Article for SGWSG Jahrbuch

Working on a contribution to the 2013 Volume of the Schweizerisches Jahrbuch für Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte. The article is based on a presentation I gave in Bern last May at a conference on “habitation”. The article on citizens’ initiatives’ strategies for low income housing is going to be along the lines of the presentation, with some considerable amendments relating to the prevailing market conditions. This point was stressed in the discussion following the presentation and I am thankful for the suggestions.

Conference Report on GSU Nachwuchstagung

Writing a conference report on the young researchers conference on urban history that took place in Darmstadt three weeks ago. Thinking about the conference in retrospective, it is surprising how well all the presentations fit together and how lively the discussions were. Of course this is difficult to depict in a conference report, but I’ll try.

The report will be published in the next informationen zur modernen Stadtgeschichte.

McKee (2008): The Problem of Jobs

McKee, Guian A.: The Problem of Jobs. Liberalism, race, and deindustrialization in Philadelphia, Chicago 2008.  

When this book came out in 2008, it was probably beyond my focus at that time wanting to get my own book finished. Otherwise I should have clearly read it back then. First of all, It is a great account of industrial policy in Philadelphia of the 1950s and 1960s. The focus on such local policy in a field that is usually held to be situated in national or even transnational policy is definitively very valuable. And secondly it comes to very similar conclusions that I drew analyzing urban redevelopment policy in Phila during the same period.

Harvey: Paris (2006)

David Harvey (2006), Paris: Capital of Modernity.

I found this book, even though many have praised it, rather difficult to judge. It contains a lot of interesting interpretations on Second Empire Paris. But then, in some places the conclusions Harvey draws seem rather crude and far-fetched. It is a difficulty of the book that it tries to combine good old marxist economic analysis (which is remarkable) with newer forms of cultural history that are intended to support and explain the asserted economic forces. This is probably the point where I got lost, it is just not convincing if you don’t share Harvey’s marxist approach beforehand.

CFP: EAUH 2012 Session M43

Sent out the CfP for the Session Tom Hulme and I am organizing in Prague next year.

Call for Papers

European Association for Urban History, 11th International Conference on Urban History, Prague, August 29 - September 1, 2012, http://www.eauh2012.com

Main Session M43:

‘Rights and Responsibilities’: Citizenship in Twentieth-Century Cities

Session Organizers: Sebastian Haumann (Technische Universität Darmstadt) and Tom Hulme (University of Leicester)

Deadline: October 1, 2011

This session proposes to study the relationship between citizenship and the exercise, acquisition, or contestation of rights and responsibilities, as shaped by the social, economic and political context of the city. It aims to investigate especially the idea that citizenship is an ‘everyday’ pursuit, centred on ways of living, acting, and behaving in - but also affected by - the specificity of the cultural and physical urban environment. Approaching the twentieth-century on these terms is particularly important, as citizenship became more strongly located in the national - both in cultural and legal terms. It is perhaps by recognising, as Engin Isin reminds us, that it is still the city where the ‘lives of people are organized, assembled together, and rendered meaningful’ that require us to refocus the issue of citizenship. Despite the alleged importance of the nation-state, the locale is ‘the site through which socialization into various identities occurs, and … individuals develop both their individuality and their sociality.’ The session invites papers that assess these processes of identity formation and socialization in the city - what we might call ‘citizenship practices’.

Themes may include:

- the interaction between citizens and local government;

- the exclusion or ‘stripping’ of citizenship of the ‘other’ through segregation, legal apparatus, or public policy;

- the attempt by such marginalized groups to negotiate social rights or assert their identity as citizens of the local;

- the attempts to inculcate specific ideas of ‘rights and responsibilities’ in the inhabitants of the city by various agencies.

Papers that compare multiple locales to unpick these practices and relationships, both within and across nations, are especially welcome, as are papers that approach the topic in an interdisciplinary manner. Through this it is hoped that an assertion can be made that citizenship in the twentieth century did not ‘exist’ as an unvaried fact, but was actually an effective identity realised through a process of contestation and practices - facilitated, and perhaps necessitated, by the experience and particularity of the modern city.

Please submit paper proposals (500 words max.) before October 1, 2011 through the conference website at: http://www.eauh2012.com/sessions/call-for-paper-proposals/

In case you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact the session organizers Sebastian Haumann (haumann@pg.tu-darmstadt.de) or Tom Hulme (th71@le.ac.uk)

Rebuilding European (and US) Cities

Just went over the very last version of my contribution to Georg Wagner-Kyora’s volume “Rebuilding European Cities. Reconstruction-Policy since 1945”. It’s so funny, because I have written about Philly, which is not really a European city. But I think the US example has much to say about how to interpret how European Cities were reconstructed after WWII. I am excited to get the final product - maybe sometime later this year the book will be published already.

Presentation on Airports and Cities

At yesterday’s History Department Colloquium Andreas Loring presented his dissertation on the interrelation of cities and their airports. A fascinating facet of urban history on which nobody seems to have done any research in Germany so far. This is the more surprising as flight-connections seem to have been a defining aspect of prosperous cities in the 20th century.

SGWSG Presentation

Preparing a presentation for the annual conference of the Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte in Bern next Saturday. My presentation will compare citizens’ initiatives strategies to provide low-income housing in the US and in West-Germany. Even though the problem was very similar on both sides of the Atlantic the citizens’ groups self-conception and their strategies were very different. The comparison also reveals quite a bit about local civil society and politics in both countries - in sum: in the US market mechanisms are much more respected and actually used while in German cities the parliamentary and administrative system is the focal point. I hope this paper will make it into a publication.

Chapter on (Sub-)Cultural Politics in Cologne

Finally found the time to finalize a book chapter on (sub-)cultural politics in Cologne. Hope I will find enough time over Easter to get it done. Still needs a lot of thinking over.

Otter: The Victorian Eye

Otter, Chris: The Victorian Eye. A political history of light and vision in Britain, 1800-1910, Chicago 2008.

This is a great book with many facets to it that got me thinking. It is first of all a history of vision, which is interesting as it touches on bodily aspects as well as technological ones. Then it is also an assertion of liberalism and a rejection of applying Foucaultian Panopticism to all and everything.

Talk on 1960s/70s London Welfare Policy

Great talk by John Davis (Queens College Oxford) at the Centre for Urban History yesterday. In his presentation “Reshaping welfare: the London experience, 1960-1975” he demonstrated how welfare policy, initiatives of community groups and protest movements were intertwined as a new sensitivity and definition of social problems and poverty emerged. I was especially intrigued by the broad-spread and detailed analysis of sources he based his argument on. In general, I think, his research is challenging conventional narratives - I enjoyed it!