises via differential distribution of sociopolitical-based lifestyle and consumption representations.

Keywords: landscape, transit, moral geography, urban imaginaries, advertising.

The political articulation of outdoor advertising with daily traffic

Going through cities is a fundamental act for social life in them. People move through the streets of the city either with our own limbs or using vehicles - increasingly with greater zeal - shaping personal and group trajectories that, when systematically analyzed, show almost choreographic patterns (Wright, 2013). Our transit, like many other cultural expressions - inhabiting, consuming, surfing the Internet, for example - responds to complex strategies of social order that rely on eminently political devices that are not very evident due to their daily life.

In this article, I will understand by transit the act of moving physically and mentally through the material framework of a geographical point, with or without a fixed course. In this act, in addition, a series of material, symbolic, historical and political dispositions converge that create, maintain and transform a series of qualities that define an important part of the morphology and cultural expressions of a city. To show this, it is enough to think about the intrinsic relationship that the usual forms of transit in a city have with respect to the type of aromas, sounds, colors and symbols that characterize them.

For the sociocultural dispositions of transit to converge and the urban order to take place day by day, the regular and active presence of the individuals who transit them is required. For the city as a moral and productive project joined to the neoliberal world-system, individuals understood as reproducers of the behavioral, economic and symbolic patterns that each one of the cities and their respective agendas of production and consumption keep for themselves. Passersby are a key part of this system as reproducers of the cultural practices that sustain it, a good part of them associated with the production and consumption of material, symbolic and computer goods.

Passers-by, understood as individuals, socialized and reproducers of the city through their daily practices, can also be seen as citizen actors, who will be more or less politically active depending on the socializing patterns through which their urban being is configured.

The citizen-passer-by relationship can then be understood as a form of be in the city that facilitates the reproduction of the norms, classes, areas and practices that are most characteristic of it as a project of social order. Being a citizen is a way of being part of and interacting with the city that is directly linked to the way we learn to be part of it, including here a series of norms and values linked to our forms of consumption (García, 2009).

A key process to understand the different expressions of citizenship, configured from the act of walking, is the definition, representation and objectification of the city and its residents from the reiterative perception of the roles, stereotypes and prejudices materialized in the landscape urban. As we routinely move through the streets, we receive and interpret messages that tell us how to be in the various urban settings. These messages will be perceived and interpreted according to various conditions such as gender, age, race, class, occupation and place of residence, but a condition that can encompass and at the same time filter several of these is the modality used for the transit. It is undeniable that different codes, scenes and landscapes are perceived and generated if the body, a bicycle, a car, a bus or a subway car are used to move from one point to another.

Among the most characteristic messages that order the patterns of belonging, lifestyles and territorialization in contemporary cities is outdoor advertising. It is a type of advertising linked to the logic of traffic, designed on a large scale with the aim that it can be perceived by passers-by during their daily journeys through the cities. This type of advertising contains characteristic formal elements, among which, according to Breva and Balado (2009), are the following: 1) use of images that alone convey the desired message; 2) little text that conveys simple and powerful messages; 3) fast and easy to read typography; 4) strategic use of color that attracts attention, benefits reading and associates the product with feelings and emotions.

The convergence of these formal elements in an advertising-type communication strategy has an eminently political facet, especially when considering public space as

field in which a certain form of social bond and relationship with power develops. In other words, it is the topographic loaded or invested with morality that is alluded to not only when speaking of public space in institutional and technical discourses on the city, but also in all kinds of pedagogical campaigns for "good citizen practices" and in all municipal regulations that seek to regulate the behavior of users on the street (Delgado, 2011: 19).

Although it could be objected that not all billboards have as their main purpose the institutionalization of “good citizen practices”, it cannot be denied that, in any message of this type, there are certain values that define issues of morality and intended customs. as desirable according to the place and time.

In the sense of the above, it is worth considering the relationship that the landscape has in the materialization and institutionalization of the values imposed by dominant groups characteristic of hierarchical societies. According to Tuan (1988), it is in the landscape where the prestige, well-being, pleasure and beauty that empower privileged groups are expressed in geographical terms. For the same author, the analysis of how these types of expressions arise and are reproduced is the object of study of moral geography, understood as the one interested "in the internal organization of society and how power is distributed in it ... the landscape it promotes and sustains, in turn, the system and social values that it embodies ”(p. 214).

Moral geography can be understood from two sides. On the one hand, it is a psychogeographic perspective that allows identifying the overlaps between power, subjectivity and materiality of an asymmetric socio-urban order in terms of aspirations, lifestyles, landscapes, explicit and implicit norms and their respective evaluations; this can be considered the methodological face, due to its value as an analytical tool.

On the other hand, moral geography can also be assumed as the programmatic order of a city, which orders its residents as part of a social structure that they themselves reproduce when traveling and inhabiting it as part of their daily lives; It is, then, an objectification of the predominant values of urban life characteristic of a city, which I would call the political-structural facet

While the first meaning of moral geography mentioned is a way of observing the relationships between space and power, the second refers to a programmatic order, the materialization of an intersubjective fabric that operates in the daily life of cities and orders people conforming to politically determined moral standards.

If we consider that billboards are today an inherent part of the urban landscape, it will be clear to us that they contain extremely powerful material in terms of social ordering and the political exercise of images. For Rojas (2006), the analysis of the imaginary is based on the recognition of “the image establishing relationships between form and function” (p. 18). Images define epochs, delimit events, practices, and allow us to understand the organization of the world. For this author:

The imaginary deals both with “the creation and use of images to inform, convince, seduce, legitimize processes, their influence; how much of visual documentation in culture, academic disciplines and ways of thinking. It analyzes how visual language is structured and how the meaning conveyed by the figures is communicated (Rojas, 2006: 19).

The nexus between landscape and urban imaginary shows that we do not perceive and interpret reality directly as our senses tell us, but through the mediation of a host of meanings that are transmitted to us through socialization. Raising this relationship when analyzing any urban problem problematizes the cultural filters that mediate our perception of the world, but also their direct influence on our actions in it.

In the following sections I will dedicate myself to presenting a proposal to read the link between the landscape and the cultural guidelines that objectify, fragment and segregate based on the constant exposure of the stereotypical representation patterns used in outdoor advertising, ready for the gaze of passersby. It is important to note that this reading is situated from the perspective of a user of public transport, because the stigma associated with this service, in the context of the metropolitan area of Guadalajara, reinforces the role that this type of communication strategies play in the construction of cultural boundaries.

Read the landscape and its moral connotations in a colonial city (ista)

Guadalajara is a city that became a metropolis, in part, due to the ideals of modernization characteristic of the second half of the century xx; Such aspirations were linked to processes of nascent and growing industrialization, mobility and consumption (Vázquez, 1992). But, before that, it was a city born of colonization under the logic of racial and cultural segregation (De la Torre, 1998). This origin marked an imprint not only in the ways of living, but also in those of traveling
the city.

The public transport service in Guadalajara is heir to the almost mythical cultural borders that marked the original division of the city between the indigenous east and the European west (De la Torre, 2001) and which, in turn, are a geopolitical expression of the aspirations and worldviews that correspond to the global north and south. This is evident in the language, aesthetics and values that are promoted by architecture and observable businesses on one side of the city or the other.

The ascription to a lifestyle and privileged status is intimately linked to geographical points of the territory that merge with the ways of traveling. A resident of this city recognizes that there are differential statuses for those who move by private car and those who move by public transport, and that it is the former who assume the most prestigious status.

In the case of automobiles, aspects such as the make and model, or even the sexual gender of the driver, are defining; although so will the place where they usually travel. Thus, a late-model automobile that circulates in an impoverished area of the Guadalajara metropolitan area may be susceptible to moral derision; It is common for a vehicle with this type of characteristics to raise questions about whether it is someone from "bad living", which refers to the relationship between vehicles, landscape, power and morals.1

Image 1

Contrasts in the type of business according to the area. Dry cleaning in the western area of the amg.

Picture 2

Contrasts in the type of business according to the area. Laundry in the eastern area of the amg.

The geographic center and periphery merge with patterns of political center-periphery associated with forms of consumption and their consequent lifestyles, from which polarities emerge between the cultured-uneducated, new-old, traditional-modern, rich- poor, slim-fat, blond-brown, to name a few. These dichotomies acquire moral evaluations that make it possible to judge the desirable and the undesirable in a context of order proper to cities that, according to Lofland (1973), was made possible thanks to “an ordering of the urban population in terms of appearance and spatial location, of so that those within the city could get to know each other widely simply by looking ”(p. 22).

The center and the periphery constitute geographic markers that have social connotations, but they are also political and artificial creations that sustain forms of segregation. In the case of Guadalajara, these indicators account for the articulating logic since its foundation and structure the experience and the imaginary of the city. Center and periphery serve as the guiding logic of urban practices, relationships and identities.

The routes between and from the center-periphery dyad allow passers-by to submit to the moral order of the city (or subvert it). It is from moving around the city that we have access to an idea of place, belonging and cognitive demarcations. According to Aguilar (2012),

It is the routes, the knowledge that is acquired through them, the information that is accessed and the orientation from the cardinal points that makes the idea of a place emerge ... what at first was a wide area and neutral acquires a special order and value.

The relationship between the paths of the passerby and the landscape is not only one of contemplation, but also of construction, since, following the tradition of French cultural geography,

The production of a landscape implies that a social group that has established itself in a place would have to recognize itself in it, orient itself from it, mark its territory, name it and institutionalize it ... The landscape and its language are a code that is shared and used collectively (Aguilar, 2012: 124-125).

In the analysis that I present below, I focus my gaze from the perspective of a user of public transport because, although private car drivers are also exposed to these commercials, it is evident that the condition of user of collective transport allows a different type of public for them. Among other things, public transport users may pay more attention to billboards, but they also perceive them from very different angles, schedules and identities due to the stigma associated with this mode of transport.

Guidelines for a political reading of the advertising landscape

Those who make daily commutes to get from home to work or school at specific times are routinely exposed to multiple advertising formats; it seems that any surface is susceptible to becoming advertising. In such a way that a passerby can perceive an advertisement on a wall, a metal panel designed to display with large-format printed canvases, paper posters, handmade signs, coatings placed on vehicles, and even on the bodies of other passers-by.

The quality of advertising varies both in terms of creativity and formal communication strategy and in the quality of design and formats. As will be seen later, these variations, as well as the formal contents of each advertisement, are territorialized following a pattern that corresponds to the fragmentation of the Guadalajara metropolitan area according to its commercial, industrial and residential areas in a relatively broad category that distinguishes between the popular and the exclusive.

The communicative strategy of outdoor advertising responds to the logic of speed, its impact is determined by the ability it has to hook the public with a concrete and significant message that generates almost reflex sensations such as desire or repulsion. These strategies respond to audiences determined by market studies that, in turn, territorialize and naturalize the pattern of consumers to whom they are directed. It means that the relationship between the ads and their viewers is co-creative, the advertiser strategically chooses where to promote a certain product and, in turn, the potential consumer identifies with certain practices or consumption patterns that characterize him, and may even develop a certain predilection for certain brands. How are representations of what is desired or feared in outdoor advertising related to the territorial distribution of the political-cultural diversity of a city? (Image 3).

Picture 3

Desires are also expressed in normative terms of how to inhabit, dress, rest, and procreate.

To answer this question, I have proposed an analysis of the imageries exposed in various outdoor advertisements distributed throughout different areas of the metropolitan area of Guadalajara, mainly in the municipalities of Zapopan, Tlaquepaque, Tonalá and Guadalajara.

The material that I present corresponds to an observation exercise carried out in 2016 and which consisted of approaching public transport routes following three parameters: strategic routes that cross the area in question at the various cardinal points; routes following an erratic pattern guided by random circumstances such as arrival at a transshipment point or my ignorance of the area to approach a new route following the methodological proposal of urban drift (Pellicer, 2013); I finally made three trips accompanied by two users and one user of public transport at their usual times with their corresponding transfers.2 I also had the opportunity to do semi-structured interviews with users of public transport that were not directly focused on the subject of outdoor advertisements, but that put the reading from moral geography in context as I propose it here (Image 4).

Picture 4

The resource of desire is applied both in the case of advertising for nightclubs with the sublimation of fellatio to a candy lollipop (left); as for the sale of real estate under the premise of inhabiting art (right).

As a result of the 22 observation routes on board the public transport, I obtained a collection of photographs, among which some that I present here stand out. These show concretely the communication strategies followed by outdoor advertisements and, in some cases, fragments of the urban context in which they are located.

I must emphasize that these are not photographs that you originally took with the intention of publishing in an article like this; At first, I found myself compiling them with the curiosity of someone who believes that for some reason it would be worth recording them, but without identifying clear patterns for their reading and analysis. This is the rationale for why many of them will be inconveniently out of focus, out of square, filtered with reflections from bus windows, or traversed by electrical and lighting utility wiring. If I dare to show them like this, it is because it seems to me that the important thing is the content of the advertisements in relation to their territorial correlate and because they correspond to an inherent quality of anthropological work: the surprising spontaneity of culture.

For the analysis, it is important to assess the scale, since it is not the same to analyze advertising discourses in terms of content than in terms of context and location. Actually, the most relevant thing for what I have proposed here is to approach it in the three dimensions; I will try to encompass some of its repetitive aspects in order to identify patterns both in the communication strategy and in the territorialization of the advertisements.

An example of what I mean is the one I show in the following images. In the one located on the left side, if one focuses on the analysis of the content of the advertising message, one can identify a series of strategic elements of the message, such as the iconic use of the hat, the mustache and the tricolor combination of the Mexican flag associated with the words "Pinches" and "tacos", which position what is sold in an identity category. But if the advertisement is placed in the context where it is located, as will be seen in the image on the right, the message takes on a different meaning, which is concatenated with the type of premises, the furniture, the bodies and clothing of the consumers. the vegetation, the roads, the cars, the graffiti and even the apparent schedule in which the photograph was taken; That is the relevance of the landscape in the way we read the contents of advertising.

Picture 5

Advertising scaled up of content.

Picture 6

Advertising scaled in context.

Finally, there is the scale of location, which places the context in a mappable geographical point that allows reading the previous scales in a comparative dimension that shows cultural, social and economic borders. For users of public transport, this location is directly related to their daily journeys and the perceptible contrasts between the different areas, but it also goes hand in hand with their own biography.

For reasons of practicality in the analysis that I intend here, and due to the limited length of this article, I will not be able to show all the ads in these three dimensions; however, I urge readers to consider these three aspects for a systematic reading in case they consider using this proposal as a clue to deepen their own investigations.3

Similarly, it is important to mention that, although several of the examples that I show appear isolated and categorized according to themes or moral representations, they are not necessarily isolated from each other when it comes to areas saturated with advertising. As I show in the following image, on the same site you can find, for example, advertisements that promote telephony, perfumery, education and food. This is a sign that, in the same fragment of the landscape, a series of imaginaries are condensed that seek to influence the passerby on various aspects of their personal, family and social life: from the most desirable forms of what to eat and where to study, how much fun and what to smell.

Picture 7

The same landscape can contain multiple persuasive strategies that order different spheres of a potential consumer's lifestyle. This type of strategy marks highly polarized consumer identities.

Approach to Imaginaries in Advertising and Their Moral Implications

Reading the style and content of outdoor advertising from the perspective of moral geography allows us to understand the way in which lifestyle is articulated with appearance depending on the different areas of the metropolis. Advertising, especially that of spectacular advertisements, segments the daily journeys of users according to various stereotypes and territorializes based on notions of belonging.

The style of outdoor advertising and its messages vary according to the areas, modifying the landscape, in some cases cramming with spectacular messages (especially on avenues and expressways); in others with the presence of printing canvases or handmade posters (especially in popular neighborhoods); resorting to interplay with architectural forms or even dressing the bodies of people hired to advertise.

Picture 8

A man disguised as a wrestler becomes the embodiment of an advertisement promoting a popular box. Popular banks are savings and loan cooperatives enabled for sectors of the population that, due to aspects such as their purchasing power or their credit history, do not have access to other formal institutions that offer the same services. These types of establishments are practically non-existent in exclusive areas of the city.

Picture 9

A young woman displays a fluorescent sign promoting the sale of storage devices usb outside the popular commercial area dedicated to technology in the downtown area of Guadalajara. These types of strategies predominate in popular areas.

In the first category, which can be called exclusive, the advertising carried out by marketing professionals is identified, presents slogans abstract and refers to businesses, products or businesses that are not necessarily close to where the ad is located. This type of advertising promotes the notion of exclusivity through labels such as Vip, select, premier, premium or gold; uses the English language as an exclusive resource, promotes the value of cosmopolitanism and uses, in many cases, metallic fonts to convey the idea of economic value. Likewise, these strategies tend to highlight the value of the different, the exclusive or the original, which, in turn, appeal to a global identity.

Picture 10

Exclusive advertising promotes the notion of exclusivity through labels such as “vip","select","premier","premium"Or"gold"; attends to the English language as an exclusive resource, promotes the value of cosmopolitanism and uses, in many cases, metallic fonts to convey the idea of economic value. Likewise, these strategies tend to highlight the value of the different, the exclusive or the original which, in turn, appeal to a global identity.

The second category, which can be considered popular, is characterized by artisan posters, handmade by the merchants themselves or with advertising strategies that refer to traditional and local discourses, in some cases even notions of race. Usually, this type of advertising is found just outside the business or in the same business, using the facade as a showcase. In contrast to the strategy of exclusivity, it tends to appeal to shared identity, often claiming nationalist, local, regional and racial symbols (Image 11).

Picture 11

Popular advertising is characterized by artisan posters, handmade by the merchants themselves or with advertising strategies that refer to traditional and local discourses, in some cases even to notions of race.

An additional characteristic of this strategy is the constant reference to proper names, surnames, nicknames or diminutives to name and advertise local businesses, mainly in popular areas. The most common is to find businesses named after the person who owns or founded it. Contrary to the case of large franchises, the client has relatively clear where the profits of the business go, but also the direct reference of who is behind the elaboration of the service or product consumed (Image 12).

Picture 12

Popular advertising presents a constant reference to proper names, surnames, nicknames or diminutives. The most common is to find businesses named after the person who owns or founded it.

Another difference lies in the most recurrent ways to transmit advertising. In the case of advertising for exclusive areas, spectacular advertisements predominate, but strategies for presenting the business by alluding to foreign places through references to landscapes, languages and international icons are also common. Although it may be accompanied by various advertising expressions, they are not usually cluttered with information (Image 13).

Picture 13

In exclusive areas, strategies for presenting the business by alluding to foreign places through references to landscapes, languages and international icons are also common.

In contrast, when it comes to advertising in popular areas, printed canvases predominate, some professionally designed, others more or less improvised and even small-format paper posters with bright colors whose messages are written by hand. A characteristic that distinguishes it from that of exclusive areas is the overcrowding of information, ranging from the explanation of the menu of a restaurant or inn to the price list of the items for sale (Image 14).

Picture 14

Printed canvases predominate in popular areas, some with a professional design, others more or less improvised and even small-format paper posters with bright colors whose messages are written by hand. They are also distinguished by the overcrowding of information, often not very legible.

Once these differences have been presented in the visual field, it is worth noting some of the distinctions recognized by users of public transport in terms of the contrasts between one area and another. Aurelia, a student at the public university, a user of Route 603-B and a neighbor of the municipality of Guadalajara, recognizes the same difference that I have mentioned and relates it to the lifestyle depending on where they are:

Here [where I work] there are many spectacular ones; there by my house, no. If you see a poster it is because they sell pozole or they sell a drowned cake, handmade posters on phosphorescent cardboard and that's it.

Aurelia also distinguishes the type of products offered as follows:

For example, here around my house what they advertise are more than chicken shops or fishmongers or small inns, stationery shops, cybers... and here it is like more products that everyone knows about ... shampoo, creams, cars, all that.4

Dulce, another public university student, user of routes such as 78, 320-A and 368, a neighbor of Zapopan, describes one of the areas where exclusive advertising predominates as "pretty", in the following
terms:

There are other areas that I do not know that suddenly we pass and I say "oh, God, where are we"; I don't know them; for example Providencia, where [Avenida] Américas and Punto Sao Paulo are, I find it very nice too. However, I know almost nothing else about that area, the pure street, because further inside I don't find much, because I don't usually go there, only the square.

The reference to the beauty quality of a place is a moral marker when it is analyzed in conjunction with the type of people who usually travel, consume and inhabit them. This type of reference also takes on an explicitly political value when the forms of consumption, the type of bodies and the appearances associated with the segregationist pattern of the city are integrated, as evidenced in Aurelia's opinion, which refers to the square Andares commercial as if it were a town with its respective inhabitants:

In my neighborhood, even if someone dresses up and dresses well, then later you know it's from there, you can't imagine that it comes from Andares or that it comes from another place. It's like seeing them differently, I don't know, even if they wear fodongos, even if they bring flip flops, it's like seeing them differently, I don't know why, whether it's how they walk, it's how they express themselves, but it's like the change from place to place.

Elda, an architect and professor at a private university who lives in Guadalajara and uses routes such as 635-A, 380 and 358, describes the areas that I have recognized as popular here as follows:

They are very saturated. There are some that do have insecurity problems, so you don't like going. There is no offer or something that I have to do there, so that's also why [I'm not going]; It is not so much that I avoid them, but that I have nothing to do there.

Elda's emphasis on the remoteness that the supply of popular areas represents for her again refers us to the relationship of transit with consumption, but also with its immanent relationship to insecurity. For his part, Fausto, a bricklayer who lives in the municipality of Tlaquepaque and is a user of routes such as 380 and 619, describes the reason why he likes the exclusive area of Zapopan more than other areas of the metropolis:

I like the Puerta de Hierro area better because it is another… how can I tell you… as you see there that it is another [place], as, for example, many people say that the United States is like that and Mexico is not, that is, They see the differences, well, they see the difference of the colonies where one lives and there, what do you say, oh no manches, here it is ... that is, they live life more better?eda?

Fausto's reference to the imaginary of the United States is not fortuitous if one takes into account what I have shown so far: the use of the English language, businesses specialized in body care, restaurants with foreign dishes and the representation of young, white bodies. and slender influence the construction of a foreign imaginary; It is not a fictitious foreigner, but intentional and linked to the advertising and consumption strategies of the area.

The sensation of foreigners produced when experiencing the landscape from symbolic markers such as those represented in advertising, both of those who move from a popular area to an exclusive one as well as those who do it the other way around, is highly political in nature, because it distributes particular forms to perceive and experience the city based on differential access to qualities and qualities in consumption and public services.

It is important to emphasize that advertising is only one of the key elements in the differential experience of public transport users that I have shared here. In addition to advertising, the contextual elements that accompany them also play a leading role; These can range from the quality of roads and public transport vehicles to the type of bodies of those who pass through the areas in question. As has been said, the content of the ads is only a scale of analysis and must be brought into play with the contextual scale. This makes it clear to us that advertising does not generate by itself the qualities of the popular and the exclusive, but rather is integrated into their cultural guidelines, shapes them, targets them and, in some (few) cases, questions them; Reading these particularities from the perspective of moral geography allows us to identify both their particularities and their correlations to investigate their political effects.

In the next section I will show some discursive strategies used by advertising that reinforce these notions of otherness and strangeness in the landscape through the use of messages that regulate the practices, roles and identities of passerby spectators. Among these types of strategies, some stand out, such as the reinforcement of stigmas, stereotypes, prejudices, invitations, imperatives and interpellations. With this analysis I seek to show the structuring role that these communication strategies contain, as well as their role in the construction of identities and the moral territorialization of contemporary metropolises.

Picture 15

Although it tends to go unnoticed, there is an open dialogue between advertising and passers-by.

Imaginaries about body shapes: their relationship with consumption and habits

The case of billboards represents a very particular way of looking at the links between the appearance of bodies and the landscape. A brief reading of the discursive contents of two examples can make more explicit the way in which advertising defines the customs of people according to the geographical area (Image 16).

Picture 16

Spectacular advertisement visible in a commercial corridor in the exclusive area, to the west of the amg. This type of advertising regulates the appearance of the bodies in relation to holiday practices. Objective to a sector of the population that travels and lives in areas where they have economic and temporary resources to attend the gym.

The image advertises a gym by representing the body of the same woman in two different settings. The first scenario appears on the left, it is the pool of the gym in question; the second appears on the right and is a beach. In the center is the advertising message: "this spring, less kcal, less fabric." The central message is that the use of the gym works to burn calories (which are referred to with their professional abbreviation kcal); in turn, burning calories implies the possibility of wearing "less clothes." Wearing fewer clothes is assumed to be the privilege of slim people. Finally, it should be noted that the name of the gym "UFit" is a pun in the English language.

The second ad advertises a chicken-flavored broth seasoning. In the center is a plump hen in an apron holding the product while smiling. On the right side appears the slogan "Put the tasty to everything", and at the bottom a very similar "put the tasty", characteristic of the brand in question. The space in which it appears is completely white. The hen is an anthropomorphization of an overweight woman; In addition to being a symbol of motherhood, she wears an apron that reinforces her role as mother in charge of the home, in the kitchen space. The slogan It is an imperative that evaluates the goodness of what is cooked based on the quality of the flavor (Image 17).

Picture 17

Spectacular advertisement visible in an industrial corridor, south of Guadalajara. This type of advertising regulates the care tasks associated with motherhood and is territorially related to an audience that is assumed to have the need to cook.

In both cases the woman's body is represented, although in the first the body is the object that is promoted, while, in the second, the edible product regulates the body that should procure it. The obese body appears mediated by the anonymity of an animal character, it is invisible, unlike the slender body that appears with a human face. The English language expression and specialized language of calories in the first ad contrasts with the colloquial expression of "put the tasty stuff on it."

It is evident that both advertisements are aimed at specific audiences, but the most relevant thing here is that they are installed in areas that assume territories of both types of public, will this have any effect on the way in which people appropriate public space, in the roles they assume, in their aspirations and in the way they interact with others? When asked by public transport users about the possible location of the McCormick chicken advertisement, they said things like the following:

It may be because of the Normal roundabout, because of the type of propaganda I think that because of the Normal, those of us who cook at home, sometimes more to this side (west) there are already those who cook for them, who have a little more than money, in Ciudad Granja, Ciudadela. Unfortunately, for economic reasons, you have to locate yourself in a more economical neighborhood and in which there are obviously fewer resources and a little more poverty and lack of services (Bernardo).

When conducting ethnographic observation, I repeatedly heard expressions that alluded to feeling out of place when passing through exclusive areas, where advertising similar to the image of the gym became more common, as well as talks around the various advertisements. The subtlety with which advertising messages regulate the uses of the city makes advertising even more powerful. Aurelia worked for a time distributing advertising brochures for a sporting event; She shares her experience and her references regarding places where she feels uncomfortable, emphasizing that a good part of that feeling comes from issues associated with consumption and appearance:

Well, a friend worked in [the ice cream parlors] Dany-Yo in the Andares area and he tells me that people are very discriminating, like they see you, how they look at you from top to bottom, so I don't like that. Once I went to a place to promote the Pan American Games, I was precisely by the Tecos stadium, I don't remember where it was, but where Route 25 passes, and there I also felt uncomfortable, because of the people and around the place, because there were a lot of friendly people, right? Who received the steering wheel, but there was another who very rudely gave the steering wheel and they didn't tell you anything, they would raise the window, besides I felt uncomfortable on the avenue and by people.5

Contrasts are not only present in the body representations used to promote the products, but in the products themselves, which, due to the context of the message that surrounds them, transmit diametrically different lifestyles. On the one hand, there is the case of the style of food that marks, as Bernardo said, where those who cook and those who have cooks live.

Picture 18

Divergences around common practices such as eating according to the area of the city. This case is an exclusive zone.

Picture 19

Divergences around common practices such as eating according to the area of the city. This case is a popular area.

On the other hand, there is the issue of eating habits; the difference is also marked between those who eat salads and those who eat junk food. The distinction is such that, in the images you see below, you can even see how different expressions are used to refer to the level of itching of the food; while in one case they talk about what spicy, on the other of what "itches".

Picture 20

Eating habits are also territorialized according to the area. It is not only noticeable in advertising, but also in the food supply that is in each of them.

Picture 21

Eating habits are also territorialized according to the area. It is not only noticeable in advertising, but also in the food supply that is in each of them.

Imaginaries of education

Advertising focused on education makes use of its imaginary as an elementary way for promotion or permanence in privileged social strata. This type of advertising, more common in exclusive areas than in popular ones, not only promotes education through stereotypes of people with fair complexions, but also through the allusion to the acquisition of moral values, with which prejudice is normalized. that people with a lower academic level have lower moral quality (Image 22).

Picture 22

Because of the poster, because I know that the Tepeyac Institute is paid, they would not put it in a place where there is no money to pay, right? * laugh * but I don't recognize the place, I could put it by Plaza del Sol, by Mariano Otero (Aurelia, 22 years old, student).

Advertising for the Tepeyac Institute, for example, shows a blonde girl turned upside down, in what appears to be a playful situation, suggesting a flexible type of education. The announcement is accompanied by the message “live your dreams", Which highlights the pronoun"your”With capital letters and a different typeface, suggesting that education is the way to make individual dreams come true. This advertisement, located on the outskirts of the Andares area —one of the most exclusive commercial complexes in the city—, also stands out for offering educational services that do not correspond to the type of education level common to the Mexican context: preschool, primary, secondary and high school are mentioned as kindergarten, elementary, junior high and high school.

By asking the collaborating passers-by to place this advertisement on a map, they showed certain strategies based on the assumption of those areas where there is a higher purchasing power. When Aurelia was asked where she imagined the advertising for the image might be located, she answered the following:

Because of the poster, because I know that the Tepeyac Institute is paid, they would not put it in a place where there is no money to pay, right? (laugh), but I don't recognize the place, I could put it by Plaza del Sol, by Mariano Otero (Aurelia, 22 years old, student).

Bernardo was guided by the English language to place the advertisement in a place far from the one where he lives, but he also gave a clear example that passersby do not read the content of a spectacular advertisement as something isolated, but rather link it with those who accompany him or happen in the landscape. To better locate the point where the advertisement was, he alluded to the content of one that is behind that of the Tepeyac Institute and which advertises the services of a medical laboratory; According to his interpretation, that same chain of laboratories is advertised differently in more popular areas. Special attention should be paid to the role played by the use of the English language:

It is at the entrance to López Mateos, because they did not put in English more than in that area, really. It was precisely my turn to see more or less in those areas that type of advertising that is in English. Above all, because there for my house, there for Oblatos is a Chopo [clinic], but they don't have “super check up", There is" basic checkup "and period, they do not give you the" ahhh ", the plus from English (laughs) (Bernardo, 25 years old, mayor).

Advertising of private education also uses the resource of transcendence as something achievable only through formal education. This responds to an agenda that excludes those population sectors that do not have access to formal education from the possibility of transcending, that is, their presence in the world becomes something more ephemeral than those of the rest. This feature becomes relevant if it is considered that the spatial segregation patterns that tend to expel the most marginalized populations towards the peripheries of contemporary cities correspond to high school dropout rates and lower educational levels (Ariza and Solis, 2009).

Picture 23

Educational advertising draws on significance and values.

The advertising of the Technological Institute of Advanced Education has the message "Educate to transcend" and offers four educational levels, each one accompanied by the faces of those who are presumed to be students of the institution. From the outset, the message reminds us that there is a rule that regulates the age at which certain formal knowledge must be acquired and that it tends to separate students according to their ages. The little one who stars in the spectacular looks back, in a gesture that suggests that he is walking towards his destination, a possible reference to social mobility and transcendence. The message "we teach what to teach", located in the lower left, is an explicit position regarding the type of knowledge that matters and those that do not. Finally, the promotion of registrations makes a substantial difference with other advertisements, since it speaks to us of being directed to an intermediate audience between the most privileged and the most disadvantaged.

Finally, the advertising of the Lomas del Valle school directly refers to moral values through the message "Good values, good families" in what can well be seen as a moralizing exercise and that prompts the questions: what are the good ones and where are they located? values and good families? On the other hand, self-reference as "the best education" reminds us of the important link between the private and the exclusive. In addition to the persuasive messages, the shield of the school is presented surrounded by three students who do not interact with each other and who represent the three educational levels offered, in ascending order from left to right, with a degraded white background that conveys a certain aseptic impression. In the lower right part you can see the shield of the Autonomous University of Guadalajara and the reference that this school is part of its educational system6 (Image 24).

Picture 24

Showing off as the best education not only represents a competitive strategy against other educational institutions, but also differentiates the value of those who attend one or the other. Something similar happens with the case of the adjective "good".

Political-electoral imaginaries

Coincidentally, when I was doing observational work it was political election season. This type of advertising differs in some respects from the others due to the relative urgency with which it seeks to convey its messages. A strategy that is quite relevant here is one that is obviously designed for people who travel in motor vehicles; It is the one that involves the hiring of people who are installed at high traffic lights to extend banners, wave flags and stick decals on the glass of vehicles (Image 25).

Picture 25

There is advertising explicitly designed for traffic dynamics. This case involves alternating advertising with the scheduled times of a traffic light.

This advertising also resorts to the issue of values, in some cases with strategies that seem to unify the moral spectrum of the geographic space, with proposals that are assumed to spread throughout the territory if the candidate and the political party in question win. Some advertisements of this type tend to resort to the defects or problems of society in general or directly resort to fear. The definition of what is frightening goes directly through moral issues and, therefore, the definition of an other that is evil and / or dangerous, which is also territorialized.

This is evident in the examples in images 26 and 27; in the first case, through the personification of the drug user; in the second case, the military. The proposals in both cases are dichotomous, on the one hand the “Yes” is made explicit and on the other the “No”.

Picture 26

Political-electoral propaganda employs identity strategies that demarcate a before and after based on highly delimited moral positions. In these cases, it is appreciated from the use of "We YES" and "We DO NOT want to."

Picture 27

Political-electoral propaganda employs identity strategies that demarcate a before and after based on highly delimited moral positions. In these cases, it is appreciated from the use of "We YES" and "We DO NOT want to."

Although the spectacular that alludes to drugs does not seem to refer directly to anyone, it would be worth considering "we" as a group identity strategy, as well as the use of the standard note post-it as an object commonly used to sort pending tasks. On the other hand, image 27 shows rejection of a security strategy focused on the militarization of the country through the representation of the supposed superficiality that it would suppose, at the same time that it criminalizes the common practices of urban artists. The original image is attributed to the English street artist nicknamed Banksy, and has a sense opposite to the intention of the propaganda analyzed here; It is thus an exceptional example of the way in which the meaning of political interventions in the urban landscape changes when they become propaganda.

These communication strategies also take advantage of the stigmas associated with neighborhoods and popular neighborhoods, as can be seen in the strategy of promising the installation of surveillance cameras to increase the security of areas identified as dangerous by simulating where these cameras would be with their simile. in print version. This type of advertising shows how the moral and cultural qualities of the territory are marked by the simple fact that it was not seen in "exclusive" areas. Specifically, here we could well think about the expression of what Lindón (2005) has recognized as topophobias.

Picture 28

Other strategies intervene in the landscape, simulating its materiality. In this case, it also seeks to persuade through the use of fear in the face of insecurity and stigmatizes the area in which it is located.

Conclusions

Outdoor advertising maintains a core relationship with the patterns of segregation and affective patterns that passersby experience with respect to the territory. It would be doubtful whether segregation and cultural borders precede the imaginaries of advertising; In view of this, in the case of Guadalajara, I have mentioned that segregation has existed since the very foundation of the city, as in other cities born of the conquest and colonization. However, it seems to me that in current times it would be more profitable to consider that the relationship between outdoor advertising, urban imaginaries and the moral geography of cities is procedural, this means that one cannot be understood without the other. The relevance of this process lies in understanding how these elements are articulated and what they generate, so I would like to close with some coordinates that guide future reflections in this regard.

The role of the imaginaries supported by outdoor advertising strategies - large and small - is key in the process of institutionalizing differences, creating or maintaining status, and founding the hierarchical social structure of cities. It can well be considered that advertising strategies of this type are creators of centralities and peripheries, which in turn are sustained by a subtle but powerful moral device associated with consumption, which makes sense thanks to our daily transit through the city.

In addition to sustaining the power of the dominant groups, this type of strategies marks the way forward for social advancement, with which the communicative strategy is introduced in the field of the desires of the most disadvantaged populations and, consequently, in the order of his political actions. Reading the city from these coordinates opens the possibility of also identifying a cartography of the desires that guide life in urban societies.

As the testimonies of public transport users that I have shared here show, the predominant strategies in this type of advertising have a direct relationship with the construction of cultural borders that segregate and stigmatize based on the acquisitive, aesthetic and moral attributions that advertising reinforces.

Most of the people I interviewed commented that they felt uncomfortable in those places where they felt inferior, always hand in hand with the purchasing power; or in places where they felt threatened, hand in hand with the risk of being assaulted by people with low purchasing power. If we consider that the purchasing power level is the gateway to all consumer goods promoted as desirable by advertising, we will realize the psychogeographic relationship between emotions and sensations such as fear, desire, joy and certain parts of the city it cannot be appreciated without taking into account the role of advertising strategies in the landscape.

Taking up and deepening the proposal of moral geography is key to analyzing this type of political patterns that segregate the city and reproduce inequitable forms of access to goods and services based on consumption; But it is also crucial to demonstrate the bidirectional process through which power over the urban landscape is objectified and materialized, at the same time that it transmits to passers-by a series of social values that are literally embodied in their practices and corporeality.

The evidence of the subtle, everyday and eminently urban programmatic order that I have described here requires strategies that combine multidisciplinary perspectives, but, above all, it shows the need for research that considers the perspective of passers-by to understand the relationship between persuasion strategies, practical consumption, forms of discrimination and exercises of power. The perception, reception, interpretation and internalization of the messages arranged in public spaces - not just advertising - is mediated by the way we travel it and the routes we follow.

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