Narrating the City: Histories, Space and the Everyday 9781782387763

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Narrating the City

Space and Place Bodily, geographic, and architectural sites are embedded with cultural knowledge and social value. The Anthropology of Space and Place series provides ethnographically rich analyses of the cultural organization and meanings of these sites of space, architecture, landscape, and places of the body. Contributions to this series examine the symbolic meanings of space and place, the cultural and historical processes involved in their construction and contestation, and how they are in dialogue with wider political, religious, social, and economic institutions. Volume 1

Volume 9

Berlin, Alexanderplatz: Transforming Place in a Unified Germany

Post-Cosmopolitan Cities: Explorations of Urban Coexistence

Gisa Weszkalnys

Edited by Caroline Humphrey and Vera Skvirskaja

Volume 2

Cultural Diversity in Russian Cities: The Urban Landscape in the post-Soviet Era Edited by Cordula Gdaniec Volume 3

Volume 10

Places of Pain: Forced Displacement, Popular Memory and Trans-local Identities in Bosnian War-torn Communities

Settling for Less: The Planned Resettlement of Israel’s Negev Bedouin

Hariz Halilovich

Steven C. Dinero

Volume 11

Volume 4

Narrating Victimhood: Gender, Religion and the Making of Place in Post-War Croatia

Contested Mediterranean Spaces: Ethnographic Essays in Honour of Charles Tilly

Michaela Schäuble

Maria Kousis, Tom Selwyn, and David Clark

Volume 12

Volume 5

Power and Architecture: The Construction of Capitals and the Politics of Space

Ernst L. Freud, Architect: The Case of the Modern Bourgeois Home

Edited by Michael Minkenberg

Volker M. Welter

Volume 13

Volume 6

Bloom and Bust: Urban Landscapes in the East since German Reunification

Extreme Heritage Management: The Practices and Policies of Densely Populated Islands

Edited by Gwyneth Cliver and Carrie Smith-Prei

Edited by Godfrey Baldacchino

Volume 14

Volume 7

Images of Power and the Power of Images: Control, Ownership, and Public Space Edited by Judith Kapferer

Urban Violence in the Middle East: Changing Cityscapes in the Transformation from Empire to Nation State Edited by Ulrike Freitag, Nelida Fuccaro, Claudia Ghrawi and Nora Lafi

Volume 8

Performing Place, Practising Memories: Aboriginal Australians, Hippies and the State

Volume 15

Rosita Henry

Edited by Wladimir Fischer-Nebmaier, Matthew P. Berg, and Anastasia Christou

Narrating the City: Histories, Space, and the Everyday

Narrating the City Histories, Space, and the Everyday

[• • ] Edited by

Wladimir Fischer-Nebmaier, Matthew P. Berg, and Anastasia Christou

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

First published in 2015 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com ©2015 Wladimir Fischer-Nebmaier, Matthew P. Berg, and Anastasia Christou All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Narrating the city : histories, space, and the everyday / edited by Wladimir Fischer-Nebmaier, Matthew P. Berg, and Anastasia Christou. pages cm. — (Space and place ; volume 15) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-78238-775-6 (hardback : acid-free paper) — ISBN 978-1-78238-776-3 (ebook) 1. City and town life—Historiography. 2. City and town life in literature. 3. City and town life in motion pictures. 4. Working class—Historiography. 5. Middle class—Historiography. 6. Public spaces—Historiography. 7. Community life—Historiography. 8. Narration (Rhetoric) 9. Discourse analysis, Narrative. I. Fischer-Nebmaier, Wladimir. II. Berg, Matthew Paul, 1961– III. Christou, Anastasia. HT113.N36 2015 307.76—dc23 2015003123 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Printed on acid-free paper ISBN: 978-1-78238-775-6 (hardback) ISBN: 978-1-78238-776-3 (ebook)

Contents List of Figures

vii

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction. Space, Narration, and the Everyday Wladimir Fischer-Nebmaier

1

Part I. Narratives and Images of the City Chapter 1. The Case of Ossification: Contemporary Narratives about Everyday Life in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century L’viv Andriy Zayarnyuk

59

Chapter 2. The Masa’s Odysseys through Bourgeois Caracas: The Testimony of Novels, 1920s–1970s Arturo Almandoz

75

Chapter 3. Reimagining Nieuwland: Narrative Mapping and the Mental Geography of Urban Space in a Dutch Multiethnic Neighborhood Leeke Reinders

97

Part II. Claiming Urban Space Chapter 4. City and Cinema as Spaces for (Transnational) Grassroots Mobilization: Perspectives from Southeastern and Central Europe Anna Schober Chapter 5. Adjudicating Lodging: Denazification, Housing Requisition, and Identity in “Red Vienna,” 1945–1948 Matthew P. Berg

139

175

Part III. Living and Working in the City Chapter 6. Urban Information Flows: Workers’ and Employers’ Knowledge of the Asbestos Hazard in Clydeside, ca. 1950s–1970s Ronald Johnston and Arthur McIvor

199

vi

Contents

Chapter 7. Creating a Familiar Space: Child Care, Kinship, and Community in Postsocialist New Zagreb Tihana Rubić and Carolin Leutloff-Grandits

219

Index

243

Figures 2.1. Plan of Caracas, 1934, by Juan Röhl

76

2.2. Plano regulador, or master plan, 1951

77

2.3. Cartoon of Juan Bimba and student, 1936

83

2.4. Central Caracas, ca. 1950

85

2.5. Postcard of Sabana Grande, ca. 1960

87

2.6. Postcard of Plaza Venezuela from Los Caobos, ca. 1960

88

3.1. A view of neighborhood square Wibautplein

107

3.2. Communal playground in the middle of a block of prefabricated apartment flats

108

3.3. Interstitial zone between new middle-class housing and a strip of neighborhood stores and apartment blocks built in the 1950s

108

3.4. “The new gardens”: a block of new middle-class housing

109

3.5. Map by Margiet

111

3.6. Current residence of Margiet, located across from the spot where her former apartment building was located

114

3.7. Map by Hans

115

3.8. Map by Tineke

119

3.9. Map by Natasha

121

3.10. Block of flats opposite Natasha’s new dwelling

123

4.1. Film still from Silver City Revisited, 1968, Wim Wenders

157

4.2. Film still from Silver City Revisited, 1968, Wim Wenders

158

4.3. Film still from Eve of Destruction, Ljubljana 1966

160

4.4. Film still from Eve of Destruction, Ljubljana 1966

161

viii

Figures

7.1. Travno Detailed Urban Developement Plan (Detaljni urbanistički plan), 1:1,000, 1972

222

7.2. Grandmothers looking after their grandchildren in the park in Travno

232

7.3. Grandmother looking after her grandchild in the park in Travno

233

Acknowledgements

This project had its origins in 2006. Over the years, our contributors

have advanced their research in ways that have informed their chapters, such that they have come to represent important elements of our colleagues’ larger research agendas. The editors extend their heartfelt thanks to our contributors for their support and good cheer through the long development of this volume. They have been ideal colleagues. Special thanks go to Caroline Varlet and Katie Mooney. The Editors

[• Introduction •]

Space, Narration, and the Everyday WLADIMIR FISCHERNEBMAIER

Spaces can become full of time when they permit certain properties of narrative to operate in everyday life. Richard Sennett, The Conscience of the Eye1

What comes to mind first when reading a book title like Narrating

the City are probably city novels like Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities or his other London stories, or perhaps Émile Zola’s Le Ventre de Paris, Alexander Belyj’s Peterburg, or Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz, and of course Baudelaire’s Paris poems. This linkage of the city and narration is not limited to the classical period of urban modernity, as is evident from more-recent titles like Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy or Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul. The city has been the topic of so many central literary texts that it seems that modern literature is somehow inextricably linked with urbanity; as Richard Sennet has argued, literature sometimes captures urban phenomena better than academic writing.2 Sometimes novels set in the city have influenced how scholars in very different academic disciplines have thought about the city. Indeed, the writing of urban fiction has always been influenced by other discourses on urbanity—perhaps most prominently, as James Donald pointed out, the discourses on crime, disease, citizenship, and class struggle (consider Victor Hugo’s Paris, Jack London’s San Francisco, or Upton Sinclair’s Chicago).3 However, it is not only fictional writing that interlocks cities and stories, but it is also narration in a more general sense. This volume explores the interplay between the concepts of narration, space, and the everyday in the city through a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary lenses. As this introduction will demonstrate, there have been currents in international scholarship over the past one hundred years that

2 Introduction

have successfully connected the everyday, space, and narration that have influenced our contributors. Important interdisciplinary authors have engaged with two or all of these concepts—for example, Michel de Certeau, Henri Lefèbvre, Erving Goffman, or Mikhail Bakhtin, the latter of whom coined the term “chronotopos” or “chronotope.” Whole subdisciplines have been dedicated to linking at least two of the phenomena, as oral historians did with storytelling and everyday history, or urban ethnographers with storytelling and space. The background to the development traced in this introduction involves a democratization of theories across disciplinary boundaries that took place during the second half of the twentieth century, informed by innovations in literary theory before the Second World War. The following introductory chapters on narration, the everyday, and space celebrate these developments, particularly those catalyzed by the work of thinkers who facilitated connections across entrenched academic disciplinary positions (ethnologists, symbolical interactionists, semiologists, narratologists, perhaps also critical Marxists). Given the democratizing thrust of many of these scholarly enterprises, it comes as no surprise that in many cases critiques of power and hegemony have linked the concepts of space, narration, and the everyday. Likewise, the replacement of vertical concepts with horizontal ones in many post-Cartesian moves in the 1970s and 1980s are part of debates linking narration, space, and the everyday. Arguably, the heyday of the theoretical developments traced here was the 1980s; nonetheless the actual interlinkage of all three concepts is an ongoing process.4 This is what the seven chapters in this volume demonstrate, each after its own fashion.

The Everyday The everyday offers itself up as a problem, a contradiction, a paradox: both ordinary and extraordinary, self-evident and opaque, known and unknown, obvious and enigmatic. Ben Highmore, 20025

In one way or another, the everyday has preoccupied intellectuals since the late eighteenth century, at the latest. Under the influence first of Enlightenment thinkers and later through research inspired by the Romanticism movement, the everyday has entered spaces in the world of academic research and teaching that had previously been reserved for so-called higher values. For instance, where theology had once dominated, the study of popular religion and religions of “primitive peoples”

Space, Narration, and the Everyday 3

became legitimate subjects of inquiry. Scholars of language, who had formerly engaged in prescribing le bon usage of grammar, now grew interested in describing words that “the people” used for everyday objects and concepts, including even obscene language. With the introduction of ethnological approaches, the people became the subject of a particular academic discipline.6

An Elusive Concept From the moment of its introduction, the everyday has been an elusive concept. First, it is ambiguous: Is the everyday merely the sum total of what people do each day and from day to day, or is it something more meaningful? If the former, no human being can ever grasp the everyday. If the everyday is all about temporality, how, then, can we actually show what the everyday is if not in real time? But if we employ the concept in this way, our concept of the everyday would stop being a concept and rather become the thing itself. This utopian intellectual claim has rendered the everyday an object of desire: it seems like the key to reality.7 Perhaps it also seems so precious because understanding the everyday might be the key to power—in other words, the power to liberate the oppressed, to gain control over entire populations, or the recipe for economically exploiting their (everyday) needs. What is the everyday and what does it have to do with space, narration, and the city? The first academic approaches to the everyday were those inspired by romanticist ideology in the early nineteenth century, in some cases even earlier. Romanticists were interested in the ways the people lived, at a time when the people came to be understood in a specifically national context.8 As the foundation of Enlightenment bourgeois political philosophy just a few short decades earlier, the people had become the ultimate authority and fundamental source of value in an evolving nationalist discourse. Classic examples are France and the United States, where revolutionaries declared the people sovereign. Even in the nominal monarchies, the people have replaced the country not only in philosophical discourse, but also in political practice and law.9 For public communication, the following question arose: what language would be fitting for a society of and for the people? This question was especially acute in regions without one, uncontested language standard. Consequently, philologists in Central, Southern, and Eastern Europe ventured out and meticulously noted the terms people employed to designate objects in their everyday worlds. They also recorded stories recounted by older village women.10 Ethnologists would later employ a similar tactic,

4

Introduction

albeit for different heuristic ends, when they encountered the customs, costumes, narratives, and objects of everyday life.11 But is folk culture necessarily identical with the everyday—and vice versa? Ethnological investigation has always focused on special cultural practices that are arguably not part of the everyday. For example, sacred rituals take place on specific days at special times. People dress up especially for rituals; they do not wear their costumes used for rituals on an ordinary workday. Rituals are performed to structure the course of life, they are not the course of life itself, as we will explore further below.12 Some ethnographers and ethnolinguists have managed to spare themselves such criticism. There has always been a section of those disciplines that not only engaged with epic poetry and rituals of passage, but also looked closely at cultural routines—a perspective, it should be noted, that was in accordance with the romanticist aspiration to “compass the whole of life.”13 Originally, ethnographers typically looked to rural villages for documentation on popular practices such as food preparation. After the First World War certain ethnographers also turned to the city, investigating the everyday culture of rural migrants as they transformed themselves into urban workers, yet left the legacy of their rural experiences on subsequent generations. Scholars in subdisciplinary fields such as sociolinguistics and urban ethnography have richly documented such practices.14 The research presented here by Tihana Rubić and Carolin Leutloff-Grandits in their chapter on Zagreb mass housing tenants is a contemporary example of such an urban ethnography. The turn to the city was in many instances connected to the abandoning of primitivism— that is, of the focus on folkloric and presumed primordial practices.15 Even as these new approaches evolved, scholars who were engaged in them still implicitly defined the everyday in a socially selective way, insofar as they gave preference to the routines of the poor or so-called ordinary people over the rich and prominent. A thorough appreciation of the everyday would have to include examination of the latter’s realm of experience, too, even if elites are not representative of the broader population. Indeed, a range of elite attitudes toward popular everyday practices are as essential to gaining a fuller appreciation of social dynamics in specific contexts as are popular perceptions of elite everyday practices. For the purpose of this volume, we employ a circumscribed working definition of the everyday, but one that we suggest is no less rich for its simplicity. The everyday is what we do on a daily basis under specific circumstances or as part of the longer arch of life, and that is structured by rituals both mundane and loaded with larger meaning.

Space, Narration, and the Everyday 5

The Everyday, Authenticity, and Ritual The idea that investigation into the everyday also brings investigation into reality rests on the argument that it is not the glorious battles, not the genius’ moments of inspiration, not the creation of exceptional works of art that represent daily experience for most people. Consistent with the fundamental move to translate the idea of majority democracy into academic research, the concept of “real” is not what the most important people experience, but rather what most people experience as (the most important) reality. This broad focus can raise the larger question of authenticity, however. Postmodern critics have argued that leftist scholars of the everyday criticized the nationalist agenda of traditional ethnographers and their approach to customs and material culture, only to replace national essentialism with class essentialism.16 Since the 1960s two contradictory yet connected trends have evolved. It appears that at the same time as postmodernists were developing a critique of authenticity, authority, and the auteur (see part 3 of this introduction, “Narration”), an authenticist and ever-more radical claim for the everyday was thriving. Prominent examples come from scholars working in the area of early modern history interested in the other and in sociocultural change. For example, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie’s early microhistory Montaillou (1975) described phenomena of early modern peasants’ everyday life, but he was actually more interested in them as articulations of longue durée phenomena such as the climate than as peasant sociocultural practices.17 Carlo Ginzburg’s account (originally published in 1976) of one villager’s thinking may have done justice to a particular person’s ideas, but it aimed fundamentally at assumed roots in preexisting, essentially anti-authoritarian, folk traditions.18 Both works are examples for microstudies guided by an interest in larger patterns and underlying structures that had certain authenticist features—that is, that the phenomena were not taken for what they were, but as emanations of something supposed to be more real.19 Today, authenticism is a compromised concept. Other scholars, including later ones such as Michel de Certeau, reconciled the everyday with postmodern critiques. Moreover, when historians began to embrace new ethnographical methodologies, such as Clifford Geertz’s concept of thick description, they too turned away from speculating about what was thought to lie behind or beneath their objects of study. In the long run the everyday was saved as a useful concept, even taking the influence of postmodernism into account. How justified is the other move, then—to prioritize the everyday over ritual? A critical stance toward a history or sociology of exceptional

6

Introduction

events is justified, of course—and not only because of democratic considerations. Yet such a critical stance should not forgo consideration of ritual. As mentioned above, there are rituals that are recurrent, that are quite different than once-in-a-lifetime rites de passage like enthronement rituals. Everyday rituals, from sacred (e.g., praying) to profane (e.g., selecting one’s clothes for the day ahead), structure the day and are there to give meaning and order to people’s lives. Thus, everyday life can be scripted in key ways—structured by rituals, conceived in terms of narrations concerning the self and the other. As Louis Althusser has noted, rituals incorporate ideology into everyday life.20 So, is ritual, in fact, an everyday phenomenon? A way out of these dilemmas might be inspired by the suggestion offered by Deleuze and Guattari to abandon vertical thinking in favor of “keeping it flat,” as Bruno Latour has put it.21 This allows us to acknowledge the importance of both exceptional narrations and rituals like those Andriy Zayarnyuk explores in his chapter on history and the everyday in L’viv alongside daily routines that Rubić and Leutloff-Grandits describe in their chapter on strategies of child care and neighborhood help in Zagreb. Such approaches suggest that the researcher’s task becomes a search for connections between that which might be considered extraordinary and that which is mundane. Stories about the exceptional provide inspiration for the everyday. They are ubiquitous and transmitted via a variety of media, such as news reports, popular literature, comics, television, or popular songs. In this respect there is no elevated sphere of ritual with the rich and famous hovering over the abyss of the populace’s everyday life routines. Instead, they are interconnected—not randomly but along the lines of politics and power. This brings us to the question of hegemony.

Hegemony The everyday is not an innocent concept. Thinking about masses of people and about how they occupy themselves cannot be separated from issues of power and profit. If it were possible to know what most people do, it might be possible to influence them on a consistent basis. Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) recognized this in his treatment of cultural hegemony—a concept that has become an integral part of the field of cultural studies that, since the 1960s, draws directly both from Gramsci and from contributions of scholars such as Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe.22 Cultural hegemony is a concept designed to explain how domination works and how it is maintained through consent, in contrast to extremely violent forms of domination associated with colonial or fascist regimes.23 Elites find ways to persuade the subordinated social classes to

Space, Narration, and the Everyday 7

accept and adopt ruling-class values.24 Crucial in this persuasion is reliance on the suggestion that the norms of the ruling classes are normal, natural, and perhaps even eternal. Everyday practices are the site where hegemony is actually exercised, for it is the everyday that convincingly appears ever-present and natural.25 Technologies like inexpensive printing allowed for the distribution of images—for example, those depicting righteous conduct as defined by the middle classes, or national identity and community solidarity as defined by fascist regimes. The use of images, in this case filmic ones, are investigated in Anna Schober’s study of how institutions incorporated cinema “into their strategies in order to expand their sphere of action” in the introduction to her contribution. One might identify the exercise of cultural hegemony far earlier than the twentieth-century context Gramsci observed, however. For example, in the late eighteenth century, Enlightenment-influenced intellectuals and public officials attempted to modify cultural forms such as folk songs and proverbs to propagate what they considered useful and appropriate content for the populace, such as purging sexual content and replacing it with references to industriousness. The heightened interest in the popular and in the concept of the everyday expressed by the post–Marxist Left during the 1970s and 1980s, influenced by the concept of hegemony, was not necessarily an authenticist one. Cultural studies scholars developed concepts (since the 1970s, anti-essentialist concepts) in order to explain the failure of the radical Left to seize power in the twentieth-century industrialized world, and later to account for how Thatcherism and Reaganomics could find wide resonance despite their negative effects on the majority of the population.26 Herbert Marcuse, Max Horkheimer, and Theodor Adorno had developed similar ideas about the role of popular culture in achieving power in their writings on culture, especially during Nazism but also within the “Hollywood” media system.27 In contrast to this negative qualification of mass culture, in the 1970s and 1980s cultural studies scholars and others, either emphasized the possibility to appropriate popular and consumer culture, or focused on the agency of “the oppressed” who used such cultural practices for their own purposes.28 Schober’s work on cinematic spaces in this volume takes a new departure on this topic; she explores the strategies of cinema activists in several European cities who countered hegemonic use of cinema by producing difference. Some observers, themselves not disinclined to its aims, criticized cultural studies scholars for their initial focus on heroic gestures of working-class resistance, their indifference to gender, their lack of irony or—especially later on—for a blind belief in the power of the consumer that others derided as populism.29

8

Introduction

The North American variant of this intellectual current has focused especially on the media.30 Researchers had earlier come to similar conclusions concerning the importance of creating consent via the everyday in their examination of the media and advertising industries. For example, they observed the tendency for marketing strategies to make products an integral part of their customers’ lives. Some items could be consumed on a daily basis like soda pop, newspapers, or TV shows; others, such as the brands of car manufacturers, could manifest themselves every day.31 Consumer surveys developed by marketing strategists would apply methods similar to those of anthropologists and sociologists, and firms recruited staff members who had studied these disciplines.32

Operationalizing the Everyday When taken seriously, the study of everyday life can help us understand how things work—for example, how processes in a hospital function, how scientific inventions come about, or which decoding processes are involved in watching television. These are the questions that methodologies subsumed under the labels qualitative sociology, actor-network theory, cultural studies, ethnomethodology, and interactionism were designed to address. Some of the most acute questions raised in this volume speak to these sorts of topics. For example, Ronald Johnston and Arthur McIvor explore the way laborers dealt with health hazards in the workplace, Rubić and Leutloff-Grandits discern strategies mothers in mass-settlements developed to organize family and work, and Matt Berg explores how Viennese tenants acted to retain or gain access to scarce housing space in the years immediately following the Second World War. It is worth reflecting for a moment on how the fields in which most of our volume’s authors were trained approach the everyday. Historians have long been more interested in the political achievements of kings and queens than in the lives of their subjects. In the 1920s the founders of the Annales school, Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, initiated the gradual turn of several generations of French and eventually other historians not only toward long-term structural history, but also to a history of the common people, developed with methods adopted from sociology and geography. The Annalistes used large quantities, or series, of documents, such as wills and marriage certificates, to create long-term accounts of the lives of the masses. In the 1970s some Annales historians of the second and third generation became particularly interested in the everyday experiences of rural people in the medieval and early modern period. Georges Duby and Philippe Ariès engaged with the history of private life from the Roman Empire until today.33 Other historians went

Space, Narration, and the Everyday 9

to the village level and concentrated, as mentioned above, on clearly defined subjects in specific locations—for example, Le Roy Ladurie used the rich sources of one village in Southern France to show an unprecedented array of aspects of life in that village from agriculture to sexual deviance. The new trend came to be known as microhistory, a term introduced by Carlo Ginzburg.34 As important as these microstudies have been for historiography, a significant new development emerged during the late 1970s and 1980s as the history workshop and dig-where-you-stand movements in Britain and Scandinavia, respectively, began to concentrate more intentionally on the actual actors in microsettings. This was a clear challenge to the preceding generation of social historians associated with Annales. In West Germany Alltagsgeschichte (history of the everyday) touched a particularly sensitive spot as it highlighted the everyday involvement of non-elite Germans in genocide and war of annihilation (Vernichtungskrieg).35 Readers of Berg’s chapter on housing requisition and reactions to it in post–Second World War Vienna in this volume will note that his work is informed by and speaks to this historiographic current. At approximately the same time, fostered by the development of portable sound recording technology (audio tape), oral history developed as a movement to capture the history of the working classes particularly, as noted earlier in this introduction. Important branches developed in Europe and in the Americas. The narratives of ordinary people entered into scholarly historical works, historical exhibitions, museums, and interpretive centers; oral history was thus integrated into a new memorial culture that was developing parallel to the decline of traditional industrial working classes in an era of Western deindustrialization.36 The Johnston and McIvor chapter in this volume on strategies developed to inform people of the asbestos hazard in a Scottish harbor town stands in this tradition. As noted above, early-twentieth-century ethnologists and anthropologists were not so much interested in the everyday as they were in rituals and the symbols associated with them. Nevertheless, questions about the social organization of culture have accompanied these disciplinary discourses. In the 1960s a growing number of scholars turned their attention toward the everyday. They saw it as the site where collective meanings are created through interactions between individuals. The theory of symbolical interaction (Blumer) was actually developed among the ranks of sociologists,37 but it also entered the field of anthropology, particularly through the influential work of Victor Turner and Howard Garfinkel.38 This has created yet another space where anthropology has served as a communicating vessel across several disciplinary formations.

10

Introduction

For instance, qualitative sociology and symbolic anthropology employ techniques of self-reflected conversation with actors and self-reflective observation. Both make use of regular reports that the researcher writes to herself not merely to record findings, but also to control developments and adjustments within the research process (such as the method that lies at the basis of the chapter on Zagreb mass housing tenants in our book). The notebook of the ethnographer has much in common with the memos of grounded theory.39 Similar to the historians interested in the everyday, symbolic interactionists and anthropologists have been interested in the actual processes that continually comprise society, our perceived reality, or any other collective sociocultural projection. The emphasis on symbolism and interpersonal contact offers connections to various psychological theories—for instance in Erving Goffman’s work on identity management and the “presentation of self in everyday life.”40 This does not mean that their work was detached from concrete reality; interactionists focus explicitly on how humans act towards things while anthropologists had a line of tradition to deal with what has been called material culture.41 Finally, the ideas described here have also found followers among historians. Historical anthropologists have embraced the idea of selfreflectiveness (or going into the field), and employed it in their journeys into the archives. Notable standard bearers include Peter Burke, who offered cultural analysis of the self-styling of the sun king Louis XIV or in the enthroning rituals of early modern English kings; and Robert Darnton, who adopted ideas from symbolic interactionism in his analysis of underground rumors and gossip surrounding the prerevolutionary royal court in Paris.42 Significantly, all these approaches have heavily depended on narration, whether in qualitative interviewing, field research, or the study of historical sources. This need for narration created openings for postmodern thinking among anthropologists and other social and cultural theorists.43 Zayarnyuk’s chapter on L’viv, with its emphasis on difference in the history of the everyday, is a fine example of critical post-Soviet historiography informed by the discussions described above, which he presents in an interpretive survey.

Realism? How Fiction Writers Have Approached the Everyday Literary scholars began to engage with the everyday much earlier than their colleagues in most of the other academic disciplines. This seems only natural, as we will see, given that narration is, to a great extent about “what it was like.” Debates in literary studies about whether to describe the everyday—and, if so, how to go about doing it—revolved around the

Space, Narration, and the Everyday 11

term “realism.” The discussion has been ongoing since at least the 1850s. The semiotic literary theorist Roman Jakobson once argued that every generation of literati has its own realism debate and its own definition of realism.44 This point notwithstanding, literary scholars in the West refer to a specific epoch as realism, modeled on the French realism movement of the 1850s identified with Honoré de Balzac and Gustave Flaubert who stood in opposition to romanticism. There have been many arguments about the historical connection between modernity and literary realism, as well as modernity on the one hand and capitalism and democracy on the other.45 All three formations have been connected to (or interested in) the everyday, the ordinary, the repetitive. Moreover, the engagement of literary scholars like Walter Benjamin with the everyday has often been in response to phenomena of modernity, like the new access of the masses to resources once reserved for the privileged, the colonization of private life by commerce, or the impressions of a flâneur in the city.46 Almandoz’s contribution on authors and their main characters moving through the city quarters of Caracas in time and space is a contemporary contribution to a debate that has always been linked to urbanity and modernity. Not unlike later generations of anthropologists and sociologists, fiction writers who wrote realistically found it logical to describe not only the events and dialogues necessary to the plot (save any allegorical or symbolic descriptions), but also the detailed ways in which the actors speak, behave, look, and feel vis-à-vis the environments in which they find themselves. Russian realists of the progressive Gogolian school went so far as to fill page after page with irrelevant detail and dialogue in order to capture how conversations really flowed—and also in order to depict the social classes to which the fictional characters belonged.47 Realism began simultaneously to exercise influence on the new disciplines of both ethnography and ethnolinguistics. This was not a coincidence, but a phenomenon of the expansion of positivistic claims on the entire world during the nineteenth century. In a way, authors of realist (later also of the naturalist) fiction pioneered what would become the methodologies of twentieth-century anthropology, sociology, and historiography. The technique of creating a realistic account for fiction authors has caused the same paradox as in academic research, of course; an author can control narrative time which, apart from certain experimental texts, unfolds more rapidly than does real time. A realistic account would probably develop at a slower pace. Still, even a faster pace can be realistic—for example, the account of a crisis might be more realistic if it captures how the pace of events is perceived subjectively.48 These are literary tech-

12

Introduction

niques of narration that have proven to be a good resource for treatment of the everyday, perhaps equally or even better equipped than the academic account of the researcher to capture lived life.49 When we touch upon narration in the third and last part of this introduction, we will note that methodologies that engage with the everyday rely heavily on narratives, insofar as they conduct interviews, analyze texts, interpret nonlinguistic narrative sign systems, and so on. Narration’s unique potential to relate the quality of what happened is perhaps the only way to capture what otherwise appears elusive in the concept of the everyday. It is also the reason why in this volume we feature studies about narrating the urban everyday.

Space The present epoch will perhaps be above all the epoch of space. Michel Foucault, Of Other Spaces50 Space is a practiced place. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life51

Space is where it all comes together, including narration and the everyday. Given that space is one of the key dimensions in which human activity takes place, this volume examines it in the form of family dwellings, city streets, and harbor docks. The book also makes a contribution on discussions about spatiality in public and private contexts, specifically discussions about claims for particular urban spaces like city quarters of Caracas; apartments and cinemas in Vienna, Cologne, Berlin, Ljubljana, and Belgrade; wharves and homes of Clydeside; mass dwellings in Nieuwland and Novi Zagreb; or the city of L’viv in its entirety. Indeed, the everyday frequently—but certainly not exclusively—takes place in those spaces that are used by masses of people, by everyone. For narration, space matters in a double sense: there must be places where people tell and hear stories, as when the urban anthropologist interviews a respondent in her modest Zagreb living room. But there also need to be spaces and places in narration itself, especially in fictional narration, like the dark forest in fairy tales. Narrated spaces are at the center of chapter 2 in this book, in which Almandoz tackles the fictionalization of city quarters. In factual narration, as most of the narrative texts under scrutiny in this book are, the plot may take place in the very same Zagreb living room just mentioned—yet here we are concerned with the space that underlies the rules of narration.

Space, Narration, and the Everyday 13

Perhaps the experience of cyberspace has made us more perceptive of imagined spaces, as the plethora of recent studies on spatial constructs and mental maps, especially the connection of space and power, testify.52 Spatial discourse can create powerful concepts and represent powerful images that help organize our thinking about the world in a hegemonic fashion, for example in such concepts as the East and the West in European modernity.53 But such geostrategic symbolic usage is not the only power issue in space. The studies in this book subscribe to more localized concepts of space, like in the post–Second World War settlement Nieuwland near Rotterdam described by Reinders. In his chapter the routine practices of everyday life for Nieuwland’s inhabitants living in what they experience as disrupted social space are analyzed through narrative maps drawn by his interview partners themselves. Power also manifests itself in urban cinema space through cinema’s socializing force, which results in an empowering experience of nightly freedom as explored in Schober’s chapter, but which also caters to overpowering education and advertising strategies. This collection primarily looks at space as something contested, especially cases where urban space has been claimed with narrative means. Such claims have been negotiated in spatial conceptions like in the Nieuwland study, when inhabitants explain the maps they draw of their neighborhood. In a related vein, in discourse on the redefinition of historical city life in L’viv, Ukraine, Zayarnyuk confronts narratives about everyday life in the past that are designed to create an urban imaginary in the present. By concentrating on specific objects in such narratives, certain categories of people are left out, thus silencing the memory of social and ethnic conflict. In Berg’s chapter on post-1945 expropriations of Viennese apartments, narratives of need and suffering are a means by which citizens submitted petitions to the city authorities in order to secure housing space. Theories of space have had other, sometimes very abstract approaches to space, too. Some of the more general philosophical theories on space will come together with narration and everyday practices in this book, especially in chapter 4 on cinematic spaces in Berlin, Cologne, Vienna, Ljubljana, and Belgrade that reflects on cinema as a potential space for encountering the other, and cinemas as places of ambivalent identification and nonunivocal attribution of identity in a context where modern institutions worked to break down differences.

Theories of Space In a most general sense, space is one of the three fundamental categories in thinking about our physical reality: space, time, and energy are the

14

Introduction

basic and also most abstract components in theorizing this reality. Although it is one of the most abstract categories in physics, mathematics, and philosophy, space can simultaneously be a most concrete concept; as we have noted, it describes the specific place where things are or, in temporal terms, where things happen. In geometry, space can be described with coordinates; in other disciplines, descriptions are more contingent. Earlier geographers, partly relying on physical and mathematical methodology, concerned themselves mostly with the description of concrete physical space, in significant measure fueled by the interest to demarcate territory and to explore travel routes.54 Although cultural notions have always been in play in geographical description, cultural geography developed as a systematic, theorized field of knowledge in the early twentieth century. It had long been a deterministic theory—the basic idea being that people and practices are determined by the space they inhabit—that is, geomorphology (landscape) and climate. Culture was thought of as bound to geography, bound to space, and not bound to social or political phenomena.55 A famous example is the idea that the Dinaric type or “race” of people—a construct advanced most vociferously by physical anthropologist Hans F.K. Günther—is allegedly shaped in its culture, economy, and bodily appearance by the climatic preconditions of the maritime Adriatic coastal regions and hinterlands of the Western Balkans.56 Earlier works in this vein had infamously included racist, Eurocentrist, and imperialist examples, such as the idea of innate tropical laziness contrasted with an assumed industriousness allegedly characteristic of inhabitants of cooler climates. Ultimately Carl O. Sauer, who developed the notion of cultural geography, raised important criticism of the determinist perspective.57 In the 1930s other more-sober positivist researchers began to emphasize the interaction of cultural practices and landscapes.58 Furthermore, Marxist influenced writings of the Annales school’s first generation subscribed heavily to the idea of a long-term geomorphological/climatic/economic determination of peoples’ lives, albeit in a dialectic way—as in Fernand Braudel’s monumental The Mediterranean.59 To be sure, it was not the geographers who invented determinism: it had already been closely connected to influential ideas in the social sciences such as societal determinism. Determinist sociologists and modernist architects maintained that not only society, class, and family, but also the physical environment shaped people’s behavior.60 Also, environmental influences, particularly the notion of sanitation and healthy or unhealthy environments, based on the miasma theory (i.e., bad air, not germs, caused disease), especially in urban settings, played a role in the deterministic thinking of scholars and policymakers alike. One

Space, Narration, and the Everyday 15

manifestation of this can be seen in Paris, first in the Hausmannian city restructuring of the late nineteenth century, but also as late as the 1960s when whole city quarters were demolished in order to purge so-called unhealthy structures from the urban setting.61 Of course, this volume’s focus on narration and everyday experience in an urban setting owes much to our understanding of the significance of actors’ agency. Much of the book builds on the criticism of the 1970s that countered the then-dominant determinism with an emphasis on notions of agency, fluidity, and diversity in social geography. In the latter discipline some otherwise influential concepts, such as Edward Soja’s socio-spatial dialectics (see below), remained rather isolated, while others—such as studying space as experienced by its inhabitants—have become widely accepted.62 Here, again, methodologies such as interviewing the users of spaces were negotiated by ethnographers and anthropologists, and influenced by intellectual movements such as symbolical interactionism. The fact that our contributions primarily examine the contestation of space is very much in line with the aforementioned postdeterminist literature, which has questioned the often tacit assumption that spatial determinants were (quasi) natural. However, given that earlier, cultural geographers and historians of longue durée did not concern themselves much with agency, they tended to understand the spatial environment with either a natural status beyond the influence of actors (especially in climate history), or—if they conceded any greater human influence at all—they looked at one or more human generations. In any event, in their approaches the environment seemed not to be subject to discrete moments of direct human intervention. What introduced a major shift of perspective, then, was an insistence that processes produce and maintain space. When authors critical of spatial determinism began to focus on conflict and resistance, the critique of determinist spaceessentialism intensified. Not surprisingly, then, Henri Lefèbvre’s The Production of Space, first published in 1974 in French, changed the terms of debate in important new ways. Although his terminology has not become standard, his basic anti-essentialist position has. A critical Marxist, Lefèbvre argued that as modes of production change, so too do the spaces produced under those modes. This would not be a dialectical idea if the spaces would not, in turn, have an impact on the modes of production—thus, we can speak of a reciprocal determinism. Lefèbvre distinguished physical space from the spatial practice in which a given society produces space as it “slowly masters and appropriates it,” as well as from representations of space by “scientists, planners, urbanists, technocratic subdividers, and social engineers” and finally from representational space “as directly

16

Introduction

lived through its associated images and symbols, and hence the space of ‘inhabitants’ and ‘users.’ ”63 Notably, although physical space is an important part of this theory, it only comes into social existence through conceiving, appropriating, and using it. As noted in the previous section, Lefèbvre especially engaged in the relationship between space and those who use it in his Critique of Everyday Life.64 A new take on the topic came from Michel de Certeau, a Jesuit historian with strong philosophical interests but who was also influenced by psychoanalysis and structuralism. His The Practice of Everyday Life examines space alongside the everyday; in a metaphor that has become commonplace, he made a point of communicating to the reader that one must explore urban space at “street level” instead of from a city planner’s perspective atop “the 110th floor of the World Trade Center” in Manhattan (Reinders draws on this in chapter 3).65 The Practice of Everyday Life is an inspiration to the present volume as well, as street level is of course also a metaphor for the everyday and de Certeau offered a narrative analysis concentrating on the way that “stories … carry out the labor that constantly transforms places into spaces and spaces into places.”66 Neither going street level nor studying space as something produced were innocuous moves, of course. Although they drew on different political influences, both academic projects were designed (at least in part) to relocate power from top to bottom, to change the researcher’s perspective from the one of a planner to that of a user. While for these authors power was only one among several issues, for others power is the most central concern—such as in Edward Soja’s socio-spatial dialectics and theories of public space or spheres. Declaring his theory both Marxist and postmodern in his 1989 book, Soja shares Lefèbvre’s basic idea about space and production modes.67 What he added was a toolkit to analyze actual struggles for socio-spatial dominance, such as in the example of the restructuring of Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s, and inequalities in the distribution of urban resources, including public transport.68 On the other hand, Jürgen Habermas’s reflections on Öffentlichkeit or the public sphere is essentially a musing on power and social control, yet in a rather idealized way and with less emphasis on actual urban places.69 To Habermas the public sphere is not just a space accessible to all, but also an attitude characteristic of civil society, a space and a sense for open public debate brought about in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century debating clubs, cafés, and salons before the mass press subjected it to capitalist interests. It is in a sense an ideal type of democratic debate.70 In the 1970s there was also an increasing interest in spaces that may be called nondominant or alternative, and in spaces that might be nei-

Space, Narration, and the Everyday 17

ther public nor private. Michel Foucault described “heterotopia” as a specific space that exists in any society in varied forms. With respect to premodernity, the concept can be applied to sacred or forbidden places, whereas in modernity heterotopias can be associated with spaces “in which individuals whose behavior is deviant in relation to the required mean or norm are placed”—for example, rest homes, psychiatric hospitals, prisons, retirement homes, and army barracks, but also places as diverse as cemeteries and theaters. Foucault noted that the heterotopia “is capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible,” as for instance in the cinema space Schober thematizes in chapter 4.71 In the space of the movie theater, spectators can see how many different spaces are usually staged in relatively rapid succession. For instance, events in an action movie can unfold in places as far apart and diverse as London, New York, and Kingston, Jamaica, in a matter of minutes. Moreover, time can deviate in the heterotopia, such as in the museum. Museums are places where time is arrested when dinosaur skeletons are displayed right next to space rockets.72 A series of studies on deviant spaces has appeared in the past two decades, such as alternatives and challenges to the hetero-normativity of modern city spaces in George Chauncey’s study on gay New York or Judith Walkowitz’s description of the gendering and classing of Victorian London’s city spaces.73 A more recent example is Anne-Marie Fortier’s work on migrant spaces in London or recent work on disability studies, as presented by Brendan Gleeson and Rob Imrie.74 One of the important contributions of such studies was a kind of reverse strategic intervention in order to make visible the presence of those in public spaces who have been written out of historical memory. For example, Mica Nava has reinscribed women in Victorian public space, thereby defining women as central to the making of modernity.75 Several concepts have since been discussed that are using the basic idea of space as a mental, imaginary process, as in mapping and power, imagined communities, and spaces of identity.76 James Donald and Richard Sennett have discussed issues of contesting urban space in this theoretical context. Donald shows how in the imagination (he argues that “the boundaries between reality and imagination are fuzzy”) several mediations of the modern city have been fabricated—that is, the planned technological City of Light, the flâneur’s city of experience, and the republican city—with methods such as the flâneur narrations of Charles Baudelaire or the social body metaphors of the early urban critics.77 The way that such cultural processes of space function will be discussed below. Historians around the world embraced poststructuralist ideas relatively recently. It is no surprise, then, that those in Britain who had been

18

Introduction

dealing with spatial histories as early as the late 1970s did this in the then-traditional sense of space as a neutral container or setting. These were detailed empirical studies on socio-spatial segregation in nineteenth-century British cities with a focus on the modernization of class and social relations. By the mid 1980s this research was challenged by historians who had begun viewing the city as a readable text and who interpreted space in the sense of a social construct, but still the interest in urban space remained. David Harvey’s Consciousness and the Urban Experience on the Hausmannian interventions in the Paris cityscape and struggles over the meaning of urban places represents a transition, while Judith Walkowitz’s above-mentioned City of Dreadful Delight described the uses and representations of London city spaces as gendered and their connections to the Victorian concept of respectability. Urban historians have had questions of culture, power, and gender clearly in focus ever since.78

Space and Cultural Practice Spatial categories are a staple metaphor in human languages … and what would be more cultural than language? The fundamental descriptive linguistic and logical categories of up, down, forward, or backward are spatial. In cultural description, such spatial terms traditionally have cultural value connotations, of course: for example, higher and lower value, rank, and prestige that are closely connected to ideas of class, gender, or other identity markers.79 Forwardness and backwardness were categories that either reinforced or counteracted such qualifications. Revolutionary discourses of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries temporarily exchanged high and low, and the classes that had been labeled low now became the bearers of forwardness (progress). This implies a switch in spatial symbolism from a horizontally stratified class logic to a vertical logic of progress, connected to contemporary evolutionism and historicism. Of course, the importance of the vertical distinctions was not exclusive to the 1800s—what seems special is rather that modernization came with an especially intense conflict over vertical and horizontal categories, either starkly contrasting them or conflating them.80 More specifically, in the 1970s a new predilection for spatial terms was noted for postmodern language usage, as opposed to the modernist variant that, according to the seminal text by Michel Foucault on heterotopia, had preferred temporality. What the new spatial thinking did was precisely to engage with nineteenth-century categories of class and backwardness, in the process offering a critique of such spatialization— but also offering critiques of the spatial language of description and of

Space, Narration, and the Everyday 19

spaces/places as objects of investigation. This had a significant impact on all fields of inquiry, including (but not limited to) cultural investigation, also known as the spatial turn.81 This development cannot be considered as divorced from intense debate about space and culture among European structuralists thirty or even fifty years earlier. The examples offered in this introduction, particularly those from literary theory, highlight how the production of space can be understood as a cultural process, as practices of cultural representation that constantly re-create space. For instance, with the metaphor of the London fog, Charles Dickens created narratives of mid-nineteenth-century London that cannot be entirely separated from the city as experienced today.82 In lyrical poetry, Charles Baudelaire defined Paris as the capital of modernity with his figure of the flâneur, an alienated middle-class urban protagonist who “seeks refuge in the crowd,” which is “the veil through which the familiar city beckons to the flâneur as phantasmagoria”—in other words, the “virtual reality” of capitalist commodities.83 Fyodor Dostoyevsky created images of Saint Petersburg “that were more legible than they were to the urbanite using his own unaided sight on the street” as the author “singled out the relevant details that gave a scene its character.” This was useful to the reader because “ordinary experience never presents itself this sharply, but the cities of the nineteenth century were particularly unclear.”84 Such cultural representation processes can be highly sustainable but also transformable. City places and spaces, as created by novels and films, have become part of the imagination of the twenty-first-century city. They are a motivation and a manual for how to use a city, for instance by tourists who are following the footsteps of Graham Greene’s The Third Man in contemporary Vienna’s sewerage system, or by people attending a festival celebrating Saint Petersburg’s white nights. Images of (city) space as durable have been produced (and are being reproduced) through key cultural texts—and, in Foucault’s terminology, in the appropriate discursive formation. But city space is culturally reproduced every day, for example by the inhabitants of Nieuwland. The maps that Reinders asked them to draw (chapter 3) demonstrate a way to retrieve such everyday practice for academic research. And, as Katherine Brickell and Ayona Datta demonstrated in their volume on translocal geographies, the use of locality need not be bound to one city or even to one nation state.85 Space is thus produced not only by architects and planners, but also by writers and painters; moreover, it is also constantly re-produced by quotidian users of space, or by tourists who are involved in the constant re-production of space. The symbolic production of space has often also been discussed as cultural appropriation of space. Narrated and publicized memory is a

20

Introduction

fine example of cultural techniques to lay claim to a city, as Zayarnyuk shows in this volume with the example of nationalist aspirations vis-àvis contemporary L’viv by way of history of the everyday. Yet even rather mundane texts can be instrumental in claiming and appropriating city space as Berg’s work on the letters of complaint concerning confiscated apartments in post–Second World War Vienna demonstrates in chapter 5. Not only discursive, but also more performative practices have been discussed in the recent past, as they seem to signify appropriation in a much more direct, immediate manner. Ritualistic practices, in particular, have been at the center of attention in studies on the appropriation of space and city space, for instance the street manifestations of middle-class societies in middle English cities in the late nineteenth century,86 or the aspirations of German nationalists for the southeastern provinces of Austria during the same period, when nationalist tourists hiked on paths designed by corresponding organizations making an explicit claim on German territory against Slavic aspirations in the Habsburg monarchy.87 Chapter 4 discusses spaces that were occupied by squatters and where alternative cinema was enacted—a related kind of ritualistic space appropriation in its own right. Finally, we can refer to what could be called spaces of culture: districts of culture, where opera houses are found; districts of worship; or closed spaces of cultural practice. These are places in the city dedicated to special cultural practices, but that can simultaneously have several other functions, including economic or political ones. Mica Nava has described how in the early twentieth-century city the department store and the cinema were spaces where, for the first time, middle-class women could present themselves in the public unaccompanied.88 In this book, for example, Schober treats cinema as cultural and political space in which politically relevant nonconformist movements constituted themselves in democratic and totalitarian political systems. Traditional conceptions of urban cultural spaces have been narrower, however. They would not include department stores but rather target spaces where works of art are presented—for example, museums, concert halls, perhaps also public libraries, venues for open air events, and houses of worship. Cultural spaces and places in the city are usually conceived of as organized mass spaces for tourists and visitors, of commodified culture—or as public cultural affairs, often, with an orientation toward elite culture. Such modern concepts of cultural spaces derive from the functionalist city theory (e.g., Le Corbusier), according to which city spaces should be separated along their functions. In an elitist tradition of thinking, cultural functions were frequently influenced by premodern sacred spaces, located in the city center. Peripheral areas

Space, Narration, and the Everyday 21

were designated for purely residential purposes, which were then by definition cultural voids. Although cities were rarely entirely remodeled in accordance with this theory, and although it soon became clear that dwellers of satellite cities and suburbia needed cultural amenities on site, a strong current of literature inspired by Lefèbvre and de Certeau has since emerged that treats suburbia and other pure residential areas as spaces of cultural practice, as our Nieuwland case examines in detail.

Space and the Everyday In the traditional definitions we have examined above, cultural places are zones that, by definition, are separate from the everyday. However, literature critical of such ritualistic separations has especially engaged with everyday cultural practices in spaces of the temples of culture. The metaphor derived from Michel de Certeau’s street-level view, in contrast to the city planner’s perspective, treats walking in the city (following the structuralist tradition) as analogous to the linguistic concept of the speech act: “The act of walking … has a triple ‘enunciative’ function: it is a process of appropriation of the topographical system on the part of the pedestrian … ; it is a spatial acting-out of the place … ; and it suggests relations among differentiated positions, that is among pragmatic ‘contracts’ in the form of movements.”89 Obviously influenced by Walter Benjamin’s theorization of Baudelaire’s flâneur, Certeau focused on the pedestrian’s way of experiencing a city as a theoretical model for city recognition in general—without actually engaging with concrete urban space, however. In 1958 the early cultural studies author Richard Hoggart had already been interested in the actual spaces the British working class inhabited in the mid twentieth century, and in 1978 Paul Willis described such profane spaces as rockers’ gathering places and hippies’ apartments.90 In the 1980s scholars began to focus more on theory, even when profane spaces formed the focus of their work. For example, Meaghan Morris approached a specific shopping center as a space of everyday culture in a now classic essay, that was rather based on discourse analysis.91 Shopping centers have become a staple object of investigation in cultural studies, in addition to the beach and the street, youth clubs, and private apartments as spaces where youth styles are staged. Nonetheless, some of the most prominent cultural studies texts about such spaces still tend to dwell more on theory than on the actual spaces.92 In short, everyday spaces seem to be often the object of cultural theory musings (maybe even a site of theoretical desire), while actual studies like the one on the Nieuwland suburb in this volume are less common.

22

Introduction

Beginning in the 1970s, urban anthropologists increasingly became interested in actual everyday urban spaces, and their work has been engaged with the uses to which urban spaces have been put by their inhabitants. A drawback of their approach has been, for the most part, that space has been conceived of in a traditional way, as background. While initially there had been a strong interest in poverty and slums,93 urban anthropologists have come to deal with the interrelatedness of life in specific neighborhoods or communities within a broader urban context. Despite an emphasis on classical anthropological topics like kinship and community, urban anthropologists have contributed studies on neighborhoods, like New York’s Greenwich Village or Washington’s Soul Side,94 which were based on field work and participant observation that opened up a dialogue with work done in fields ranging from cultural studies, to history, to urban sociology, that remains ongoing. This approach is also manifested in our volume’s chapter on the Novi Zagreb suburb of Croatia’s capital city. The work of our contributors engages specifically and intentionally with actual spaces. Their scholarship represents the next generation of the pioneering work begun by those researchers at the intersection of the academic fields, discussed above, who engaged in description of everyday spaces and places on a pedestrian level. Our contributors represent space in the course of fieldwork, archival investigation, or reading fictional texts as it is conceptualized by actors.

Narration Narrative is present in every age, in every place, in every society. … Narrative is international, transhistorical, transcultural: it is simply there, like life itself. Roland Barthes [1966] 197795

In 1981 W.J.T. Mitchell proclaimed a narrative turn in the humanities in general. In 1994 David Maines pledged to develop a narrative sociology. By 2000, narration was already an entry in a social psychology handbook, and in 2004 Berger and Quinney published a comprehensive study of the topic. Some observers speak of a narrative turn during the 1990s in sociology, too, while in 2005 Goodsell still found it necessary to defend narrative in sociology.96 Our book demonstrates that, over the past two decades, practitioners in nonliterary fields have become aware of the importance of narration. Many have found out that narration has long been a part of their discipline’s methodology, albeit under a dif-

Space, Narration, and the Everyday 23

ferent name and not as developed theoretically, as in literary studies. Indeed, there has been considerable resistance to the idea that theories derived from so fictive a discipline as literature should matter in factdriven fields such as physics or sociology. This battle of ideas was especially fierce in the 1970s and 1980s. Poststructuralist proponents of the use of narrative maintained that the move to narration was a politicization of cultural and social analysis. Marxists ignored that claim and condemned narrative approaches as culturalist and apolitical. New Marxists, like Louis Althusser (1918–1990), who were under the influence of structuralism were highly interested in the political aspect of narrative theory when developing theories of ideology and hegemony in the 1960s. This prepared the postmodern move from the “analysis of rhetoric to the analysis of ideology” and the “transition from poetics to politics,” as represented by poststructuralist and deconstructivist theories in the later 1960s.97 While one might assume today that these had been predestined as leftist theories, they were branded as conservative in the 1960s by classical Marxists, for their political quietism. Deconstruction was castigated as removed from reality, producing boundless doubt, for adhering to an anti-historicist formalism, and for containing no program for social change.98 However, in the end deconstructivism influenced even a traditional Marxist like Eric Hobsbawm; his Nations and Nationalism widely popularized the idea of the “constructedness” of nations in the 1980s.99 Another related and politically motivated adaptation of narrative theory emerged at the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies; in fact, one of the initial and most important pieces of cultural studies scholarship in this vein was concerned with literature: Raymond Williams’s Marxism and Literature.100

Theories of Narration Postmodernists, deconstructivists, New Marxists, and cultural studies scholars had only borrowed the idea from structuralists, formalists, and narratologists—scholars of literature who were not content with the traditional, positivist ways of analyzing stories—that narration and how it works are essential to understand a wide range of human activity. However, their writings found a deep and long-running reception across disciplinary boundaries, known as the narrative turn. Narrative theory is closely related to structuralism. It developed in the 1920s, especially in Russia and Czechoslovakia. The structuralists’ discontent with the mere description of literary texts and its elements resulted in the search for underlying constitutive structures—that which holds the elements together. Put another way, they were concerned with the ways in which

24

Introduction

narrative elements are related, not inconsistent with the Aristotelian notion that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. In their search for basic structures, early narrative theorists engaged with so-called simple narrative forms—that is, relatively short and repetitive narrations, such as those typical of fairy tales. Most importantly, the work of Vladimir Propp (1895–1970) is still regularly cited, particularly his Morfologiya skazki (1928), a systematic description of basic structures in Russian folk tales.101 Later, Tzvetan Todorov developed a systematic narratology based on structuralist principles and proposed the name.102 Although structural theory, perhaps given its abstractness, has not become the sole standard in literary analysis, the structuralist legacy is still present in the work of most authors who engage with narrative texts on a theoretical level. For example, Gérard Genette was able to present a systematic narratology of literary texts that is much in use with practitioners, arguably drawing on the strengths of structuralist theory and while simultaneously employing classical concepts of fiction.103 The reasons why narratologists’ concepts could spread to other disciplines are manifold. At root, this theory had the potential for general application, and it offered possibilities to work with narration that other concepts had not. Narrative theory can apply not only to fictional, but also to factual narration (i.e., narration about events that are supposed to actually have happened). It thus goes far beyond literary texts or fiction, and can be applied whenever something is being narrated. Narrative theory describes what is being narrated on the one hand, and how it is being narrated on the other. The how is what offered new possibilities: it included, for example, whether that which is narrated is presented more or less directly, from which perspective or point of view it is narrated, on what level the narration takes place, the extent to which the narrator is part of the story, and who is narrating to whom. In narratological terms, this would be called distance, focalization, intradiegesis versus extradiegesis, homodiegesis versus heterodiegesis, and subject/addressee.104 This sophisticated descriptive arsenal has made it possible to ask new questions. For instance, when I am describing a scholarly topic, to whom am I speaking? How am I presenting it, and what does this mean for the authors whom I cite? When I employ source material, interviews, or any kind of text, how do I narrate them, and which meanings are advanced that were not previously conceived? Such questions are, of course, highly political in the sense that they challenge the authority of whole disciplines and their methodologies. The dust on the methodological and theoretical battlefields has settled in more recent years, to be certain; maybe, as Terry Eagleton stated in 2003, we are even “after theory” right now.105 Narration has become widely used as a concept. However, it is

Space, Narration, and the Everyday 25

still worthwhile to think about how exactly narration can be understood and what narrative theory can offer to practitioners of nonliterary and nonphilological disciplines.

How To Narrative theory offers three advantages for scholars in disciplines other than literature. First, it can help the reader to reflect on who is speaking to whom in a text and make the writer aware of her role in the production of text. Second, it allows the reader to distinguish narrative texts from nonnarrative ones and to think about the character, the potential, and the limits of narration.106 Third, and perhaps most importantly, narration offers something that other forms cannot: personal experiences, the power to communicate what something was like. Narrative theory is able to describe how these qualia work. This is also the most important function of narrative for the contributions collected in this volume. The ability to analyze narratives opens up the option of self-reflection. It makes one aware of the stories one tells about oneself. This characteristic trait of narrative theory made it so interesting to postmodern authors, insofar as it made it possible to highlight the academy’s own politics and the power issues at stake when stories are being told. Thus, for instance, the account of narrative theory provided above is basically a heroic story (note also with exclusively male actors). It is, read as a simple form, a myth of origin, a specific narrative used to justify a given order and to lend it endurance and stability.107 Point of view analysis, as introduced by Wayne Booth (1921–2005), describes how narration manages distance. It thus aims at revealing how narration controls sympathy in the reader.108 How does this work? Narrative theory can be used to distinguish between an actual narrator and who she allows to narrate in a text. For example, the narrator in a text can be concealed by not referring to herself—simply put, by not using the word “I.” This technique makes narration sound like a commonly accepted reality instead of a subjective account, and belongs in the narratologist realms of focalization and diegesis. When the narrator chooses to describe events as if the narrator in the text (the implicit author, according to Booth), was very close to those events (e.g., in terms of time, space, emotion, etc.), this will lead to a strong impact on the reader in combination with the claim to general validity that the author had created before through focalization. The narration feels simultaneously as a generally established fact and as a subjective experience, because the reader will grow acquainted with the situation of the hero and develop a certain degree of sympathy with that figure. Mike Currie sums it up this

26

Introduction

way: “Narratology has provided methods and concepts to understand how stories, narratives can control us.”109 This basic trait of narration and this potential of narratology make it central in any consideration of power and hegemony, whether it is the subject of research or fosters the research itself. Besides point of view, the third characteristic that makes narrative theory so interesting for other disciplines is a topic that has received theoretical attention relatively late as compared to others described here. This is narration’s unique potential to convey the qualia of events, the feelings, and the situations; it is only with some sort of narration that humans are able to develop an impression of the experiences of someone else.110 This potential of referring to what it was or is like is a dear commodity—not only for journalists who earn their keep, in part, by reporting the emotional side of events, but also for social scientists, historians, and anthropologists who over the last several decades have increasingly longed to learn more about the actual experience of their subjects of study. Finally, as already noted, narration’s ubiquity makes it indispensable for researchers to understand how it works. Like everyone else, scholars cannot escape narration, because it is “simply there, like life itself,” as Roland Barthes noted.111 Narratology has also created a close connection between the concepts of narration and space. Soviet semioticians attempted to create a universal meta-language to describe cultural phenomena of all times and places in the 1960s. This initiative, which began among small circles of Soviet academics during the Khrushchev thaw before extending to France and farther afield, led to a body of writing that attempts to strictly analyze cultural products—for example, Orthodox icons, the layout of a church or village, or a movie—in spatial or topological terms. In effect, this amounted, for instance, to an attempt to describe a cultural text in a highly abstracted terminology made up of basic spatial categories such as in, out, above, and below, reminiscent of mathematical terminology. (A late representative of this trend was again de Certeau with his spatial stories.112) Vladimir Toporov, one of the main proponents of the Moscow-Tartu Semiotic school, proposed that the separation of space and time was the very end of the mytho-poetic (or primitive) worldview and thus these categories stood at the early beginnings of modern thinking. One of the most influential examples from this school is the spatial description of narrative texts as in Yurii M. Lotman’s analysis of Nikolay Gogol’s prose.113 “Literary space,” Lotman argues, “represents an author’s model of the world, expressed in the language of spatial representation.”114 Lotman examined the basic function of the spatial category of the border in narrative (operationalized by such motifs as doors, win-

Space, Narration, and the Everyday 27

dows, thresholds), as well as central and peripheral spaces (urban and rural) often separated by the woods, which stand for certain worldviews, and the road the hero has to travel as a linear, connecting space.115 This is interesting to note in connection to chapter 2, which traces the agency of the masses as a literary hero to transgress boundaries in Caracas city space. Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotopos was a still more dynamic spatial approach to narrative.116 These theorists have, decades before Foucault, already introduced spatiality into cultural analysis—not in the sense of territorialism, but of space as an abstract yet all-the-moremeaningful descriptive category. Narratology has not spread to other disciplines as methodology, rather its basic ideas have been popularized in poststructuralist academic debates. Postmodern theory, although very much based on narrative theory, has been particularly critical of the scholarly aspirations of narratology and has therefore dropped the suffix -ology. More importantly, postmodernists emphasized the aspect that had already been present in Propp’s approach (and in the semiotic strand of structuralism): the expansion of narrative theory to nonliterary texts. This development is especially crucial to this volume, as all contributions but one deal with factual texts. This was one important step as the study of narration shifted from an apolitical, even antipolitical to a political project—from formalism to neo-Marxism, poststructuralism, and cultural studies. Narrative theory, especially in its current postmodern form, has been attractive for nonliterary scholars not least due to its politicization and its critique of hidden ideology in narrative and its potential to control people. What else can it do for other disciplines? Not all of the insights provided by narrative theorists are of direct relevance for researchers in other disciplines, though (consider time sequence, e.g.). And not all disciplines profit from all features narrative theory offers. This is because many disciplines do not work with texts as subjects of study. What is important to all disciplines, however, are the second and third features identified above: the ability to understand narrative and to refer to experiences, connected to point-of-view theory and the qualia. As we have noted, this is because different disciplines employ narration even if they do not make it an object of study. The ability to understand author and reader helps researchers to deal with narrative accounts. This is especially important to disciplines that employ interviews (i.e., oral accounts, which are represented in four chapters in this book).117 To be sure, in most cases written accounts have narrative traits, too. Historical sources are narrative texts more often than not. Sources like the letters used in Berg’s chapter on housing requisitions in post–Second World War Vienna contain very specific narratives, for

28

Introduction

instance narratives of suffering, which were designed to justify claims on living space. Even laws contain narrative passages—for example, in their preambles. There is one aspect of narrative theory that is of broader scholarly interest however: its self-reflexive quality, which is important in all fields, including the natural sciences. Science, as Jean-François Lyotard has shown, employs strategies of persuasion apart from logical arguments, including rhetorical and political arguments. Narration is one of these strategies.118 Communication of knowledge in a discipline even as scientific as physics would simply be impossible without narration. For instance, in order to describe such a basic physical category as movement, one needs to say, “Something moves.” This sentence, according to narratology, essentially is the definition of a basic narration.119 In 1984, Randall Collins demonstrated how “words seem to be a necessary and inescapable frame within which mathematics is embedded,” and in 1993 David R. Maines echoed this for sociologists, who face the dilemma that they “must use words and discursive representations in their work, although there is strong advocacy of the superiority of non-discursive display of research findings and knowledge.”120 These are also examples of how an understanding of narrative form, as opposed to other explanatory forms like pure description, makes one aware of the nature of one’s own academic work. Some of the disciplines contaminated with narration have had a traditional understanding of the concept for a long time, but just not in the sense of narrative theory. This is true, for instance, in the case of law. Aristotle’s treatise on rhetoric and most subsequent teachings on the subject were developed from court arguments.121 Scholars working in cultural studies, and others in traditional disciplines like sociology or medicine, have quite intentionally adopted elements of narrative theory. New and related fields, like discourse analysis, whether in the linguistic or Foucauldian sense, have incorporated it. Michel Foucault recognized narration as one of the major strategies of ordering discourse and he understood it as one important kind of discursive events.122 Additionally, in sociology, economics, business, and organization studies, actor-network theory has recently introduced elements of structuralist semantics and thus incorporated some narratological elements, most prominently the most well-known proponent of this theory, Bruno Latour.123 Not all practitioners of narrative methodologies in social sciences are as radical as Latour. Today there is a substantial social science scholarship, particularly in sociology, that recognizes that narrations of individual actors are the basic material of inquiry: “Storytelling sociology views lived experience as constructed, at least in part, by the stories people

Space, Narration, and the Everyday 29

tell about it. Stories are not merely ways of telling others about ourselves but of constructing our identities, of finding purpose and meaning in our lives.”124 The contributors to this volume, regardless of their own disciplinary training, offer their own evidence of the depth and breadth of this conclusion.

Historians and Narration The disciplines most consistently represented in this volume are history and social anthropology, both of which are quite narrative-centered and have developed their own ways of theorizing and employing narration. Historians began to accept narrative analysis as a viable methodology in its own right in the 1980s. Under the label new historicism or narrativism, historians began to rehabilitate narrative sources over and against the accusation of prevailing social historians’ assertion that they were less scientific than quantitative or mass data. Moreover, in recent decades historiography itself has been the object of narratological analysis, influenced by developments in literary studies by scholars like Hayden White, who described the writings of eight classic modern historians from Ranke and Croce to Marx and Nietzsche in terms of the basic tropes they employed: metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony.125 Our chapters “City and Cinema” and “Adjudicating Lodging” are two contemporary responses to the challenge narrative theory has posed to the historical guild. Historians have always thought about narration, though, and the distinction between story and history has been a longstanding one in historiography. Until the nineteenth century, debates regularly emerged that accused the field of literature of being based on lying (which is what narratology would describe as fictional narration). Even Herodotus was called both the father of history and the father of lying.126 Considering these reservations against storytelling, it is no wonder that modern historians did not want to be confused with mythmakers—even if, in cultural-historical perspective, there is a relationship. As no historian can deny that storytelling has been and will remain the central occupation of historians (even quantitative data have to be presented in a narrative form), a technique had to be found to legitimize narration for modern historiography. The first attempt coincided with the introduction of modern historiography and is still valid. In the mid nineteenth century, Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886) and Jakob Burckhardt (1818–1897) developed a critical method of source interpretation to guarantee reliability and accountability of historical accounts. It has remained the standard among

30

Introduction

historians up to the present. While it had always been possible to tamper with sources, the new method made sure that well-trained historians could differentiate between research that is solid and balanced and that which is biased or untenable. The key to this was a meticulous technique of making traceable which sources a historian employed to make which claim, and an interpretation of what a source tells us—often according to the presumable intentions of the source producer. Thus, a narrative account could still claim truth as long as it was based on verifiable sources, and narration was saved for the discipline of historiography. This took care of what narratologists call fabula or plot. But what about the story, which is, as narrative theory was able to show, the narrative level where points of view come in? Nineteenth-century historians were well aware that different points of view could be introduced into the presentation of identical facts. They tried to eliminate this by imposing the imperative to do history sine ira et studio.127 They would not concede that they essentially utilized the same principles as any fiction writer, however. Perhaps they were aware of the point-of-view issue but did not see a problem in following what would, in the 1980s, come to be criticized and termed master narratives by Jean-François Lyotard.128 Earlier historians understood these constructs as their legitimate frames of reference, and traditionalists still do. Nonetheless, in the 1960s, before the impact of poststructuralism, another cure for the problems of traditional historiography was found in introducing scientific methodology into the narrative discipline of historiography. The turn to quantitative methods borrowed largely from social theorists like Paul Lazarsfeld. But, as we have shown, science is not detached from narration either, especially not when it is connected to the master narrative of modernization (as it usually is). Quite to the contrary, a tendency has been criticized to bolster the modernization paradigm at all costs, especially in social history.129 So, by turning to scientific methods, historians had actually jumped out of the frying pan into the fire. In the mid twentieth century oral history gained momentum as an effort at writing counterhistories, to offer an alternative to traditional historiography. The method was also the message: recording or transcribing eyewitness accounts of the past. Methodological predecessors in the early twentieth century were more interested in national historical events such as the U.S. Civil War, living conditions of the masses, or folk culture. Oral history as an actual discipline-specific movement turned rather to describing everyday life, and not infrequently its adherents simply used oral sources as a supplement to other, written mate-

Space, Narration, and the Everyday 31

rial, (e.g., in regional economic history, history of medicine, technology, and of course labor history).130 Classic projects primarily involved interviews with working-class people like the Yorkshire coal miners in Coal Is Our Life (1956), or more recently the Fiat workers of Torino or peasants in southern England.131 Our chapter “Urban Information Flows” is informed by this tradition. Practitioners of oral history sought to give voice to those who had previously only figured in history as the anonymous masses or even to capture the views of a representative sample of the population.132 While the earlier tendency to retrieve the voices of the oppressed seemed to be linked to a progressive ethos, in the course of time oral historians have also turned to previously invisible actors of working-class conservatism and racism, like Jeremy Seabrook did when he asked, “What Went Wrong [with] Working People and the Ideals of the Labour Movement[?]” in 1978.133 Despite their extensive use of narratives, oral historians were not initially involved in theoretical or methodological reflections about narrativity. Some of their work has been characterized by a belief in the matter-of-factness of “real people” and in a greater authenticity of their accounts (again, e.g., in Norman Dennis, Coal Is Our Life).134 Put in narratological terms, such authors were especially interested in what it was like, and in a different point of view.135 Thus, oral historians did not, at first, invest much energy in theoretical reflection on these qualia and focalization or point of view, although oral history had its peak during the same period—the 1970s and 1980s—as narratology, conversational analysis, qualitative sociology, and cultural anthropology. They had borrowed their interview methods primarily from the field of sociology, not literature or linguistics. Over recent years, practitioners of oral history have become more self-reflective and have let the interviewees speak for themselves. They have grown aware of the perilous temptation of transforming the authenticity retrieved from eyewitnesses into an argument developed by an omniscient historian, as the Johnston and McIvor contribution on the asbestos hazard in twentieth-century Scotland demonstrates. Instead, this chapter draws on oral accounts to describe how interaction around this dangerous material worked, as well as to describe the experience of the workers with asbestos and how their bodies are affected by it. Thus, in a fashion similar to the experiences of qualitative social scientists, oral historians have come to appreciate the impact of context (i.e., of the interview situation) on the results. Interestingly, the traditional link to sociology has made oral history open to ethnomethodology and conversational analysis, maybe more so than the humanities-based narrative theory.136

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Introduction

Cultural Anthropologists, Ethnographers and Narration Cultural anthropology and ethnography have always dealt with stories, too, originally those of so-called primitive cultures, stories that were then labeled “mythology.”137 These disciplines’ reflections on narrative have also contributed to the theory of narration. For example, the anthropologist Walter Goldschmidt put the researcher herself on the agenda via his proposal in a 1977 article to introduce self-reflective methodology (auto-ethnography). For Goldschmidt the field trip represented an initiatory rite and the entire discipline formed a subculture.138 Because mythical narration is an important practice in communal, religious institutions, anthropologists used methodologies developed in the humanities rather early in their work—for example, the analysis of mythology as practiced by classical philologists. In 1966 John Fontenrose championed the idea that ancient rituals were the origins of modern theater and, in general, that Greek mythology contained universal anthropological information—in the process drawing not only from philology, but also from Freudian psychology.139 Claude Lévi Strauss was perhaps the first in 1958 to open a back door through which linguistic and literary knowledge found entry into cultural anthropology in his Structural Anthropology, by borrowing from the structuralist linguist Nikolay Trubetskoy (1890–1938). However, as early as 1949 Joseph Campbell had anticipated the structuralist idea of comparable narrative structures in his The Hero with a Thousand Faces, in which he advanced the idea that a basic myth underlies all mythological narratives.140 Conversely, after anthropology had become an established discipline, scholars in the 1970s who were disenchanted with fields such as positivist sociology, quantitative history, or structuralist linguistics reinvigorated their work by allowing anthropological approaches to inform them. This resulted in fruitful new perspectives like those that could be found in such hyphenated disciplines as historical-anthropology, urban-anthropology, and ethnomethodology.141 This is perhaps the background to the fact that in our volume not only the urban-anthropology inspired work of Rubić and Leutloff-Grandits employs narrative interviews as its source material, but also the contributions offered by Reinders and Schober. To a significant extent, then, anthropologists’ interest in myth concerned the relationship between myth and ritual, which has been equated to the relation between libretto and a (dramatic) performance. This would mean that the performance of narrative could also be studied and interpreted similar to the narrative itself, thus suggesting that social interaction could be studied like a drama—an idea advanced by Erving

Space, Narration, and the Everyday 33

Goffman in the late 1950s.142 Thus, cultural anthropologists and ethnographers contributed to an early theory of narration-in-practice. Spaces are produced by narrating them. The everyday evolves in spaces that are conceivable only through narration. Only narration can transmit the quality of the everyday. The everyday is the space where hegemony is produced. The city is a space where hegemony is produced and challenged on an everyday basis, but that is structured by rituals and dominant narratives. This is, perhaps, why more and more researchers who are working at the crossroads of the academic fields described here have turned to basic human practices: listening to stories and to reading written accounts as stories. The research represented in this book tries to understand the meaning of narrations in and about the city, and how they create spaces of the everyday. Wladimir Fischer-Nebmaier is researcher at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. His main areas of teaching and research interest are identity politics in Central and Southeastern Europe from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, migrants in the metropolis, as well as Balkan literatures and popular culture. His research has taken him to Croatia, Serbia, Germany, Canada, England, and the United States. He is currently working on a book in English on Habsburg Serb public cultures in several Central European and North American cities between 1786 and 1932. His publications include Dositej Obradović als bürgerlicher Kulturheld (Peter Lang, 2007); and, as coeditor (with Alexandra Millner, Waltraud Heindl and Wolfgang Müller-Funk), of Räume und Grenzen in Österreich-Ungarn, 1867–1914 (Francke, 2010). Notes 1. Richard Sennett, The Conscience of the Eye. The Design and Social Life of Cities, 1st ed. (New York, 1990), 190. 2. Ibid. 3. James Donald, Imagining the Modern City (London, 1999). With the Cable Car line, Jack London developed a powerful metaphor of class distinctions in his South of the Slot (1909). 4. Mark Currie, Postmodern Narrative Theory, 3rd ed. (Basingstoke, 2001), 1. 5. Ben Highmore, Everyday Life and Cultural Theory. An Introduction (London, 2002), 16. 6. Peter Burke describes the interest in the everyday from early modern to modern history in his introduction to Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (London, 1978). Ben Highmore offers a short overview of the emergence of a concept of the everyday between boredom and strangeness in Highmore, Everyday Life and Cultural Theory.

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7. See Michael Gardiner, Critiques of Everyday Life (New York, 2000). 8. An overview of the relationship between German romanticists and nationalists can be found in Eugene Anderson, “German Romanticism as an Ideology of Cultural Crisis,” Journal of the History of Ideas 2, no. 3 (1941), 301–17. German readers will find this collection instructive: Alexander von Bormann, Volk—Nation—Europa: Zur Romantisierung und Entromantisierung politischer Begriffe, Stiftung für Romantikforschung 4 (Würzburg, Germany, 1998). 9. A study of the transfer of the mandate to rule from medieval to modern times for England, France, Germany, and Japan can be found in Reinhard Bendix, Kings or People: Power and the Mandate to Rule (Berkeley, CA, 1978). An explicitly formulated theory of how a deity is replaced by a collective subject can be found in early twentieth-century Russian literary history. At a Communist Party conclave in Capri, Russian writer Maxim Gorkiy and ideologist Anatoly Lunacharsky formulated the concept of “god building” (bogostroitel’stvo). See George Louis Kline, Religious and AntiReligious Thought in Russia, The Weil Lectures (Chicago, 1968). A thorough study in German is Raimund Sesterhenn, Das Bogostroitel’stvo bei Gor’kij und Lunačarskij bis 1909. Zur ideologischen und literarischen Vorgeschichte der Parteischule von Capri, Slavistische Beiträge 158 (Munich, 1982). 10. Since the French Revolution, democratic nation-state projects have been striving for a unified polity that requires cultural and linguistic streamlining. See Stephen May, Language and Minority Rights: Ethnicity, Nationalism and the Politics of Language, 2nd ed. (New York, 2011). In East, Central, and Southeastern Europe during the nineteenth century, the democratic-linguistic projects initiated by the romanticists often led to the discursive erasure of linguistically different populations—and eventually, in tragic cases, to their forced assimilation, expulsion, or extinction. One such case is the Roma and their language(s), known as Romani. See Dieter W. Halwachs, “The Changing Status of Romani in Europe,” in Minority Languages in Europe: Framework, Status, Prospects, ed. Gabrielle Hogan-Brun and Stefan Wolff (Basingstoke, 2003). The production of language atlases (like the first ones by Georg Wenker from 1881 and by Jules Gilliéron from 1902–1910) constituted ethnonational claims on territories. 11. Important early romanticist linguists were simultaneously ethnographers, such as Vuk Karadžić. See Gabriella Schubert, “Vuk Karadžić—Der Volkskundler,” in Sprache, Literatur und Folklore bei Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, ed. Reinhard Lauer, Opera Slavica (Wiesbaden, Germany, 1988). 12. A classic study on ritual is Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passsage (London, 1909). Victor Turner broadened the concept but was still not interested in the everyday; see Turner, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Rituals (Ithaca, NY, 1967). The appearance of cultural studies seems to have been a turning point; see Paul E. Willis, Profane Culture (London, 1978) and Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson, Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain (London, 1976).

Space, Narration, and the Everyday 35

13. Anderson explains this aspiration in the classic case of the German romanticists with the necessity to react to the social transformation from feudal to constitutional class states. Anderson, “German Romanticism,” 301. 14. The classic introductions to urban anthropology are Edwin Eames and Judith Goode, Anthropology of the City: An Introduction to Urban Anthropology, Prentice-Hall Series in Anthropology (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1977); Richard Gabriel Fox, Urban Anthropology: Cities in Their Cultural Settings (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1977); John Friedl and Noel J. Chrisman, City Ways: A Selective Reader in Urban Anthropology (New York, 1975). Consider also the following early studies of urban sociolinguistics: William Labov, The Social Stratification of English in New York City (Washington, DC, 1966); and Joshua A. Fishman, Robert Leon Cooper, and Roxana Ma Newman, Bilingualism in the Barrio (Bloomington, IN, 1971). 15. See Adam Kuper, The Invention of Primitive Society: Transformations of an Illusion (London, 1988). 16. Julie Graham, “Post-Modernism and Marxism,” Antipode 20, no. 1 (1988), 60–66. 17. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou: Village Occitan de 1294 à 1324 ([Paris], 1975). 18. Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a SixteenthCentury Miller (New York, 1982). 19. This has been criticized as an attitude of social scientists and social historians alike in Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social. An Introduction to ActorNetwork-Theory, Clarendon Lectures in Management Studies (Oxford, 2005). 20. Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” In Lenin and Philosophy, and Other Essays (London, 1971), 168. 21. Latour, Reassembling the Social, 67f. 22. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (London, 1971); Chantal Mouffe, Gramsci and Marxist Theory (London, 1979); Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (London, 1985). The common ground between Hall and Laclau also shows in their use of the term “articulation.” Cf. Lawrence Grossberg, We Gotta Get Out of This Place: Popular Conservatism and Postmodern Culture (New York, 1992), 54. 23. See the concept of “dominance without hegemony” coined by Ranajit Guha for British colonialism in India. Guha, Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India (Cambridge, MA, 1997). 24. In fact, the concepts of modernity, hegemony, and civil society are hard to disentangle. 25. See Jürgen Link, Thomas Loer, and Hartmut Neuendorff, “Normalität” im Diskursnetz soziologischer Begriffe, Diskursivitäten 3 (Heidelberg, 2003). Maybe the most productive field of discussion on normalization is the debate on heteronormativity. See Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 1st American ed. (New York, 1978); Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: The Discursive Limits Of “Sex” (London, 1993); Lisa Duggan and Nan D. Hunter,

36

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

Introduction

Sex Wars: Sexual Dissent and Political Culture (New York, 1995). For Althusser, the ideological state apparatus manifests itself in everyday practice. Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” 168. Perhaps the work of Raymond Williams is best suited to illustrate this point. Williams, Culture and Society: Coleridge to Orwell (London, 1990); idem, Marxism and Literature (Oxford, 1978); idem, The Long Revolution (London, 1975). An outstanding engagement with post-1980 forms of discursive hegemony from a linguistic perspective is Norman Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language (London, 1995); idem, New Labour, New Language? (New York, 2000). Herbert Marcuse’s analysis revolved around capitalist alienation. Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (Boston, 1964). Adorno’s rather top-down views of the culture industry play an important role in the classic collection of essays Dialectic of Enlightenment in its 1947 version (originally titled Philosophische Fragmente), whereas Horkheimer’s input seems to have been more a political-philosophical one published in English as Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” in Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, Cultural Memory in the Present (Stanford, 1988). See the pathbreaking Phil Cohen, “Sub-Cultural Conflict and WorkingClass Community,” in Culture, Media, Language, ed. Stuart Hall, Dorothy Hobson, Andrew Lowe, and Paul Willis (London, 1980). See, for instance, Todd Gitlin, “The Anti-Political Populism of Cultural Studies,” in Cultural Studies in Question, ed. Marjorie Ferguson and Peter Golding (London, 1997), 25–38; and Angela McRobbie and Jenny Garber. “Girls and Subcultures,” In Resistance through rituals. Youth subcultures in post-war Britain, ed. Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson (London, 1976), 209– 22. Another example is Paul McGuigan, “Cultural Populism Revisited,” in Cultural Studies in Question, ed. Marjorie Ferguson and Peter Golding (London, 1997), 138–54. James Carey, “Reflections on the Project of (American) Cultural Studies,” in Cultural Studies in Question, ed. Marjorie Ferguson and Peter Golding (London, 1997), 1–24. See M. Gottdiener, “Hegemony and Mass Culture. A Semiotic Approach,” American Journal of Sociology 90, no. 5 (1985), 959–1001. Althusser described the social process of interpellation (or internalization of general beliefs) in marketing. Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” De Certeau explicitly mentions it also. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley, 1984), 36. See also Grant David McCracken, Culture and Consumption II: Markets, Meaning, and Brand Management (Bloomington, 2005). See Kate Soper and Frank Trentmann, Citizenship and Consumption, Consumption and Public Life (Basingstoke, 2008); Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism (London, 1995); Robert John Foster, Materializing the Nation:

Space, Narration, and the Everyday 37

33.

34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

39.

40.

41.

42.

Commodities, Consumption, and Media in Papua New Guinea (Bloomington, IN, 2002); Tim Edensor, National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life (Oxford, 2002); Matthew Hilton, “The Banality of Consumption,” in Citizenship and Consumption, ed. Kate Soper and Frank Trentmann, Consumption and Public Life (Basingstoke, 2008), 87–103; Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920– 1940 (Berkeley, 1985); T.J. Jackson Lears, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America (New York, 1994). See Traian Stoianovich, French Historical Method: The Annales Paradigm (Ithaca, NY, 1976); Philippe Ariès and Georges Duby, A History of Private Life, 5 vols. (Cambridge, MA, 1987). According to Peter Schöttler, George Duby claimed to have been inspired to this by concepts of Louis Althusser. Schöttler, “Mentalities, Ideologies, Discourses: On the ‘Third Level’ as a Theme in Social-Historical Research,” in The History of Everyday Life: Reconstructing Historical Experiences and Ways of Life, ed. Alf Lüdtke (Princeton, 1995), 84. Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou. Ginzburg, The Chese and the Worms. Lüdtke, History of Everyday Life. On oral history, see part 3 of this introduction (“Narration”). Herbert Blumer, Symbolic Interactionism. Perspective and Method (Berkeley, 1969). Turner, Forest of Symbols; Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (New York, 1995); Harold Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology (Cambridge, MA, 1984); Harold Garfinkel and Anne Warfield Rawls, Ethnomethodology’s Program: Working out Durkeim’s Aphorism, Legacies of Social Thought (Lanham, MD, 2002). Anselm L. Strauss and Juliet Corbin, Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques, 20th ed. (Newbury Park, CA, 1997). The most relevant work here is Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Goffman also deals with identity management, as the title suggests, in Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, A Spectrum Book (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1963). Blumer, Symbolic Interactionism. On investigating material culture see, for instance, Christopher Tilley, ed., Reading Material Culture: Structuralism, Hermeneutics and Post-Structuralism (Oxford, 1990). The debate started with Ernst Hartwig Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton, 1957). Peter Burke discussed related questions for the early modern period in The Fabrication of Louis XIV (New Haven, CT, 1992). A recent overview of early modern political ritual is Philippe Buc, “Political Rituals: Medieval and Modern Interpretations,” in Die Aktualität des Mittelalters, ed. Hans-Werner Goetz, Herausforderungen X (Bochum, Germany, 2000), 255–72. The Paris study is Robert Darnton, The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France (New York, 1995).

38

Introduction

43. First came the cross-fertilization with structuralism, most prominently in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, trans. Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf (New York, 1963). Clifford Geertz has been among the first to programmatically apply narrative terminology on historiography, such as “author,” “genre,” and “interpretation.” Geertz, Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author (Stanford, CA, 1988). Michael Carrithers even asked whether anthropology might be an art rather than a science. Carrithers, “Is Anthropology Art or Science?,” Current Anthropology 31, no. 3 (1990), 263–82. 44. Roman Jakobson, “On Realism in Art,” in Language in Literature, ed. Roman Jakobson, Krystyna Pomorska, and Stephen Rudy (Cambridge, MA, 1987), 19–27. 45. The Marxist literary theorist and critic György Lukács argued that realism, like other literary forms, was a tool in class struggle. Realism understood for him should therefore direct the reading subject in understanding the forces underlying material reality. Realism is thus seen as an instrument of modernization and revolution. Lukács’s and related theories have assumed a link between certain literary texts and interests of specific classes and were in search for the “correct” literary form for revolutionary interests. Thus, close links between progress or modernization are central, if one term or the other is not explicitly used by Lukács. György Lukács and Rodney Livingstone, Essays on Realism (Cambridge, MA, 1981). Subtler was the approach of the Marxist literary theorist Walter Benjamin who described how certain developments of urbanization and bourgeois self-representation, two key aspects of modernity, formulated into literary texts of the inventor of the very term “modernity.” Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism (London, 1973). Russian semiotic linguist Roman Jakobson disentangled the various overlapping and contradictory meanings of realism. As mentioned above, Jakobson showed how successive generations of writers have attacked each other, claiming to have found a better way to realism. Jakobson, “On Realism in Art.” A different approach was used by Raymond Williams in Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, rev. ed. (New York, 1985), 257–62. He presented an updated post-Marxist theory of literature and society in idem, Marxism and Literature. 46. See Andreas Huyssen, After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism (Indianapolis, IN, 1986). 47. For example, Tolstoy concentrated primarily on Anna Karenina’s handbag in his description of her suicide. See Jakobson, “On Realism in Art,” 25. 48. Mieke Bal and Christine van Boheemen, Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, 3rd ed., Toronto, 2009. 49. Ronald J. Berger and Richard Quinney, Storytelling Sociology: Narrative as Social Inquiry. Boulder, CO, 2004. Also see part three of this introduction (“Narration”). 50. Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” Diacritics 16, no. Spring (1986): 22.

Space, Narration, and the Everyday 39

51. De Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, 117. 52. On the concept of mental maps and applications in urban studies, see Peter Gould, People in Information Space: The Mental Maps and Information Surfaces of Sweden (Lund, Sweden, 1975); John Rosslyn Clark, Turkish Cologne: The Mental Maps of Migrant Workers in a German City (Ann Arbor, MI, 1977). On space and cyberspace, see Peter Gould and Rodney White, Mental Maps, 2nd ed. (Boston, 1986). On space and power see Daniel J. Walkowitz and Lisa Maya Knauer, Contested Histories in Public Space. Memory, Race, and Nation, Radical Perspectives (Durham, NC, 2009) as well as Simon Gunn and R.J. Morris, Identities in Space: Contested Terrains in the Western City since 1850 (Aldershot, 2001). 53. Doreen Massey has described several central aspects of space and power, including geopolitics and gender. See Doreen B. Massey and John Allen, Geographical Worlds (Oxford University in association with the Open University, 1995); Doreen Massey, Space, Place and Gender (Cambridge, UK, 1994); idem, Power-Geometries and the Politics of Space-Time (Heidelberg, 1999). See below for a discussion of space-time or chronotope. The concept of a European East and West came about in the late eighteenth century in Enlightenment discourse on Russia. See Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford, CA, 1994). 54. Walter Christaller, Die Zentralen Orte in Süddeutschland: Eine ökonomischgeographische Untersuchung über die Gesetzmäßigkeit der Verbreitung und Entwicklung der Siedlungen mit städtischen Funktionen, 2 ed. (Darmstadt, Germany, 1968); and Walter Christaller and Carlisle W. Baskin, Central Places in Southern Germany (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1966). The latter’s concept of “centrality” is an early example of relational thinking on space. Critical approaches in geography include Massey, Power-Geometries and the Politics of Space-Time; idem, Imagining the World; Benno Werlen, Society, Action and Space: an Alternative Human Geography, 1. publ. ed. (London, 1993); David Harvey, “The Geopolitics of Capitalism,” in Social Relations and Spatial Structures, ed. Derek Gregory and John Urry (New York, 1985). 55. Three classic examples are: Ellen Churchill Semple and Friedrich Ratzel, Influences of Geographic Environment of the Basis of Ratzel’s System of Anthropo-Geography (New York, 1911); Friedrich Ratzel, Anthropogeographie, 2. Aufl. ed., Bibliothek Geographischer Handbücher (Stuttgart, 1899); Ellsworth Huntington, Civilization and Climate (New Haven, CT, 1915); and idem, The Character of Races as Influenced by Physical Environment, Natural Selection and Historical Development (New York, 1924). 56. The idea has been made even more popular through the seminal writings of Yugoslav politician and researcher Jovan Cvijić. Cvijić, La Péninsule Balkanique. Géographie Humaine (Paris, 1918). On his political agenda cf. Snezhana Dimitrova, “Jovan Cvijić on the Periphery and the Centre,” Études Balkaniques, no. 3–4 (1996), 82–91.

40

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57. Carl O. Sauer, “The Morphology of Landscape,” University of California Publications in Geography 2, no. 2 (1925), 19–53. 58. A more recent example of this tradition is Martin L. Cody and Jared M. Diamond, Ecology and Evolution of Communities (Cambridge, MA, 1975). 59. Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (London, 1972). 60. For the debate on architecture, see Adolf Behne, Eine Stunde Architektur (Stuttgart, 1928); Maurice Broady, “Social Theory in Architectural Design,” Arena 81, no. 898 (1966); Bill Hillier et al., “Creating Life: Or, Does Architecture Determine Anything?,” Architecture and Behaviour 3, no. 3 (1987), 233–50. The classic proponents of geodeterminism were Ellen Churchill Semple, Ellsworth Huntington, and Thomas Griffith Taylor. See, for example, Ellen Churchill Semple, The Geography of the Mediterranean Region: Its Relation to Ancient History (New York, 1931). The idea itself seems to go back to the Arab philosopher Ibn Khaldûn (1332–1406), however. See Warren E. Gates, “The Spread of Ibn Khaldûn’s Ideas on Climate and Culture,” Journal of the History of Ideas 28, no. 3 (1967), 415–22. 61. See Philippe Simon, Paris, Visite Guidée: Architecture, Urbanisme, Histoires et Actualités, 2nd ed. (Paris, 2009). 62. Edward Soja, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (London, 1989). Space as experienced by its inhabitants is a subject of environmental psychology. See Paul A. Bell, Jeffrey D. Fisher, and Ross J. Loomis, Environmental Psychology (Philadelphia, 1978). 63. Henri Lefèbvre, The Production of Space (Oxford, 2001), 38f. 64. Henri Lefèbvre, Critique of everyday life (London, 2008). 65. De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life. 66. Ibid., 118. Emphasis added. 67. Soja, Postmodern Geographies. 68. De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, 190ff. 69. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought (Cambridge, MA, 1989). His book was originally published in 1962, and not only for this reason distinctly not influenced by Foucault, but rather an attempt to rescue the positive aspects of Enlightenment thinking in a Frankfurt school sense. 70. Note that the concept of “public space” is not the same concept as “public sphere,” but the two are often seen as overlapping, because Öffentlichkeit is supposed to take place both in public places like coffee houses, but also in streets and squares, and in print. See Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun (Cambridge, MA, 1992, 109–42. 71. Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” 25. 72. Foucault, “Of Other Spaces.” 73. George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Makings of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940 (New York, 1994); Judith R. Walkow-

Space, Narration, and the Everyday 41

74.

75.

76.

77. 78.

79.

80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85.

itz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London, Women in Culture and Society (Chicago, 1992). See also Massey, Space, Place and Gender. Anne-Marie Fortier, Migrant Belongings: Memory, Space, Identity (Oxford, 2000). Disability studies is not necessarily a domain of historians, but from the beginning this academic movement did include a historical perspective, as documented in Brendan Gleeson, Geographies of Disability (London, 1999). Urban Studies dedicated an issue to disability studies in 2001 with an instructive introduction: Rob Imrie, “Barriered and Bounded Places and the Spatialities of Disability,” Urban Studies 38, no. 2 (2001), 231–37. Mica Nava, “Modernity’s Disavowal: Women, the City and the Department Store,” in Modern Times: Reflections on a Century of English Modernity, ed. Mica Nava and Alan O’Shea (London, 1996). Massey, Imagining the World; Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, London, 1983; David Morley and Kevin Robins, Spaces of Identity: Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural Boundaries (London, 1995). Mapping should not necessarily be understood in the sense of mental mapping referred to above; it can also include a postmodern, cartographic sense of drawing up landscapes of culture, economy, and power or strategically visualizing territories of desire. See, for instance, Jeremy Black, Maps and History: Constructing Images of the Past (New Haven, CT, 1997); and Simon Ryan, “Inscribing the Emptiness: Cartography, Exploration and the Construction of Australia,” in De-Scribing Empire: Post-Colonialism and Textuality, ed. Chris Tiffin and Alan Lawson (London, 1994), 115–30. Donald, Imagining the Modern City, 27, 28ff., 96. Simon Gunn, “The Spatial Turn. Changing Histories of Space and Place,” in Identities in Space: Contested Terrains in the Western City since 1850, ed. Simon Gunn and Robert J. Morris, Historical Urban Studies (London, 2001), 1f. and 5f; David Harvey, Consciousness and the Urban Experience: Studies in the History and Theory of Capitalist Urbanization (Baltimore, 1985); David Cannadine, “Victorian Cities: How Different?,” Social History, no. 2 (1977), 457–87; David Ward, “Victorian Cities: How Modern?,” Journal of Historical Geography 1, no. 2 (1975), 135–51. Soviet semiotician Yurii M. Lotman has laid out a general description of these cultural representations. See Y. M. Lotman, “On the Metalanguage of a Typological Description of Culture,” Semiotica 14, no. 2 (1975), 97– 123. See Doreen Massey, For Space (London, 2005), 27f. See Gunn, “Spatial Turn.” Donald, Imagining the Modern City, 1–26. Walter Benjamin, The Writer of Modern Life. Essays on Charles Baudelaire, ed. Michael William Jennings (Cambridge, MA, 2006), 40. Sennett, Conscience of the Eye, 190f. Katherine Brickell and Ayona Datta, eds., Translocal Geographies. Spaces, Places, Connections (Farnham, 2011).

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86. Simon Gunn, The Public Culture of the Victorian Middle Class. Ritual and Authority and the English Industrial City 1840–1914 (Manchester, 2000). 87. Pieter M. Judson, Inventing Germanness: Class, Ethnicity, and Colonial Fantasy at the Margins of the Habsburg Monarchy (Minneapolis, 1993); idem, “Frontier Germans: The Invention of the Sprachgrenze,” in Cultural Practices and the Formation of Imagined Communities around 1900. A Comparison between North America and Central Europe, ed. Susan Ingram, Markus Reisenleitner, and Cornelia Szabó-Knotik (Wien, 2001), 85– 100. 88. Nava, “Modernity’s Disavowal.”; Mica Nava and Alan O’Shea, eds., Modern Times: Reflections on a Century of English Modernity (London, 1996). 89. De Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, 97f; emphasis in original. 90. Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy (Harmondsworth, 1990); Willis, Profane Culture. 91. Meaghan Morris, “Things to Do with Shopping Centres,” in The Cultural Studies Reader, ed. Simon During (London, 1993), 392–409. 92. Meaghan Morris, “‘On the Beach,’ ” in Cultural Studies, ed. Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula Treichler (New York, 1992), 450–78; Hall and Jefferson, Resistance through Rituals; Willis, Profane Culture. 93. See, for instance the classic study on culture of poverty: Oscar Lewis, La Vida. A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty—San Juan and New York (New York, 1966); idem, A Study of Slum Culture. Backgrounds for La Vida (New York, 1968); William Foote Whyte, Street Corner Society. The Social Structure of an Italian Slum (Chicago, 1943). 94. Whyte, Street Corner Society; Ulf Hannerz, Soulside. Inquiries into Ghetto Culture and Community (New York, 1969). 95. Roland Barthes, Image, Music, Text (London, 1977), 20. 96. W.J.T. Mitchell, On Narrative (Chicago, 1981); Berger and Quinney, Storytelling Sociology; Todd Goodsell, “Defending Narrative: A Virtue Ethics Approach to Narrative Sociology,” in Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Marriott Hotel, Loews Philadelphia Hotel, Philadelphia, PA, Aug 12, 2005 (2005); Charles P. Smith, “Content Analysis and Narrative Analysis,” in Handbook of Research Methods in Social and Personality Psychology, ed. Harry T. Reis and Charles M. Judd (Cambridge, 2000), 313–35. 97. The reception of narrative theory in Althusser was a mediated one. It was connected to the concept of the cultural ideological state apparatus. Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” The quote is from Currie, Postmodern Narrative Theory, 21 and 23. 98. Currie, Postmodern Narrative Theory, 4. 99. See Eric J. Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1983); and E.J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780. Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge, 1990). Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities infused into other disciplines an adaptation of narrativist ideas closer to postmodern narrative theory.

Space, Narration, and the Everyday 43

100. Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy; Williams, Marxism and Literature. 101. Vladimir Propp, “Morfologija skazki.” Voprosy poetiki XII (1928). The first English translation was Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale (Bloomington, IN, 1968). 102. Tsvetan Todorov, The Poetics of Prose (Ithaca, NY, 1977). 103. Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse Revisited (Ithaca, NY, 1988); idem, Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method (Ithaca, NY, 1980). A successor of sorts is Mieke Bal; see Bal, Narrative Theory, 4 vols., Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies (London, 2004). An alternative tradition of narrative theory is Mihail Bakhtin, mentioned above, who developed concepts such as the polyphonic novel and the chronotopos. See the collection Pam Morris ed., The Bakhtin Reader: Selected Writings of Bakhtin, Medvedev and Voloshinov (London, 1994). 104. These terms depend on which terminology one is using, of course. In this case they are Genette’s. Most of these topics are covered in Genette, Narrative Discourse Revisited. For event-story-plot, see E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel (London, 1927). For event-fabula-story-text, see Bal and van Boheemen, Narratology. For événment-histoire-discours see Todorov, Poetics of Prose. 105. Terry Eagleton, After Theory (New York, 2003). 106. See the gradual model developed in ibid., 102f. 107. André Jolles, Einfache Formen. Legende, Sage, Mythe, Rätsel, Spruch, Kasus, Memorabile, Märchen, Witz, Forschungsinstitut für Neuere Philologie Leipzig: Neugermanistische Abteilung 2 (Halle/S., Germany, 1930). There is a French translation of this work, but not an English one: Formes Simples, Poétique (Paris, 1972). 108. The background of this theory is a larger argument about narrative being a sort of rhetoric aimed at creating a response in the reader. The concept of distance as developed by Booth means the distance an author (to whom Booth refers as an implied author, because author is a theoretical construct) takes toward the narrated events. See Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago, 1961), 243–70. 109. Mike Currie, Postmodern Narrative Theory, 17f. Of course, Currie also contended that this kind of interpretation was criticized as removing the reader’s agency. On the other hand, the theory also encompasses an implicit reader in the text and in scholarship, inspired by the German Rezeptionsästhetik (reader-response-theory) that has tried to reconcile agency and authority. See Wolfgang Iser, The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett (Baltimore, 1974); and Hans Robert Jauss, Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics (Minneapolis, 1982). Michel Foucault has deconstructed the author concept altogether in Foucault, “What Is an Author?,” in The Art of History: A Critical Anthropology, ed. D. Preziosi (New York, 1998), 299–314. 110. David Herman, Basic Elements of Narrative (Chichester, 2009). 111. Barthes, Image, Music, Mext, 20.

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112. De Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life. 113. Boris Andreevič Uspenskij et al., “Theses on the Semiotic Study of Cultures (as Applied to Slavic Texts),” in Structure of Texts and Semiotics of Culture, ed. Jan van der Eng and Mojmir Grygar (The Hague, 1973), 1–28; Lotman, “On the Metalanguage of a Typological Description of Culture”; idem, “Artistic Space in Gogol’s Prose,” Russian Literature 24 (1990), 199–241. 114. Lotman, “Artistic Space in Gogol’s Prose,” cited in Katharina Hansen-Löve, The Evolution of Space in Russian Literature: A Spatial Reading of 19th and 20th Century Narrative Literature (Amsterdam, 1994), 33. 115. Lotman, “Artistic Space in Gogol’s Prose.” 116. Morris, Bakhtin Reader, 184f. 117. See “Reimagining Nieuwland,” “City and Cinema as Spaces for (Transnational) Grassroots Mobilization,” “Urban Information Flows,” and “Creating a Familiar Space” in this volume. 118. Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Manchester, 1987). 119. Propp, Morphology of the Folktale. 120. Randall Collins, “Statistics Versus Words,” Sociological Theory (1984): 352; David R. Maines, “Narrative’s Moment and Sociology’s Phenomena: Toward a Narrative Sociology,” Sociological Quarterly 34, no. 1 (1993): 18. 121. Aristotle, Treatise on Rhetoric, Great Books in Philosophy, ed. Theodore Alois Buckley (Amherst, NY, 1995). For the common ground shared by rhetoric and narrative theory see Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction. 122. Michel Foucault, “Order of Discourse,” in Untying the Text. Post-Structuralist Reader, ed. Robert Young (Boston, 1981), 48–78. 123. The very acronym ANT (for actor-network theory) also hints to narratological influences, as the word actor is linked to Algirdas J. Greimas’ “actants,” as defined in Harjeet Singh Gill and Algirdas Julien Greimas, Structural Semantics (New Delhi, 1989). See Latour, Reassembling the Social. 124. Berger and Quinney, Storytelling Sociology, 10. 125. Hayden White, Metahistory. The Historical Imagination in NineteenthCentury Europe, 9th ed. (Baltimore, 1997). 126. Cf. W.K. Pritchett, The Liar School of Herodotos (Amsterdam, 1991). 127. Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The ‘Objectivity’ Question and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge, 1988), 648. 128. Lyotard, Postmodern Condition, xi, xix. 129. See, for instance, the case of migration history: Ewa Morawska, “The Sociology and Historiography of Immigration,” in Immigration Reconsidered. History, Sociology and Politics, ed. Virginia Yans-McLaughlin (New York, 1990), 187–238. 130. Paul Thompson provides a detailed overview of the “achievement of oral history” in these fields in Paul Thompson, The Voice of the Past. Oral History, 3rd ed. (Oxford, 2000), 81–116. Alistair Thomson noted a shift from a primary interest in English oral history to retrieve the “real facts” that

Space, Narration, and the Everyday 45

131.

132.

133.

134. 135. 136.

137. 138.

139. 140.

141.

was critically influenced by the Italian oral history scholarship that was more interested in memory. Alistair Thomson, “The Memory and History Debates: Some International Perspectives,” Oral History 22, no. 2 (1994), 33–43. Norman Dennis, Coal Is Our Life: An Analysis of a Yorkshire Mining Community (London, 1956); George Ewart Evans, Where Beards Wag All: The Relevance of the Oral Tradition (London, 1970); idem, Ask the Fellows Who Cut the Hay (London, 1956); Alessandro Portelli, Biografia di una città. Storia e racconto: Terni 1830–1985, Microstorie 11 (Torino, 1985). Luisa Passerini, Fascism in Popular Memory: The Cultural Experience of the Turin Working Class (Cambridge, 1987); Paul Richard Thompson, The Edwardians: The Remaking of British Society, 2nd ed. (London and New York, 1992). Thompson refers to these studies: Kathleen M. Blee, Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s (Berkeley, 2008); Jeremy Seabrook, What Went Wrong? Working People and the Ideals of the Labour Movement (London, 1978). Dennis, Coal Is Our Life. Although not an oral historian, Hoggart’s ethos was a similar one; see his Uses of Literacy. Not coincidentally, oral history overlapped with the history-from-below movement, a distinct, yet assumed, point of view. For example, David Henige did not use the word “narration” at all in his rather technical introduction. Paul Thompson uses the term in the 2006 edition of his important introduction to oral history, but not in its broad definition and mentions William Labov only as a field researcher. Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson did include various texts in their reader that reflect the limits and constraints of the method on grounds of narrative theory. Thompson, The Voice of the Past; Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson, The Oral History Reader, 2nd ed. (London, 2006); David Henige, Oral Historiography (London, 1982). The classic work is Bronislaw Malinowski, Myth in Primitive Psychology, 3rd ed. (Westport, CT, 1976). Walter Goldschmidt, “Anthropology and the Coming Crisis: An Autoethnographic Appraisal,” American Anthropologist 79, no. 2 (1977): 293–308; Rosanna Hertz, ed. Reflexivity and Voice (Thousand Oaks, CA,1997). See, for instance, Joseph Fontenrose, The Ritual Theory of Myth, Folklore Studies 18 (Berkeley, 1966). Trubetskoy was the founder of phonology. See Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology; on myth, see specifically idem, “The Structural Study of Myth,” in Myth: A Symposium, ed. Thomas Albert Sebeok, Bibliographical and Special Series of the American Folklore Society 5 (Bloomington, 1955), 50–66. Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 1st ed. (New York, 1949). Evans-Pritchard’s reflections originally appeared in 1961. E.E. EvansPritchard, “Anthropology and History,” in Social Anthropology and Other

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Essays. (New York, 1966), 172–91. See also Richard G. Fox, Urban Anthropology; Richard Basham, Urban Anthropology: The Cross-Cultural Study of Complex Societies (Palo Alto, CA, 1978); Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology. 142. The libretto idea is again formulated in Fontenrose, The Ritual Theory of Myth; Goffman, Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.

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Darnton, Robert. The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France. New York: W.W. Norton, 1995. de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Dennis, Norman. Coal Is Our Life. An Analysis of a Yorkshire Mining Community. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1956. Dimitrova, Snezhana. “Jovan Cvijić on the Periphery and the Centre.” Études Balkaniques, no. 3–4 (1996): 82–91. Donald, James. Imagining the Modern City. London: Athlone Press, 1999. Duggan, Lisa, and Nan D. Hunter. Sex Wars: Sexual Dissent and Political Culture. New York: Routledge, 1995. Eagleton, Terry. After Theory. New York: Basic Books, 2003. Eames, Edwin, and Judith Goode. Anthropology of the City: An Introduction to Urban Anthropology, Prentice-Hall Series in Anthropology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1977. Edensor, Tim. National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2002. Evans, George Ewart. Ask the Fellows Who Cut the Hay. London: Faber and Faber, 1956. ———. Where Beards Wag All: The Relevance of the Oral Tradition. London: Faber, 1970. Evans-Pritchard, E.E. “Anthropology and History.” In E.E. Evans-Pritchard, Social Anthropology and Other Essays, 172–91. New York: Free Press, 1966. Fairclough, Norman. Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language, Language in Social Life Series. London: Longman, 1995. ———. New Labour, New Language? New York: Routledge, 2000. Fishman, Joshua A., Robert Leon Cooper, and Roxana Ma Newman. Bilingualism in the Barrio. Indiana University Publications, Language Science Monographs. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1971. Fontenrose, Joseph. The Ritual Theory of Myth, Folklore Studies 18. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966. Forster, E.M. Aspects of the Novel. London: E. Arnold, 1927. Fortier, Anne-Marie. Migrant Belongings: Memory, Space, Identity. Oxford: Berg, 2000. Foster, Robert John. Materializing the Nation: Commodities, Consumption, and Media in Papua New Guinea. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2002. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. ———. “Of Other Spaces.” Diacritics 16 (Spring 1986): 22–27. ———. “Order of Discourse.” In Untying the Text. Post-Structuralist Reader, edited by Robert Young, 48–78. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981. ———. “What Is an Author?” In The Art of History: A Critical Anthropology, edited by D. Preziosi, 299–314. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Fox, Richard Gabriel. Urban Anthropology: Cities in Their Cultural Settings. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1977.

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Fraser, Nancy. “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy.” In Habermas and the Public Sphere, edited by Craig Calhoun, 109–42. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992. Friedl, John, and Noel J. Chrisman. City Ways: A Selective Reader in Urban Anthropology. New York: Crowell, 1975. Gardiner, Michael. Critiques of Everyday Life. New York: Routledge, 2000. Garfinkel, Harold. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984. Garfinkel, Harold, and Anne Warfield Rawls. Ethnomethodology’s Program: Working out Durkeim’s Aphorism, Legacies of Social Thought. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002. Gates, Warren E. “The Spread of Ibn Khaldûn’s Ideas on Climate and Culture.” Journal of the History of Ideas 28, no. 3 (1967): 415–22. Geertz, Clifford. Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988. Genette, Gérard. Narrative Discourse Revisited. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988. ———. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980. Gennep, Arnold van. The Rites of Passsage. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1909. Gill, Harjeet Singh, and Algirdas Julien Greimas. Structural Semantics, Series in Semiotics and Literature 4. New Delhi: Bahri Publications, 1989. Ginzburg, Carlo. The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller. New York: Penguin Books, 1982. ———. Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Gitlin, Todd. “The Anti-Political Populism of Cultural Studies.” In Cultural Studies in Question, edited by Marjorie Ferguson and Peter Golding, 25– 38. London: Sage, 1997. Gleeson, Brendan. Geographies of Disability. London: Routledge, 1999. Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971. ———. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963. Goldschmidt, Walter. “Anthropology and the Coming Crisis: An Auto-rethnographic Appraisal.” American Anthropologist 79, no. 2 (1977): 293–308. Goodsell, Todd. “Defending Narrative: A Virtue Ethics Approach to Narrative Sociology.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Marriott Hotel, Loews Philadelphia Hotel, Philadelphia, PA, August 12, 2005. http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p21305_index .html> (accessed May 24, 2015). Gottdiener, M. “Hegemony and Mass Culture. A Semiotic Approach.” American Journal of Sociology 90, no. 5 (1985): 959–1001. Gould, Peter. People in Information Space: The Mental Maps and Information Surfaces of Sweden, Lund Studies in Geography: Ser. B, Human Geography No. 42. Lund, Sweden: Gleerup, 1975.

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Gould, Peter, and Rodney White. Mental Maps. 2nd ed. Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1986. Graham, Julie. “Post-Modernism and Marxism.” Antipode 20, no. 1 (1988): 60–66. Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1971. Grossberg, Lawrence. We Gotta Get Out of This Place: Popular Conservatism and Postmodern Culture. New York: Routledge, 1992. Guha, Ranajit. Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997. Gunn, Simon. The Public Culture of the Victorian Middle Class. Ritual and Authority and the English Industrial City 1840–1914. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000. ———. “The Spatial Turn. Changing Histories of Space and Place.” In Identities in Space. Contested Terrains in the Western City since 1850, edited by Simon Gunn and Robert J. Morris, 1–14. London: Ashgate, 2001. Gunn, Simon, and R.J. Morris. Identities in Space: Contested Terrains in the Western City since 1850, Historical Urban Studies. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001. Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989. Hall, Stuart, and Tony Jefferson. Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain. London: Hutchinson, 1976. Halwachs, Dieter W. “The Changig Status of Romani in Europe.” In Minority Languages in Europe. Framework, Status, Prospects, edited by Gabrielle Hogan-Brun and Stefan Wolff, 192–207. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Hannerz, Ulf. Soulside. Inquiries into Ghetto Culture and Community. New York: Columbia University Press, 1969. Hansen-Löve, Katharina. The Evolution of Space in Russian Literature: A Spatial Reading of 19th and 20th Century Narrative Literature. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994. Harvey, David. Consciousness and the Urban Experience: Studies in the History and Theory of Capitalist Urbanization. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1985. ———. “The Geopolitics of Capitalism.” In Social Relations and Social Structures, edited by D. Gregory and John Urry, 128–63. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985. Henige, David. Oral Historiography. London: Longman, 1982. Herman, David. Basic Elements of Narrative. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Hertz, Rosanna, ed. Reflexivity and Voice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997. Highmore, Ben. Everyday Life and Cultural Theory. An Introduction. London: Routledge, 2002. Hillier, Bill, Richard Burdett, John Pepponis, and Alan Penn. “Creating Life: Or, Does Architecture Determine Anything?” Architecture and Behaviour 3, no. 3 (1987): 233–50.

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Hilton, Matthew. “The Banality of Consumption.” In Citizenship and Consumption, edited by Kate Soper and Frank Trentmann, 87–103. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Hobsbawm, Eric J. Nations and Nationalism since 1780. Programme, Myth, Reality: The Wiles Lectures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Hobsbawm, Eric J., and Terence Ranger, eds. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Hoggart, Richard. The Uses of Literacy. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990. Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.” In Dialectic of Enlightenment. Philosophical Fragments, 94–136. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988. Huntington, Ellsworth. The Character of Races as Influenced by Physical Environment, Natural Selection and Historical Development. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1924. ———. Civilization and Climate. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1915. Huyssen, Andreas. After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1986. Imrie, Rob. “Barriered and Bounded Places and the Spatialities of Disability.” Urban Studies 38, no. 2 (2001): 231–37. Iser, Wolfgang. The Implied Reader. Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974. Jakobson, Roman. “On Realism in Art.” In Language in Literature, edited by Roman Jakobson, Krystyna Pomorska, and Stephen Rudy, 19–27. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1987. Jauss, Hans Robert. Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics, Theory and History of Literature. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982. Jolles, André. Einfache Formen. Legende, Sage, Mythe, Rätsel, Spruch, Kasus, Memorabile, Märchen, Witz, Forschungsinstitut Für Neuere Philologie, Leipzig, Neugermanistische Abteilung II. Halle/S., 1930. ———. Formes Simples, Poétique. Paris: Seuil, 1972. Judson, Pieter. “Frontier Germans. The Invention of the Sprachgrenze.” In Cultural Practices and the Formation of Imagined Communities around 1900. A Comparison between North America and Central Europe, edited by Susan Ingram, Markus Reisenleitner and Cornelia Szabó-Knotik, 85–100. Wien: Turia+Kant, 2001. ———. Inventing Germanness: Class, Ethnicity, and Colonial Fantasy at the Margins of the Habsburg Monarchy, Working Papers in Austrian Studies— Center for Austrian Studies, 93–92. Minneapolis: Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota, 1993. Kantorowicz, Ernst Hartwig. The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957. Kline, George Louis. Religious and Anti-Religious Thought in Russia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968. Kuper, Adam. The Invention of Primitive Society: Transformations of an Illusion. London: Routledge, 1988.

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Labov, William. The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics, 1966. Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso, 1985. Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social. An Introduction to Actor-NetworkTheory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel. Montaillou: Village Occitan de 1294 à 1324. Paris: Gallimard, 1975. Lears, T.J. Jackson. Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America. New York: Basic Books, 1994. Lefèbvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Structural Anthropology, translated by Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf. 1st ed. New York: Basic Books, 1963. ———. “The Structural Study of Myth.” In Myth: A Symposium, edited by Thomas Albert Sebeok, 50–66. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1955. Lewis, Oscar. La Vida. A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty—San Juan and New York. New York: Random House, 1966. ———. A Study of Slum Culture. Backgrounds for La Vida. New York: Random House, 1968. Link, Jürgen, Thomas Loer, and Hartmut Neuendorff. “Normalität” im Diskursnetz soziologischer Begriffe, Diskursivitäten 3. Heidelberg: Synchron, 2003. Lotman, J.M. “On the Metalanguage of a Typological Description of Culture.” Semiotica 14, no. 2 (1975): 97–123. Lotman, Yurii M. “Artistic Space in Gogol’s Prose.” Russian Literature 24 (1990): 199–241. Lukács, György, and Rodney Livingstone. Essays on Realism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981. Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987. Maines, David R. “Narrative’s Moment and Sociology’s Phenomena: Toward a Narrative Sociology.” Sociological Quarterly 34, no. 1 (1993): 17–38. Malinowski, Bronislaw. Myth in Primitive Psychology. 3rd ed. Westport, CT: Negro Universities Press, 1976. Marchand, Roland. Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920–1940. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. Marcuse, Herbert. One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. Boston: Beacon Press, 1964. Massey, Doreen. For Space. London: Sage, 2007. ———. Imagining the World. Geographical Worlds. Oxford: Oxford University Press in association with the Open University, 1995. ———. Power-Geometries and the Politics of Space-Time. Heidelberg: Geographisches Institut der Universität Heidelberg, 1999. ———. Space, Place and Gender. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994. May, Stephen. Language and Minority Rights: Ethnicity, Nationalism and the Politics of Language. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2011.

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McCracken, Grant David. Culture and Consumption II: Markets, Meaning, and Brand Management. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2005. McGuigan, Paul. “Cultural Populism Revisited.” In Cultural Studies in Question, edited by Marjorie Ferguson and Peter Golding, 138–54. London: Sage, 1997. McRobbie, Angela, and Jenny Garber. “Girls and Subcultures.” In Resistance through rituals. Youth subcultures in post-war Britain, edited by Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson, 209–22. London: Hutchinson, 1976. Mitchell, W.J.T. On Narrative. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. Morawska, Ewa. “The Sociology and Historiography of Immigration.” In Immigration Reconsidered. History, Sociology and Politics, edited by Virginia Yans-McLaughlin, 187–238. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Morley, David, and Kevin Robins. Spaces of Identity: Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural Boundaries. London: Routledge, 1995. Morris, Meaghan. “ ‘On the Beach.’ ” In Cultural Studies, edited by Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula Treichler, 450–78. New York: Routledge, 1992. ———. “Things to Do with Shopping Centres.” In The Cultural Studies Reader, edited by Simon During, 392–409. London: Routledge, 1993. Morris, Pam, ed. The Bakhtin Reader: Selected Writings of Bakhtin, Medvedev and Voloshinov. London: Routledge, 1994. Mouffe, Chantal. Gramsci and Marxist Theory. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979. Nava, Mica. “Modernity’s Disavowal: Women, the City and the Department Store.” In Modern Times: Reflections on a Century of English Modernity, edited by Mica Nava and Alan O’Shea, 38–76. London: Routledge, 1996. Nava, Mica, and Alan O’Shea, eds. Modern Times: Reflections on a Century of English Modernity. London: Routledge, 1996. Novick, Peter. That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity” Question and the American Historical Profession. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Passerini, Luisa. Fascism in Popular Memory: The Cultural Experience of the Turin Working Class. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press/Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 1987. Perks, Robert, and Alistair Thomson. The Oral History Reader. 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge, 2006. Portelli, Alessandro. Biografia di una città. Storia e racconto: Terni 1830–1985. 1st ed., Microstorie 11. Torino: G. Einaudi, 1985. Pritchett, W.K. The Liar School of Herodotos. Amsterdam: Gieben, 1991. Propp, Vladimir. Morphology of the Folktale, Bibliographical and Special Series of the American Folklore Society 9. Bloomington: Indiana University Research Center, 1958. Ratzel, Friedrich. Anthropogeographie 2nd ed. Bibliothek Geographischer Handbücher. Stuttgart: J. Engelhorn, 1899. Ryan, Simon. “Inscribing the Emptiness: Cartography, Exploration and the Construction of Australia.” In De-Scribing Empire: Post-Colonialism and Textu-

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ality, edited by Chris Tiffin and Alan Lawson, 115–30. London: Routledge, 1994. Sauer, Carl O. “The Morphology of Landscape.” University of California Publications in Geography 2, no. 2 (1925): 19–53. Schubert, Gabriella. “Vuk Karadžić—Der Volkskundler.” In Sprache, Literatur und Folklore bei Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, edited by Reinhard Lauer, 309– 22. Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz, 1988. Seabrook, Jeremy. What Went Wrong? Working People and the Ideals of the Labour Movement. London: V. Gollancz, 1978. Semple, Ellen Churchill. The Geography of the Mediterranean Region: Its Relation to Ancient History. New York: H. Holt, 1931. Semple, Ellen Churchill, and Friedrich Ratzel. Influences of Geographic Environment of the Basis of Ratzel’s System of Anthropo-Geography. New York: H. Holt, 1911. Sennett, Richard. The Conscience of the Eye: The Design and Social Life of Cities. 1st ed. New York: Knopf, 1990. Sesterhenn, Raimund. Das Bogostroitel’stvo bei Gor’kij und Lunačarskij bis 1909. Zur ideologischen und literarischen Vorgeschichte der Parteischule von Capri, Slavistische Beiträge 158. Munich: Sagner, 1982. Simon, Philippe. Paris, Visite Guidée: Architecture, Urbanisme, Histoires et Actualités. 2nd ed. Paris: Picard, 2009. Smith, Charles P. “Content Analysis and Narrative Analysis.” In Handbook of Research Methods in Social and Personality Psychology, edited by Harry T. Reis and Charles M. Judd, 313–35. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Soja, Edward. Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory. London: Verso, 1989. Soper, Kate, and Frank Trentmann. Citizenship and Consumption, Consumption and Public Life. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Stoianovich, Traian. French Historical Method: The Annales Paradigm. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976. Strauss, Anselm L., and Juliet Corbin. Basics of Qualitative Research. Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques. 20th ed. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1997. Thompson, Paul. The Voice of the Past: Oral History. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Thompson, Paul Richard. The Edwardians: The Remaking of British Society. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 1992. Thomson, Alistair. “The Memory and History Debates: Some International Perspectives.” Oral History 22, no. 2 (1994): 33–35. Tilley, Christopher, ed. Reading Material Culture: Structuralism, Hermeneutics and Post-Structuralism. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990. Todorov, Tsvetan. The Poetics of Prose. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977. Turner, Victor. The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Rituals. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967.

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———. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1995. Uspenskij, Boris Andreevič, Vjačeslav Vsevolodovič Ivanov, Vladimir N. Toporov, Aleksander M. Pjatigorskij, and Yurii M. Lotman. “Theses on the Semiotic Study of Cultures (as Applied to Slavic Texts).” In Structure of Texts and Semiotics of Culture, edited by Jan van der Eng and Mojmir Grygar, 1–28. The Hague: Mouton, 1973. Walkowitz, Daniel J., and Lisa Maya Knauer. Contested Histories in Public Space: Memory, Race, and Nation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009. Walkowitz, Judith R. City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London, Women in Culture and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Ward, David. “Victorian Cities: How Modern?” Journal of Historical Geography 1, no. 2 (1975): 135–51. Werlen, Benno. Society, Action and Space: An Alternative Human Geography. 1st publ. ed. London: Routledge, 1993. White, Hayden. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. 9th ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. Whyte, William Foote. Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1943. Williams, Raymond. Culture and Society. Coleridge to Orwell. London: Hogarth, 1990. ———. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. ———. The Long Revolution. London: Penguin, 1975. ———. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978. Willis, Paul E. Profane Culture. London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1978. Wolff, Larry. Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994.

Part I

[•] Narratives and Images of the City

[• Chapter 1 •]

The Case of Ossification Contemporary Narratives about Everyday Life in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century L’viv ANDRIY ZAYARNYUK

Since the 1980s the study of everyday life has turned into a kind of

academic industry. This burgeoning research field attracts the attention of researchers across disciplines and has entered university curricula. Such popularity has its costs, however. The logic of developments in contemporary academia is often economic; universities and research institutions try to capitalize on new fields of inquiry, turning them into profit-making enterprises.1 Besides the logic of capitalist economy, the logic of tradition is also at work in such cases, insofar as the university is among the oldest and least mutable institutions in the Western world. The interaction between universities and society more broadly compels the former to assimilate new fields of study into the existing disciplinary structures and divisions if they are to remain viable, and academics try to accommodate new phenomena into existing knowledge frameworks and often apply to them familiar theories and assessment tools. This chapter is a case study in the history of everyday life with a focus on L’viv, the largest urban center of western Ukraine, a city that was part of the Soviet Union, of interwar Poland, and of the Habsburg monarchy. L’viv has also been known (at times) as Lvov, Lwów, and Lemberg. The chapter explores stories about the past, tracing connections between narratives constructed by academic historians, journalists, and both memoir and fiction writers invested in representations of the city’s past. I explore how the everyday is located in these representations, how it is singled out as a separate field of human experience, and how it correlates with the larger picture of city life and history. These areas of inquiry allow us to gain understanding of the relationship between narratives treating the everyday and larger fields of politics and ideology in the post-Soviet city.

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The story told in this chapter comes from Ukraine, but similar tendencies can be discerned in other East European and post-Communist countries; in many such cases, the study of the everyday developed on the ruins of the rigid structure of social sciences and humanities centered on a dogmatic interpretation of Marxism codified by Stalin himself and known as dialectical materialism. Since dialectical materialism was the leitmotif for all fields in the social sciences and humanities, much of the present analysis can be applied across disciplinary boundaries to post-Soviet sociology and anthropology as well. The collapse of the Soviet Union ushered in not only an ideological, but also a methodological vacuum.2 Historians perceived no particular problem with long-established research methods relying on documentary critique and factual verification. Two fundamental problems persisted, though. The first of these involved the nature of the epistemological foundations of historical knowledge. The second stemmed from divisions in the way explanation structures our understanding of social phenomena and historical change, and the effect these divisions have on our ability to establish causal connections and present a coherent story about the past. Throughout the 1990s the phenomena of nationalism, national movements, national revival, and nation building became the foci that structured historical research in Ukraine.3 Thematically, historical research during this decade—especially work pertaining to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—almost entirely concentrated on political events and prominent figures.4 The riches of the recently opened archives, the abundance of blank spots considered taboo in Soviet historiography, were conducive to this tendency in historical scholarship. They also compensated for the lack of engagement with epistemology and theory, which was in fact sanctioned by this kind of positivist or Rankean history.5 The inadequacy of these historical approaches and the lack of engagement with theory could no longer be denied by the end of the first postindependence decade. After clumsy attempts at theoretical reflection, in which nation-centrism was combined with the old-fashioned search for the meaning of history in the guise of historiosophy,6 the persistent lack of serious engagement with theory characterized as methodological pluralism allegedly demonstrated the openness and maturity of Ukrainian historiography.7 In the context of this pluralism, a number of articles appeared in various subfields of historical inquiry and in genres of history writing pursued by Western European and North American historians. These articles combined surveys of Western historiography with discussion of its possible application to Ukrainian themes.

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The historiography of everyday life was among the trends that were discussed most extensively.8 One of the outcomes of this discussion was the legitimization of its status in the writing and teaching of Ukrainian history; the appearance of the first textbook concentrating on the everyday experiences of ordinary people is evidence of this acceptance.9 The history of everyday life in this context was conceptualized as a subfield within the discipline, first and foremost as an alternative to traditional political history concentrating on the achievements of a select few. It also claimed to uncover aspects of the past unmapped by the more established political, socioeconomic, and cultural subfields of historical inquiry. The story of this subfield’s origin is a familiar one; it tends to draw from such currents in Western social history as microhistory, Alltagsgeschichte (history of everyday life), and oral history. However, theoretical foundations of histories of everyday life have rarely been discussed. When they are, the symbolic interactionism of Herbert Blumer and the phenomenological sociology of Alfred Schütz, Thomas Luckmann, and Peter L. Berger are cited as main points of reference in the realm of social theory.10 Nonetheless, while these theories are mentioned in passing as part of attempts to map the subfield, there is a striking absence of any references to them in the actual histories of everyday life. In short, historical approaches to everyday life in contemporary Ukrainian historiography are explicitly antitheoretical.11 The commonsensical approach to the history of the everyday is to treat it as a history of mundane experiences and objects that add density and color to the historical reconstruction of what Bakhtin would have referred to as particular chronotopes, thus enriching our understanding of certain places and historical periods, and making past lives more vivid and palpable. Such an understanding of the everyday relates it to well-established practices in ethnography and equates the everyday with the so-called pobut in Ukrainian (byt in Russian), or way of life. Ethnographic description remains the dominant mode of narration in histories of everyday life, and the only difference between the ethnography and the history of everyday life is the setting for this description. While the more traditional ethnography focused on villages and peasants, emerging popular and academic incarnations of the history of everyday life focus on cities.12

Everyday Histories of the City The synthesis of 750 years of L’viv’s history, published in 2007, has introduced the rubric everyday life in addition to population, culture and art,

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science, and politics and political parties.13 This three-volume publication, envisioned as the definitive survey of the city’s history, was prepared by a sizable team of professional historians at Ivan Kyp’iakevych Institute of Ukrainian Studies, the L’viv-based social sciences and humanities research institute that functions as a unit of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. This suggests that the history of everyday life in the Ukrainian historiography has become a legitimate field of historical enquiry. Such a legitimization works by assigning the everyday to a particular territory; it becomes a tangible societal feature that historians can grasp and map. Academic historians focusing on L’viv have been relatively slow to engage with the everyday. More popular representations of everydayness from L’viv’s recent past had developed into a prosperous and fashionable publishing trend by the late 1990s. While academic historiography, just like its previous Soviet manifestation, has continued to be preoccupied with the “significant” in history, the “insignificances” became the focus of popular writers and amateurs.14 The “little” people and trivial occurrences, particularly local stories and in some cases distinctly local notables, have received considerable attention. Besides popular histories and semifiction, memoirs have been published, reprinted, and translated. More often than not these texts deal with people’s daily lives; it is these daily routines that attract attention, and are evident also in recollections of prominent people.15 Since popular representations of the history of everyday life are oriented toward the general reader, such volumes are more widely printed than those of works by scholarly historians and they therefore influence readers’ perceptions to a greater extent. There are important differences between approaches to the everyday in academic historiography and in popular history, of course. The former emphasize the importance of historical accuracy and strive to provide objective investigations, whereas the latter are not constrained by the conventions of academic discipline and acknowledge that flights of imagination frequently spice up their narratives.16 The majority of memoirs fit somewhere in between. On the one hand, they are based on actual recollections; on the other, memory frequently plays tricks on authors, or authors’ sentiments are not grounded very much in the past they reconstruct but remain inseparable from the moment of writing. Taking into account these differences between various genres of historical representation, the similarity in the modes they employ to describe the everyday is nonetheless remarkable. All of them describe the everyday as a matrix manifesting itself in the city and through things and people, determining but not being determined.17 This matrix can be seen in material things—for example, performance of daily chores—but also within the physical parameters of apartments and parks, or other

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spaces that shape routes or time spent. While academic historians usually try to shed light on elements and structure of this matrix, popular writers and those reminiscing about bygone days concentrate on unique atmospheres: they describe objects and encounters, and compose lists of antiquarian curiosities helping to convey the otherness of an otherwise irretrievable past.18 In both cases there is a unity and wholeness in representations of the everyday. The picture we get from these memoirs, popular literature, and historiography is not one of uniformity in everyday urban life. Differences are manifested in narrations. It is taken for granted that people do not sit in the same cafés and do not wear the same kind of clothes, and that they interact with circumstances differently. Differences and inequalities are never emphasized in popular histories, nor are they discussed at length when acknowledged. Instead, popular histories—and, particularly, memoirs—prefer to represent images of a tranquility forever lost. This can be explained, in part, by the fact that for much of the second half of the twentieth century memoirs about L’viv were written almost exclusively by its former Polish inhabitants. These people were forcibly resettled to Poland after 1945, and the sense of loss so central to their memoirs is not a function of the passage of time—it is manifested in the recollection of expulsion, the forcible seizure and remolding of something that once belonged to them. The peaceful, quiet, and comfortable city they depict is implicitly written against the frenzied and traumatic changes that came with the Second World War.19 But the memoirs and popular histories published from the 1990s onward have largely been written by Ukrainians, usually by people who lived in L’viv after the Second World War and who therefore experienced a different social matrix. Most telling in this respect is the codification of everyday life in L’viv through the multivolume work on city history referred to above, since it was prepared by scholars who came of age professionally during the 1990s. Academic historians do not have either the liberties or excuses of amateur historians, fiction writers, and memoirists; rather, they strive to reveal particular aspects of city life, to emphasize change instead of idyllic images frozen in time. For example, Ostap Sereda, a specialist on the Ukrainian national movement in Galicia, starts his account of city’s everyday life in the second half of the nineteenth century with the “new technologies” that “not only changed the mode of transportation and information exchange, but also caused standardization of social habits and accelerated the rhythm of life.”20 One noteworthy consequence of these new technologies is the ostensible creation of a singular, organic urban space with well-integrated and balanced elements.21 Divisions into public and private spheres and the presence of widespread poverty

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are mentioned, but the author discusses them with the help of spatial metaphors; they are presented as qualities of a particular urban space, as markers of the urban inhabitants’ lives. Characteristically, these spatial metaphors figure prominently in an essay on everyday life in L’viv during the 1920s and 1930s by another promising historian of the same generation, Roman Holyk. Set in interwar L’viv, when the city became a home of increasingly radicalized nationalisms, the account begins with Ukrainian and Polish images of the city and national signification of the city space. Both national narratives and actual signs established in public spaces by the national communities quite often confronted each other with inverse meanings. At the same time, “an image was formed of the city as of a single urban organism that served as a common home to all city and suburban dwellers.”22 Linguistic differences, differences of social status, and gender differences are interpreted simultaneously as differentiators and as sources of common identity. The author concludes his description with the metaphor of the city as mosaic. This is not accidental: Smaller pieces in a mosaic are subordinated to a larger design. The everyday is represented as a united, organic space that influences people. There are slips of the tongue that obliterate differences between representation of the city and the actual city of the 1920s and 1930s, as the following example demonstrates: “On the one hand, the city becomes an embodiment of technological progress and dynamism—on the other, the place in which humans lose their individuality.”23 On a different level, the authors commit a similar slippage by inscribing the preconceived image of what they believe is a modern city into the space of the historical city they represent in terms of the everyday. Not accidentally, the legitimacy of the everyday is never questioned in these narratives. Its existence is postulated and described. The everyday is defined through a distinction to and in separation from politics, economics, and high culture. This operation corresponds to “claiming everyday life as self-evident and readily accessible,” which, Ben Highmore argues, “becomes an operation for asserting the dominance of specific cultures and for a particular understanding of such cultures.”24 In the remainder of this chapter I shall show which particular understanding of urban culture is upheld by this mode of narrating the everyday.

Indifferent Everyday The significant, diachronic differences in representations of the history of everyday in L’viv referred to above deserve particular attention. The

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nineteenth-century and interwar periods seem to be the privileged foci in histories of the everyday. In the discussion of Soviet L’viv, there is only a short subchapter on pobut and Soviet social policies. There is no separately defined space of everyday life as represented in accounts of the nineteenth century and the interwar period. Chapters dealing with the First World War or the Ukrainian-Polish and Polish-Bolshevik wars following it also contain no specific treatment of everyday life. The section on the Second World War includes a very short chapter on everyday life under Nazi occupation that concentrates on the hardships of daily experience, but it is remarkably depopulated and avoids any mention of violence, killings, and military confrontation. Indeed, there are separate chapters on the Holocaust and the Resistance. There are also separate chapters on culture, art, and intellectual life, and cross-references to them are abundant in the specific chapter on everyday life. This is part of the larger tendency in the recently published historical works on L’viv. “Despite all the divisions and contradictions with which ‘Lemberg’ lived at the turn of the century,” Holyk maintains that “in the consciousness of future generations the image of a city ‘pleasant from all the aspects’ had become attached to it.”25 Holyk informs us that L’viv cultivated a certain sense of common identity, even in interwar Poland.26 The everyday becomes embedded on some deeper level, allegedly not disturbed by the waves on the political surface. Holyk’s Misto i mif (City and Myth) also embraces the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but omits both world wars and other instances of armed conflict, ethnic cleansing, and brutal violence.27 Yet other histories of L’viv focusing on the twentieth century do recount political and military developments and include treatments of politicians and military commanders, but are indifferent to everyday life experience. The events that dramatically affected experience for city inhabitants are mentioned in passing, but not explored in-and-of themselves; they are approached in the context of larger political changes and conflicts between clearly defined antagonists. This is even more surprising if we take into account the fact that excellent works on everyday life in Ukraine during the Second World War have been written, and that there are works on everyday life of other Ukrainian cities under the Nazi occupation.28 There is a striking avoidance of confrontation and physical contestation (not just symbolic) in the accounts of everyday life in L’viv by both academic historians and other writers.29 The very popular authors who express nostalgia for the little pleasures of homes lost in their treatments of contemporary developments or in historical narratives do focus on national, ethnic, or other conflicts, however. They tend to understand these experiences as rooted in essential, underlying cultural differences.30

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On the level of organized social life, institutions, and political parties we encounter the stories of familiar ethnic divisions and national antagonisms. Stories of social and political change are told within the parameters of cultural differences that are mobilized and exploited. While minimization of social difference is consistent with contemporary descriptions of everyday life in L’viv, the discussion of ethnic difference is conducted in a different register and the narratives dealing with this problem depart from the level of the everyday altogether. This new register consists of portrayals of creative people who write texts, deliver speeches, and perform in public; historians pay particular attention to organized movements and activism. Their explanations involve strategies, consciousness, and identification. People are described as actors; calculation and choice are implied. These narratives are full of human agency, they are eventful, they focus on temporal change. The tone of the narration dealing with ethnic conflict, and the explanations that account for it, contrast sharply with those deployed to narrate everyday life. One might conclude that they refer to different cities and different people, even though they deal with the same city during the same period. Difficulties in describing national tensions and conflict at the level of everyday life can help us account for the differences between these two modes of historical narration. On the other hand, it might be that their particular understandings of the everyday prevent these historians from employing such tropes as domination, resistance, and struggle in their descriptions. In the end, these particular narrative strategies leave no place for understanding ideology and power. A longing for the comfortable and peaceful city are evident in both scholarly and popular histories; certainly in the latter the sentiments of memoir writers, anecdotal events referenced in newspapers accounts, and subjects of antiquarian interest help to create a serene picture of “a very pleasant city.”31 This has led to a problematic obscuring of the significance that ideology and power dynamics have played in histories of the everyday. While human figures do appear in memoirs and histories focusing on everyday L’viv, they are very often objectified as shallow and one-dimensional. They are either abstract, average figures like some unidentified Lychakiv inhabitant,32 or real people summed up in a single line: for example, “This was the doctor known by the whole of L’viv.”33 Even when it comes to people with whom memoirists had an intense emotional relationship, and with whom they were in close contact for a longer period of time, we have only silhouettes of these people expressed in standard, formulaic terms.34 In such representations the relations between people are provided schematically. Their momentary interactions are torn from the context of social relations and networks and inserted in the descrip-

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tion of a café or park. For example, in the history of L’viv restaurants, the so-called trial of the St. George communists from 1922 is mentioned because of the restaurants that the defendants frequented “magnificently dressed,” impregnating waitresses, and “throwing away tips of 10,000– 15,000 marks.”35 Such a perspective identifies with the experience of those who dominated the city and leaves the opposition voiceless, even discredited. For the contemporary reader, such texts present L’viv as a consumer paradise, enjoyed even by those responsible for its eventual destruction. It elides the sufferings and aspirations of others who lived in the city and whose lives were affected by such personalities. In these representations of the everyday, the chronotope devours people. This happens not only because of institutional inertia when the subfield of everyday is assimilated into pobut. It is also the result of a strategy designed to create a particular image of the city. Concentrating on specific objects and leaving out certain categories of people, these narratives construct an everyday that serves as the backbone of a city imagined as a unified, coherent entity—the complete opposite of the fragmented, contested, and negotiated modern city.36 Such an everyday helps to appropriate the city without laying particular claims in the name of a national community, to establish continuities that cover contingencies. An acceptable, nonproblematic identity of the city is established through the de-ideologization of the city’s everyday experience, through an emphasis on unity and shared culture to which present-day inhabitants are encouraged to relate their experiences. But such an understanding of the everyday severs our knowledge and confines our imagination—and thus obstructs critical judgment agency vis-à-vis current city’s residents.

Life at the Extremes Counterexamples to the story that has been told here do exist and warrant acknowledgement, however. Some memoirs narrate everyday life in L’viv differently: they focus not on a unitary space, but on coalescing planes; they describe human social networks and interactions rather than objects or landmarks. Two recently published memoirs that describe the city during the Second World War and focus on the Holocaust are written by David Kahane, a rabbi, and Ievhen Nakonechnyi, a Ukrainian Christian librarian who spent his childhood and youth in the Jewish area of the city.37 These memoirs show that everyday life does not stop during times of political and social upheaval, violence, or mass murder. For some time historians have claimed that the way people make sense of the atrocities under which they suffer (or that they themselves

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commit), or of the motivation behind their actions during wartime, relate in meaningful ways to their everyday experience of normal times.38 The two memoirs in question demonstrate this, too. Both provide vivid descriptions of an everyday that is not static, but rather is alive and dramatic. Moreover, the changing matrix of everyday life in the L’viv they describe is produced not by objective changes propelled by invisible forces, but by people themselves. People’s behavior signifies dramatic change, despite the fact that many significant everyday elements from their previous life remain constant. Social networks and human interaction are of utmost importance for these two memoirs. They are the key to survival. They constitute everyday life in the very fundamental sense and allow everyday life to reproduce itself. Interaction between people is described in a completely different tone; gestures turn into something other than internalized ritual: “[In order] not to traumatize her mother, Ida has agreed to wear an armband, but every time he had to be tearfully persuaded [by mother] to do so.”39 Silence becomes more telling than words: “I shook his hand and greeted with a warm shalom aleichem. We did not say anything to each other.”40 These are examples not of frozen but of very dramatic interaction, not of repetitive routine but of difficult decisions taken. Human agency issues forth from these stories, paradoxically during a period when that agency was most severely constrained. The richness and dynamism of these memoirs contrasts with how artificial and selective depictions of the everyday have been in Ukrainian historical narratives over the past two decades. The logic of forgetting is at work in the dominant representations of the past in L’viv’s everyday life. Constructed anew, the city’s collective self is protected from the encounter with trauma. That is why lived experiences during the Second World War are not reflected on or worked through either in popular or in scholarly histories of L’viv. Severing the links between pleasant everyday experiences and the experience of violence and brutality that sometimes is the essence of everyday, a cozy urban bourgeois space is imagined and projected. The everyday is not explicitly claimed by a chauvinistic or nationalist project, but it is in this sterilized space that such projects have opportunities to flourish. If a break with this tradition is to occur, another approach to the everyday is required, one based on a different conceptualization. At its inception during the 1920s and 1930s, recognition of the significance of the everyday was part and parcel of revolutionary transformation. The everyday was the site of praxis, the space where change could take place, where the silenced could find their voices. As John Roberts argues in his genealogy of the concept, the everyday is not the same as the every-

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dayness to which it is frequently reduced in the social science: “If everydayness designates the homogeneity and repetitiveness of daily life, the ‘everyday’ represents the space and agency of its transformation and critique.”41 Far from being a space distinct and delimited from the political, social, and cultural, the everyday is the ground on which political, social, and cultural are defined, contested, and negotiated. Only such a reconceptualization of the everyday will prevent an ossification of the everyday we have observed in the case of L’viv, and will contribute to a richer and ultimately more vital range of narratives of life in the city. In summary, this chapter examines a narrative that dominates historical representations of everyday life in L’viv. The narrative not only emerges in a number of contemporary texts ranging from academic publications to popular semifiction, but also works through the selective actualization of certain texts and images from the city’s past. In this larger discourse, the word “everyday” is used as a powerful tool because of its alleged neutrality and illusory promise of immediate access to the chronotope of the world we have lost. Finally, although this observation exceeds the scope of this chapter and deserves a separate, dedicated study, the narrative thread analyzed here has been embraced by local authorities and entrepreneurs to help shape the urban space of presentday L’viv. Through new monuments, conversions of existing buildings, pseudo-historical décor, and advertising, the historical imagery produced by this narrative becomes materially embodied and structures everyday life of the contemporary city. Andriy Zayarnyuk is associate professor in the Department of History at the University of Winnipeg, where he specializes in the social and cultural history of East-Central Europe during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His publications include Framing the Ukrainian Peasantry in Habsburg Galicia, 1846–1914 (Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2013); coedited with J.P. Himka, Letters from Heaven: Popular Religion in Russia and Ukraine (University of Toronto Press, 2006); Idiomy emansypatsiï: “vyzvol’ni” proekty i halyts ’ke selo seredyny XIX st. [Idioms of Emancipation: Projects of “Liberation” and the Galician Village in the Mid-Nineteenth Century] (Krytyka, 2007); and “Mapping Identities: The Popular Base of Galician Russophilism in the 1890s” (Austrian History Yearbook 2010). Notes 1. On how the corporate university has changed the structure of the production of academic knowledge, see John Biggs, “Corporatized Universities:

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2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9. 10. 11.

12.

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An Educational and Cultural Disaster,” in The Subversion of Australian Universities, ed. John Biggs and Richard Davis (Wollongong, Australia, 2002), 184–222. See also Yaroslav Hrytsak, “On Sails and Gales, and Ships Sailing in Various Directions,” Ab Imperio, 2004, no.1, 229–54; R.W. Davies, Soviet History in the Yeltsin Era (Basingstoke, 1997), passim. This trend can be discerned in the national historical journal; Ukraïns’kyi istorychnyi zhurnal. The preoccupation with a national focus has been commented on by several scholars, including Georgii Kasianov, “Rewriting and Rethinking Contemporary Historiography and Nation Building in Ukraine,” in Dilemmas of State-Led Nation-Building in Ukraine, eds. Taras Kuzio and Paul D’Anieri (Westport, CT, 2002), 29–46; and Iaroslav Hrytsak, “Ukrainian Historiography, 1991–2001: Decade of Transformation,” Ab Imperio, 2003, no.2, 427–54. The first Ukrainian social history journal (Sotsium: al’manakh sotsial’noi istoriï) appeared in 2002, but it focuses exclusively on the medieval and early modern periods. Both positivism and Leopold von Ranke, the founder of history as modern academic discipline, are associated with the history that concentrates on the sphere of formal politics and documentary evidence, although there are some doubts whether this kind of history is in the spirit of positivist philosophy—or if, indeed, Ranke would have approved of it. V.A. Potul’nytsky, “Ukrains’ka ta svitova istorychna nauka: Refleksiï na mezhi stolit,’ ” Ukraïns’kyi istorychnyi zhurnal, 2000, no.1, 3–20; No.2, 27–47; no.3, 20–37; no.4, 20–37. The term “methodological pluralism” is used in Heorhii Kas’ianov, “Shche ne vmerla ukraïns’ka istoriohrafiia,” Krytyka, No.4, 2002, http://krytyka .kiev.ua/articles/s6-4-2002.html O.A. Koliastruk, “Predmet istoriï povsiakdennosti: istoriohrafichnyi ohliad ioho stanovlennia u zarubizhnii ta vitchyznianii istorychnii nautsi,” Ukraïns’kyi istorychnyi zhurnal, 2007, no.1, 174–84; O. Udod, “Istoriia povsiakdennosti: pytannia metodolohiï, istoriohrafiï ta dzhereloznavstva,” in Aktual’ni problemy vitchyznianoi istorii XX st. Zbirnyk naukovykh prats’ akad. NAN Ukraïny Iuriia Iuriiovycha Kondufora, 2 (Kiev, 2004), 286–313; Oleksandra Kunovs’ka, “Quo vadis ‘istoriie povsiakdennia’?” Istoriohrafichni doslidzhennia v Ukraïni 18, 2008, 21–31. Iurii Komarov et al., Istoriia epokhy ochyma liudyny. Ukraina ta Ievropa 1900–1939 (Kiev, 2004). Koliastruk, “Predmet istoriï povsiakdennosti,” 178–79. By “antitheoretical” I mean history that not only fails to reflect on the epistemological foundation and social location of historical knowledge, but that also rejects the need for such reflection and claims special authority derived directly from evidence. While this chapter focuses on L’viv, this tendency is also observable in the case of other Ukrainian cities. There are memoirs, such as Valerii Shevchuk,

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13. 14.

15.

16. 17. 18.

19. 20.

21. 22.

23. 24.

Na berezi chasu, mii Kyïv, vkhodyny: avtobiohrafichna opovid’-ese (Kiev, 2002); D.V. Malakov, Oti dva roky: U Kyievi pry nimtsiakh (Kiev, 2002); professional histories, such as Mykhailo Rybakov, Nevidomi ta malovidomi storinky istoriï Kyieva (Kiev, 1997); all kinds of popular histories, such as Aleksandr Anisimov, Moi Kiev. Portret v inter’ierie vechnosti (Kiev, 2007); Anatolii Makarov, Malaia entsyklopediia kievskoi stariny (Kiev, 2005); and albums of old postcards and photographs, such as Ashot Arutiunian, ed., Kiev na pochtovoi otkrytke kontsa XIX—nachala XX veka (Kiev, 2005). Iaroslav Isaievych, Mykola Lytvyn, Feodosii Steblii, eds., Istoriia L’vova. U triokh tomakh, vols. 1–3 (L’viv, 2007). Multiple works by Iurii Vynnychuk must be mentioned here, e.g., Iurii Vynnychuk, Knaipy L’vova (L’viv, 2000); idem, Taiemnytsi l’vivs’koï kavy (L’viv, 2001); idem, Taiemnytsi l’vivs’koï horilky (L’viv, 2006). See also Aleksandra Matiukhina, W Sowieckiem Lwowie. Życie codzienne misata w latach 1944–1990 (Cracow, 2000); and Il’ko Lemko, L’viv ponad use (L’viv, 2003). Consider, for example, the memoir of one of Ukraine’s underground nationalist leaders work in an advertising agency during the Second World War, B. Chaikivsky, “Fama.” Reklamna firma Romana Shukhevycha (L’viv, 2005). Compare, for example, the work of Iurii Vynnychuk with that of Iaroslav Isaievych, Lytvyn, and Steblii, Istoriia L’vova. Individual perception is seen as the hostage of popular stereotypes and myths that flourish in everyday life: Matiukhina, W Sowieckiem Lwowie, 9. In this respect the memoirs discussed here differ from memoirs concerned with the construction of self, and fit well with nonautobiographical popular literature treating L’viv’s past. The tendency is not a new one—it has been seen already in Ukrainian émigré memoirs or in Polish memoirs concerning L’viv that appeared after the Second World War and were written by exiles from L’viv. For a Ukrainian example, see Zenon Tarnavs’kyi, Doroha na Vysokyi zamok (Toronto, 1964). As a Polish example, consider the rather impersonal memoirs of historian Marian Tyrowicz, Wspomnienia o życiu kulturalnym i obyczjowym Lwowa 1918–1939 (Wrocław, Poland, 1991). As an example we can take the memoirs of the famous science fiction writer: Stanisław Lem, Wysoki zamek (Cracow, 2006). Ostap Sereda, “Shchodenne zhyttia,” in Istoriia L’vova. U triokh tomakh, edited by Iaroslav Isaievych, Mykola Lytvyn, and Feodosii Steblii vol. 2 (L’viv, 2007), 318. Ibid., 322. Roman Holyk, “Misto Leva” i “sertse batiara”: obraz mista i shchodenne zhyttia l’viv’ian mizh dvoma svitovymy viinamy,” in Istoriia L’vova. U triokh tomakh, ed. by Iaroslav Isaievych, Mykola Lytvyn, and Feodosii Steblii vol. 1 (L’viv, 2007), 150. Holyk, “Misto Leva”, 161. Ben Highmore, “Introduction: Questioning Everyday Life,” in The Everyday Life Reader, ed. Ben Highmore (London, 2002), 1.

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25. 26. 27. 28.

Roman Holyk, L’viv: Misto i mif (L’viv, 2005), 22. Ibid., 38–39. Ibid. In the former case, consider Mykola Lytvyn, Kim Naumenko, L’viv mizh Hitlerom i Stalinom (L’viv, 2005); and Karel C. Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule (Cambridge, 2004). As an example of the latter instance, see Anatolii Skorobohatov, Kharkiv u chasy nimets’koï okupatsiï (Kharkiv, Ukraine, 2004). Even when the national conflict is mentioned, it is downplayed and treated lightly, as in Ivan Kernytsky, Heroi peredmistia (L’viv, 2003). For example, Il’ko Lemko, “Zapakh sechi viie zi Skhodu,” http://www .zaxid.net/article/1751/; idem, “L’viv rosiis’kyi,” http://www.zaxid.net/arti cle/3693/; or idem, “Usi krychat’, shcho L’viv—Ievropa. Deshcho z istoriï,” http://www.zaxid.net/article/8142/ I allude to Stanisław Wasylewski, Bardzo przyjemne miasto (Katowice, Poland, 1990). Lychakiv is one of L’viv suburbs. Oleksandr Nadraha, Sered l’vivs’kykh parkiv (L’viv, 2004), 167. Ibid., 171. Ibid. Iurii Vynnychuk, Knaipy L’vova (L’viv, 2000), 16. For just such a conceptualization of the modern city, see James Donald, Imagining the Modern City (London, 1999). Davyd Kakhane, Shchodennyk l’vivs’koho hetto (Kiev, 2003); Ievhen Nakonechnyi, “Shoah” u L’vovi. Spohady (L’viv, 2004). A masterful example of this approach is Alf Lüdtke, “The Appeal of Exterminating ‘Others’: German Workers and the Limits of Resistance,” Journal of Modern History, 64, Supplement: Resistance Against the Third Reich, 1992, 46–67; and Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999 (New Haven, CT, 2003), 154–78. Nakonechnyi “Shoah” u L’vovi, 152. Kakhane, Shchodennyk l’vivs’koho hetto, 148. John Roberts, Philosophizing the Everyday: Revolutionary Praxis and the Fate of Cultural Theory (London, 2006), 67.

29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

39. 40. 41.

References Anisimov, Aleksandr. Moi Kiev. Portret v inter’ierie vechnosti. Kiev: Izd-vo Zhnets, 2007. Arutiunian, Ashot, ed. Kiev na pochtovoi otkrytke kontsa XIX—nachala XX veka. Kiev: Ashot Arutiunian, 2005. Berkhoff, Karel C. Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2004. Biggs, John. “Corporatized Universities: An Educational and Cultural Disaster.” In The Subversion of Australian Universities, edited by John Biggs and Rich-

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ard Davis, 184–222. Wollongong, Australia: Fund for Intellectual Dissent, 2002. Chaikivsky, B. “Fama.” Reklamna firma Romana Shukhevycha. L’viv: Medytsyna svitu, 2005. Davies, R.W. Soviet History in the Yeltsin Era. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997. Donald, James. Imagining the Modern City. London: Athlone, 1999. Highmore, Ben, “Introduction: Questioning Everyday Life.” In The Everyday Life Reader, edited by idem. London: Routledge, 2002. Holyk, Roman. L’viv: Misto i mif. L’viv: Piramida, 2005. ———. “Misto Leva” i “sertse batiara”: obraz mista i shchodenne zhyttia l’viv’ian mizh dvoma svitovymy viinamy.” In Istoriia L’vova. U triokh tomakh, edited by Iaroslav Isaievych, Mykola Lytvyn, and Feodosii Steblii vol. 1. L’viv: Tsentr Ievropy, 2007, 150. Hrytsak, Yaroslav. “On Sails and Gales, and Ships Sailing in Various Directions.” Ab Imperio, no. 1 (2004): 229–54. ———. “Ukrainian Historiography, 1991–2001: Decade of Transformation” Ab Imperio, no.2 (2003): 427–54. Isaievych, Iaroslav, Mykola Lytvyn, and Feodosii Steblii, eds. Istoriia L’vova. U triokh tomakh, vol. 1–3. L’viv: Tsentr Ievropy, 2007. Kakhane, Davyd. Shchodennyk l’vivs’koho hetto. Kiev: Dukh i Litera, 2003. Kasianov, Georgii (or Kas’ianov, Heorhii). “Rewriting and Rethinking Contemporary Historiography and Nation Building in Ukraine.” In Dilemmas of State-Led Nation-Building in Ukraine, edited by Taras Kuzio and Paul D’Anieri, 29–46. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2002. ———. “Shche ne vmerla ukraïns’ka istoriohrafiia,” Krytyka, No. 4, 2002, http:// krytyka.kiev.ua/articles/s6-4-2002.html Kernytsky, Ivan. Heroi peredmistia. L’viv: Piramida, 2003. Koliastruk, O.A. “Predmet istoriï povsiakdennosti: istoriohrafichnyi ohliad ioho stanovlennia u zarubizhnii ta vitchyznianii istorychnii nautsi.” Ukraïns’kyi istorychnyi zhurnal no. 1 (2007): 174–84. Komarov, Iurii, Viktor Mysan, Andrii Osmolovsky, and Serhii Bilonozhko, Istoriia epokhy ochyma liudyny. Ukraina ta Ievropa 1900–1939. Kiev: Geneza, 2004. Kunovs’ka Oleksandra, “Quo vadis ‘istoriie povsiakdennia’?” Istoriohrafichni doslidzhennia v Ukraïni 18 (2008): 21–31. Lem, Stanisław. Wysoki zamek. Cracow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2006. Lemko, Il’ko. L’viv ponad use. L’viv: Piramida 2003). ———. “Zapakh sechi viie zi Skhodu.” (http://www.zaxid.net/article/1751). ———. “L’viv rosiis’kyi.” (http://www.zaxid.net/article/3693). ———. “Usi krychat’, shcho L’viv—Ievropa. Deshcho z istoriï.” (http://www .zaxid.net/article/8142). Lüdtke, Alf. “The Appeal of Exterminating “Others”: German Workers and the Limits of Resistance.” Journal of Modern History, Supplement: Resistance against the Third Reich 64 (1992): 46–67. Lytvyn, Mykola and Kim Naumenko. L’viv mizh Hitlerom i Stalinom. L’viv: Piramida, 2005.

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Makarov, Anatolii. Malaia entsyklopediia kievskoi stariny. Kiev: Dovira, 2005. Malakov, D.V. Oti dva roky: U Kyievi pry nimtsiakh. Kiev: Amadei, 2002. Matiukhina, Aleksandra. W Sowieckiem Lwowie. Życie codzienne misata w latach 1944–1990. Cracow: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 2000. Nadraha, Oleksandr. Sered l’vivs’kykh parkiv. L’viv: Piramida, 2004. Nakonechnyi Ievhen. “Shoah” u L’vovi. Spohady. 2nd ed. L’viv: Piramida, 2006. Potul’nytsky, V.A., “Ukrains’ka ta svitova istorychna nauka: Refleksiï na mezhi stolit,’ ” Ukraïns’kyi istorychnyi zhurnal, 2000 no. 1, 3–20; no. 2, 27–47; no. 3, 20–37; no. 4, 20–37. Roberts, John. Philosophizing the Everyday: Revolutionary Praxis and the Fate of Cultural Theory. London: Pluto Press, 2006. Rybakov, Mykhailo. Nevidomi ta malovidomi storinky istoriï Kyieva. Kiev: Kyi, 1997. Sereda, Ostap. “Shchodenne zhyttia.” In Istoriia L’vova. U triokh tomakh, edited by Iaroslav Isaievych, Mykola Lytvyn, and Feodosii Steblii vol. 2, 318–333. L’viv: Tsentr Ievropy, 2007, 318. Shevchuk, Valerii. Na berezi chasu, mii Kyïv, vkhodyny: avtobiohrafichna opovid’-ese. Kiev: Tempora, 2002. Skorobohatov, Anatolii. Kharkiv u chasy nimets’koï okupatsiï. Kharkiv, Ukraine: Prapor, 2004. Snyder, Timothy. The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. Tarnavs’kyi, Zenon. Doroha na Vysokyi zamok. Toronto: Homin Ukrainy, 1964. Tyrowicz, Marian. Wspomnienia o życiu kulturalnym i obyczjowym Lwowa 1918–1939. Wrocław, Poland: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1991. Udod, O. “Istoriia povsiakdennosti: pytannia metodolohiï, istoriohrafiï ta dzhereloznavstva.” In Aktual’ni problemy vitchyznianoi istorii XX st. Zbirnyk naukovykh prats’ akad. NAN Ukraïny Iuriia Iuriiovycha Kondufora, vol. 2., 286–313. Kiev: Instytut istorii NAN Ukraïny, 2004. Vynnychuk, Iurii. Knaipy L’vova. L’viv: Spolom, 2000. ———. Taiemnytsi l’vivs’koï horilky. L’viv: Piramida, 2006. ———. Taiemnytsi l’vivs’koï kavy. L’viv: Piramida, 2001. Wasylewski, Stanisław. Bardzo przyjemne miasto. Katowice, Poland: Śląsk, 1990.

[• Chapter 2 •]

The Masa’s Odysseys through Bourgeois Caracas The Testimony of Novels, 1920s–1970s ARTURO ALMANDOZ

The Urban Explosion of Venezuela’s Crucible Venezuela underwent one of the world’s fastest urbanizations during the twentieth century.1 An urban population that comprised 15 percent of the country’s total in 1926 jumped to 53.3 percent in 1950 and to 76.7 percent in 1971—three significant stages of a growth that, comparatively speaking, took more than a century in countries like Great Britain, Germany, or the United States. With a level of urbanization that reached between 84 and 90 percent by 1990 (according to the National Census and the United Nations, respectively), since the 1970s Venezuela has ranked among the most urbanized countries of Latin America and anywhere in the world.2 The rise of urbanization was mainly due to the abandonment of an agricultural economy based on colonial staples such as coffee and cocoa, which were replaced by the exploitation of petroleum from the 1920s onward. By the 1930s Venezuela claimed to be the world’s first exporter and second producer of black gold—a fortune that had mixed effects on the structures of a country that, up to that point, had possessed one of Latin America’s most sluggish economies. With an estimated 92,212 residents by 1920, the Caracas of the first part of Juan Vicente Gómez’s dictatorship (1908–1935) lagged far behind the major Latin American capitals whose populations had, on average, surpassed 100,000 inhabitants by the turn of the twentieth century. However, partly as a consequence of the sanitation and communication programs initiated by the Gómez administration, Caracas soon started to evince a demographic recovery. To wit: the population jumped to

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135,253 by 1926, an increase of 39.48 percent that marked considerable growth vis-à-vis the 22.86 percent growth experienced between 1891 and 1920. The traditional center underwent densification of commercial and other sectors due to new economic activities, epitomizing the functional and social segregation of the 1920s capital. By the time Gómez died in 1935, Caracas had long since manifested the urban effects of the petroleum boom; the population had increased to 203,342 residents (including 45 percent growth since 1926) and contained Venezuela’s highest population density in a municipal surface that included 542 hectares by 1936 (figure 2.1). Rural-to-urban migration had become an important factor of growth: 87,902 residents were born from immigrants to the capital, the city boasted eight lines of taxis and cars, two tram enterprises, buses, trucks and a very active business

Figure 2.1. Plan of Caracas, 1934, by Juan Röhl Source: Arturo Almandoz archive.

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life. Urban sprawl was controlled by new measures introduced by E. López Contreras’s democratic administration (1936–1941), as revealed in the design of its first urban plan in 1939 under the guidance of French urbanist Maurice Rotival. Perhaps the most striking of several noteworthy elements derived from this plan was urban renewal of the El Silencio slum in central Caracas, a major achievement of I. Medina’s government (1941–1945). This phase of the plan also served to launch a new vernacular modernity led by Venezuelan architect Carlos R. Villanueva. Partly as a consequence of its natural trend to grow along the axis of the valley, the eastward sprawl of Caracas found itself reinforced by urban planning measures launched in 1939 and again in 1951. Whereas the city’s western side was dominated by working-class districts and the center became principally a site of administrative and commercial activities, from the late 1920s the eastern urbanizaciones, avenues and, later, shopping centers, came to be associated with the bourgeois modernization of oil-exporting Venezuela. The effects of the oil revolution manifested themselves prominently during M. Pérez Jiménez’s dictatorship (1952–1958). International and rural-to-urban migrants flooded the capital to such a degree that the city’s population increased from 614,657 to 1,111,975 people between the 1950 and 1961 censuses. Encouraged by the government, foreign immigration to Venezuela during the 1950s numbered 348,485 people, and a great number of them settled in Caracas. Urban concentration was fueled by investment growth called for in the 1951 master plan ( plano regulador) that bolstered infrastructural elements such as housing, public works, and expressways (figure 2.2). The 9,000-unit 23 de Enero project,

Figure 2.2. Plano regulador, or master plan, 1951 Source: Arturo Almandoz archive.

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the Los Próceres ensemble, and the Francisco Fajardo highway stand as emblematic works enacted by the regime. But the sham modernization of Venezuela’s metropolitan areas was belied by the persistence of slums in city centers and suburbs. This, in turn, prompted the dictatorship’s aggressive policy to eradicate the rural immigrants’ shanties; in Caracas the official number of shanties fell from about 65,000 to 7,000 during this period. From the 1960s on, land scarcity led to a very compact urbanization pattern, which in turn produced the image of Caracas as a city of skyscrapers. With relatively few important open spaces, the Venezuelan capital emerged as one of the most densely populated cities in the world. Caracas underwent its main demographic increase between 1961 and 1981, when population in the metropolitan region rose from 1,336,464 to 2,879,468 inhabitants. During that period there were several outstanding public works projects added to the city, such as the Boyacá Avenue, a peripheral highway that links residential areas at the foothills of the Avila Mountain and that extends to the north of the city. The 1970s saw construction of the high-rise residence and office towers of Parque Central, a project that became the quintessence of metropolitan modernity associated with oil bonanza until inauguration of the subway system in 1983. Once the colonial centrality ended with a shift away from the coffeebased economy by the mid 1920s, the attributes and functions of the historic center as a public-space district diminished. This can be seen in the eastward expansion proposed in the first plan, as well as with the creation of the Bolivar Avenue and other commercial axes in the following decades. As shown by the 1951 plan inspired by the International Congress of Modern Architecture, the notion of centrality in Caracas unfolded along several nodes, according to different urban functions: the civic-historic center; the Plaza Venezuela of corporate skyscrapers; the Chacaíto of shops and public transport; and the ministerial Parque Central towers, which, by the 1970s, eclipsed Centro Simón Bolívar as the headquarters of public administration, on the eve of the consolidation of Chuao as a district in which private corporations established themselves. The mirages of the oil bonanza dazzled natives and foreigners alike. Besides the rural-to-urban immigration that had been present in Caracas since the 1930s oil boom, tens of thousands of Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, and Central Europeans—as well as Turks and Arabs from the former Ottoman Empire—diversified the city and shaped a dynamic cosmopolitanism into a sudden and consumption-driven metropolis that thrived over the following decades. During the 1960s and 1970s

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thousands of immigrants from Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Central Europe continued to arrive in Venezuela. Most of these newcomers settled in the capital, accentuating Caracas’s dynamism and diversity. Districts such as La Candelaria and Chacao absorbed many of the new immigrants, and these areas rapidly prospered from their entrepreneurial spirit and professional activities. After the 1970s large-scale immigration from the Andean countries and the Caribbean islands tended to predominate, which resulted in the increase of an unskilled population linked to informal activities such as street vending (buhoneros) and a clientele dependent on the party machine of politics. Introduction of functionalist segregation and express roads in Caracas brought with them spatial and social fractures; a snobbish capital grew during the 1960s and 1970s that paid little attention to pedestrian circuits and dismissed the fundamental necessity of public life in plazas, streets, and along sidewalks. The suburban pattern of scattered commercial functions led to a preference for shopping centers on the U.S. model, perhaps earlier than in any other Latin American metropolitan areas. From a psychedelic yet sober Chacaíto that galvanized the underground, but consumerist bohemia of the 1960s, several malls of the following decades consolidated Venezuela’s nouveau riche cult. The most Pharaoh-like temple of that cult was the Centro Ciudad Comercial Tamanaco, a shopping center inaugurated with a disco. This was the Caracas that slipped toward the Black Friday of February 1983, when the strong bolívar was officially devaluated against the dollar, for the first time in more than two decades. After the financial crisis started in 1983, and especially after the so-called Caracazo—the revolts of 1989 against the neoliberal measures implemented at the beginning of Carlos Andrés Pérez’s second presidency—there was a reversal in the immigration trends and construction boom. The urban explosion of Venezuela’s crucible was completed.

Literary Trends and Dramatis Personae As was the case in other Latin American countries, Venezuela did not undergo an industrial revolution that shaped a traditional European bourgeoisie. Following a trend in local historiography, I understand this indigenous bourgeoisie as a collection of groups dependent on the oil industry and related activities (i.e., banking and commerce), whereas understanding of the term oligarchy is linked to traditional land tenure and agricultural production in the colonial plantation style.3 An analogous characterization of other Latin American societies can be found in the

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work of José Luis Romero, who distinguished the bourgeois city emerging from the liberal reforms of the late nineteenth century, in contrast to the patrician order based on land tenure and export staples that had been inherited from the colonial era.4 From the 1930s on, in addition to national burguesías, the indigenous working class and immigrants who figured so prominently in early-twentieth-century urbanization stand as significant actors in Romero’s ciudades masificadas (mass cities)—a category that becomes a historical and methodological reference to my approach here, and whose aims and premises must be now clarified. Registration of the successive changes in the mentalités and movements of lower-class people throughout the metropolitan structure in the midst of the transition of Caracas from a bourgeois city into a mass metropolis is one of the main purposes of this study—indeed, in a fashion that recalls the literary motif of the urban odyssey recreated throughout the twentieth century after the publication of Joyce’s Ulysses (1922).5 Another aim is to reconstruct an alternative microhistory of period between the 1920s and 1970s, relying on the dramatis personae’s everyday experience in this narrative—a fundamental corpus that remains scarcely explored in Venezuela’s urban historiography. The possibilities of literature as a primary source have been developed by the so-called new cultural history since the 1970s, always relying on contextualization with supplementary methodologies derived from the social sciences.6 Literary elements have been incorporated into urban histories in Latin America at least from the 1980s, and many of these histories feature a diversity of sources and discourses assembled for recreating the cultural manifestations and forms of representation for different actors in the city, usually through a microhistorical approach. In fact, the incorporation of literary genres and nonspecialized discourses—essay, narrative, poetry, travel chronicle, pictorial and cinematographic representation, among others—into a catalogue of traditional primary sources for urban and planning histories that had mainly relied on technical and legal literature has enhanced the documentary corpus of a new field: urban cultural history.7 As far as changes implied by the structures of the modern city and processes of urbanization are concerned, literature in general and novels in particular have proved to be most instructive for illustrating the microhistorical approaches coming out of the emerging fields of urban cultural history and history of representation.8 Although the larger research project from which this chapter is drawn combines both essay and narrative, the episodes of the social and spatial odyssey explored below rely specifically on novels, with occasional references to essays and other representations.9

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The dramatis personae of Venezuela’s twentieth-century novels mirror the dynamics and the importance of those social groups present in the transition from old bourgeois Caracas into the modern metropolis. The belle époque oligarchy and the emerging bourgeoisie of the oil era were already portrayed in 1900s modernismo—a Latin American movement very much influenced by France’s symbolism and the Parnassian group.10 Consistent with the aesthetic concerns of modernist writers, working-class and immigrant characters became present in novels set in Caracas as early as the 1920s, very much a product of the oil discovery that transformed Venezuela’s economy and society. While the first realistic works depicted humble personae arriving from the countryside to a crowded center that had diminished in its residential prestige, bourgeois families were on the move to the east of Caracas, where new, flamboyant urbanizaciones were laid out. Decorated with an architectural eclecticism that ranged from beaux arts to the international style,11 the lavish way of life in the quintas or villas of these areas in the novels of Rómulo Gallegos (1884–1969), José Rafael Pocaterra (1889–1995), or Laureano Vallenilla Lanz Jr. (1912–1973) contrasted with the report of central pensiones and casas de vecindad (tenement houses) where outsiders and newcomers remained secluded and overwhelmed by their encounters with the big city. This was true, in any case, of the early novels published until the 1950s. The realism of the generation led by Gallegos, still colored by the rural criollismo (nativism) of the later nineteenth century,12 would give way to the avant-garde tendencies of younger writers who found themselves more influenced and excited by urban motifs. Indeed, from the 1940s onward Guillermo Meneses (1911–1978) and Salvador Garmendia (1928– 2001)—themselves immigrants to the capital—began to report the excursions of lower-class people through the bourgeois Caracas that boomed eastward. Subsequently, another group of novels by authors representing different generations, personal backgrounds, and literary trends—most notably Francisco Massiani (1944), Antonieta Madrid (1939), Miguel Otero Silva (1908–1985), and Adriano González León (1931–2008)— portrayed more-urbanized characters. These personages, in spite of their provincial pasts and marginal insertion in the metropolitan establishment, moved freely throughout the Caracas urbanizaciones, motorways, and shopping centers that had been fueled by the oil-boom economy of the 1960s and 1970s. This segregation between the capital’s lower-class west and the trendy east was somehow blurred by the 1980s, a period during which the metro system introduced new possibilities for mobility and social interaction, and Venezuela’s economy and political stability started to erode.

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Juan Bimba Comes to the City Although Venezuela would undergo a petroleum-based rather than an industrial manufacturing revolution by the early twentieth century, concern for the economic, social, and cultural introduction of the provincial and foreign workforce into cities manifested itself in national literature quite early. Reviewing the constitution of social groups in the backward country in order to pave the way for the industrialization and modernization that already penetrated Latin America’s southern republics, Gil Fortoul’s El hombre y la historia (1896) had raised the question of what would happen in cities where “the urban worker and the agricultural laborer” would associate against “the oppression exerted by industrialists and landowners.”13 Gil Fortoul thus seemed to point at the amalgam of peasants and citizens who, coming from different contexts and with diverse backgrounds, were later identified by Romero as fundamental components of the masa (mass) that crystallized in Latin America’s metropolitan areas after the First World War. The ciudades masificadas typified by Romero resulted to a significant extent from the hybridization of rural and foreign immigrants with the working and middle classes traditionally belonging to the city.14 Integrated into major capitals but standing in sharp contrast to the emerging bourgeoisie and their Americanized districts of skyscrapers, department stores, and avenues, by the 1920s the masa demanded its own spaces in metropolitan structures that thereby accentuated their social and functional segregation. As a consequence of its political instability and economic sluggishness at the turn of the century, a peculiarity of Venezuela’s urbanization was that the constitution and emergence of that mass was delayed by Juan Vicente Gómez’s twenty-seven-year dictatorship—a regime that maintained both the countryside and cities under semifeudal and premodern structures until at least the late 1920s. Despite these circumstances, proletarian and immigrant characters appeared early in novels staged in the crowded center and suburban outskirts of Caracas during the late Gómez era, for example in Díaz Rodríguez’s Peregrina (1921), Otero Silva’s Fiebre (1939), and Meneses’s Campeones (1939).15 Notably, this development did not take place before the series of reforms that followed Gómez’s death, when the masa were granted democratic rights of citizenship. For our purposes, concern for the political and educational arrival of the social element that faced the challenges of urbanization was initially emblematized by Juan Bimba (or Joe Bloggs), a peasant character profiled in both Medina Febres’s cartoons in newspapers such as Ahora, as well as in A.E. Blanco’s poetry (figure 2.3).16 Having thus appeared in Venezuela’s popular culture as a caricature of the rural-to-urban im-

The Masa’s Odysseys through Bourgeois Caracas 83

Figure 2.3. Cartoon of Juan Bimba and student, 1936 Source: Medina (1991).

migrant—illiterate and dressed in well-worn traditional clothes—Juan Bimba was rapidly recognized by the capital’s post-Gómez intelligentsia as a symbol of Venezuela’s rural and traditional population demanding attention from the oil-based democracy restored after 1936.

In the Tenement Houses of the City Center Prior to the oil revolution that attracted them into cities and camps, anticipation of Juan Bimba figures had occasionally appeared in Venezuelan novels. For instance, J.A. Pocaterra depicted a significant example of the effects on spatial segregation prompted by waves of immigrants in Tierra del sol amada (1918), in which the western Venezuelan city of Maracaibo was caught on the eve of the petroleum boom that would

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transform it into a metropolis. There also were several approaches to that masa emerging in the growing villages and camps explored in the so-called novela del petróleo (oil novel) genre; Díaz Sánchez’s Mene (1936) and Casandra (1957), as well as Otero Silva’s Casas muertas (1954) and Oficina No. 1 (1961) are among the most conspicuous examples. Such a literature sketched out the significant fresco of the migrant masa moving from the ailing villages of rural Venezuela into the bustle of settlements that, from the late 1920s, were fuelled by oil exploitation and production.17 Finally arriving in the Caracas that had begun to evince signs of the oil boom, Fabbiani Ruiz’s Mar de leva (1941) marked a first stage in the capital-based urbanization of the masa. Two characters representative of the two Venezuelas struggling for (or with) changes in the late 1930s are confronted within the novel’s pension: on the one hand stood Nectario Lugo, a frustrated heir of the popular clientelism neglected by the Gómez regime; on the other was the bachiller (high school graduate) who personified the virulent reformism prompted by the democratic renaissance. After their status as short-lived sports stars faded, Meneses’s Campeones found their true destiny in the same scenery of tenement houses that proliferated in the capital’s center and working-class districts. Some characters in Meneses’s later works are perhaps more illustrative of Juan Bimba’s first mutation within the city that became a major metropolis. For instance, in El falso cuaderno de Narciso Espejo (1952) the character Juan Ruiz appeared from a “dry and hot village far away” and now dwelled in the central parish of La Pastora, whose steep streets and traditional shops gave a picturesque image to the workingclass district.18

Adventure, Routine, and Segregation Beyond the snobbish salons and clubs portrayed in the novels of earlytwentieth-century modernismo and realism, public night life featured prominently in Caracas-based literature with Mariño Palacio’s Los alegres desahuciados (1948), in which decadent and urbane intellectuals moved about the new quarters and avenues of a sprawling metropolis. But it was the so-called second Meneses—whose narrative became less realistic and linear and more influenced by the stream-of-consciousness composition—who paid more attention to the low-class wanderer. Unlike Benjamin’s flâneur, who became engrossed while promenading along the monumental spaces of the industrial city (e.g., boulevards and arcades),19 the urbanization of Meneses’s creatures included penetration into the bourgeois city—but only for as long as was necessary. In Me-

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neses’s La misa de Arlequín (1962) we still find characters such as José Martínez or Justo López, newcomers from a rural background who were willing to assume the urban jobs unwanted by the capital’s established groups, wandering around central hotels and bars day and night. The male figures of the second Meneses still seemed to enjoy the unknown spectacle of the paved avenues around the teeming center, with its neon signs that lured the immigrants into its nocturnal rhythm and made them explore an uncharted urban geography. As Martínez felt from the very moment of paying for his bus ticket, such figures seemed to undertake a little adventure on every urban excursion (figure 2.4).20 As the very embodiment of Juan Bimba, Meneses’s Arlequín is another immigrant from provincial Venezuela who seemed to maintain a sense of adventure within the metropolis, just before the arrival of the routine that would alienate Salvador Garmendia’s Los pequeños seres (1959). Though still contemplated with joy by Arlequín, that vibrant masa became a “colorless crowd” to the blasé Mateo Martán, who regarded it flowing along “dusty streets … deprived of all intimacy.”21 Torn between

Figure 2.4. Central Caracas, ca. 1950 Source: Arturo Almandoz archive.

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the polarization of Simmel’s domains of “material culture” and “mental life”22—which did not manifest itself in Venezuela’s dramatis personae before the 1950s metropolitanization—the routine-bound protagonist of Garmendia’s novel thus stepped aside from the newcomers that still unveiled the carnival-like city Meneses depicted with simultaneous excitement and naïveté. Swelling the masa of peddlers and workers, some of Los habitantes (1961) belonged to the “network of street vendors, located in the most populous spots of the city center.” Others are employed as drivers for the expanding public transportation network—buses and carritos whose routes were announced by the drivers themselves along avenues crowded with “poorly-dressed people” who pushed and shoved to get into the buses with unusual haste.23 But not all of Los habitantes remained in the center between ranchos (shanties) and high-rise buildings; by the end of his novel the author placed the reader before what can be assumed to be the 23 de Enero superblocks that epitomized the modernist projects with which Pérez Jiménez’s dictatorship (1952–1958) tried to absorb the uncontrolled growth of shanty towns on the outskirts of Caracas. Garmendia thus confronted his reader with the abysmal borderline of the already segregated metropolis that showed the impact of rural-to-urban and foreign immigration. This would be the setting for Día de ceniza (1963) and later novels, in which Venezuela’s social and economic diversity is represented throughout the capital’s center, inner suburbs, and outlying districts.

Toward the Eastern Districts Still living in rented rooms of the downgraded center of 1950s Caracas, some of Garmendia’s pequeños seres (little beings) were initially overwhelmed by the stately homes surrounded by gardens that they contemplated in their daily excursions through the eastern urbanizaciones. Those mansions boasted modern forms of comfortable living with which Garmendia’s later habitantes (inhabitants) would become familiar when the latter entered their premises as workers or servants.24 At the same time, such a penetration signaled another mutation of working-class characters and an eastward advance of their circuits through the segregated metropolis. Borrowed from the titles of Garmendia’s novels, the pequeños seres and the habitantes can thus be said to mark two other steps of the masa’s literary urbanization, whereby the routine-stricken subject anchored in the center undertook wider odysseys throughout eastern districts of the segregated metropolis.

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In the midst of the eastward-bound urbanization of Caracas, Sabana Grande had become a most bohemian and heterogeneous district in the 1950s, enlivened by Mediterranean immigrants—mainly Spaniards, Italians, and Portuguese—who had partly assumed the commercial functions that the city center no longer provided (figure 2.5).25 Consolidated

Figure 2.5. Postcard of Sabana Grande, ca. 1960 Source: Arturo Almandoz archive.

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as the first public district for the middle classes outside of the traditional center of Caracas—a sort of moral region in the sense identified by Park in the ecological analysis of 1920s Chicago26—one of Sabana Grande’s earliest representations can be found in Francisco Massiani’s Piedra de mar (1968). On the one hand, perhaps for the first time in Venezuelan narrative, Massiani fictionalized the petty bourgeois world established in Los Caobos, Las Palmas, and other urbanizaciones of the Caracas del este; on the other hand, he registered what up to that point had been only ephemeral references to pop and mass culture depicted mainly in television and cinema, but long-since embedded in Venezuela’s oil-fueled modernization (figure 2.6). Especially in Día de ceniza, Garmendia’s bolder characters expanded their excursions through the consumerist city with lack of inhibition. Even if they still dwelled in the central parishes, they frequented cafés, bars, and cinemas in Sabana Grande and other eastern districts.27 Shaking off the atavism that had long characterized their behavior as erstwhile newcomers, Garmendia’s later creatures seemed both buoyed and propelled by a self-assured masa that led a sort of unsophisticated dolce vita throughout districts hitherto unexplored by lower classes within Venezuelan narrative in early-twentieth-century criollismo or realism.

Figure 2.6. Postcard of Plaza Venezuela from Los Caobos, ca. 1960 Source: Arturo Almandoz archive.

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Eastward, beyond Sabana Grande, Caracas was the locus of the psychedelic characters who belonged to the 1960s generation that experienced the liberal effects of the French May and sexual revolution in Antonieta Madrid’s No es tiempo para rosas rojas (originally published in 1975). Moving about in cars and taxis most of the time, the novel’s young protagonists felt at ease in the petty bourgeois districts of Caracas in which they had grown up (i.e., Los Caobos El Bosque, La Florida, La Campiña), all of which seemed to compound a region with new functions of commercial and cultural centrality. But they were accompanied by lower-class characters whom they met on a central university campus rocked by academic and political reforms. Moreover, women played a predominant role in such depictions in ways not encountered since 1920s realism. Moving farther toward Las Mercedes and Chuao, southeastern urbanizaciones, accessible mainly through motorways, appeared for the first time in Caracas narratives through Madrid’s novel.28 Other eastern districts such as the Country Club and La Castellana had featured centrally in chapters of Otero Silva’s Cuando quiero llorar no lloro (originally published in 1970), but this novel was dominated by the bourgeois antiheroes who assaulted the Caracas del este with their motorcycle gangs.29 Even as it maintained distinctions between eastern and western Caracas, one of the breakthroughs of Adriano González León’s País portátil (1968) was its representation of the spatial, social, and political complexity of the late-1960s metropolis for the first time in Venezuelan literature. His protagonist’s odyssey through a multicentered and traffic-jammed space captured the contrast between the east’s consumerism and modernity on the one hand, and the west’s social conflicts on the other. This journey was characterized by guerrilla attacks and criminal violence. While the narrative moved mainly through the patchwork of bourgeois urbanizaciones, González León’s Caracas includes shanty towns, superblocks, and neon billboards, all of which can be best contemplated from the multilevel motorways that cross the metropolis. They were like postcards that announced the crises of the Venezuelan capital after the oil bonanza that would end by the late 1970s.

Concluding Thoughts Originally epitomized by the emblematic caricature of a provincial Juan Bimba, the masa of Venezuelan cities swelled with rural-to-urban and foreign immigrants who urbanized that sort of “every man” and pro-

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pelled him through sprawling cities. As a sort of social laboratory that simulated all the contortions of Caracas on the verge of becoming a metropolis, Meneses’s novels portray the hybridization and mutation of figures transformed by a structure that is likewise in the process of segregation and diversification. Though still living in the center, the dramatis personae of 1950s novels explored other districts and avenues, searching for adventure in a city that was to a great extent unknown to the newcomers. The intrepidness that Meneses’s characters showed in their excursions throughout the sprawling structure of Caracas was lost in the mutation epitomized by Garmendia’s pequeños seres. The latter became schizoid amidst a complex and alienating metropolis, while forgetting the quaint influences of their provincial descent. But Garmendia’s later characters managed to penetrate the bourgeois districts and suburbs of eastern Caracas, either in all-night drinking sprees or in daytime routine as workers or servants. Combining a bohemian scene, commercial functions, and public spaces, Sabana Grande was the first district of eastern Caracas featured prominently in a new generation of Venezuelan novels pioneered by Massiani’s Piedra de mar. Lower- and upper-class representatives also coexisted in the bourgeois urbanizaciones and suburbs re-created by Madrid and Otero Silva, whose violent climate was a permanent reminder of social and political unrest that could no longer be reduced to a New York–like West Side Story. In this respect, País portátil was the 1960s manifesto of a conflict that pervaded both the capital’s eastern and western sides, whose centers and districts were not totally segregated in a metropolitan structure tied up by broad avenues and motorways. The violence of those novels seems to have announced the ceaseless conflict of late-twentieth-century Caracas, in which the metro system would also contribute to a blurring of the limits of social and spatial segregation after its launch in 1983. While demonstrating the possibilities of narrative as a helpful resource for urban cultural history, this chapter has also endeavored to show that, after the early mutations of the rural Juan Bimba that became an urban pequeño ser, the successive enlargements of the Caracas odysseys undertaken by such literary subjects were likewise attempts to adapt themselves to the complex metropolitan structure. Initially marked by contrasts between the affluent east side and the deteriorated west, the whole of Caracas became not only the scene but also the substratum for the dramatis personae’s day-to-day odysseys. In spite of the generational and stylistic differences among authors and novels considered, the symbols and fetishes of urban Venezuela—from highways to shopping cen-

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ters—signaled the itineraries of both city-born and immigrant Ulysses that end up informing the Caracas masa. Arturo Almandoz holds a joint appointment as professor at the Department of Urban Planning of Universidad Simón Bolívar in Caracas and at the Catholic University, Santiago de Chile. His current research interests include the relationship between literature and urban cultural history, and Latin America’s modernization and urban historiography. He is the editor of Planning Latin America’s Capital Cities, 1850–1950 (Routledge, 2002, 2010), and of Caracas, de la metropolis súbita a la meca roja (Olacchi, 2012). He is the author of Modernización urbana en América Latina. De las grandes aldeas a las metropolis masificadas (Universidad Católica de Chile, 2013), and Modernization, Urbanization and Development in Latin America (Routledge, 2014). Notes 1. This chapter is based on the project ‘The city in the the thinking of urban Venezuela’, Decanato de Investigación y Desarrollo (DID), Universidad Simón Bolívar (USB), Caracas.” This section draws some passages from the author’s article on Caracas; see Almandoz, “Caracas, Venezuela,” in Encyclopedia of Urban Cultures. Cities and Cultures around the World, 4 vols, ed Melvin Ember and Carol R. Ermber (Danbury, 2002) I, 495–503. 2. United Nations Centre for Human Settlements—Habitat, An Urbanizing World. Global Report on Human Settlements (Oxford, 1996), 47f. 3. From a socio-economic point of view, some of the traditional chroniclers of Caracas have referred to this period as the plutocratic city, meaning the predominance of the landowners and traditional producers based on agriculture that was Venezuela’s main sector through the mid 1920s. For more on this, consult Mariano Picón Salas, “Perfil de Caracas,” Crónica de Caracas, 8 (August–December), 1951, 136–44; and Díaz Sánchez, “Sinfonía de Caracas,” El Farol, 150 (February) 1954, 18–27. Despite differences in scale, this period partly coincides, in the case of Caracas explored in Almandoz, Urbanismo europeo en Caracas (1870–1940) (Caracas, 2006), 13–16, with the so-called bourgeois city in other Latin American countries that had more industrial development, elaborated on in José Luis Romero, Latinoamérica: las ciudades y las ideas (Mexico City, 1984), 247–59. 4. Romero, Latinoamérica, passim. 5. James Joyce, Ulysses (London, 1922). 6. This trend is an alternative to the history of great deeds and personae, following from Leopold von Ranke’s nineteenth-century paradigm, on the one hand, and to the vast and still structures identified by the Annales school on the other. Rather, it takes as its point of departure the new “importance given to everyday life in contemporary historical writing” since the 1960s,

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nurtured by the sociological meanings that the quotidian acquired in the works of Michel de Certeau and Norbert Elias, among others. According to Peter Burke’s interpretation, this shift in the paradigm of historiography prompted an enlargement of the catalogue of sources of the so-called new history: statistics, oral history, and images, among others, registers that made possible the reconstructions of visions from below—in sum, an alternative to the traditional explanations given by political and ideological establishments. See Peter Burke, “Overture: the New History, its Past and its Future.” In New Perspectives on Historical Writing, 1–23 (Cambridge, 2001), 10–11. Arturo Almandoz, Entre libros de historia urbana. Para una historiograf ía de la ciudad y el urbanismo en América Latina (Caracas, 2008), 182–212. The orientation toward microhistory explains to some extent the seeming fragmentation of works on urban and planning history in the past decades, which mirrors in turn the abandonment of the interpretations relying on principles drawn from Weber, Marx, or the Annales school, which are usually applied to broad historical periods and/or geographical blocs. Microhistory’s reappraisal of petty facts and case studies allows the researcher to readdress, in an innovative and synthetic way, the historiography’s tantalizing relationship between general and individual knowledge, and between quantitative and qualitative sources. This is why microhistory has turned out to be an alternative for cities’ studies, a field in which it has made significant contributions. See Giovanni Levi, “On Microhistories” in Burke, New Perspectives on Historical Writing, 112–13, 115. Besides mirroring the above-referred trend to favor case studies of individual cities rather than addressing national or international contexts, today’s abundant casuistry of urban and planning histories is indicative of another trend of greater scope and depth in terms of both theory and historiography. Nancy Stieber’s excellent treatment of the microhistory of the modern city, and cultural and social history has tended to put aside either the great narratives or the systemic approaches, derived from Marxist structuralism or from the Annales’ longue durée, in order to develop more-focused and microhistorical studies, in which the contingency and autonomy of cultural manifestations tend to be stressed. See Stieber, “Microhistory of the Modern City: Urban Space, Its Use and Representation,” in Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 58, No. 3 1999, Special Issue, September 1999, 382–91. The exploration of literary sources, including essay and novel as tools for urban cultural history, has been a feature of the project “The City in Venezuela’s Imaginary,” developed by the author since 1998. Two parts have already been published as books, basically corresponding to the first half of the twentieth century. Almandoz, La ciudad en el imaginario venezolano. I: Del tiempo de Maricastaña a la masificación de los techos rojos (Caracas, 2002); idem, La ciudad en el imaginario venezolano, II: De 1936 a los pequeños seres (Caracas, 2004). Almandoz, La ciudad en el imaginario venezolano. I, 33–54.

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11. The beaux arts refers to an architectural eclecticism inherited from the Paris-based school, very much influential in Latin American architecture until well into the twentieth century. The international style is rather associated with functionalist principles drawn from the Chicago school and the modern movement, both of which had already penetrated some of Latin America’s architectural milieus by the 1930s. 12. After the publication of Doña Bárbara (1929)—a best-seller and classic of Latin America’s criollismo that recreated the nineteenth-century antinomy that opposed civilization to barbarism—Gallegos’s novels continued to map out landscapes and portray characters of Venezuela’s regions on the verge of oil revolution and urbanization. 13. José Gil Fortoul, El hombre y la historia (1896), in Obras Completas, IV: Filosof ía constitucional. Filosof ía penal. El hombre y la historia y otros ensayos (Caracas, 1956), 420. Fortoul’s warning evinced echoes not only from Marxism, but also from positivism. Drawn from Darwin’s natural evolutionism, Latin America’s positivism can be said to have been a hybrid that combined Comte’s opposition to the methaphysical legacy with the social evolucionism interpreted according to Spencer, without discarding a good dose of economic liberalism. See E. Bradford Burns, La pobreza del progreso. América Latina en el siglo XIX (Mexico City, 1990), 29–30. Within that framework, Venezuela’s early-twentieth-century positivism was a suitable method for the elite to analyse and answer concrete questions regarding Venezuela’s social evolution as nation and state. Thinkers such as J. Gil Fortoul, L. Vallenilla Lanz, and P.M. Arcaya also revisited the colonial and republican periods in order to understand the nation’s historical shortcomings, in turn to have access to the organiscism and progress of industrializing counries. This is elaborated on in Almandoz, La ciudad en el imaginario venezolano, I, 55–57. 14. See Romero, Latinoamérica, 336–37. 15. Almandoz, La ciudad en el imaginario venezolano, I, 125–34. 16. See Mariano Medina Febres, Medo: caricaturas de lucha, 1936–1939 (Caracas, 1991) and Andrés Eloy Blanco, La juanbimbada in Antología popular (Caracas, 1997). 17. See Almandoz, La ciudad en el imaginario venezolano, II, 27–36, 65–76. 18. Guillermo Meneses, Espejos y disfraces (Caracas, 1981), 180–82, 180. 19. Walter Benjamin, Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, ed. Peter Demetz, translator E. Jephcott (New York, 1986), 146–62. 20. Meneses, 235–36, 241. 21. Salvador Garmendia, Los pequeños seres/Los habitantes (Caracas, 1979), 44, 54f. 22. Georg Simmel, “The Metropolis and Mental Life,” trans. H.H. Gerth, in Classic Essays on the Culture of Cities, ed. Richard Sennett (New York, 1969), 47–60. 23. Garmendia, Los pequeños seres/Los habitantes, 268–69, 269. 24. Ibid., 13, 257.

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25. See Almandoz, “Caracas, Venezuela,” passim. 26. See Robert Park, “Suggestions for the Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment,” in The City. Suggestions for Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment, ed. Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess (Chicago, 1984), 43–46. By the mid 1920s the Chicago school of urban sociology, whose most prominent representatives were Robert E. Park, Ernest W. Burgess, and R.D. McKenzie, produced the first spatial analysis of the metropolis segregated in functional activities and social groups. Park’s pioneering approach included the distinction of the so-called moral region, where individuals’ gathering and interaction are not based on residential or economic reasons, as in other districts of the city, but rather on their affinity to share leisure and bohemian activities. In Park’s own terms, “Every neighborhood, under the influences which tend to distribute and segregate city populations, may assume the character of ‘moral region.’ Such, for example, are the vice districts, which are found in most cities. A moral region is not necessarily a place of abode. It may be a mere rendezvous, a place of resort” (43). 27. Salvador Garmendia, Día de ceniza (Caracas, 1968), 85, 90; 1979, 67–71, 262–63, 273. 28. Antonieta Madrid’s No es tiempo para rosas rojas (Caracas, 1994), 82–99, 216–17. 29. Miguel Otero Silva, Cuando quiero llorar no lloro (Caracas, 1996), 74–75 and 103.

References Literary Texts Díaz Rodríguez, Manuel. Peregrina (originally published 1921), in Narrativa y ensayo. Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1982. Díaz Sánchez, Ramón. Mene (originally published 1936), in Narrativa y ensayo. Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1982. ———. Casandra (originally published 1957). Madrid: Editorrial Mediterráneo, 1980. Fabbiani Ruiz, José. Mar de leva (originally published 1941). Caracas: Monte Avila, 1973. González León, Adriano. País portátil. Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1968. Garmendia, Salvador. Los habitantes (originally published 1961). Caracas Monte Ávila, 1979. ———. Los pequeños seres (originally published 1959). Caracas Monte Ávila, 1979. Massiani, Francisco. Piedra de mar (originally published 1968). Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1987. Madrid, Antonieta. No es tiempo para rosas rojas (originally published 1975). Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1994. Meneses, Guillermo. Campeones (originally published 1939). Caracas: Monte Avila, 1990.

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———. La misa de Arlequín (originally published 1962), in Espejos y disfraces. Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1981. ———. El falso cuaderno de Narciso Espejo (originally published 1952), in Espejos y disfraces. Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1981. Mariño Palacio, Andrés. Los alegres desahuciados. Caracas: Editorial Bolívar, 1948. Pocaterra, José Antonio. Tierra del sol amada (originally published 1918). Caracas: Monte Avila, 1991. Otero Silva Pocaterra, Miguel. Casas muertas (originally published 1954). Barcelona: Círculo de Lectores, 1974. ———. Oficina No. 1 (originally published 1961). Bogotá: Oveja Negra, 1986. ———. Cuando quiero llorar no lloro (originally published 1970). Caracas: CMR, 1996. ———. Fiebre (originally published 1939). Caracas: Monte Avila, 1994. Almandoz, Arturo. “Caracas, Venezuela.” In Encyclopedia of Urban Cultures. Cities and Cultures around the World, edited by Melvin Ember and Carol R. Ember, 4 vols., vol. 1: 495–503. Danbury, CT: Grolier, 2002. ———. Entre libros de historia urbana. Para una historiograf ía de la ciudad y el urbanismo en América Latina. Caracas: Equinoccio, Ediciones de la Universidad Simón Bolívar, 2008. ———. La ciudad en el imaginario venezolano. I: Del tiempo de Maricastaña a la masificación de los techos rojos. Caracas: Fundación para la Cultura Urbana, 2002. ———. La ciudad en el imaginario venezolano, II: De 1936 a los pequeños seres. Caracas: Fundación para la Cultura, 2004. ———. Urbanismo europeo en Caracas (870–1940). Caracas: Equinoccio, Fundación para la Cultura Urbana, 2006. Benjamin, Walter. Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, edited by Peter Demetz, translated by E. Jephcott. New York: Schocken Books, 1986. Blanco, Andrés Eloy. La juanbimbada in Antología popular. Caracas: Monte Avila Editores Latinoamericana, Comisión Presidencial para el Centenario del Natalicio de Andrés Eloy Blanco, 1997. Burke, Peter. “Overture: the New History, its Past and its Future.” In New Perspectives on Historical Writing, edited by Peter Burke, 1–23. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001. Burns, E. Bradford. La pobreza del progreso. América Latina en el siglo XIX. Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1990. Febres, Mariano Medina. Medo: caricaturas de lucha, 1936–1939. Caracas: Presidencia de la República, 1991. Gil Fortoul, José. El hombre y la historia (1896). In Obras Completas, IV: Filosof ía constitucional. Filosof ía penal. El hombre y la historia y otros ensayos. Caracas: Ministerio de Educación, 1956. Garmendia, Salvador. Día de ceniza. Caracas: Monte Avila Editores, 1968. ———. Los pequeños seres/Los habitants. Caracas: Monte Avila Editores, 1979.

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Levi, Giovanni. “On Microhistory.” In New Perspectives on Historical Writing, edited by Peter Burke, 93–113. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001). Park, Robert. “Suggestions for the Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment.” In The City. Suggestions for Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment, edited by Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess, 43–46. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press/Midway Reprint, 1984. Picón Salas, Mariano. “Perfil de Caracas,” Crónica de Caracas, 8 (August– December), 1951: 136–44. Romero, José Luis. Latinoamérica: las ciudades y las ideas. Mexico City: Siglo Veintinuno Editores, 1984. Sánchez, Díaz. “Sinfonía de Caracas,” El Farol, 150 (February) 1954: 18–27. Simmel, Georg. “The Metropolis and Mental Life,” translated by H.H. Gerth. In Classic Essays on the Culture of Cities, edited by Richard Sennett, 47–60. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1969 Stieber, Nancy. “Microhistory of the Modern City: Urban Space, Its Use and Representation.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 58, no. 3 (Special Issue, September 1999): 382–91. United Nations Centre for Human Settlements—Habitat. An Urbanizing World: Global Report on Human Settlements. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.

[• Chapter 3 •]

Reimagining Nieuwland Narrative Mapping and the Mental Geography of Urban Space in a Dutch Multiethnic Neighborhood LEEKE REINDERS

The passive world is that of the straight and narrow while the active world is one that we feel at home in. Roger M. Downs and David Stea, Maps in Mind. Reflections on Cognitive Mapping 1

In The Practice of Everyday Life, Michel de Certeau stands on the 110th

floor of the World Trade Center in New York City and looks down at the city below. The view from above offers him an astonishing and alluring vision of the city as an abstract geometric composition, in which New York emerges as a “wave of verticals” and a “stage of concrete, steel and glass” set amidst two oceans.2 What, de Certeau asks himself, makes a totalizing view of “seeing the whole” for such a pleasurable experience? To be lifted to the summit of the World Trade Center is to be lifted out of the city’s grasp. One’s body is no longer clasped by the streets that turn and return it according to an anonymous law; nor is it possessed, whether as player or played, by the rumble of so many differences and by the nervousness of New York traffic. When one goes up there, he leaves the mass that carries off and mixes up in itself any identity of authors or spectators. … His elevation transfigures him into a voyeur. It puts him at a distance. It transforms the bewitching world by which one was “possessed” into a text that lies before one’s eyes. It allows one to read it, to be a solar Eye, looking down like a god.3

For de Certeau this bird’s-eye view typifies the disciplining gaze through which architects and urban planners exercise power and social

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control. Maps, aerial photographs, and scale models reduce the spatial complexity and social diversity of the city into purified images. But eventually, who goes up must come down—and one who is downstairs sees the city with different eyes. De Certeau asks, “Must one finally fall back into the dark space where crowds move back and forth, crowds that, though visible from on high, are themselves unable to see down below?”4 De Certeau seeks to confront us with the informal and trivial aspects of urban life that remain hidden from dominant readings of the city. Against the detached professional strategies of regulation and manipulation, he emphasizes the differentiated urban landscape peopled by its residents, users, and consumers who eventually do not rise above the city but walk in the midst of things. Rather than focus on normative systems, he is concerned with the tactics of making do through which people appropriate, edit, and transform the spaces organized by the techniques of institutional production. Thus, by walking along a street, reading a book, watching a television program—or, as explored in this chapter, by dwelling within neighborhood space—de Certeau urges us to look at how people inhabit the city. My approach here follows de Certeau by casting a shoulder-height look at urban space through maps drawn by residents of Nieuwland, a postwar neighborhood located near the inner city of Schiedam, a rather large development within the Rotterdam metropolitan area. Nieuwland was built after the Second World War according to the principles of modernist planning. During the 1970s, though, after a series of massive redundancies in the shipbuilding and steel industries, it developed into a low-income and mixed ethnic neighborhood. Since the end of the 1990s the municipality and a local housing corporation have initiated a large regeneration scheme to differentiate the social and physical fabric by demolition of part of the housing stock and construction of new housing complexes. The process of urban renewal needs to be understood as diametrically opposed to the notion of the everyday and to the repetitive, mundane practices of creating a settled sense of home and self, however. Indeed, apartment buildings have been renewed or torn down. Street patterns have been restructured. Established residents are moving out and new groups are moving in. Nonetheless, hidden from the formal cartography of policy plans are pertinent questions concerning how residents search for stability, comfort, and security in the midst of a changing environment. This study examines everyday life practices in the midst of disruptions of a social-spatial environment, and relies on narrative maps of neighborhood space drawn by residents themselves. My intention is to explore

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how urban space is reimagined by using these residents’ representations as counter mappings that provide us with an alternative perspective to professionally sanctioned cartography employed by local institutions.5 My approach to urban space is decidedly emic; it confronts the everyday environment of a neighborhood through the eyes of those who inhabit it. “Everyday” here refers to the routine practices that escape dominant readings of urban space, but that are integral to how people appropriate space, inscribe it with meaning, and make it home. “Place,” for my purposes, is not just a décor or setting, but foremost an inherent part of the social fabric and the formation of personal and collective identities. Linked to my understanding of the everyday is the idea of urban planning as a dynamic process that continues to exert an influence long after a street, building, or square is designed and constructed. People figure not as passive consumers, but as active users of space. Within this space they appropriate and transform the script that planners and legislators have written for them. In essence, this chapter deals with the stories of conquest to which de Certeau refers, the manifold ways residents get to know their way around town. These everyday practices incorporate the potential to add color and meaning to the environment of a postwar neighborhood, however nondescript, miserable, grey, and empty that space is often represented in mainstream accounts. I understand the residents’ maps on which I rely as discursive representations that reflect the experience of peopling moving through urban space and inscribing it with meaning. In the first two sections I formulate constructionist critiques of the notion of home and the method of mental mapping that shifts from maps as true representation of inner space to discourse practices (i.e., “the process of producing and interpreting texts”).6 I contend that a mental map is a two-fold construction that is both derived from a mental image or representation and transformed during the occasion when it is drawn. Rather than a navigational tool that people carry around in their heads, mental maps are part of the cultural practices through which environmental images are produced. Thus, I argue here for a discursive approach that locates subjective notions of home and belonging in the narrative realm of the everyday topographies of neighborhood space. Narrative mappings are seen as interpretive devices through which people connect past and present, self and other. These maps are not a representation of some underlying psychological reality, but rather a prism through which residents conceptualize and make sense of the spaces they inhabit. Such a narrative approach directs attention from notions of home and belonging as private perceptions, somehow sequestered within people’s heads, to the relational realm of telling stories.

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What, then, do these emic cartographies look like? The second part of this chapter sketches an imaginary geography of everyday space by presenting four spatial stories that manifest the divergent ways residents engage with the changing social and physical fabric of neighborhood space. I employ these elements to sketch a preliminary topography of everyday space in the concluding section. The maps and stories I present touch on different practices of making an environment into home, as people traverse space and express it as narrative. The maps tell us about normative evaluations of areas (positive/negative, safe/unsafe, beautiful/ ugly), as well as about status differences and social structures. No less significant is what these mental maps tell us about the social construction and cultural meaning of full and empty spaces—for example, intimate locales, but equally grey areas in a neighborhood (places people are less familiar with, or that lack broader identity). These gaps show us how people construct microlocales through principles of inclusion and exclusion that are very much defined by conflicts between social groups and the regressive regulation of space. Finally, this chapter discusses the role of local histories and places of memory. The residents’ maps offer a layered texture with regard to time, as well as space. People often reflect on the disappearance of landmarks or distinguishing neighborhood features that no longer exist physically, but live on in their memories.

Home and the Mental Geography of Everyday Space “Home” is often referred to as a special kind of place toward which people experience a strong social, psychological, and emotional attachment.7 Human identification with places relates both positively and negatively to the way people create distinctiveness, continuity, self-esteem, and self-efficacy.8 In a phenomenological sense, home is seen as a private, safe, and familiar setting where people find an opportunity to retreat from public surveillance and relax. The practice of home-making is centered round the act of dwelling, created through the familiarity of everyday routines, regular settings, and identification with the in-group as an extension of home and family; Peter King sees dwelling as a reiterative and circular practice of settling and keeping settled.9 This sense of intimacy associated with home is also captured in the concept of place attachment—that is, a close and affective bonding between individual and place, or a shared symbolic relationship through which people attach to a place certain culturally shared emotional and affective meanings.10 Despite its comforting features, home can have rough edges. Homes are porous places, as the maps and narratives in this chapter will illus-

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trate. Feelings of intrusion and estrangement, awakened by physical and social changes in the neighborhood, may lead to regressive forms of closure and territorial commitment involving, for example, hostile strategies of hegemonic control and surveillance.11 Disruption of place also enhances collective forms of belonging and the recollection of old certainties marked by memories or objects of nostalgia.12 Since home is receptive to extra-local forces, people reach a sense of intimacy, privacy, comfort, and stability by precluding ingress and interference.13 Thus, home places are produced in a dialectic tension between what belongs and what does not, what is mentally near and what is mentally distant, what feels like inside and what feels like outside, whom we call “we” and who we call “others.” As sociologist Shelly Mallet notes, “Homes always involve encounters between those who stay, those who arrive, and those who leave. … There is movement and dislocation within the very forming of homes as complex and contingent spaces of inhabitance.”14 Constructions of place-identity are thus implicated in ideological processes and power relations through which people localize themselves and others, often in paradigmatic oppositions between “us” and “them.”15 Questions of home often arise during periods of disruption, when the conflict-laden and contradictory nature of place identity is revealed.16 For example, research on the intersections of home, identity, and belonging among transnational migrants shows that the feelings and associations people attach to place are highly ambivalent and complex, that locality and community come to refer to physical spaces as well as to clusters or networks of social relations.17 Here issues of place-making are seen in relation to different forms of territorialization, through which people attach themselves to local places and imagined homelands. In a fragmented world, notions of home are expanded from fixed physical or geographical spaces (dwelling and neighborhood space), to imaginary, virtual, or rhetorical spaces. Home can be manifested in different domains and at different levels of scale: it connects with both functional and affective relations in settings other than the place where people actually reside.18 As David Morley argues, home in a modern sense is a phantasmagoric space in which, as a result of processes of migration and media representation, “the far away” mixes with “the space of the near.”19 This multiscale conception of place is captured in the notion of the casita employed by Puerto Ricans in New York City as a metaphor of home (domestic dwelling and national homeland).20 The Japanese notion of furusato, which refers to old village as well as home and original place, is informed by nostalgia and feelings of dislocation vis-à-vis a present time and place.21 The notion of home as multilocal, overlapping, and dynamic instead of fixed, definitive, and self-evident requires of us a more complex un-

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derstanding of the social and cultural practices through which people actively interpret place and attach meaning to it. Anthropologist Margaret Rodman reminds us, “An anthropology whose objects are no longer conceived as automatically and naturally anchored in space will need to pay particular attention to the way spaces and places are made, imagined, contested, and enforced.”22 Her point reminds us to incorporate subjective feelings of home, attachment, and belonging into the reality we investigate.23 Such constructionist conceptions of urban space thus emphasize the micro spatial aspects of place-based identities derived from relations between extra-local forces and the historical layering of social relations. A perspective on home that is continual and conflictive confronts us with questions of how people create a meaningful place amidst a changing environment through collective and intersubjectively shared conceptions of place. Although the fragmented, disrupted experience of space occurs in extreme forms with political refugees, migrants, and stateless people, postmodern issues of home and place force themselves onto all sites where the illusion of a natural, self-evident relation between place and culture has been disrupted. As we will see below, it is particularly in the little tactics of the habitat—such as neighborhood spaces—that questions of belonging and attachment are magnified.

Reassessing Mental Mapping In the 1960s and 1970s cognitive mapping served human geographers and environmental psychologists as an often-applied technique for studying the mental phenomena that construct a place—for example, perception, cognitive structure, schema, and image.24 The practice of mental mapping refers to a process of place learning, through which people collect, organize, store, and manipulate information that enables them to comprehend their immediate environments.25 Mental maps display what Christopher Spencer and Marie Weetman call “graphicacy”: the ability to perceive and retain the structure and proportion of geographical space and translate them into graphic form.26 Within environmental psychology these maps are often understood as a mental navigation tool, a “coat hanger for assorted memories” that enables people to reduce, simplify, and organize the abundant environmental stimuli they confront.27 Mental mapping is thus seen as essential for people to make sense of things around them and to cope with the numerous spatial problems they face in the course of daily life. In a fundamental way, then, mental mapping reveals to us how knowledge of the sociospatial environment is related to the formation of personal and collective identities.

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Mental maps tell us how people move through space, but also about status differences and social structures in urban space. Cognitive mapping deals essentially with the relationship between the outside world and the images that people carry inside their heads. The method offers insights into what David Lowenthal calls “terrae incognitae,” the unexplored territories “that lie within … minds and hearts.”28 In this respect, a mental or cognitive map can be understood as a personal, symbolic representation of the environment “as it exists within a person’s mind.” These maps are seen as a reflection of an internal gestalt or inner space—or, as Downs and Stea put it, “the world as people believe it to be.”29 In contrast to public images that are conscious and communicable, the private milieu is a complex phenomenon, however; personal conceptions are diffuse, difficult to access, and often impossible to formulate clearly even to ourselves.30 The question at hand is how, and to what extent, people’s perceptions or worldviews are shared—and how to get inside their heads in the first place. Kevin Lynch broke new ground through the use of mental maps as an empirical method to access the perception and imagination of space.31 In his The Image of the City, Lynch distinguished between five elements of urban images: (1) paths or channels along which people traverse space, such as streets, sidewalks, roads, or canals; (2) edges or linear elements that mark and bridge two areas, such as coastal lines and railroad tracks; (3) districts, understood as medium-to-large urban sections that possess an identifiable character; (4) nodes or strategic spots that connect these areas to each other; and (5) landmarks that serve as striking and vital objects in urban space. These elements make up what Lynch called the imageability of space, by which he meant the quality of physical objects and geographical spaces to evoke strong and vivid images. According to Lynch, imageability is an important element of a city’s composition because it offers material for the formation of symbols and collective images that enable people to recognize a city’s parts and organize them into a coherent pattern. Strong and vivid images contribute to the emotional security with which people move through space. A distinguishable urban environment makes it easier for people to relate to a city, build a harmonious relationship with it, and fill it with meaning. In this sense, Lynch’s book is a critique of the generic and undifferentiated urban landscape caused by processes of suburbanization and urban sprawl. Lynch’s work has been widely recognized as a landmark study in environmental cognition, insofar as it popularized a method to access the imaginary qualities of urban space. Moreover, he offers important reflections on methodology. For example, he stated that mental maps are not miniaturized versions of geographical reality, reduced in scale and

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consistently abstracted, but rather a purposeful simplification in which elements are left out, added to, and distorted.32 Lynch also took up the problem of shifting imageries—that is, sets of overlapping and connecting images, rather than mental maps as total images. Despite the new opportunities for inquiry that he introduced, there are some drawbacks to his conception of a mental map, however. Three of them are relevant for the maps I discuss in this chapter. First, Lynch presented cognitive maps as a more or less approximate depiction of mental representations implied somewhere in the minds of individual people. The equation of the mental maps people draw on paper and the cognitive images they carry with them is more complex than he would have us understand it. As Yi-FuTuan argues, the image of a mental map is a construct in a double sense, since it not only originates as a perception, but also transforms itself during the actual occasion when it is recalled.33 Moreover, Downs and Stea point out that cognitive mapping is an interactive, selective, and organizing process in which the interaction itself determines what kind of information is retrieved.34 Second, as Tuan claims (and Lynch also implied), many cognitive activities are preattentive, in the sense that they are limited to the immediate present. This means that people do not orient themselves according to some approximate mental representation of place, but often make complex movements without the help of a plan or image. For example, people do not have to fully utilize their attention once they are familiar with a place. Moreover, they inscribe space with symbolic meanings through the regular and habitual practices of everyday life. Tuan thus urges us to see mental maps not as something of an imaginary cartographic tool that people carry around in their heads, but rather as an inherent part of the process through which spatial knowledge is produced. Mental maps serve foremost as a mnemonic device through which people communicate spatial information, mentally practice spatial behavior, store and structure knowledge, and construct imaginary worlds. Finally, Lynch’s work flirts with a kind of physical determinism, since he starts from the idea that identity is inherent in a physical object or geographical structure. He focuses on the identity and structure of urban images, but leaves the less tangible domain of meaning out of the picture.35 In the maps presented in his book, people are somehow deprived of agency to grasp and appropriate an environment that at first glance seems less imaginable. How are we able to read cognitive structures from the maps that people draw on paper? When mental maps are not trustworthy representations of cognitive images, what then can be made of them? Are mental maps “out of line with reality,” as Stanley Milgram and Denise Jodelet asserted?36 I argue that it is precisely the principles of selection, accentuation, and

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transformation that make mental maps such a valuable object of cultural analysis. “Many a true word is spoken in jest,” Downs and Stea note. “We live in a world of grays and gradations. Most of the important dimensions through which we construe the world do not display sharp breaks or discontinuities.”37 Accordingly, mental maps are inevitably sketchy, incomplete, deformed, and idiosyncratic images framed by the viewpoint of the map maker, the technological means available, and the occasion in which they are recalled.38 In a constructionist sense, mapping creates both a productive and a reconstructive frame through which people interpret the environment. The effectiveness of a map to represent physical and geographical space has long been questioned, of course.39 In critical social theory mapping is seen as a political act that confines people in a Carthesian epistemology. Making maps is as much about the creation as the revealing of geographical knowledge. Just like the places they represent, argues Lippard, maps hide and reveal information.40 Maps are social and cultural constructions, and thus a product of privileged and formalized knowledge that (re)produces the world in which we live. Calling into question the ontological security often attributed to maps, Kitchin and Dodge note, “Maps are of-the-moment, brought into being through practices (embodied, social, technical), always remade every time they are engaged with; mapping is a process of constant reterritorialization. As such, maps are transitory and fleeting, … contingent, relational, and context-dependent. Maps are practices—they are always mappings; spatial practices enacted to solve relational problems.”41 Rather than true representations of the world that surrounds us, maps are made in a “co-constitutive production between inscription, individual, and world.”42 In this critique attention is shifted from the ontology of representation to the ontogenesis of practice, from the way things are to the way things come into being. “The important thing about the truth,” writes Lowenthal, “is not that it should be naked, but what clothes suit it best.”43 I am interested here in reassessing the conceptions of mental mapping discussed above in order to better explore the relations between personal perceptions, collective identities, and material settings. To pursue this objective I employ a form of mental mapping in which attention is shifted to the role of maps in the social and narrative construction of urban space. My intention is to provide necessary balance to Lynch’s physically oriented approach to mental mapping through an introduction of less tangible aspects such as meanings, stories, memories, and local histories. This notion of mapping-as-a-signifying-practice is inspired by artist impressions of urban space—for example, the emotional maps

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and psychogeographical experiments of the Situationist International, the ambiance mappings of cultural geographers, the map biographies of anthropologist Hugh Brody, and the memory maps of avant-garde artists like Roger Welsh and William Least-Heat Moon.44 In effect, my approach follows a paradigm shift in the study of space and place that moves our attention away from a claim on space as objective, absolute, and unproblematic toward a constructionist notion of how places are interpreted, narrated, and culturally encoded. Rather than a physical setting or inert container of social relations, I advance an understanding of place as a sociocultural construction intricately connected with the development of personal and group identity. This perspective provides us with a fresh outlook on epistemological questions concerning mapping that both denaturalizes/deprofessionalizes the practice of map making and offers us a space for theorizing the social production of urban space. In order to access the narrative construction of space through mental mapping we must look beyond the surface of the image to the practices that bring them into existence. By reassessing mental mappings as discursive units, we can gain new insights into the role of narratives in the constitution of everyday space. Along with Schutz, I contend that spatial experience takes place in a communicative environment and it is in face-to-face relationships where an intersubjective world is constituted.45 A discursive approach thus directs us away from a concept of home locked in private perceptions; the latter are so hard to pinpoint because of their diffuse character.46 As Dixon and Durrheim claim, Such a discursive approach might begin by relocating place identity, by removing it from the vault of the mind and returning it to the flux of human dialogue. … It thereby reconstitutes place-identity as something that people create together through talk: a social construction that allows them to make sense of their connectivity to place and to guide their actions and projects accordingly. … Not only does it acknowledge the relevance of places to their collective senses of self, but it also highlights the collective practices through which specific place identities are formed, reproduced and modified.47

The spatial stories discussed below show how residents connect past and present, self and other in relation to the spaces that surround them.48 By foregrounding how people create a sense of home through what Suttles calls processes of “selective memoralization,” these maps bring personal representations of neighborhood space into the “visible and audible world of defended typification rather than in the subjective realm of individual sentiments.”49

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Spatial Stories: Mapping through Talking The narrative maps presented below are part of an ethnographic research project carried out between November 2006 and June 2007 in a small section of Nieuwland, a multiethnic neighborhood located near the inner city of Schiedam in the Netherlands. Nieuwland is inhabited by sixtyone different nationalities, among which a relatively large number of families are from Turkey, Morocco, Surinam, and the Antilles. In fact, 58 percent of the neighborhood population is of non-Dutch descent. Since the end of the 1990s, the neighborhood has been subjected to large-scale restructuring in order to attract middle-class segments from the wider region. This restructuring program has involved the demolition of 1,100 council flats and the construction of 722 new dwellings, most of these owner-occupied (see figure 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4). The housing corporation and local municipality that initiated Nieuwland’s renewal in the early 1990s had completed the lion’s share of work by the end of 2010. Nieuwland thus provides us with an interesting case of an environment that has undergone quite different forms of transition, where changes in the physical and social texture of the neighborhood intrude on the repet-

Figure 3.1. A view of neighborhood square Wibautplein Source: Photograph by author. Note: In the background two minarets of the newly built mosque can be seen.

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Figure 3.2. Communal playground in the middle of a block of prefabricated apartment flats Source: Photograph by Mariska van Meijeren.

Figure 3.3. Interstitial zone between new middle-class housing and a strip of neighborhood stores and apartment blocks built in the 1950s. Source: Photograph by Mariska van Meijeren. Note: New middle-class housing is to the left, and the strip of stores and apartment blocks is to the right.

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Figure 3.4. “The new gardens”: a block of new middle-class housing Source: Photograph by author.

itive and mundane practices of everyday life. These intrusions involve not only the physical restructuring of the area, such as the reorganization of public space and forced relocation because of home demolitions, but also changes in the social composition of the neighborhood and the symbolic colonization of space by different ethnic groups. In order to appreciate the social and spatial competition over microlocales, I focused on a small territorial segment of the neighborhood. This area is composed of three juxtaposed locales: a newly built estate of rented and owner-occupied dwellings developed by the local housing corporation, a complex of mixed-income and low-rise houses built in the 1990s, and a block of standardized modernist apartment units built in the 1950s and 1960s. These three housing complexes are separated by a square called the Wibautplein, named after a Dutch Social Democratic politician (see figure 3.1). Fieldwork included face-to-face interviews, lasting up to ninety minutes, with thirty residents living in each of these three housing complexes. During the course of the interview I made careful notes on the interview partner’s dwelling space, including the appearance of the house and interior design and architectural features. Since research focused on discursive constructions of space, interviews were semistructured and arranged in thematic sections; this allowed interviewees to frame their thoughts and tell their stories. The first part of

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the interview traced the informant’s residential history by moving backward in time, starting with current dwelling place and concluding with birthplace. The second part of the interview focused on residents’ action space.50 I posed questions about time spent in the neighborhood, their routes for shopping and leisure activities, and their work settings. The third part traced interviewees’ social networks (relations with family, friends, and business associates) within and beyond the neighborhood, as well as relationships with local institutions. The final part of the interview focused on what interviewees saw as their home area in relation to neighborhood space and community life. During the course of each interview I asked interviewees to draw maps of their everyday environments. At the beginning of each interview they received a blank piece of A3 format paper and a pencil. I asked them to create drawings and write down topics that came up during conversation. Unlike traditional techniques of mental mapping in which people are asked to create a map of their city or neighborhood and then discuss what they had drawn, mental mapping functions in reverse. The drawings developed during the course of the interview as talking maps—as representations of everyday space interwoven with the stories, experiences, and meanings that came up during conversations. Consequently, attention focused on narrative construction of notions of home, belonging, and place attachment through maps and stories. Thus, the maps discussed below are not representations of neighborhood space-asphysical-setting, but rather are personal accounts very much structured by the topics discussed and questions asked during interviews. Mindful of limited space, I have selected four representative examples of the personal geographies that reveal how people traverse social space, organize it, and link it into narratives. Each of the stories highlights how space is made into home according to different practices. The first story is provided by Margiet, an older woman forced to relocate into a rented house across from her former apartment; this story shows how changes in neighborhood demographics and conflicting residential cultures impinge on her sense of familiarity with public space and attachment to place. Home here becomes a symbol of dependence and loss of personal autonomy. The second story features Hans, a middle-aged resident of a new housing estate, and reveals how social and spatial changes in the neighborhood challenge people to relocate their sense of home to places outside their immediate residential environment—in this case, to an allotment garden at the edge of the city. The third story involving Tineke suggests the often-complex and layered texture of neighborhood space, in which spatial perception intersects with memories and personal histories. The final story, that of Natasha, centers on a newcomer in the

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neighborhood; we see how she habitually conquers space as well as inscribes it with personal recollections of the imaginary space of her native country. Taken together, each of these spatial stories touches on different aspects of being at home in a fragmented time and place.51 They also tell a story of Nieuwland, beginning with recollections of neighborhood life in the 1950s and 1960s, continuing with the dramatic demographic changes during the 1970s, and ending with the first two weeks of a newly arrived middle-class resident.

Margiet: Place Aversion and the Scattering of Space Home is the realm of privacy, security, and familiarity, a set of sentiments that are particularly vulnerable during times of change. The disruption of home, such as in urban renewal, sometimes results in the feeling that one loses “both a link to a past experienced as meaningful and a link to a future imagined as potentially meaningful.”52 Neighbors can become strangers and home is traced back to other times and places than those in which one actually resides. Just as people develop a sense of belonging to a place, they can also be uprooted and have a sense of nonbelonging.53 In figure 3.5, Margiet’s map, we see how changes in neighborhood space

Figure 3.5. Map by Margiet Source: Author’s archives.

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encroach on feelings of trust and familiarity within physical place and community. In the 1960s Margiet and her husband married and moved from a tiny house in the inner city of Schiedam into an apartment on the third floor of a block of flats in Nieuwland. Margiet described their move as a transition “from hell to heaven”. Although monthly rents went up from three to ten guldens, the apartment offered her a much longed for improvement in quality of life. The flat was designed according to modern standards and arranged with a toilet and shower. “I was totally in love with my new little house,” says Margiet. “I felt like I was reborn. I didn’t want anything other than this. The feeling I had is beyond description.” Although she liked their apartment, her husband could never settle in. He preferred living in a small, low-rise house without upstairs or downstairs neighbors, like the old working-class house in the city center where they had lived immediately after their wedding. At that time, a period when Nieuwland used to border on agricultural land, Margiet’s husband worked at a farm and at a hardware shop in the inner city of Schiedam. Margiet remembers the apartment building as a tidy place occupied by “neat Dutch people” [see drawing of the apartment and names of neighbors in the middle-left part of the map]. A construction worker lived upstairs with his wife. Next-door neighbors included a meat industry worker, a supervisor at a shipbuilding yard, and an employee of the Philips concern in nearby Rotterdam. Despite the pleasant atmosphere in the apartment block, Margiet never developed close ties with her immediate neighbors, however. She did not particularly like to engage in neighborly activities, and the responsibilities associated with raising her five children left little time to engage in neighborhood activities. She earned the derisive nickname “laundry woman” from the neighbors. “Since I had to wash and iron clothes, I had no time for [them],” Margiet explains. “Sometimes I would talk with people from the balcony, but I didn’t have time to have people around. I was way too busy.” She did spend a lot of time in the garden in front of their flat, however. After moving into the ground-floor apartment in the same building, Margiet and her husband rented a piece of land and turned it into a small garden, with gravel tiles, a patch of grass in the middle, a lean-to and a flowerbed on both sides. Her time was also taken up with visits to her grandmother in Kethel, a garden village located on the edge of the city, or to the canteen of a sporting club in Schiedam. Margiet recalls life in the 1960s when people would meet at the Wibautplein [see also figure 3.1], a square located near her apartment. In the 1950s and 1960s this was a lively space lined by several “luxurious” shops, such as a grocery, a candy store, a women’s fashion store,

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an “old-fashioned” bank, and a butcher’s shop. She remembers this as a cozy time and place, when people still had time to come by and strike up a conversation. However, after a series of massive redundancies in the shipbuilding and steel industries during the 1970s and 1980s, the neighborhood demographics changed dramatically. Most of her neighbors had left within three years, and the arrival of immigrant families “with strange names” brought on a tense atmosphere. Margiet connects the decline of the apartment block and the surrounding neighborhood to decreasing social interaction among residents. For her, the arrival of new ethnic groups introduced an atmosphere of conflict into the apartment block; people ignored established social rules, such as the weekly cleaning of staircases. Some apartment dwellers no longer hung curtains, and some would plaster their windows with newspapers. Margiet recalls “the Moroccans” who would gather and play music at night and let their children stay awake until late in the evening. “Those people made a hell of a mess,” she says. People turned their backs against each other and turned the place upside down. There was a Moroccan woman next door with her one child. She was very nice, didn’t trouble me at all. Well, half a year later twenty people were living in that apartment. You can’t imagine! They would put those beds on the ground. One day a taxi arrived and a whole Surinamese family moved in with bag and baggage. … They mostly stayed awake all through the night. When we went to bed, they were just starting up. They had all these guests over and didn’t pay attention to anyone else in the apartment building. When we had people over, we’d say: “Be quiet on the stairs.” Even the children stayed awake until late at night. They ran and made noise until four o’clock in the morning. They disregard their neighbors—that’s what I mean.

With the arrival of new ethnic groups in her building, Margiet changed her daily routine. She rarely went out for strolls through the neighborhood and rearranged her shopping habits. For several years now she does her shopping in town and thereby avoids the Turkish grocer at the Wibautplein. Each Tuesday she travels to a large supermarket in Rotterdam, located near her sister-in-law, to make larger purchases. On that day she also goes swimming with a group of friends in Rotterdam. For three years now Margiet has lived in a semidetached house on the northern edge of Nieuwland that she rents from her son; he lives next door with his wife and children. The house [see also figure 3.6] is located at a busy intersection and across from a newly constructed housing complex. From her living room window Margiet is able to see the precise spot

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Figure 3.6. Current residence of Margiet, located across from the spot where her former apartment building was located Source: Photograph by author.

where her former apartment was located. The place has been cleared and new middle-class housing now stands there. “They are nice people living there,” Margiet says, looking outside. Even though she likes her current house, she would have preferred to live in her former apartment. “I like to sit and look outside my window,” she says. “People may think I’m staring at them, but I just like to look outside and enjoy my view.” She does get outside regularly, though. After her husband died two years earlier, Margiet got a birthday present from her son: a little dog. Owning a dog, forces her to take a daily stroll through the neighborhood. Margiet’s map narrates in condensed form how changes in the social fabric of the neighborhood affect her sense of home and attachment to place. As a representation of her personal geography, the map traces a timeline, beginning at her birthplace (Schiedam-Zuid) and moving on to the working-class home in the inner city, where she moved after marriage, her former apartment, and her current residence. The map is filled with memories of the people and places that made up her earlier years in Nieuwland, such as in references to the agricultural land that once surrounded the neighborhood, to the neighbors in her former apartment building, and to the names of shops located in the neighborhood square.

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However, in her recollection of new groups colonizing the apartment building the map also shows her disengagement with a present time and place. Inscribed with personal recollections from the past, the area shown on the map is a scattered place. The elements are mostly isolated objects that do not seem to relate to their present surroundings. There are no roads connecting the individual features, and the map also contains no images of currently existing buildings or other objects. In sum, with its references and linkages to the present, her map is a disengaged representation of neighborhood space. It depicts place aversion—a cognitive principle of dissociation, through which people deal with threatening events by identifying themselves in terms of what is lost and who one is not.54

Hans: Displaced Home Figure 3.7 shows a map drawn by Hans, a resident of Dalsland. A complex of mixed-income row houses in Nieuwland, Dalsland appears as a village-like oasis in the urban fabric of the neighborhood. Long curving roads cut across neatly trimmed grass fields. The red brick row houses are designed in a Swedish style with overhanging peaked roofs. Rented

Figure 3.7. Map by Hans Source: Author’s archives.

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houses are set square with owner-occupied houses. Hans lives here with his wife and three children. He comes from what he calls a “technical family”: his father labored as a mechanical woodworker at a nearby shipyard, his son works in a mechanics-related business, and his daughter has a job in the electronics industry. Hans grew up in Nieuwland during the 1960s, initially in a second-story apartment located above a local supermarket and later in a block of flats farther down the street. Hans describes the Nieuwland of his youth as an “open and spacious” place. The neighborhood was an open place, very different from today. It was a wide and large place. The area down at the bank was beautiful. There was a pond and some patches of grass. You know, I was brought up in streets, very small streets. People always complained about young men playing soccer games. Well, this was a place where you could play ball! The apartment blocks stood far apart. In those days you still had those wide open streets and large sidewalks. Though there weren’t that many cars yet, two cars could easily pass one another. The streets nowadays aren’t as good as they used to be.

After their wedding, Hans and his wife moved into a small apartment in inner-city Schiedam located above the hardware shop where he worked. For Hans, the city still had a “cozy feel” at that time, a connotation he uses to describe the intimacy of the social networks in which he was embedded. He knew many neighbors and would often go out for a late-night drink in a café around the corner. After a few years he and his wife moved into an apartment in the “green neighborhood” of Groenoord, built during the 1970s and located next to Nieuwland. They remained there for twelve years. The move from this apartment building to his current low-level house in Dalsland was not much of a transition for Hans. Describing his current dwelling in largely functional terms, Hans says, “This is where I live and sleep. For me, it’s just a matter of stocking your trash.” Nonetheless, he sees Dalsland as a considerably quieter place than any of the places he had lived before. He describes his former apartment block as a “birdcage”; people lived cheek by jowl and one always had to be considerate of the neighbors. Many stores were located in the area and many cars drove by. “Things moved,” says Hans. “It just was a busy place.” People would walk past one’s window talking loudly and children would play tennis against the wall. After the first three years, when Dalsland was a “white” area, the social composition of the neighborhood began to change. Many established neighbors left and new groups moved in. Hans refers to the house

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on the other corner of his street, which has already been residence to five different families, and says he does not often notice when new people have arrived. Although he stays in touch with his next-door neighbors, he does not interact with people living in the owner-occupied dwellings who, according to Hans, mostly leave early in the morning to go to work and who return in the evening and shut their curtains and lock their doors. Although Hans sees Dalsland as a nice and quiet place, he considers the streets surrounding the neighborhood as noisy. “There’s always something going on,” he says, especially in the apartment block close by where groups of young men hang around and make noise that sets him on edge. Some families even park their couches on the sidewalk. Hans finds that the shopping areas in the inner city of Schiedam and in the neighborhood have fallen into decline. During the evening the streets are deserted and windows are locked with roll-down shutters. Hans also objects to the newly constructed mosque nearby and the plans to build an Islamic school in the neighborhood. From his first-floor window Hans is able to see the minaret (“that tower”). “I don’t have problems with people having faith in God or Allah,” he says. “That’s no big deal to me. But these things don’t have anything to do with Schiedam anymore. They take a piece of land away from our children.” Three years ago, a group of residents decided to organize a neighborhood watch program in order to reduce nuisances. Hans cannot see the point of these surveillance strategies, however. “They put on these tidy jackets with captions,” he says. “They mostly walk with two people and a dog, but nothing ever happens.” Hans thinks the watch persons live in the nearby apartments and therefore have a perspective. Maybe they see things we don’t see. But then we are looking the other way. … Half of the residents in this block said: “What are they talking about?” I also said: “We sit in a playground and I don’t understand the problem.” I mean, in the evening nobody’s in the playground area. … There once appeared to be some problems with a ball rolling in a house and destroying a glass cabinet. And I think to myself: “That only happened once!” And from that time on, children weren’t allowed to play football anymore. … Sometimes, when things get a bit out of hand, I ask these boys to watch out a little and then they don’t bother you anymore. This is such a nice place for kids to play. And it’s just a daytime thing. In the evening there’s no one in sight. I don’t know, maybe it’s because we are away during the summer period and see other things than these people see. We heard they organize picnic parties or barbecue parties around here. We don’t participate in these kinds of things.

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For eighteen years now Hans and his wife have rented a community garden in the Beatrixpark on the outskirts of the city, where his sister, uncle, and three nephews also have a bit of land. Next to the garden is a house measuring four by ten meters, where Hans has installed a kitchen and a panel of solar cells on the roof. The house has a refrigerator that runs on gas. During summer holidays the family would stay over for several weeks. Although it offers peace and quiet, the allotment garden is not like a camping site. It takes a lot of hard work to keep the garden looking nice. Hans does all the lifting and moving, and his wife cultivates plants and flowers that she keeps in the backyard of their Dalsland home. The allotment garden is located a very short drive from Dalsland. Every evening and each weekend Hans visits their private garden. This takes him through the Poldervaart, a scenic area he considers as his true home place. Years earlier, Hans would often spend his time in this neighborhood playing billiards or cards in the community center. But nowadays he largely ignores neighborhood life. “I don’t stroll around this place anymore,” he says. “I just walk where I have to go and that’s it.” Just as in Margiet’s narrative drawing, the map Hans created shows us a sense of detachment from the present time and place. Nonetheless, his map is quite detailed. For example, it shows two roads that both mark out his home environment and lead to his allotment garden. Some elements on the map are highlighted in detail, as for example the drawing of roofed houses or in the detailed mapping of his allotment garden. The area of Dalsland, located in the middle of the map, is set against a horizon that features the scenic area of the Poldervaart. The way the picture is framed thus tells us about how his orientation has shifted away from local neighborhood life and toward a nonresidential setting. Also intriguing is the inscription of space with normative notions, such as in references to quiet and peaceful areas and places he finds noisy and stressful.

Tineke: Nestled Mapping Tineke, a woman in her forties, presents us with a more complicated depiction of neighborhood space in her map (see figure 3.8). She lives with her husband and three children in a new, owner-occupied dwelling in Nieuwe Tuinen, a complex of middle-class housing opposite where Margiet lives. Her house is approximately a two-minute walk from her former dwelling in Dalsland, where Hans lives. Although the family favored a house in another Schiedam neighborhood, she wanted to stay in familiar surroundings. Tineke claims Nieuwland as home ground.

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Figure 3.8. Map by Tineke Source: Author’s archives.

This is where I have lived happily for many years. We wouldn’t have opted for a new house in this area if I wasn’t happy about it. Disturbing things don’t bother me that much … such as these young guys walking the street all day and night. They are not on my own little piece of land. It’s true, the neighborhood has changed, but then so have I. When we first came here my daughter went to school. Then I got work and my life changed. New circumstances make you see things through different eyes.

When she was young Tineke spent many hours in Nieuwland. She remembers how, as a child, she would play at the grass fields between the apartment blocks. Children would pitch their tents during the summer and mothers would lower them food baskets from their windows with a rope. Nieuwland had a rustic feel to it that also characterized social life in the neighborhood of Schiedam West, where she and her parents lived for fourteen years in a small upstairs apartment. Tineke describes Schiedam West as a “folksy neighborhood.” The houses were built close to each other so people were forced to get to know each other. Dalsland— the neighborhood where she has lived for the past few years—was more like a village unto itself, however. Though it had a strong sense of social cohesion, after a few years a feeling of unease became palpable in the

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neighborhood. She attributes this to the influx of new families who did not concern themselves much with neighborhood life. Tineke’s new house offers an unobstructed view onto the street. It is located at a safe distance from the Troelstralaan, a notorious trouble spot where many young people hang around. Tineke has no significant problems with these youths hanging around; for several years she was in the executive committee of a football club that has many young members, and she is not at all uncomfortable with this age group. What she does worry about is the busy traffic, generated in large part by noisy scooters that circle around the neighborhood. She also has her misgivings with respect to the arrival of a new Islamic school close to her new house. Her feelings about the school contrast with her reaction to the nearby mosque, which does not seem to register with her; the latter remains a kind of blank space to her. Tineke’s life largely takes place in Nieuwland. She works for an insurance company located on the outskirts of the neighborhood. Because of a lack of outdoor space, she rents an allotment garden in a nearby park, just like her parents and parentsin-law. During the summer months the gardens are a lively place. Tineke organizes social activities, such as a bingo or karaoke night. The allotment gardens look very much like a camping site, says Tineke, though people respect one another’s privacy. Tineke’s map is an account of someone who has nestled herself into neighborhood space. It provides a temporally layered representation of the neighborhood in which references are made to different places and historical periods. Dense and full of detail, the map is roughly divided into three segments. In the bottom left corner the informant’s birthplace appears, including references to her primary school and the collective gardens between apartment buildings where she played as a child. The upper part of the drawing features Dalsland, her former place of residence described as a village-like setting. In the bottom-right corner sits her new residential setting, including the location of undesirable elements such as the busy street and favorite hangout spot of neighborhood youth. These areas are linked through an intricate web of main avenues and side streets. In between these three areas the map is filled with small notes on special and dangerous locales, such as references to no-go areas and “the country of dish antennas” in the bottom-left corner, which signifies migrant families living in the area.

Natasha: Conquering Space The map discussed above depicts space through the eyes of a resident who has spent many years in her neighborhood. What, then, does neigh-

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borhood space look like when seen from the perspective of someone who has just arrived? Figure 3.9 is a map drawn by Natasha, who at the time she created it had lived just three weeks in her newly rented apartment. The street in front of her house has not yet been paved and heavy

Figure 3.9. Map by Natasha Source: Author’s archive.

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rain has created a muddy road abounding with water-filled potholes. Work is still not finished in her apartment itself. Wrapped-up paintings are set against the wall. The window that separates the garden from the living room is plastered with garbage bags. Against a living room wall stands a large television set. “I didn’t have time to hang up curtains,” Natasha excuses herself, “and the neighbors can peer through the fence right now. I don’t like that. I want to have some privacy when I watch television.” She appears to like her furnishing minimalist. The colors of her living room are carefully coordinated. On the laminate floor stand two gray couches, two dark-red chairs, and a matching red-grey carpet. In the back of the living area, separated by a wall, is the kitchen. To the left of the kitchen is a large fern that reaches up to the ceiling and the hallway. The fern reminds Natasha of the Antillean island of Curaçao where she grew up. Natasha is turning fifty. Twenty-seven years ago, after divorcing her first husband, she arrived in the Netherlands with her two children “to start over again.” She temporarily moved in with a female friend in Amsterdam and later lived with a cousin in Helmond, a city in the southwest of the Netherlands, where she rented an apartment. Natasha moved to Zwolle, a city in the northeastern part of the country, after she met her second husband; she lived there until her husband’s death a year and a half later. Her residence in Zwolle was a single-family dwelling with front and back gardens. The house had four bedrooms and an attic. “It was a beautiful house with lots of green,” Natasha recalls. Although she did not develop close friendships, she got to know a number of people in the city. Her husband and children were active in sports clubs; Natasha often went on vacation to Italy, Barcelona, and Curaçao with particularly close colleagues. According to Natasha, the city of Zwolle itself was “coarse and conservative,” however. At work she often felt discriminated against. After her second husband died, Natasha lived for one year with her daughter in Rotterdam. Because she wanted to live close to her children, Natasha resolved to search for her own place in the vicinity of that city. Her search included a visit to Nieuwland, but the neighborhood was not love at first sight. I first thought: “Never in my life am I going to live here!” What struck me were the old houses on the other side [1; see also figure 3.10]. I think the neighborhood is old. In Zwolle I lived in a nice and quiet area, so I really like old buildings. But when I drove back I said to myself: “This is not where I want to be.” This was my first impulse, my first impression. But then I got a notice from the housing corporation that

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Figure 3.10. Block of flats opposite Natasha’s new dwelling Source: Photograph by author.

I was allowed to have the apartment, so I started to feel differently. And then I thought: “I should do this, because otherwise I’m left with nothing.”

Natasha does not regret her decision to move into Nieuwland, because the neighborhood offered her a place where she feels at ease. You see, there are a lot of foreigners in this place. So I feel I don’t live in the Netherlands anymore. Here you have foreign food and things like that, that’s an advantage. So here I am more relaxed. In Zwolle I had made myself a home, but I felt at odds with my surroundings. I remained something of an outsider. I always felt the urge to go on holiday to Curaçao. Here, in Nieuwland, I have everything I could possibly wish for, such as food, restaurants, hair stuff, and God knows what else.

Natasha likes Latin American music, especially salsa; she has purchased music with which she tries to recreate an Antillean atmosphere in her home space. She recently discovered an Antillean restaurant, Havana, in the inner city of Schiedam; a dance club where they play Latin

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American music; and a Chinese and Antillean take-out restaurant. The food and atmosphere of these places remind her of her home country. I feel like I am at Curaçao. It’s the music and the people. A lot of Antillean people go out for dinner over there. And when people go out, it must be a good place to eat. We are quite critical about the things we eat. It has to be a clean place. And the food tastes very good. Sometimes I eat cheap food, like saté and chips. And then you get these juices! Then I feel like I am back at Curaçao. I don’t have to fly over there to get my special fried rice anymore. It just tastes the same. Now I don’t have to wait for three years anymore to get this feeling.

Although she is getting used at living in Nieuwland, Natasha says she avoids particular areas in the neighborhood. Colleagues at the City Inspection Service already told her about shootings, knifings, and burglaries that contribute to Nieuwland’s bad reputation. Although she takes these stories with a grain of salt, Natasha has nonetheless adjusted her daily travel routes. For example, each workday she goes by car four hundred meters to the metro station in order to avoid walking along the Troelstralaan, where she often sees groups of young men loitering. Natasha believes these men, despite their Antillean origin, give the area a bad reputation. This is the Netherlands. On Curaçao people are used to hanging around in public places. It’s a habit. With such high temperatures people like to sit on balconies. You have these snack bars, where you can get food and drinks. You hang around and then you go home. Some people day-in, day-out, sit under a tree to play dominoes. Then again, this is [a place] where people lead their outdoor lives. But they have to realize that they live in another country. People here don’t have the habit of living outside. To go outside each day, sit around and do nothing is asking for trouble. … You never see Indian people outside. They are always Antillean or Moroccan people. And why is this? Go out and do something useful with your life!

Natasha comes from a wealthy family. Her stepfather was well-established bureaucrat who would not allow her to hang out on the street. “We lived in a huge house,” she says. “All these houses have gardens and that’s where you play. You don’t get out to the street and do nothing.” Natasha also points to different uses of public space by working versus middle-class Antilleans.

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Some people think they are allowed to live on welfare. I don’t get it. Why are these people not going to a job and doing something useful? To always live on welfare is asking for trouble. Of course, they should mind their own business. But I was raised differently: you go to work or to college. But here some people just won’t see that.

Since she moved into her new home, Natasha has come to know some of her new neighbors. She likes to have friendly neighborly relations. Furthermore, striking up a conversation reminds her of home. She likes the idea of neighbors helping each other out. Natasha’s map depicts how people familiarize themselves with and appropriate place through a process of habituation. The area depicted covers the interviewee’s action space, comprising locations such as restaurants, shops, and sports facilities. Striking features are the paths that link different parts of public space, such as roads leading to work and the inner city, and highways pointing in the direction of the cities of Rotterdam and The Hague.

Conclusions In this chapter I have explored a narrative approach to mental mapping in order to cast light on the discursive construction of everyday space among residents within an environment in transition. Central to my notion of the everyday is a critique of the distanced and technocratic gaze of planners and architects. The chapter set out to counteract a conception of urban space as emptied of human habitation, one in which “normal folks” figure as passive figures in a script imposed by those in authority. However, the notion of everyday space is based on the idea of dwelling as an ongoing, dynamic process that does not stop once a building, street, or square has been designed and developed. In order to secure a more complete appreciation of the home-making practices through which people construct their “environmental settings” and furnish them with emotional and social connotations,55 I have reassessed the method of mental mapping as a form of discursive mapping, one that directs us toward the ways people make sense of home and place through talk and images. In the preceding pages we thus have come down from the imaginary tower of the World Trade Center to enmesh ourselves in the intricate and complex sociospatial realm of the everyday. What are we left with, then, when picturing urban space from the perspectives of the people who live it on a regular basis? Using these mappings we are able to sketch out a

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rough, preliminary topography of everyday space, in which the domains of structure and identity, as Lynch distinguished them, are linked to the third and less tangible realm of spatial texture and cultural meaning. In this topography of textural space four varieties of spaces stand out. First, the maps drawn by Hans, Margiet, Tineke, and Natasha are replete with full spaces, relatively detailed pictures of locales within a neighborhood that are regarded as intimate and personal. In graphic form these maps narrate how personal and collective identities are linked to the microsocial textures of neighborhood space. Note, for example, the sense of affection with which Margiet described neighborhood life in the 1960s, the detailed mapping of the allotment garden Hans provided, Natasha’s sensuous experience of the inner-city dancing hall and restaurant, or the dense texture of Tineke’s map. These maps provide us with layered and often-detailed accounts of home-making practices through which people orientate themselves and find their way through an area. The maps are what Bird refers to as “ontological narratives,” storied accounts by which people make sense of the world in which they live and constitute their social identities in relation to place.56 The stories depict personal trajectories as they arise out of narratives about place and self; they are structured around episodes that Gurney calls “a short part of a much longer story that has ‘temporal salience.’ ”57 In all their deformations and distortions, the narrative maps explored here picture everyday spaces as they are linked with stories, meanings, and experiences. Second, narrative maps are also filled with empty spaces. What is striking about the residents’ maps is no less the elements highlighted than those forgotten, ignored, or simply unseen. Sometimes these reflect contrasts in the physical arrangement of neighborhood space itself. For example, interview partners would ignore certain elements in the environment that were out of the line of sight, or seen as a hindrance (such as the mosque). The social construction of empty space also can be instigated by the disappearance of landmarks—such as in Tineke’s account, where she often referred to objects or places that no longer exist in a physical sense. A supreme example of an empty space is found in Margiet’s map, which was a nonlinked representation of the neighborhood as it looked like in the 1960s. Furthermore, emptied space also depicts the reactive regulation of space to exclude undesirable elements. They constitute zones within an area, in which focal points symbolically demarcate transitions from one place to the other. As McDonogh argues, “Such spaces do not define a vacuum, an absence of urbanness, so much as they mark zones of intense competition: the interstices of the city.”58 The empty zones on the maps thus point us to objects or spaces that are defined by conflicts among social groups. In a cultural and social sense,

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empty spaces are meaningful zones in the microsociological construction of urban space. Next to full and empty zones, the resident maps also depict hot spaces within a neighborhood area, space that is defined by social conflict. Note, for example, the map drawn by Natasha that is marked by places regarded as unsafe or threatening. In this sense, maps show homemaking as an ongoing process in which people put up boundaries between themselves and the outside world, between inside and outside, and between what is close and what is distant. It is especially during periods of intense change, such as in processes of urban regeneration, that meanings of home, familiarity, and bonding are revealed intensively. The more borders become porous, the greater the need for security and self-determination. Disruption of home forces people to revise their personal and social relationship between the self and the social and spatial environment. Some adapt by withdrawing from public life, others by relocating their sense of home to another place and time, or by intensive surveillance of their immediate environment. In this sense, the maps are linked to social processes through which people mark out boundaries and ascribe identity to themselves and others. “The drawing of a boundary around a particular space is a relational act,” argues Featherstone, “which depends upon the figuration of significant other localities within which one seeks to situate it.”59 These social processes of creating distinction and identity are mediated through space. As Watt notes, images of place are mixed with people’s attempts to “sort themselves into a spatial as well as social habitus, i.e. where they feel comfortable with others ‘like themselves’ ”60 The maps here are filled with normative associations, such as social rules regarding cleanliness, respectability, and outside appearance. As we saw with Natasha, people put up physical and symbolic dividing lines in order to guard against external threat. Finally, the maps discussed above narrate memory space, the personal biographies and local histories through which people inscribe space with meaning. Narrative maps point out the way environmental perception intersects with history and a sense of movement or transition. Interview partners often related neighborhood decline to the presence of lower-status others, such as young men loitering in the streets and migrants symbolically claiming parts of urban space. These spatial narratives are still more complex, however. They also expressed a “discourse of belonging” in which people referred to a sense of public familiarity and localized networks of friends, family, and neighbors.61 Feelings of loss of community relations are linked to changes in the social composition of place and the decline of social class solidarity. The narratives of urban decline, as shown in the narrative maps created by Hans

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and Margiet, display a strong attachment to the disappearing virtues of working-class life and community. As a consequence of the erosion of community places and social support systems, they localize themselves as “out of place”; for example, the neighborhood lacks facilities that make it possible to carry on informal forms of social interaction, such as the chatting with neighbors to which Margiet referred. The sense of place, as expressed by Hans and Margiet, was also strongly linked to semipublic leisure spaces in which the social life of working-class communities was concentrated. These two narratives illustrate a vague sense of threat and alienation from neighborhood life linked to the symbolic places taken over by new immigrant groups. Yet for others, such as Natasha, the multiethnic environment offers a possibility to attach oneself to a newly found place. The narrative maps discussed here thus provide us with detailed microlocal stories of everyday space. They reveal information about the perception, meaning, and use of neighborhood space and of routes taken; of the importance of border areas, physical landmarks, intimate places, and trouble spots; and of the collective spaces through which people attach themselves to place and community. The narrative maps draw attention to positive and negative evaluations of urban space, to places seen as safe or unsafe, ugly or beautiful. They lay bare intimate places as well as gray zones and nondescript places. Informants also discussed places in relation to friends, family, and neighbors. The residential histories contained within each map thus reflect changing networks of social relations. The maps are therefore about places as well as social structures and status differences in a neighborhood. Because they are highly qualitative and personal, they are difficult to grasp, but these elements are crucial for appreciating how people understand their sense of home and engage with place. Urban planners would profit from knowing more about that which is hidden from formal cartographies and neglected in general statistics: the intricate spaces of meaning and texture that make up our daily lives. Leeke Reinders is an anthropologist at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at the University of Technology in Delft and at the Faculty of Architecture of KU Leuven. He is currently working on an ethnographic study of the social production and construction of space in two postwar Dutch neighborhoods. His main interest is in the anthropology of urban space, with a focus on the meaning of home, planning and everyday life, private-public-parochial space, and narrative cartography. He has written book chapters and journal articles on narrative

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mapping, the mental geography of home and place, public art, hip hop and urban space in the Parisian banlieue, and the changing urban landscape in southwest China.

Notes 1. Roger M. Downs and David Stea ed., Maps in Mind. Reflections on Cognitive Mapping (New York, 1977), 77. This chapter is adapted from the author’s larger study, Leeke Reinders, Harde stad, zachte stad. Moderne architectuur en de antropologie van een naoorlogse wijk (Delft, 2013). Parts of the chapter were also printed in Arnold Reijndorp and Leeke Reinders, De alledaagse en de geplande stad: over identiteit, plek en thuis (Amsterdam, 2010). It was written with financial assistance from the Dutch government through the Habiforum Program for Innovative Land Use and from Delft University of Technology through the Delft Centre for Sustainable Urban Areas. The author wishes to thank Talja Blokland, Marco van der Land, Wladimir Fischer, Peter Nas, Freek Colombijn, Rivke Jaffe, and Annemarie Samuels for their helpful comments. 2. De Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, 91. 3. Ibid., 92. 4. Ibid. 5. David Harvey, cited in Rob Kitchin and Martin Dodge, “Rethinking Maps,” Progress in Human Geography 31, no. 3 (2007): 332. 6. Greg Marston, “Metaphor, Morality and Myth: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Public Housing Policy in Queensland,” Critical Social Policy 20, no. 3 (2000): 349–73, 360. 7. Hazel Easthope, “A Place Called Home,” Housing, Theory and Society 20, no. 3 (2004): 136. 8. Clare L. Twigger-Ross and David L. Uzzell, “Place and Identity Processes,” Journal of Environmental Psychology 16, no. 3 (1996): 205–20. 9. Peter King, In Dwelling: Implacability, Exclusion and Acceptance (Aldershot, 2008), 2. 10. In the former instance, see M. Carmen Hidalgo and Bernardo Hernandez, “Place Attachment: Conceptual and Empirical Questions,” Journal of Environmental Psychology 21, no. 3 (2001): 274; in the latter, see Setha M. Low, “Symbolic Ties that Bind: Place Attachment in the Plaza,” in Place Attachment, ed. Irwin Altman and Setha M. Low (New York, 1992), 165–85, 165. 11. Setha M. Low, Behind the Gates: Life, Security, and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America (New York, 2004). 12. Anne Buttimer, “Home, Reach, and the Sense of Place,” in The Human Experience of Space and Place, ed. Anne Buttimer and David Seamon (London, 1980), 166–87. 13. King, In Dwelling.

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14. Shelly Mallet, “Understanding Home: A Critical Review of the Literature,” Sociological Review 52, no. 1 (2004): 79. 15. John Dixon and Kevin Durrheim, “Displacing Place-Identity: A Discursive Approach to Locating Self and Other,” British Journal of Social Psychology 39, no. 1 (2000): 27–44. 16. Leeke Reinders and Marco van der Land, “Mental Geographies of Home and Place: Introduction to the Special Issue,” Housing, Theory and Society 25, no. 1 (2008): 1–13. 17. See Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson ed., Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology (Durham, NC, 1997); Margaret C. Rodman, “Empowering Place: Multilocality and Multivocality,” American Anthropologist 94, no. 3 (1992): 640–56; Anne-Marie Fortier, “Re-membering Places and the Performance of Belonging(s),” Theory, Culture & Society 16, no. 2 (1999): 41–64; Alison Blunt, “Cultural Geography: Cultural Geographies of Home,” Progress in Human Geography 29, no. 4 (2005): 505–15. 18. Lee Cuba and David M. Hummon, “A Place to Call Home: Identification with Dwelling, Community and Region,” Sociological Quarterly 34, no. 1 (1993): 111–31. 19. David Morley, “Belongings: Place, Space and Identity in a Mediated World,” European Journal of Cultural Studies 4, no. 4 (2001): 428. 20. Joseph Sciorra, “Return to the Future: Puerto Rican Vernacular Architecture in New York City,” in Re-presenting the City: Ethnicity, Capital and Culture in the 21st Century, ed. Anthony D. King (London, 1996), 60–92. 21. Jennifer Robertson, “Furusato Japan: The Culture and Politics of Nostalgia,” Politics, Culture and Society 1, no. 4 (1988): 494–518. 22. Rodman, “Empowering Place,” 18. 23. See also Anne Buttimer, “Social Space and the Planning of Residential Areas,” in Buttimer and Seamon, The Human Experience of Space and Place, 21–54, 23. 24. For example, see Roger M. Downs and David Stea, eds., Image and Environment: Cognitive Mapping and Spatial Behavior (Chicago, 1973); idem, Maps in Mind; and Peter R. Gould and Rodney White, Mental Maps (Harmondsworth, 1974). 25. J.S. Humphreys, “Place Learning and Spatial Cognition: A Longitudinal Study of Urban Newcomers,” Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 81, no. 5 (1990): 365. 26. Christopher Spencer and Marie Weetman, “The Microgenesis of Cognitive Maps: A Longitudinal Study of New Residents of an Urban Area,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 6, no. 3 (1981): 378. 27. Downs and Stea, Maps in Mind, 27. 28. David Lowenthal, “Geography, Experience and Imagination: Towards a Geographical Epistemology,” in Man, Space and Environment: Concepts in Contemporary Human Geography, ed. Paul Ward English and Robert C. Mayfield (New York, 1972), 219. 29. Downs and Stea, Maps in Mind, 4.

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30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

36. 37. 38.

39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

46. 47. 48.

49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

Lowenthal, “Geography, Experience, Imagination,” 230. Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City (Cambridge, MA, 1972). Ibid., 87. Yi-Fu Tuan, “Images and Mental Maps,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 65, no. 2 (1975): 205–13. Downs and Stea, Maps in Mind, 83. For a similar argument, see Peter J.M. Nas and Reynt Sluis, “In Search of Meaning: Urban Orientation Principles in Indonesia,” in The Indonesian Town Revisited, ed. Peter J.M. Nas (Münster, Germany, 2002), 130– 46. Stanley Milgram and Denise Jodelet, “The Way Parisians See Paris,” New Society, 787 (1977): 234. Downs and Stea, Maps in Mind, 108. See Astrid Wege, “Maneuvering on Uncharted Terrain,” in Mapping a City, ed. Nina Möntmann, Yilmaz Dziewior, and Galerie für Landschaftskunst (Hamburg, 2004), 138–44. See, for example, Trevor J. Barnes and James S. Duncan, eds., Writing Worlds: Discourse, Text and Metaphor in the Representation of Landscape (London, 1992). For an overview, see Lucy R. Lippard, “All at a Glance,” in Möntmann, Dziewior, and Galerie für Landschaftskunst, Mapping a City, 96–103, 96. Kitchin and Dodge, “Rethinking Maps,” 335. Emphasis in original. Ibid. Lowenthal, “Geography, Experience Imagination,” 241. Lippard, “All at a Glance,” 99. Timothy Auburn and Rebecca Barnes, “Producing Place: A Neo-Schutzian Perspective on the ‘Psychology of Place,’ ” Journal of Environmental Psychology 26, no. 1 (2006): 43. See Lowenthal, “Geography, Experience, Imagination.” Dixon and Durrheim, “Displacing Place-Identity,” 32. See Jennifer Mason, “Personal Narratives, Relational Selves: Residential Histories in the Living and Telling,” Sociological Review 52, no. 2 (2004): 162–79; and Neil Leach, “Belonging: Towards a Theory of Identification with Space,” in Habitus: A Sense of Place, ed. Jean Hillier and Emma Rooksby (Aldershot, 2002), 281–95. Gerald D. Suttles, “The Cumulative Texture of Local Urban Culture,” American Journal of Sociology 90, no. 2 (1984): 302. Anne Buttimer, “Social Space and the Planning of Residential Areas,” 21– 54. I have chosen to use pseudonyms to preserve interviewees’ privacy. Michael Ian Borer, “The Location of Culture: The Urban Culturalist Perspective,” City & Community 5, no. 2 (2006): 192. Michael A. Godkin, “Identity and Place: Clinical Applications Based on Notions of Rootedness and Uprootedness,” in Buttimer and Seamon, The Human Experience of Space and Place, 73–85.

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54. Branda L. Nowell et al., “Revealing the Cues within Community Places: Stories of Identity, History and Possibility,” American Journal of Community Psychology 37, no. 1/2 (2006): 41. 55. Altman and Low, Place Attachment. 56. S. Elizabeth Bird, “It Makes Sense to Us: Cultural Identity in Local Legends of Place,” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 31, no. 5 (2002): 523. See also Ann Winstanley, David C. Thorns, and Harvey C. Perkins, “Moving House, Creating Home: Exploring Residential Mobility,” Housing Studies 17, no. 6 (2002): 813–32. 57. Craig M. Gurney, “ ‘… Half of Me was Satisfied’: Making Sense of Home Through Episodic Ethnographies,” Women’s Studies International Forum 20, no. 3 (1997): 375. 58. Gary McDonogh, “The Geography of Emptiness,” in The Cultural Meaning of Urban Space, ed. Robert Rotenberg and Gary McDonogh (Westport, CT, 1993), 3–16, 13. 59. Cited in Bird, “It Makes Sense to Us,” 523. 60. Paul Watt, “Respectability, Roughness and ‘Race’: Neighbourhood Place Images and the Making of Working-class Social Distinctions in London,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 30, no. 4 (2006): 779. 61. Ibid.

References Altman, Irwin, and Setha M. Low, eds. Place Attachment. New York: Plenum Press, 1992. Auburn, Timothy and Rebecca Barnes. “Producing Place: A Neo-Schutzian Perspective on the ‘Psychology of Place.’ ” Journal of Environmental Psychology 26, no. 1 (2006): 38–50. Barnes, Trevor J., and James S. Duncan, eds. Writing Worlds: Discourse, Text and Metaphor in the Representation of Landscape. London: Routledge, 1992. Bird, S. Elizabeth. “It Makes Sense to Us: Cultural Identity in Local Legends of Place.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 31, no. 5 (2002): 519–47. Blunt, Alison. “Cultural Geography: Cultural Geographies of Home.” Progress in Human Geography 29, no. 4 (2005): 505–15. Borer, Michael Ian. “The Location of Culture: the Urban Culturalist Perspective.” City & Community 5, no. 2 (2006): 173–97. Buttimer, Anne. “Home, Reach, and the Sense of Place.” In The Human Experience of Space and Place, edited by Anne Buttimer and David Seamon, 166–87. London: Croon Helm, 1980. ———. “Social Space and the Planning of Residential Areas.” In The Human Experience of Space and Place, edited by Anne Buttimer and David Seamon, 21–54. London: Croon Helm, 1980. Buttimer, Anne, and David Seamon, eds. The Human Experience of Space and Place. London: Croom Helm, 1980.

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Cuba, Lee and David M. Hummon. “A Place to Call Home: Identification with Dwelling, Community and Region.” Sociological Quarterly 34, no. 1 (1993): 111–131. De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1984. Dixon, John, and Kevin Durrheim. “Displacing Place-Identity: A Discursive Approach to Locating Self and Other.” British Journal of Social Psychology 39, no. 1 (2000): 27–44. McDonogh, Gary. “The Geography of Emptiness.” In The Cultural Meaning of Urban Space, edited by Robert Rotenberg and Gary McDonogh, 3–16. Westport and London: Bergin & Garvey, 1993. Downs, Roger M., and David Stea, eds. Image and Environment: Cognitive Mapping and Spatial Behavior. Chicago: Aldine, 1973. ———. Maps in Mind: Reflections on Cognitive Mapping. New York: Harper & Row, 1977. Easthope, Hazel. “A Place Called Home.” Housing, Theory and Society 20, no. 3 (2004): 128–38. English, Paul Ward, and Robert C. Mayfield, eds. Man, Space and Environment: Concepts in Contemporary Human Geography. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972. Fortier, Anne-Marie. “Re-membering Places and the Performance of Belonging(s).” Theory, Culture & Society 16, no. 2 (1999): 41–64. Godkin, Michael A. “Identity and Place: Clinical Applications Based on Notions of Rootedness and Uprootedness.” In The Human Experience of Space and Place, edited by Anne Buttimer and David Seamon, 73–85. London: Croon Helm, 1980. Gould, Peter R., and Rodney White. Mental Maps. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974. Gupta, Akhil, and James Ferguson, eds. Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997. Gurney, Craig M. “ ‘ … Half of Me was Satisfied’: Making Sense of Home Through Episodic Ethnographies.” Women’s Studies International Forum 20, no. 3 (1997): 373–86. Hidalgo, M. Carmen and Bernardo Hernandez. “Place Attachment: Conceptual and Empirical Questions.” Journal of Environmental Psychology 21, no. 3 (2001): 273–81. Hillier, Jean, and Emma Rooksby, eds. Habitus: A Sense of Place. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002. Humphreys, J.S. “Place Learning and Spatial Cognition: A Longitudinal Study of Urban Newcomers.” Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 81, no. 5 (1990): 364–80. King, Anthony D., ed. Re-presenting the City: Ethnicity, Capital and Culture in the 21st Century. London: MacMillan, 1996. King, Peter. In Dwelling: Implacability, Exclusion and Acceptance. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008.

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Kitchin, Rob, and Martin Dodge. “Rethinking Maps.” Progress in Human Geography 31, no. 3 (2007): 331–44. Leach, Neil. “Belonging: Towards a Theory of Identification with Space.” In Habitus: A Sense of Place, edited by Jean Hillier and Emma Rooksby, 281–95. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002. Lippard Lucy R. “All at a Glance.” In Mapping a City, edited by Nina Möntmann, Yilmaz Dziewior, and Galerie für Landschaftskunst, 96–103. Hamburg: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2004. Low, Setha M. “Symbolic Ties that Bind: Place Attachment in the Plaza.” In Place Attachment, edited by Irwin Altman and Setha M. Low, 165–85. New York: Plenum Press, 1992. ———. Behind the Gates: Life, Security, and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America. New York: Routledge, 2004. Lynch, Kevin. The Image of the City. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1972. Mallet, Shelly. “Understanding Home: A Critical Review of the Literature.” Sociological Review 52, no. 1 (2004): 62–89. Marston, Greg. “Metaphor, Morality and Myth: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Public Housing Policy in Queensland.” Critical Social Policy 20, no. 3 (2000): 349–73. Mason, Jennifer. “Personal Narratives, Relational Selves: Residential Histories in the Living and Telling.” Sociological Review 52, no. 2 (2004): 162–79. Milgram, Stanley, and Denise Jodelet. “The Way Parisians See Paris.” New Society, 787 (1977): 234–37. Morley, David. “Belongings: Place, Space and Identity in a Mediated World.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 4, no. 4 (2001): 425–48. Nas, Peter J.M., ed. The Indonesian Town Revisited. Münster, Germany: Lit Verlag, 2002. Nas, Peter J.M. and Reynt Sluis. “In Search of Meaning: Urban Orientation Principles in Indonesia.” In The Indonesian Town Revisited, edited by Peter J.M. Nas, 130–46. Münster, Germany: Lit Verlag, 2002. Nowell, Branda L., Shelby L. Berkowitz, Zermarie Deacon, and Pennie FosterFishman. “Revealing the Cues within Community Places: Stories of Identity, History and Possibility.” American Journal of Community Psychology 37, no. 1/2 (2006): 29–46. Reijndorp, Arnold, and Leeke Reinders. De alledaagse en de geplande stad: over identiteit, plek en thuis. Amsterdam: Trancity, 2010. Reinders, Leeke. Harde stad, zachte stad. Moderne architectuur en de antropologie van een naoorlogse wijk. Delft, Netherlands: Delft University of Technology, 2013. Reinders, Leeke, and Marco van der Land. “Mental Geographies of Home and Place: Introduction to the Special Issue.” Housing, Theory and Society 25, no. 1 (2008): 1–13. Robertson, Jennifer. “Furusato Japan: The Culture and Politics of Nostalgia.” Politics, Culture and Society 1, no. 4 (1988): 494–518.

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Rodman, Margaret C. “Empowering Place: Multilocality and Multivocality.” American Anthropologist 94, no. 3 (1992): 640–56. Rotenberg, Robert and Gary McDonogh, eds. The Cultural Meaning of Urban Space. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1993. Sciorra, Joseph. “Return to the Future: Puerto Rican Vernacular Architecture in New York City.” in Re-presenting the City: Ethnicity, Capital and Culture in the 21st Century, edited by Anthony D. King, 60–92. London: MacMillan, 1996. Spencer, Christopher, and Marie Weetman. “The Microgenesis of Cognitive Maps: A Longitudinal Study of New Residents of an Urban Area.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 6, no. 3 (1981): 375–84. Suttles, Gerald D. “The Cumulative Texture of Local Urban Culture.” American Journal of Sociology 90, no. 2 (1984): 283–304. Tuan, Yi-Fu. “Images and Mental Maps.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 65, no. 2 (1975): 205–13. Twigger-Ross, Clare L. and David L. Uzzell. “Place and Identity Processes.” Journal of Environmental Psychology 16, no. 3 (1996): 205–20. Watt, Paul. “Respectability, Roughness and ‘Race’: Neighbourhood Place Images and the Making of Working-class Social Distinctions in London.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 30, no. 4 (2006): 776–97. Wege, Astrid. “Maneuvering on Uncharted Terrain.” In Mapping a City, edited by Nina Möntmann, Yilmaz Dziewior, and Galerie für Landschaftskunst, 138–44. Hamburg: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2004. Winstanley, Ann, David C. Thorns, and Harvey C. Perkins. “Moving House, Creating Home: Exploring Residential Mobility.” Housing Studies 17, no. 6 (2002): 813–32.

Part II

[•] Claiming Urban Space

[•  Chapter 4  •]

City and Cinema as Spaces for (Transnational) Grassroots Mobilization

Perspectives from Southeastern and Central Europe Anna Schober

This chapter compares the narration, actions, and films created by

filmmakers and cinema activists in Southeastern and Central European cities such as Vienna, Cologne, Berlin, Belgrade, and Ljubljana since the 1960s.* These cities are located in nation states which have different political traditions: In the 1960s Austria and Germany had pluralist democratic political systems while (former) Yugoslavia had a socialist one-party system. Consequently, in this essay I will focus on a comparison of new, politically non-conformist cinema movements in democratic political systems one the one hand and in one-party socialist political systems on the other. In doing so I am referring to a corpus of interviews with various individual filmmakers, as well as with members of cinema clubs or cinema movements both in Austria and Germany and in former Yugoslavia. The main movements investigated are the “Expanded Cinema” and the communal cinema movement in Germany and Austria. In former Yugoslavia it is the “Novi Film” movement (also called “Crni Talas”, especially by representatives of the official regime, or “Open Cinema” by activists themselves) and “OHO”, an avant-garde cinema circle—all of which achieved greater public prominence in the course of the 1960s.1 Unlike older social movements that also focus on cinema spaces as places of politicization (e.g., the working-class cinema clubs or the people’s cinema initiatives of the 1920s and 1930s), movements such as Expanded Cinema in Austria and Germany or Novi Film in former

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Yugoslavia were no longer bound to relatively stable class formations and party organizations, even if they remain related to previous movements and sometimes reconstruct a relationship with them in a very active and pronounced way. However, all the cinema activist groups that emerged since the late 1960s reveal a change in the public appearance of such movements. They can no longer be merely interpreted in categories established by the working-class movements themselves—categories such as class or right and false consciousness—but demand the acknowledgement of other settlements of sense.2 They were situated at the transition between the movements that emerged in the interwar years, which often suppressed certain differences and privileging and universalizing other ones (e. g. “the worker”, “the proletarian” or national differences have for example been universalized) and the movements that emerged after 1968. The latter often programmatically rediscovered and exhibited a bigger variety of cultural differences (gender, sexual or ethnic difference) – and quite often mutually challenged themselves. An analysis of the ways such movements came into existence, and of how they inhabited the city and of how they were received can thus provide insights into how public institutional strategies as well as consumer tactics change in respect to difference. A related question concerns the potential the cinema has as a space for encountering the other (and oneself as other) and the effects this has on the level of urban civil society. Hence in the following I will focus on both city and cinema as places of changing and plural identification and nonunivocal attribution of identity in a context where the social engineering of modern institutions worked to mirror and manage ethnic, sexual, regional, and other differences in an always milieu-specific way. Such a focus also compels us to raise the question of what kind of imagination is triggered by what we encounter in the cinema and how this affects our everyday lives and the ways we perceive our surroundings.

Cinema and Socialization Like other city spaces, cinemas can act as focal points that bring groups into being. Hence collective bodies such as cinema activist groups do not exist beforehand and then occupy certain urban spaces, but rather bring themselves into existence by exploiting space and by inhabiting it in certain ways. As Georg Simmel has shown, the cinema setting has certain standardized qualities that have an especially pronounced capacity for socialization: When we use the term “cinema” we usually refer to quite a big room bounded on one side by an enormous screen and on

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the other side occupied by a—usually invisible to the audience—projector. In between there are rows of numbered seats, all facing in the same direction, toward the screen. The size of the space and the closeness between the people sitting in the seats already creates an impulsiveness and a sweeping-away of the public, which emphasises the feeling of being part of a collective. In addition, the darkness of the cinema space creates an uncertainty of the spatial frame, which further enhances these effects. As a result, the boundaries of the space as a whole disappear and allow fantasy to expand it toward infinite dimensions.3 Because of this, occasionally tempestuous and even violent collective outbursts occur in cinema spaces, despite the strict order and the controlled nature of the space. So, for instance, the filmmaker and cinema activist Wilhelm Hein, cofounder of the XSCREEN group in Cologne and operator of one of the first program cinemas there, remembers, Once, the audience didn’t hold back, and we were affected ourselves. I found it great. We played a punk film, ‘The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle’ (1979). I was on my own in the cinema and it was like a dream. One of my favorite showings—there is a scene were Sid Vicious comes down the stairs tracing a swastika; within thirty seconds three cinema-rows were in pieces, upholstered seats cut open and thrown away. … That was so great. … The next day I had to close the cinema [I WH].4

Usually however, the process of socialization in cinema spaces happens in less violent ways. For example, the film critic and later director of the Vienna film festival, the Viennale, Hans Hurch recounts the social function of a space like the Z-Club, an early program cinema in the 1970s in a central district in Vienna: “The Z-Club was more than just a cinema. There was a big bar with a buffet, a stage, etc. People sat on the steps, and if there were even more people the performance was moved to the Kosmos cinema. … The cinemas were also a meeting point or one had a date there. For many that was the way into the city” [I HH]. He further describes how a lot of people like him, who were born in small Austrian cities and moved to Vienna when they were eighteen for university studies, adopted the city via spaces like the cinema, usually moving around in quite big groups. “I can’t remember that I was alone in the cinema, we always were a big group. … We discussed a lot about films and read about them,” he recalls. “The cinema … is a space that creates a community, where people are equal. But there is no exchange in cinema and that’s the beautiful thing” [I HH]. Here the socializing force of cinema is described as one that creates a temporary community and triggers shared feelings and imagination,

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without the need to define experiences explicitly or to make clear designations of belonging. In addition, Hans Hurch characterizes the darkness of the cinema space as democratic, and he is not the only one to do so. For instance, Suzanne, the young protagonist of Marguerite Duras’s novel Un barrage contre le Pacifique, also speaks about the “artificial and democratic night, the enormous, all-equalizing night of cinema.”5 The great merit of the cinema, she explains, is that it attracts young women and men and lets them escape their families.6 This emphasizes a further aspect of the socializing force of cinema that is linked to its democratizing aspect. In this space affiliations such as those of birth—the family, class, craft, local communities—and the hierarchies that are part of them can become less important in respect to new identifications that can be found in the films the cinema shows or that are linked to other unforeseen encounters that may happen in and around cinema spaces, which accommodate a potentially wide audience, built up of strangers too. Thus, the cinema not only contributes to the formation of connections (albeit more or less temporary), but at the same time exerts a separating force: it divides us from the communities we were born into and their traditional ways of ordering the world and leads us to gather in new constellations, with shared judgments, taste, interest, or identification playing an increasing role in this. For example, Gottfried Schlemmer, cofounder of the Austrian Filmmakers Cooperative in the late 1960s and the film institute Synema in the early 1980s, remembers the excessive cinema visits that for him characterized the passage toward adulthood and the various cinema worlds he entered afterwards: “In the year 1948 … I went to the ‘Kärnterkino’ after school. This was my first conscious cinema visit. There I saw Calcutta and I can only remember a black knife flying through space. … And then I went to the cinema intensively, three or four times a day” [I GS]. In this early period of enthusiasm for the cinema he saw “only Hollywood,” but soon, he explained, I bought a book on film history, the first was Knaurs Filmgeschichte … and looked out for what was on in Vienna. There was the film archive, run by Gesek, and films were shown there and then at the university; there were the Filmwissenschaftliche Wochen [film festivals] … in the Palais Lobkowitz. … But in parallel I never completely gave up the other cinema, but I now saw it in a broader context. … And the third phase began with the Nouvelle Vague [French New Wave … the early Antonioni or Außer Atem (À Bout de Souffle). … Then I stopped watching other films apart from the avant-garde or the Nouvelle Vague, and at the end of the 1960s we founded the Austrian Filmmakers Cooper-

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ative. This was directed against the classical cinema and everything. It was the liberation from this “opium.” [I GS]

As a sign of varying attributions and in connection with the films he saw he also changed the way he dressed. “You can look at old photographs,” he says referring to the late 1960s, “and there you can see that we all went in ties. … [But soon] I was one of the first to go around in blue jeans” [I GS]. Schlemmer usually went to the cinema alone. “Otherwise I would have felt disturbed,” he explained [I GS]. Nevertheless, he described himself as being in conversation with others in the cinema simultaneously: with filmmakers, cinema programmers, and fellow film enthusiasts. Thus, cinema appears here as a place where new possibilities for relating to others could be encountered and a questioning of the status quo could take place. Such experiences were then translated—for example into new dress fashions that influenced others, or into new ways of making or showing films and of inhabiting the city. Dieter Schrage, cofounder of one of the first program cinemas in Vienna, the Freies Kino (Free Cinema), for example, recalls, “At the university, in the ‘Neues Institutsgebäude,’ in this very famous Auditorium I, there was a cinema weekend about the new revolutionary Latin American film and the new German proletarian film. I went there first as a visitor, but I knew the initiators very well. This was 1972, at the beginning of 1972. And then we got together and since this was extremely successful we said we should show political cinema continuously” [I DS]. Since they were expecting mainly a student audience they chose an old cinema near the university, the Rossauer Kino, in Vienna’s Ninth District, as the location for their cinema activism. They painted it and arranged some catering with beer and wine for special events. But most important was the further framing of the films screened with introductory addresses at the start and the discussions afterward, through the magazine they published as well as the overall political message they tried to deliver via the films they chose to show. Schrage explains: “We had discussions with the Austrian Filmmakers Cooperative. … They accused us of being no different from Hollywood. … But this was not true, since we focused on the political message of film” [I DS]. The artists and filmmakers of the Austrian Filmmakers Cooperative, on the other hand did not create such a single urban meeting point but put on various events at a variety of locations throughout the city. They showed so-called invisible films running through a projector, used the body as a screen, created provocative public performances at squares

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and in the streets and took part in new kinds of festivals and public lectures. In addition to Vienna, they presented these events in cities such as Munich and Cologne—the latter especially was a particularly frequent venue and the site of some of the most provocative urban interventions.7 Together with other artistic events such as the performances of the living theater, the art fair, and several new galleries, these cinema actions in Cologne contributed to redesigning the city as a metropolis of avantgarde art. With this kind of activism the city was transformed into a cultural space,8 in which spectacular events could take place unexpectedly and the public found itself in the position to be challenged, provoked— and perhaps, as Schlemmer put it, even liberated. In contrast to the plurality of spaces in postwar Vienna mentioned by Schlemmer, reference points for such memories in cities in former Yugoslavia such as Ljubljana or Belgrade are much more stable and singular. However, in a similar way cinema enthusiasts there recount how they put together a sense of themselves and of the world by consuming films from various countries of origin and various periods. They too used stimuli found in certain urban spaces in order to create aesthetic productions that in themselves changed urban life. Naško Križnar, for instance, founder of the very small OHO-Kino-Club in Kranj, remembers that in the 1960s he went to Ljubljana almost every day because he was studying architecture there. Since the last train back to Kranj did not leave until around midnight he could go to the cinema in Ljubljana before departing. He remembers especially having seen films of the French New Wave—Jean Luc Godard and François Truffaut—as well as Italian Neorealism, especially Michelangelo Antonioni, Luchino Visconti, and Federico Fellini, in the regular cinemas. At the same time, he recalls, he got “an education” at the Kinoteca in Ljubljana. Here, for example, he got to know the films of Luis Buñuel, Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovski, and Sergei Eizenstein. “I don’t know,” he says, “if it was my own engagement or my own intuition or this education with the help of Kinoteca, but I felt like I was at home watching Eizenstein’s films” [I NK]. Together with others he soon started to translate this experience of watching films into a particular way of producing films and of inhabiting the city. The ideas for these films came from music: “pop music like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones or from classical music” [I NK]. Križnar and his friends mainly made short films, recorded with a hand-held camera, mostly in fuzzy focus, fast-paced and with extreme close-ups. City life played a central role in these films: they were shot in everyday surroundings, casual gestures such as strolling through the city were reenacted in surprising ways, and slogans and graffiti are shown being painted on walls.9 Since the films were shot on location, well-known city

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spaces and average passers-by were included in the shooting, the latter either as the audience for certain happenings or as involuntary actors. Since they were recorded on film in this transformed way, locations such as main parks and central city streets in Ljubljana and activities such as surprised gazing or absorbed watching became reinserted into urban events like screenings or festivals where people in the audience could identify and observe their attitude in relation to them. Naško Križnar especially highlights how important it was for him to gain recognition from others for his productions, and through it to feel part of a larger community. “What I felt was that I had a strong desire to make a film and to show it to others. It was an extremely nice feeling watching the film for the first time with other people, not alone. … It is thrilling, it is difficult to explain” [I NK]. With such activities he participated in creating the wider community of OHO that mainly engaged not in filmmaking, but in a variety of other cultural activities such as performance, poetry, and the visual arts. In his case however, the new community was not separate from the one he was born into; he used family ties to get public support for his project of funding a kino klub (amateur film club). He recounts, “My father was a member of a [photo-] kino klub [in Kranj, A.S.] and he took me with him when they had some meeting and I went with my father to these photographic safaris. … Then, when I joined a group, this was an opportunity for me. Everybody knew me in the club and so I could organize a kino section there. … It was important to have an official seat. When we had an official seat we could apply for programs, to be given some funds for film, for footage. So it started” [I NK]. Thus, in his case, the socializing force the cinema exerts not only created a new community, but also at the same time transformed existing bonds such as of the family, neighborhood, or school. This becomes especially palpable when Križnar remembers the beginning of OHO, a circle of artists working in various fields of literature, theater, performance, and film. “We were all friends and schoolmates, neighbors, we met every day and little by little we started to talk more about these activities and tried to understand. … Then this idea of Marko Pogacnik’s of ‘OHO’ came up. … ‘OHO’ … is a combination of ‘oko,’ which means ‘eye,’ and ‘uho,’ which means ‘ear.’ So two senses are involved: seeing and hearing [I NK]. In the Yugoslav context such family bonds were usually related to the Communist Party or the army and were important for getting an opportunity to establish new, urban spatial linkage points—not only in small cities like Kranj, but also in bigger ones like Novi Sad, as Dušan Makavejev reports when he remembers the first activities of the kino klub there.

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There was this organization called Narodna Technica, people’s technology. This was an imitation of this Soviet system [of youth education]. … When I was in high school, I was in Novi Sad, I was 15 or 16. … I was the head of that technology-club organization. … At our school we had a son of a general who was an air-force commander. So I went to see him and said, “Look, could you speak with your dad so that we can get a parachute course?” We needed help from the army … so we got connections. … It was part of this technical education. … There was a photo-kino klub, the cinema section became stronger. … We went to the basement of the school, we found some old projector that had some old films. … Then we went to an American library that had opened and we got films about electrons, about astronomy. Because they were not allowed to have political films, but they were sending us good school films, like Discovery Channel … so we were showing that. Then I came to study here [in Belgrade] in 1950, 1951, and then I was a founding member of the Belgrade kino club [I DM].

In Kranj, too, a particular taste in films and a certain style of aesthetic expression connected OHO as a group and acted as a dividing line toward previously established communities. For example, Naško Križnar is eager to make clear that his father—although helpful for establishing initial contacts and furnishing him with respectability—“was not a film enthusiast” [I NK] and thus did not belong to the same circle. In such accounts of memories related to cinema spaces, narrators usually give the name of the place and localize it on the city map—as for instance Marko Babac did, when he said, “Kinoteka Jugoslovenska, in Kosovska Street, a famous cinema” [I MB]. At the same time however, they usually highlight a clash between the cinema spaces they experienced themselves and the surrounding city life. Gottfried Schlemmer remembers a particular viewing situation in the early period of his cinema enthusiasm: I’m watching a John Ford film in the Weltbiograph. … I am looking at the screen, and underneath someone opened the door and the people [in the street] were walking past. It was really like that. They went out onto the street from a room that was wonderful. Everything that made life difficult was gone there, and they went out, outside it had been raining, you slipped. Inside, everything was perfect, the happy ending or the perfect catastrophe, but everything went without a break. … Wonderful. [I GS]

Similarly, Marko Babac, a member of the Kino Klub Beograd, also describes a moment of surprising encounter between everyday urban life

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and the environment they constructed in the kino klub that included showing their homemade films and also playing jazz. At a certain point, he remembers, the young people in the club opened the window and their music could be heard in the streets. There was a “meeting between ordinary people, who were waiting for the train, with progressive jazz … completely atonal and arhythmic music, [you should have seen these] faces … For me that was a fantastic feeling” [I MB]. In such accounts cinema spaces are represented as emptied of everyday routine and filled with feelings, projections, and projects. Simultaneously, however, activists usually locate them carefully in the city and present them as urban meeting points open to others, including strangers. The cinema thus appears as a space linked to utopian sensibilities10 and as part of everyday struggles. In the process a clash of two worlds is often staged as competing ways of inhabiting space—one world that is and must be overcome, and another world that does not yet exist and is to come into being.

Official Strategies, Transition Spaces and the Cinema Created from Below This power of cinema in respect to socialization has led a variety of institutions to incorporate it into their strategies in order to expand their sphere of action. From the beginning the cinema was incorporated into the educational and promotional discourses of cities, nations, political parties, transnational organizations, corporations, and even religious institutions. In Austria and Germany, the Nazi regime explicitly used films to (re)produce the community as a Volksgemeinschaft, creating a variety of institutional intersections and inventing also a particular sort of mise en scène called Filmfeierstunden (film celebrating hours).11 After the Second World War, too, several influential institutions such as trade unions and the Protestant and Catholic churches included the cinema setting in their strategies to reeducate the public in West Germany and Austria and thereby expand their spheres of influence. To this end, they used established offices, trade union locales, community spaces in parishes, and even mobile equipment to reach the population in various parts of the cities and in the countryside.12 In addition, U.S. offices and French, British, and Soviet cultural authorities organized screenings, film programs, and lectures.13 Sometimes there was collaboration—for instance between the American and the Catholic reeducation bodies.14 At the same time there was resentment and conflict, as well as competition for similar target groups.15 Industry, too—especially the foodstuff

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and consumer goods sectors—focused on cinemas to reach a large audience, and framed screenings with fashion shows or with usherettes in sexy and spectacular outfits distributing samples.16 Bigger cities such as Vienna, Munich, Berlin, and Cologne became battlegrounds for these various efforts to use the cinema to reeducate, even seduce, the public. As the above recollections of filmmakers and cinema activists demonstrate, in cities like Vienna, Cologne, or Munich cinema consumers also started their own initiatives to adopt film and to occupy cinema spaces, usually in some kind of interaction with these official strategies.17 Groups that initially emerged in the 1950s were more in the tradition of working-class cinema clubs of the 1920 and 1930s—for example, the Workers’ League Bridge of the Red Army (Arbeiterbund Brücke der Roten Armee), which organized film screenings in Vienna’s second district and also published a magazine advertising films and promoting certain “red” actors.18 In the mid 1960s, however, new initiatives emerged that no longer related to the reference frame of the working-class movement. In Vienna, Munich, or Cologne, a tightly knit network of artists and filmmakers came into existence who had been in close contact with each other through various common activities and mutual invitation; their activities also contributed to the formation of the broader student movement of the late 1960s. Among this network (also known as Expanded Cinema) was the XSCREEN group in Cologne and Munich (Birgit and Wilhelm Hein in Cologne and Karlheinz Hein in Munich), the Viennese Aktionismus (especially Otto Mühl, Günter Brus, and Rudolf Schwarzkogler), and the Film Makers’ Cooperative in Vienna (Gottfried Schlemmer, Hans Scheugl, Kurt Kren, Peter Weibel, and Valie Export). These groups were set up in distinction to and confrontation with the more explicitly politically oriented, leftist cinema clubs [I BH]. In addition to, and sometimes merged with the latter, communal or free cinemas were established in various cities and were soon transformed into an early form of art house cinema [I DS]. This kind of cinema activism usually responded to previous viewing events happening in already established cinema settings. Wilhelm Hein, cofounder of the XSCREEN group in Cologne remembers, “We were at the universities … at that time part of the film club scene … and they played the Mexico film by Buñuel and that was the first time that I got out of my seat and said, ‘That can’t be true! Such an incredible film.’ … That was completely trivial, but had an incredible vitality and emotional force” [I WH]. Here the cinema appears again as a transition space: certain kinds of film could strongly affect perceptions of the world and could catalyze the development of something new. As the stories about the foundation of the Freies Kino in Vienna show, the fascination and

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lure to involvement that film exerts on others could also inspire tactics to use cinema space for longer term and to invent farther-reaching challenges to prevailing attitudes. During the Second World War the perceptual regime that emerged in Yugoslav cities such as Novi Sad or Belgrade in connection with cinema spaces was closely connected to developments in Austria and Germany. After the April War in 1941, cinema products introduced into the territory of the former Kingdom of Yugoslavia reflected Nazi policies, notably celebration of Germanness and disparagement of racial and other enemies. Under the Nazi occupation regime, Jewish-owned cinemas were confiscated; all other proprietors were commanded to surrender their prewar stock of films and to exhibit Nazi films, as well as films from German allies or from so-called neutral countries such as Spain or Sweden. Thus, cinema in occupied Yugoslavia became a vehicle for Nazi propaganda.19 With the liberation of Belgrade by Tito’s partisans and the Liberation Army of Yugoslavia in October 1944, film showing was again reorganized. In late 1944 the high command of the liberating forces created a film section, which, for lack of its own productions, mainly distributed films obtained as Allied aid from Soviet, British, and American forces, supervised the production of new films, and operated the nationalized cinemas.20 The Tito-led government elected in 1945 oriented itself on the Soviet model and utilized film as a central means for mass education; as early as June 1946 it set up a separate committee for cinematography to serve as the highest state organ for the development of film. This central authority quickly established separate regional committees for cinematography in each of the six republics. (Montenegro was an exception; here a special commission was formed.) The regime established national film studios such as Avala Film in Belgrade, Jadran Film in Zagreb, and Triglav Film in Ljubljana, as well as the first state film school for acting and film direction on Yugoslav territory in 1946–47.21 In contrast to Austria and the Federal Republic of Germany after 1945, where as noted above a variety of societal forces competed to employ cinema for their strategic activities, in Yugoslavia an institutional structure was installed, dominated by the Communist Party and its leader, Josip Broz Tito. With this, power and society were fused together.22 The party, with Tito at its head, claimed to represent an undivided people and rejected that difference is constitutive for society. The only difference accepted was the distinction between the people-as-one (represented in the party and its leader Tito) and its enemies (the old society, or the bourgeois/capitalist/imperialist world).23

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Under Aleksandar Vučo, a well-known writer who was appointed leading cinematography official by Tito himself, the cinema became a tool to redirect the population toward what Vučo called a single “direction that shows the nations composing our country involved in an unparalleled aspiration to change all of the old relations and ideas and in an unparalleled struggle to achieve a richer and better future for man.”24 In film production, as in other sectors of society, nonconformists found themselves slandered as “enemies of the people and of the state,” were forced underground, and found their productions were banned, or “put in the bunker” as it was known in former Yugoslavia [I MB]. Thus, film was to represent the officially sanctioned perspectives of partisans, party members, and workers’ collectives engaged in socialist reconstruction. The intended result: films for a new, socialist society differentiated clearly from “bourgeois” productions characterized by individualism and the “star” system, by “the dangers of formalism,” or “vulgar entertainment.”25 Cinema reception in Yugoslavia was to celebrate an undivided people as one. In 1948 Tito broke with the Soviet bloc in order to advance an independent, Yugoslav path to socialism, and in 1950 the regime implemented a self-management system that strengthened the initiative of individual units and collective action.26 Consequently, the period from 1950 into the 1960s marked an opening that included a growth in film imports from the United States and Western Europe (primarily France, followed by Britain and Italy) as well as a diversification in homemade film production that included light comedy and satire as well as adventure tales, historical and literary productions, and children’s films.27 As Dubravka Ugrešić recalls, “My childhood culture consisted of Greek myths, stories of brave partisans, and Hollywood films. My childhood idol was Audie Murphie, the hero of American Westerns. American films were the most effective and cheapest propaganda support for Tito’s famous ‘NO’ to Stalin.”28 This did not change attempts to control what happened in cinema spaces, however. Party bureaucrats remained concerned that collective action and group initiative should not transform itself into political opposition. The presence of different positions could be tolerated only as long as the sanctity of the people-as-one, the party, and the egocrat were not challenged. As part of this newly introduced decentralized structure, Yugoslav state-socialist authorities encouraged the formation of a network of kino klubs, which showed similarities to the Soviet youth education system. The aim of this program was to provide the institutional framework, venues, and economic support to create spaces that separated the youth

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from their families in the interest of socializing them into a socialist “new world”—a strategy that, beside kino clubs, led to the creation of photography clubs, chess clubs, or radio clubs.29 The activities in which these groups were involved quickly revealed the energy that participants were prepared to bring to such initiatives. The Yugoslav state-socialist regime intended to promote a particular form of socialization through these clubs. In doing so, however, it also provided young people with meeting and representation spaces as well as with equipment to articulate their own perspectives. Diverging from the intentions of the one-party system and its cinema apparatus, some of the young filmmakers and enthusiasts in these kino klubs—nourished by films they had seen—started making films that showed feelings, observations, a constellation of figures, and aesthetic forms that were incompatible with official ideology. Marko Babac, an early member of Kino Klub Beograd summarized this: Then … the regime saw our clubs with completely new eyes. … They said: “We wanted them to be separated from their families, but then they had constructed a family we didn’t want.” … When we started making films we organized meetings and little festivals, and journalists, the papers, started to write about us. It was now a public problem … an affirmation of some different kind of movie making. It was … completely different from the official film production, which was very conservative and very administrative. [I MB]

By making films focusing on the mise en scène of love, alienation, sexuality, loneliness, and the individual, the young filmmakers in the early 1960s entered into conflict with state-socialist authorities—at first often involuntarily, but later in a more conscious and playful way. These conflicts resulted in the banning of several films, other forms of censorship, and threads of various kind, measures that forced some of the filmmakers to opt for either an inner emigration or—later on (at the beginning of the 1970s)—for actual emigration to places like France, the United States, or West Germany. But at first, in the 1960s, around some of these cinema clubs a movement started to emerge that soon came to be known in official discourse as Crni Talas (Black Wave). It started first in kino klubs in Belgrade and Novi Sad, and had connections to various clubs in Ljubljana, Zagreb, Split, or Sarajevo. Even a number of film critics, scriptwriters, and journalists throughout the country began to support the film activists. Similar to the cinema activists in postwar West Germany and Austria, Marko Babac too describes “his” cinema as a place where it was possible to survive in times of poverty and harsh political transitions and to ne-

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gotiate or reject changes. “My family was very poor, the father without a job, as a nationalist officer after the war he had to work as a construction worker. And in the clubs you could have a warm room. … In the clubs we had warmth, technology and good friends” [I MB]. What tied him to the club he describes as “cinema, dreams, you know, to run away from reality, from rough reality, very poor. … Not a world of lies such as in reality, but in lies of dreams” [I MB]. In his account, too, certain urban cinema settings are characterized as transition spaces toward something that diverged strongly from official ideology. In the cinema he could move from a rough, false reality full of lies that he associated with the official regime and its film culture into another world full of dreams he could believe in. That world was again tied to particular city spaces—to the kino klub, the small cinema they had there, and the Kinoteka, where they could get an “education” [I NK], as young cinema lovers used to say. Thus, in various depictions of postwar urban experience, the cinema is represented as functioning as a space where transformations in everyday life could be reflected, rejected, disavowed, transmuted, and negotiated. These experiences of transition triggered the construction of alternative cinema settings that offered representations that could contest the officially sanctioned image worlds. Grassroots mobilization around cinema spaces thus happened after the Second World War in cities like Vienna, Cologne, or Belgrade, on the one hand in a very similar way and in interaction with official strategies that also employed the cinema spaces. Nevertheless, and on the other hand, the different political and socioeconomic systems evident in Austria or the Federal Republic of Germany and in Yugoslavia affected the forms that cinema activism assumed and shaped them in quite a different way. In Vienna or Cologne groups constituted themselves in an open contest with other forms of cinema culture. For example, the Expanded Cinema struggled against commercial cinema and the educational films advanced by the so-called K-groups (a plethora of small communist political pressure groups)—as well as against the ideological corsets of everyday life in general.30 This struggle led the emerging movements to define their tactics, to create new demarcations and designate enemies, all expressed in manifestos or declarations or translated into a very recognizable aesthetic style, which was immediately taken up by the mainstream media and thus became enlarged, fixed, and popularized.31 The Yugoslav Novi Film Movement (Crni Talas), too, emerged in response to and in rejection of certain forms of film aesthetic. For instance, they opposed the conveyor-belt production of heroic partisan films as

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well as the home movies made by the average ciné amateur, “happy to record flowers and family scenes” [I DM]—as one of the movement’s protagonists recalled it. Nevertheless, the control exercised by the statesocialist system precluded outright, open struggle, as it was practiced in comparable movements in Austria or West Germany. Their cinema interventions were thus not unified in the same way by one recognizable style and explicit set of demarcations, but rather were shaped by a constant yet silent pattern of individual negotiation, with the party and with Tito displaced most often to an aesthetic realm. Another fundamental difference between the democratic and the state-socialist contexts is reflected in the processes of assigning names to groups. The Crni Talas was first identified and named by journalists, censors, and then by the party and Tito himself [I MB]; thus, the name Crni Talas was in the beginning the name the official regime used for this movement. As such it could could refer to quite different styles of expression or activities that outsiders identified as a unified movement, to which other activists however could then consider themselves adherents. In contrast, Austrian and West German cinema activists understood themselves as the active agents and even vigorously displayed their identifications, most prominently with the American Underground Cinema. Analogous to the Film Makers’ Cooperative in New York, they referred to themselves as cooperatives and Expanded Cinema.32 However, despite such differences the formative processes of all these movements in Vienna or Cologne, and equally in Belgrade, Novi Sad, or Kranj, involved a rather similar fascination with certain films, a search for position, delineation from other initiatives, and formation from below in response to official strategies and the fixations and popularizations represented in the mainstream media.

Ambivalence and the Public Sphere As Zygmunt Bauman has shown, the modern state engages in social engineering—that is, in creating a new kind of order, and in this way has tended to promote assimilation (linguistic, cultural, and ideological unification) rather than cross-cultural exchanges and a heterogeneity of cultural forms. Thus, one of the main practices of the modern state has been “the effort to exterminate ambivalence … and to suppress or eliminate everything that could not or would not be precisely defined.”33 The embedding of cinema spaces into a mise en scène of the nation-state, of the promotion of productivity, or of social reform was part of this struggle against ambiguity. Accordingly, films were framed by various

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symbols and became part of newly invented rituals intended to lead the perception into new directions. Integration of the cinema into official strategies began in the urban centers of the modern state, where the cinema established itself as one of the most important visual entertainment and commercial sites, but soon the city’s perceptual regime extended to the countryside.34 In Europe the Nazi regime in particular served as a driving force in this respect, insofar as it mobilized a closely-knit system of symbols and new rituals to celebrate an undivided Germanness, and bridged urban/rural distinctions. After the war the newly established official entities made cinema again part of their now diversified and sometimes conflictuous encroachments into social space. With this, feature films were now framed by newsreel and commercials as well as by posters and leaflets that visibly linked the screening into the broader strategy it was part of. Sometimes lectures and addresses were included, too. In the case of foreign-language films, live interpreters and usually already the opening credits, logos and introductory images of films presented the production company and the country or organisation that produced the film. Together with this various attempts to make films a clearly visible part of various public strategies (and to push ambivalence back as much as possible) went the fact that—in form of concepts like the nation, the worker, or everyman—the focus was on the universal and the appearance of other cultural differences was closely mirrored and consigned to the background.35 Yet at the same time, modern consumer culture—of which the cinema was part—also worked against this tendency, since it operated through diversification. The various strategies focusing on cinema spaces were trapped in this dual tendency. In Yugoslav state-socialist society, this focus on the universal and the elimination of ambiguity also happened in a particular way. As already mentioned, film was urged to represent the worker, the party, and the party leader, Tito. Consequently the regime tried to monitor every appearance of difference inside the collective body of Yugoslavia and directed its cinema policies toward embracing the spectators in an undivided people as one. Even though the films shown in regular cinemas during the 1960s were more diverse than those shown immediately after the war and included films from the United States as well as from Western Europe, and the homemade production was, in terms of genres, more diversified too, any form of appearance of difference that related to the Yugoslav people remained closely controlled. For instance, when the film critic Slobodan Novaković started a discussion about national film languages and different aesthetic traditions after the Pula Film Festival in 1969 in the well-known journal Filmska Kultura,36 the party imme-

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diately stopped him from discussing the topic. Because alongside the expression of political differences this assertion of national difference, even before the Croatian uprising in 1971, was one of the most threatening issues in former Yugoslavia, Novaković had to even publicly recant the theses he had developed around it.37 This close state surveillance of any expression of difference is also why in state-socialist society a public sphere in the strict sense of the word could not come into existence, since such a sphere can only be created through various distinguishable positions that make themselves visible and audible for others, challenge each other, and/or fraternize in an unpredictable, contingent way.38 However, as the emergence of movements such as the Novi Film (Crni Talas) movement or of groups such as OHO show, in Yugoslav state-socialist society, too, events around cinema settings occurred that to some extent created such a public sphere. Since an open contest and an explicit challenge to the ruling elites remained precluded, however, this particular public sphere can be called an informal public sphere.39 Thus the development of an informal public sphere in state-socialist societies was bound to assertions of difference—a role that films produced in some of the kino klubs sometimes played. Then these films, for instance, showed evidence directed against the measures the regime employed in order to control the public sphere. Naško Križnar recalls such an occurrence: “There was a big political struggle against a magazine, a cultural magazine called ‘Perspektive.’ … At that time this magazine was [banned], discontinued. Just in this first film [by myself ] we can see how [the actor] Marko Pogačnik, is running along the streets and this magazine was falling out of his pocket. … We were all very worried about this situation” [I NK]. Apart from such events, however, difference is articulated quite often in the form of representing another view of the city. For instance Lice (the face, 1962), a short film, made in the Kino Klub Beograd by Ivan Martinac, combined shots showing a gazing out of a window (that captures prefabricated slab building construction so typical of socialist countries in the 1960s and a Belgrade square) with close ups of strange (clownesque, ugly, inexpressive, longnosed) masquerades of faces made during a workshop run by a makeup artist. Substituting for the audience of the film, a man and a woman in the film are represented gazing at these faces, city surfaces, or objects randomly lying around. The misunderstanding that emerges already in the beginning of the film between these two spectators in the picture is enlarged by this associative deployment of self-transformations, things, and spaces. The city and the self as other appear here as objects of an alienated gazing that dominates everyday urban life.

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Besides alienation, other experiences and issues that were officially treated as decadent, bourgeois, or outmoded and therefore overcome were also represented in films by so-called black filmmakers. So for instance Buđenje Pacova (The rats woke up, 1967), an early longer feature film by Živojin Pavlović, showed Belgrade as being a place full of deep, wet mud in which one constantly was in danger of sinking.40 And Skupljači Perja (I even met happy gypsies, Aleksandar Petrović, 1967), represents housing areas at the outskirts of Belgrade where members of a Roma community make their living by begging and singing in the streets of the city center, by collecting garbage, and by prostitution. The unconventionality of all these films was also underscored by their aesthetic appearance, which often featured an enhanced montage-technique, hand-held cameras, and were shot in everyday urban locations or working with nonprofessional actors and found stories. By representing on several levels what in official productions was excluded, neglected, downplayed, or ignored, the Novi Film movement (Crni Talas) challenged the ideological safeguarding of the Yugoslav collective constitution. Yet the motivations for producing such diverging representations could be quite diverse. Dušan Makavejev, for instance, points out that he as a film activist “fought for differences in order to bring the party to be truer to what their program claimed” [I DM]. Others, in contrast, were more concerned to develop an essayistic, existentialist style in order to oppose totalitarianism on an aesthetic level [I MB]. This emphasizes a certain double-edgedness that characterizes these films. Because in these films representation usually appears on the one hand as authorized through an individual aesthetic style, but on the other hand it remains related to the allusion of being made in accordance with the state and the party, which also authorizes it. Some filmmakers such as Dušan Makavejev or Želimir Žilnik defended their productions publicly by maintaining that their films were, even if unusual, still representations in accordance with Marxism and its realization in Yugoslav state-socialism [I DM and I ZZ]. Others, such as Marko Babac, had at least to abstain from explicitly questioning this. However, this merging made it quite difficult and arbitrary where to draw the line between the legitimate representations of the people-as-one and the illegitimate deviations from it—and enforced the role of the official authorities, since they were the ones who erected boundaries between the legitimate and the illegitimate. Contrary to this, we have seen that filmmakers and cinema activists in Austria and Germany emphasized conflict and struggle in a particular way. The act of openly contesting other forms of cinema appearance

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such as Hollywood cinema or the productions other cineastes featured even played an important role in the constitution of these groups. The Expanded Cinema activists in particular directed their artistic urban performances toward challenging and attacking the “instruments of domination that bind the individuals to the values, goals, norms of the state.”41 But filmmakers in a more narrow sense of the word also had to take a stand regarding other and competing positions that were present in public space. They, too, quite often focused on the city and its everyday handling in order to stage a difference toward other kind of representation. In Silver City Revisited (1968), for example, Wim Wenders confronts a historical opening sequence showing a crowd of people, viewed from above, marching, waving banners, and lifting hats during a manifestation with a series of very long shots depicting the present flow in urban streets and at crossings, often viewed from above. A bluish twilight and the streaming traffic connect these long shots on spaces as well as the mood music that accompanies parts of the whole film. In this way Wenders combines an enhanced contemplative taking in possession of space with reflections on forms of public use of these spaces, including (political) mobilization, mobility, consumption and isolation.

Figure 4.1. Film still from Silver City Revisited, 1968, Wim Wenders Source: Courtesy German Filmmuseum Frankfurt/Main.

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Figure 4.2. Film still from Silver City Revisited, 1968, Wim Wenders Source: Courtesy German Filmmuseum Frankfurt/Main.

Another film made almost at the same time, Polizeifilm (Police film, 1968), makes the oppositional position Wenders takes up vis-à-vis the ruling powers more clearly graspable. In this film he observes the Munich police and their tactics of dealing with the student movement in 1968. In doing so he places the public in a position of observing these practices of controlling public space and thus forces them to take a position toward them—which also gives this film its pronounced political character.42 Simultaneously, in bigger cities in Austria and Germany urban meeting spaces were set up exclusively dedicated to the screening of so-called political films. With respect to Freies Kino (Free Cinema) in Vienna, Dieter Schrage remembers that the main criterion for showing a film was whether it could be judged as political: A German friend gave us the rights to a film about Jimi Hendrix, a concert film. Well Jimi Hendrix, this was OK, but [we said] “this is not a political movie.” But then I saw the film and I realized that there were scenes, in Berkeley, there were aggressive assaults on the students. And the concert was set in montage to such scenes where the police beat students. So [we thought] this is a political film, because they de-

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nounced this … and then we played it for a long time. I don’t know if we would have shown it even without these police-scenes [I DS].

Part of this focus on the political was that the cinema was transformed into a space for discussion, information, and dispute. Similar to what happened in the strategic adoption of the cinema space from the official side, here, too, there were attempts to direct the perception in the cinema setting through speeches, addresses, information folders, banners, and flags as well as guided discussion in un-ambiguous directions. In addition, an accompanying magazine Kritischer Film (Critical cinema) was published, which introduced the films but also disseminated general statements about the political role of film.43 In 1973 it reported that other Austrian cities such as Linz and Graz had also set up critical film clubs on the Viennese model.44 The programming of such spaces focused on anti–Vietnam War movies, including Joris Ivens’ 17th Parallel: Vietnam in War (1968); critical movies from the German Democratic Republic, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, or Hungary; Italo Westerns; films on women’s liberation; Cine Tracts (leaflet films) and other short films produced by political groups and young filmmakers; some older films by Eizenstein and others about the Russian Revolution; and films about fascism. Quite often revolutionary Latin American movies were shown, as well as films fraternizing with political struggles in Africa or with the Afro-American liberation groups in the United States. For example, from former Yugoslavia they showed Skupljači perja (Aleksandar Petrović, 1967), several times, as well as Ljubavni slučaj ili tragedija službenice P.T.T. (Love affair, 1967) by Dušan Makavejev.45 By showing films from a variety of state-socialist countries (German Democratic Republic, Hungary, or Yugoslavia) and by simultaneously stating “we would never have shown anti-communist films” [I DS], any strict demarcation between the two systems that was so typical for the period of the Cold War was blurred. At the same time there was an emphasis on the filmic examination of imperialism and colonization—in other words, films dealing with Vietnam, Latin America, or the AfroAmerican liberation struggle were featured especially prominently. The reception of these films was embedded in other political activities such as demonstrations, reading groups, and discussions. Sometimes this even inspired new styles of public appearance. White people in Austria and Germany started to adopt looks from blacks or other marginalized groups. Birgit Hein, for instance, member of the XSCREEN group in Cologne, recalls that after the Underground Festival in Munich in 1969 she changed her appearance into an Afro look: “I didn’t want to

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look as usual any more. During the Underground festival in Munich I still had these honest hairdresser-curls, but shortly after I adopted this Afro look. Of course this was also a statement, how one looks. But it was not seen as provocative; it was already fashion at the time” [I BH]. There are also parallels in former Yugoslavia to directing the focus of discussion toward political struggles outside the centers of Europe.46 Here filmmakers turned the war in Vietnam especially frequently into a subject of public discussion. In Eve of Destruction (1962) by Naško Križnar, for instance, the spectator becomes involved in a process of painting anti–Vietnam War slogans, flowers, and other drawings on Ljubljana city walls to the sounds of the homonymous song by Barry McGuire. The viewer is at the same time prompted to observe the surprised looks of passers-by, which are also featured in the film. In Jutrišnje Delo (The morning paper, 1967)—embedded in a framing story about a young boy selling the daily paper in the streets of Ljubljana—Jože Pogačnik, from the Kino Klub Ljubljana, shows TV footage and photographs from newspapers about the war in Vietnam to U.S. pop and folk songs in abrupt montage together with ads for consumer goods or sequences from local news. In WR: Mysteries of the Organism (1971), Dušan Makavejev mocks the “joy of soldiering” in several scenes that had left Vietnam and entered everyday life in the United States.47

Figure 4.3. Film still from Eve of Destruction, Ljubljana 1966 Source: OHO-Film, Naško Križnar.

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Figure 4.4. Film still from Eve of Destruction, Ljubljana 1966 Source: OHO-Film, Naško Križnar.

Naško Križnar remembers that in 1968 emotionally the occupation of Czechoslovakia was perceived as being much more important than the events in the United States or in Paris. He says, “The occupation in Czechoslovakia made us aware that it is a real danger to live in a communist country” [I NK]. Marko Babac, by way of contrast, recalls that when he heard about the events in Paris in 1968 he realized that he was “part of one global kind of thinking, of [one] will” [I MB]. These examples show that in cities like Vienna, Cologne, as well as Belgrade or Ljubljana in the 1960s the politicization processes happened in and around urban settings that conventionally were seen as cultural spaces and not as spaces of politics. In Vienna or Cologne explicit political action was connected with the cinema setting or with urban artistic performance, and in Belgrade, Ljubjana, or Kranj, too, an informal public sphere started to emerge more prominently around cultural spaces such as the cinema. Hence the pronounced activities of the Novi Film movement (Crni Talas), the Expanded Cinema, or the newly emerging alternative cinemas such as the Freies Kino in Vienna,48 enhanced through media representation, participated in moving culture, as they perceived it, toward the center of society.49

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In addition, by adopting inputs for the making of films and for cinematic exhibition from the French New Wave, Italian Neorealism, or the U.S. Underground Cinema and by focusing on struggles like those against the Vietnam War or the anti-imperialist struggle in Latin America, these cinema activists, like other “1968” movements, also participated in the fabrication of a new transnationally disseminated reference frame that displaced the previous East-West polarity through one in which differences were multiplied and a North-South, or Third World– First World, opposition became established.50 When the filmmakers and activists are talking about the networks they have created themselves they usually relate to one another by mentioning each other’s films they have seen as well as some important shared viewing events, and talking about travel experiences51 or about participating in the various festivals they organized. In doing so, they usually give the name of the city the fellow activists lived in; in comparison—and this was important especially in former Yugoslavia—any mention of religious or national affiliation is secondary. For instance Marko Babac recalls, “There was, from Split, you know, Lordan Zafranović … in Ljubljana Boštjan Hladnik, for example … a member of the kino klub Ljubljana, my friend” [I MB]. And Birgit Hein speaks about “those Hamburgers” or “those in Munich” [I BH]. This shows that by way of identification processes relating to the city and to particular cinema locations as well as to certain films or viewing events, connectivity is created via shared spaces and aesthetic pleasure. Engagement, loyalty, and connectedness were experienced without the need for the unambiguous attribution of national or religious belonging. The assertion of taking part in a shared being together developed even in a quite small spatial framework—in the localities of a kino klub, of a cinema, or a festival— but simultaneously gave rise to much wider, transnational communities formed by various spectators, which were sometimes also cinema organizers, filmmakers, journalists, and critics. And even if most of the activists themselves soon established new lines and applied measures to shift the perception in certain well-defined directions, they nevertheless took part in creating urban cinema settings where plural identification processes, ambivalent readings, and transformations of identifications could take place too. At the same time, the very activities that created a bonding between the various activists usually acted also as a dividing line vis-à-vis the respective mainstream cinema culture, and other cinema activists and filmmakers—thus creating new bad others: the Yugoslav state cinema of the late 1950s and early 1960s, for example, acted as one of the bad others of the Novi Film movement (Crni Talas) [I MB] and “commercial

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films” full of “sappyness” [I WH] as one of the counterparts of Expanded Cinema activism. This socialization around the cinema thus featured a particular (informal) public sphere that is characterized by being created predominantly around cultural spaces, by mingling entertainment and political engagement, by focusing on the aesthetic level, and by individual psychic involvement and identification-processes that gave rise to rapidly changing and often overlapping communities.52 The arenas of politics in a more narrow sense, such as political parties or parliament, looked rather old-fashioned by comparison, and are in the long run only perceived and dealt with if they somehow fit in with the measures established by these cultural pressure groups. At the same time, divisions that otherwise existed in society also persisted in these alternative cinema settings. So, for example, a very strict division between the activities of men and women also reemerged in and around the cinema settings in former Yugoslavia. Whereas both men and women were present at the screenings, the members of the kino klubs were mostly men, even if some women participated. But these women are retrospectively almost always described as “girlfriends” or “would-be actresses” [I NK and I MB]. Those who made films and especially those of them under the Crni Talas label, as well as film critics or scriptwriters, were exclusively male.53 In this way, via shared activities in the clubs, at the festivals, and in the more general informal public sphere that emerged around certain cinema settings, which also included journalists and critics, old boys’ networks were created—sometimes also strengthened through the shared featuring of particular female stars.54 A strict gender division also characterized the cinema activities in Central European cities—even if in this respect also a first break-up is noticeable. In some groups individual women artists and filmmakers took part from the beginning, such as Valie Export in the Austrian Filmmakers Cooperative in Vienna or Birgit Hein in XSCREEN in Cologne. Their participation in these early movements, however, is also attributed retrospectively by some former male colleagues to their status as “girlfriends” or “spouses” of other male activists.55 And despite the showing in the Freies Kino in Vienna in 1972 of The Women’s Film (San Francisco Newsreel, 1970), which as they stated in their magazine investigates the social, economic, and psychological repression of women, the organizers otherwise almost exclusively showed works by male filmmakers and artists.56 Consequently here, too, most of the groups and networks emerging in the 1960s were strongly male dominated—which becomes evident by the fact that the cinema manifestos and declarations published in Germany in the 1960s such as the Oberhausener Manifest

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(1962) and the Mannheimer Erklärung (1967) were signed mainly by male filmmakers and cinema activists.57 But there were at the same time urban artistic interventions such as Tapp- und Tastkino by Valie Export, designed to challenge the ruling relationship between the sexes, which, however, again was regarded tongue-in-cheek and ambiguously in the mainstream press as “real women’s film.”58

Afterlife Movements such as the Novi Film movement (Crni Talas), OHO, the Expanded Cinema, or the communal cinema movement were shortlived phenomena—they existed broadly speaking between the early 1960s and the mid to late 1970s. Then in Central Europe filmmakers and cinema activists who started to question their colleagues’ political approach to the cinema appeared and defined their relationship with the public in a less hierarchically way.59 First, they often were shaped explicitly by feminism, or by the gay and lesbian movement in the 1970s and 1980s.60 But soon others informed by newly emerging discourses on migration also appeared.61 Thus in the decades following 1968 groups who saw themselves as having been marginalized increasingly used the cinema to establish a public presence. In Central European cities there have been women’s, gay and lesbian, or queer film festivals as well as squattings of the cinema by Turkish, Kurdish, Jewish, or Korean groups, alongside Hollywood or so-called world cinema in a more general sense. In parallel, in Yugoslavia film and cinema were used in recent decades to cope with the newly rediscovered national and ethnic differences as well as with the totalitarian heritage.62 During the Yugoslav succession wars, young activists in Belgrade or Subotica, for instance, organized the Trash Film Festival in order to use humor against a situation viewed as hopeless, violent, and full of lies [I MK].63 Simultaneously, however, in the latter context the plural, changing, and sometimes double-edged identification-processes that films were able to trigger again often became themselves seen as something threatening; in reaction to this certain films or even whole cinema movements were sometimes redefined in a nationally univocal way. Emir Kusturica’s film Underground, for instance, was judged as being pro-Serbian, “ethnoexpansionist” and “ethnocentrically motivated” through a “quasi-transgressive aestheticization of collectivist enjoyment”64 and the whole Novi Film movement (Crni Talas) was redefined as a “Serbian” movement and was this way “purged” of all Bosnian, Croatian, or Slovenian traces.65

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As part of these processes in Central and South-Eastern Europe, the cinema setting as well as cinema spectatorship reemerged in a transformed way. Since the 1980s the cinemas have often changed into video or multimedia spaces, have been redesigned as film discos or as widescreen art house or multiplex cinemas. Embedded in a postmodern, globalized, consumer culture—which mainly operates through diversification—the rediscovery or reinvention of difference via film and cinema was part of a much broader folklorization and ethnization of commerce and exchange. Thereby the rediscovery of difference could also be experienced as incisive individuation. The various forms of cinema activism that appeared around 1968 are thus early signs of an emerging “new cultural politics of difference,”66 which soon showed itself in a much broader rereading of history in the light of struggles between women and men, heterosexuals and homosexuals, or between various ethnic groups. The examination of this cinema activism has shown that the potential of the cinema setting for civil society lies in its persistent ability to challenge and renegotiate sense afresh in a way that addresses the individual as well as allowing for the creation of connectivity. In these now often transformed cinema spaces (festivals, multiplex cinemas, ciné pubs, temporary urban performances), spectatorship and the enthusiasm and translation activity triggered by it is still able to create contingent coalitions, which remain fragile, however, and are always threatened by the danger to erase ambivalence and to re-erect univocal divisions. Anna Schober currently directs the DFG funded research project Everybody: a transnational iconography at Justus Liebig University in Giessen. She was a fellow at the Graduiertenkolleg Psychische Energien bildender Kunst, of the Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt am Main, at the IFK (International Research Center for Cultural Studies) in Vienna; at the Centre for Theoretical Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Essex, Colchester; at the Jan Van Eyck Academie in Maastricht; and at the Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen in Innsbruck. Between 2009 and 2011 she was Marie Curie Fellow and Visiting Professor at Verona University. She has published widely on the aesthetic and political dimensions of the public sphere, visual culture, transnationality, gender and diversity issues, and methodological questions of the humanities. Her writings have appeared in such venues as Afterimage, Performance Research, Gender Forum, International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics, and Zeitschrift für Kulturphilosophie. Her publications include Blue Jeans. Vom Leben in Stoffen und Bildern (Campus Verlag, 2001), Ironie, Montage, Verfremdung. Ästhetische Tak-

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tiken und die politische Gestalt der Demokratie (Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2009) and The Cinema Makers. Public Life and the Exhibition of Difference in South-Eastern and Central Europe Since the 1960s (Intellect Books, 2013). Notes   * Reworked passages of this text as well as parts of the interviews cited in it have also been published in Anna Schober, The Cinema Makers: Public Life and the Exhibition of Difference in South-Eastern and Central Europe since the 1960s (Bristol, UK, 2013).   1. The stock of interviews on which this text is based were made between 2000 and 2008 in the course of the following research projects: “City-Squats: The Cinema as a Space for Political Action,” financed by the FWF (Austrian Science Fund) 2006–2009; “Aesthetic Tricks as a Means of Political Emancipation,” financed by the FWF (Austrian Science Fund) 2003–2006; “Cinema: Transformations of a Social Space. Vienna 1945–2000,” financed by the FS Kulturwissenschaften/Cultural Studies, Ministry of Science, Austria (together with Werner M. Schwarz and Siegfried Mattl) 2000; as well as during a postdoctoral fellowship to pursue The Cinema as Political Utopia—Public Space as a Space of Struggle: Contribution to a History of Perception of Vienna between 1960 and 2000, financed by the FS Kulturwissenschaften/ Cultural Studies, Ministry of Science, Austria in 2001. All interviews explicitly quoted in this text are listed at the end of it. The interviews in Austria and in Germany were held in German, those in former Yugoslavia in English. All translations are the author’s in collaboration with David Westacott.   2. On this change in the formation of political identities see Andreas Dörner, Politainment. Politik in der medialen Erlebnisgesellschaft (Frankfurt/Main, 2001), 107f. On the new politics of difference that emerged in connection with these groups, see Michel Wieviorka, La différence: Identités culturelles: enjeux, débats et politiques (La Tour d’Aigues, France, 2001).   3. Georg Simmel, “The Sociology of Space,” in Simmel on Culture: Selected Writings, ed. David Frisby and Mike Featherstone (London, 1997), 137–70.   4. A catalogue of all interviews cited is listed at the end of this chapter. Letters in brackets refer the reader to a specific interview.   5. Marguerite Duras, Un barrage contre le Pacifique (Paris, 1963), 188.   6. Ibid., 199.   7. For more on this point see Anna Schober, Ironie, Montage, Verfremdung. Ästhetische Taktiken und die politische Gestalt der Demokratie (Munich, 2009), 253ff.   8. For more detail on this point, see Schober, Cinema Makers, 99ff.   9. This can be seen, for instance, in the films Zurigo (1966), The Eve of Destruction (1966), or Živčni Zlom (1966), all by Naško Križnar representing other OHO members.

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10. Richard Dyer points out how entertainment in the mass media can embody utopianism at the level of sensibility. See Richard Dyer, “Entertainment and Utopia,” 1977, repr. in The Cultural Studies Reader, ed. Simon During (London, 1993), 371–83. 11. In 1933 the Reichsfilmkammer was created in order to control film and cinema. In 1934 a new law for filmmaking was established that enabled any authority to exclude films that could be seen as questioning Nazi ideology; the education for filmmaking as well as cinema programming was formalized in a way that so-called non-Aryans were excluded. See Andrea Naica-Loebell, “Das totale Kino. Die Arbeit der Gaufilmstellen der NSDAP und die Jugendfilmstunde, konkretisiert am Beispiel München-Oberbayern,” in Positionen deutscher Filmgeschichte. 100 Jahre Kinematographie: Strukturen, Diskurse, Kontexte, ed. Michael Schaudig (Munich, 1996), 179–96. 12. See, for instance, Ramón Reichert, Im Kino der Humanwissenschaften. Studien zur Medialisierung wissenschaftlichen Wissens (Bielefeld, Germany, 2007); Uli Veith, Gewerkschaftliche Medienpolitik und Filmarbeit. Am Beispiel des DGB und der IG Metall (Cologne, 1974); Christian Kuchler, Kirche und Kino. Katholische Filmarbeit in Bayern (1945–1965) (Paderborn, Germany, 2006); Axel Schwanebeck, Evangelische Kirche und Massenmedien. Eine historische Analyse der Intentionen und Realisationen evangelischer Publizistik (Munich, 1990). 13. Hermann-Josef Rupieper, Die Wurzeln der westdeutschen Nachkriegsdemokratie. Der amerikanische Beitrag (Opladen, Germany, 1993), 101ff.; Franz Grafl, “‘Reizender Scharm,’ Französische Filmkultur in Österreich,” in “Ein Frühling, dem kein Sommer folgte?” Französisch-österreichische Kulturtransfers seit 1945, ed. Thomas Angerer and Jacques Le Rider (Vienna, 1995), 205–15. 14. See Thomas Schlemmer, “McCloys Botschafter in der Provinz. Die Demokratisierungsbemühungen der amerikanischen Kreis Resident Officers 1949–1952,” Vierteljahresschrift für Zeitgeschichte, no. 2, 1999: 297. 15. For example, Reichert, Im Kino der Humanwissenschaften, 236f. 16. Press photographs for instance show usherettes hired by the company Pezz distributing goodies to children in Viennese cinemas in the 1960s. 17. On this interaction between official strategies and the mobilization of below more in detail, see Anna Schober, “Cinema as Political Movement in Democratic and Totalitarian Societies since the 1960s,” in Public Spheres After Socialism, ed. Angela Harutyunyan, Kathrin Horschelmann and Malcolm Miles (Exeter, 2009), 41–65, 41ff. 18. Unser Arbeiterbund, Information in Bildung und Unterhaltung, September 1954, 3. 19. Dejan Kosanović, A Short History of Cinema in Serbia and Montenegro, Part I: 1896–1945 (Belgrade, 2004), 43. 20. Kosanović, Short History of Cinema, 43; Daniel J. Goulding, Liberated Cinema: The Yugoslav Experience, 1945–2001 (Bloomington, 2002), 2. 21. Goulding, Liberated Cinema, 4ff.

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22. As Dušan Makavejev recalls, “In that time, you know, everything was one. One youth organization, one filmmaker organization, one poplar front. … And then the Cinémathèque opened in 1955” [I DM]. On this public regime of Titoism see also Schober, Cinema Makers, 53. 23. On notions of democratic and totalitarian political systems, see Claude Lefort, “The Image of the Body and Totalitarianism,” in Claude Lefort: The Political Forms of Modern Societies. Bureaucracy, Democracy, Totalitarianism, ed. John B. Thompson (Cambridge, 1996), 292–306, particularly 297f. 24. Aleksandar Vučo, “Naša mlada filmska proizvodnja,” Film, December 1946, 4. 25. Ibid., 3ff. 26. The implementation of self-management was aimed at decentralization and a gradual withering away of the state and entailed installing workers’ councils as basic economic units and local governmental bodies of the commune as central political units. Nevertheless, the commune remained a central party organ through which the Central Committee of the Communist Party could exercise control. According to Harold Lydall, the processes of forming a new elite happened immediately: “The local party members, who control the communes, soon tended to identify themselves with the managers running the local enterprises,” something that “gave rise to what the Yugoslavs call ‘localism,’ or ‘particularism.’ ” See Harold Lydall, Yugoslav Socialism: Theory and Practice (Oxford, 1984), 71f.. 27. Goulding, Liberated Cinema, 37f., 43. 28. Dubravka Ugrešić, Culture of Lies (London, 1998), 2. 29. Marco Babac, Kino-Klub Beograd (Uspomene) (Belgrade, 2001), 74ff. 30. The filmmaker Birgit Hein, who with Wilhelm Hein and others set up the XSCREEN projection space in Cologne in 1968, described the explicitly politically engaged cinema movements as “ignorant” regarding “formal innovative art,” and accused them of a simplistic “one-to-one ideology,” which, for example, seeks to rouse people against war by showing a dying soldier. See interview with Birgit Hein in Mo Beyerle et al., “Ein Interview mit Birgit Hein,” Frauen und Film, no. 37, 1984 (Avantgarde und Experiment), 96 31. Important in this regard were major magazines such as Der Spiegel, as well as the local press; television was very influential, too, since it showed special programs on the Expanded Cinema movement. 32. See the conversation of the Heins with colleagues in 1967 and 1968, reprinted in Christiane Habich, W + B Hein: Dokumente 1967–1985. Fotos, Briefe, Texte (Frankfurt/Main, 1985), 3ff. The Viennese group called themselves the Austrian Filmmakers Cooperative (1968) and referred to themselves as Expanded Cinema. See the newspaper article, Peter Hajek, “Für McLuhan, Bazooka Joe und die Garbo,” Kurier, 25 March 1968, 3. 33. Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence (Cambridge, 1991), 7f. 34. On this see: Henri Lefèbvre, The Urban Revolution (Minneapolis, 2003), 4. 35. See Ernesto Laclau, “Universalism, Particularism and the Question of Identity,” in Emancipation(s) (London, 1996), 20–35, particularly 32ff.

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36. Slobodan Novaković, “Naša decenija: 1960–1969/Ili: Teze za razgovor o jugoslovenskom filmu danas,” Filmska Kultura, no. 7 (December 1969): 42–50. 37. Duško Dimitrovski recalls these official reactions [I DD]. 38. On this notion of the public sphere as one that is built via actions and judgements, see Hanna Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago, 1958); and Jacques Rancière, Dis-agreement: Politics and Philosophy (Minneapolis, 1999). 39. The notion of informal public sphere to designate the politically relevant diversity of state-independent activities and interactions in totalitarian societies was formulated first by Oleg Yanitskii. See Oleg Yanitskii, Russian Environmentalism: Figures, Facts, Opinions (Moscow, 1993). The emergence of such informal public spheres questions the strict distinction advocated by Claude Leford between democratic and totalitarian societies regarding the possibilities of an emergence of a political public sphere. See also Marc Garcelon, “The Shadow of the Leviathan: Public and Private in Communist and Post-Communist Society,” in Public and Private in Thought and Practice. Perspectives on a Grand Dichotomy, ed. Jeff Weintraub and Krishan Kumar (Chicago, 1997), 303–32. On the creation of an informal public sphere linked to cinema and film in Yugoslavia since the 1960s, see Schober, Cinema Makers, 104ff. and 124ff.. 40. For the urban environments in former Yugoslavia in general Slavenka Drakulić notes “mud never disappears from our streets.” She interprets this ubiquitous presence of mud, which is featured prominently in the Novi Film (Crni Talas) productions, too, as sign of the enduring dependence of the city on the village and rural life. See Slavenka Drakulić, “Still Stuck in Mud,” in Café Europa. Life After Communism (London, 1996), 195–203, particularly 199ff. 41. My translation. For the original text, see Peter Weibel, Kritik der Kunst. Kunst der Kritik. Es says & I say (Vienna, 1973), 62. 42. Ernesto Laclau uses the term “political” for every action that calls structural principles of society into question or proposes a new ordering. The term “politics,” on the other hand, he uses to denote a separate social complex, which has to deal with this precarious logic of the political. On this, see Ernesto Laclau, New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time (London, 1990), 68ff.. 43. The magazine Kritischer Film was published between 1972 and 1975. 44. Kritischer Film, no. 2, 1973, 5. 45. See Kritischer Film, 1972–1975. 46. See also Schober, Cinema Makers, 115ff. 47. A detailed analysis of this film can be found in Raymond Durgnat, WR. Mysteries of the Organism (London, 1999). 48. In relation to the press coverage of the Freies Kino, Dieter Schrage recalls, “We were treated very favorably by the Viennese press. … Soon there were also other spaces like the Filmmuseum, the film club Action and film series at the Technical University. … But we were clearly the number one because

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52. 53.

54. 55.

56. 57.

58.

59. 60.

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we had our own magazine, we had daily screenings and we had continuous PR work for our public” [I DS]. On this change see Mike Featherstone, Undoing Culture: Globalization, Postmodernism and Identity (London, 1995), 15ff. Martin Klimke, The Other Alliance: Student Protest in West Germany & the United States in the Global 1960s (Princeton, 2010). Exchange between the various kino klubs was especially eased in statesocialist Yugoslavia. Costs for train tickets and for stays in other cities were kept low by state allowances. Marko Feguš, president of the Kino Klub Ljubljana between 1966 and 1970, remembers that they had special tickets for cheap travel to other cities and could usually stay in student hostels [I MF]. In this way quite a lively participation of young people in the various festivals organized by the local kino klubs could be secured; their members came to know each others’ works and could discuss films they had seen and pass on insider knowledge. As the Expanded Cinema scene and the communal cinema circles in Western Europe demonstrated, close networks could emerge here through common activities such as the organization of festivals, film series, or underground art events; the mutual invitation of nonresidents as well as participants; or through joint travel to some of the biggest cinema and art events in Europe. See documents and photographs reprinted in Habich, W + B Hein, 3ff. See also Schober, Cinema Makers, 72ff See also John R. Gibbins and Bo Reimer, The Politics of Postmodernity: An Introduction to Contemporary Politics and Culture (London, 1999), 76ff. Bojana Makavejev, wife of Dušan Makavejev, was part of the Novi Film (Crni Talas) scene, however. As a member of the Kino Klub Beograd, she made the short film Vesela Klasa (The cheerful class, 1969) and worked later in radio. Milena Dravić, for instance, appeared in several films by Dušan Makavejev, Kokan Rakonjac, Puriša Ðorđević, Boštjan Hladnik, and others. Hans Scheugl depicts Valie Export before 1968 as a photo model, script girl, tapestry designer and girlfriend of Peter Weibel. Hans Scheugl, Erweitertes Kino. Die Wiener Filme der 60er Jahre (Vienna, 2002), 40. Kritischer Film, no. 4, 1972, 2. These declarations are reprinted in Der alte Film war tot. 100 Texte zum westdeutschen Film 1962–1987, ed. Hans Helmut Prinzler and Eric Rentschler (Frankfurt/Main, 2001), 29ff. Only in 1979 was a manifesto crafted by women film workers made public as a feminist reaction to the Hamburger Erklärung published in the same year. Ibid., 32ff. This action is analyzed extensively in: Anna Schober, “Kairos im Kino. Über die angebliche Unvereinbarkeit von Subversion und Bejahung,” in räumen. Baupläne zwischen Architektur, Raum, Visualität und Geschlecht, ed. Irene Nierhaus and Felicitas Konecny (Vienna, 2002), 241−67. Schober, Ironie, Montage, Verfremdung, 195ff. Esther Quetting ed., Kino. Frauen. Experimente (Marburg, 2007).

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61. For instance, Diana Schäffler, “Deutscher Film mit türkischer Seele.” Entwicklungen und Tendenzen der deutsch-türkischen Filme von den 70er Jahren bis zur Gegenwart (Saarbrücken, 2007). 62. Ljiljana Filipović, “Film as an Abreaction of Totalitarianism,” in The Couch and the Silver Screen. Psychoanalytic Reflections on European Cinema, ed. Andrea Sabbadini (New York, 2003), 204–12. 63. On related movements since the 1990s, see Schober, Cinema Makers, 187ff. and 206ff. 64. Pavle Levi, Disintegration in Frames. Aesthetic and Ideology in the Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav Cinema (Stanford, 2007), 101, 105. 65. During my research in Belgrade I was confronted with statements by colleagues who were approximately a generation younger than the Novi Film (Crni Talas) authors themselves, and who vividly insisted that this was a “Serbian” movement and disputed all the films from authors with different ethnic background I had on my research list. 66. Cornel West, “The New Cultural Politics of Difference,” in Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures, ed. Russell Ferguson (Cambridge, 1990), 19–36.

Interviews Babac, Marko, by A.S. and Vera Konjović, February and March 2004 [I MB]. Dimitrovski, Duško, by A.S., 24 September 2007 [I DD]. Feguš, Marko, by A.S., 20 March 2008 [I MF]. Hein, Birgit, by A.S., 4 December 2004 [I BH]. Hein, Wilhelm, by A.S., 8 December 2004 [I WH]. Hurch, Hans, by A.S. and Werner Schwarz, 22 August 2000 [I HH]. Križnar, Naško, by A.S., 17 March 2008 [I NK]. Makavejev, Dušan, by A.S., 4 October 2007 [I DM]. Schlemmer, Gottfried, A.S. and Werner Schwarz, 21 December 2000 [I GS]. Schrage, Dieter, by A.S., 10 February 2004 [I DS]. Žilnik, Želimir, by A.S., 25 April 2008 [I ZZ].

Other Sources Hajek, Peter. “Für McLuhan, Bazooka Joe und die Garbo.” Kurier. 25 March 1968, 3. Vučo, Aleksandar. “Naša mlada filmska proizvodnja.” Film, December, 1946. Unser Arbeiterbund. Information in Bildung und Unterhaltung. September, 1954.

References Arendt, Hanna. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958.

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Babac, Marco. Kino-Klub Beograd (Uspomene). Belgrade: Jugoslovenska kinoteka, 2001. Bauman, Zygmund. Modernity and Ambivalence. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993. Beyerle, Mo, Noll Brinckmann, Karola Gramann, and Katharina Sykora. “Ein Interview mit Birgit Hein,” Frauen und Film no. 37 (1984, Avantgarde und Experiment): 95–101. Dörner, Andreas. Politainment. Politik in der medialen Erlebnisgesellschaft. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 2001. Drakulić, Slavenka. “Still Stuck in Mud.” In Café Europa. Life after Communism, 195–203. London: Penguin, 1996. Duras, Marguerite. Un barrage contre le Pacifique. Paris: Gallimard, 1963. Durgnat, Raymond. WR: Mysteries of the Organism. London: British Film Institute, 1999. Dyer, Richard. “Entertainment and Utopia.” 1977. Reprint in The Cultural Studies Reader, edited by Simon During, 271–283. London: Routledge, 1993. Featherstone, Mike. Undoing Culture. Globalization, Postmodernism and Identity. London: Sage, 1995. Filipović, Ljiljana. “Film as an Abreaction of Totalitarianism.” In The Couch and the Silver Screen. Psychoanalytic Reflections on European Cinema, edited by Andrea Sabbadini, 204–12. New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2003. Garcelon, Marc. “The Shadow of the Leviathan: Public and Private in Communist and Post-Communist Society.” In Public and Private in Thought and Practice: Perspectives on a Grand Dichotomy, edited by Jeff Weintraub and Krishan Kumar, 303–32. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997. Gibbins, John R., and Reimer, Bo. The Politics of Postmodernity: An Introduction to Contemporary Politics and Culture, London: Sage, 1999. Goulding, Daniel J., Liberated Cinema. The Yugoslav Experience, 1945–2001. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002. Grafl, Franz. “ ‘Reizender Scharm,’ Französische Filmkultur in Österreich.” In “Ein Frühling, dem kein Sommer folgte”? Französisch-österreichische Kulturtransfers seit 1945, edited by Thomas Angerer and Jacques Le Rider, 205–15. Vienna: Böhlau, 1995. Habich, Christiane. W + B Hein: Dokumente 1967–1985. Fotos, Briefe, Texte. Frankfurt/Main: Deutsches Filmmuseum, 1985. Klimke, Martin. The Other Alliance: Student Protest in West Germany & the United States in the Global 1960s. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010. Kosanović, Dejan. A Short History of Cinema in Serbia and Montenegro. Part I: 1896–1945. Belgrade: Jugoslovenska kinoteka, 2004. Kuchler, Christian. Kirche und Kino. Katholische Filmarbeit in Bayern (1945– 1965). Paderborn, Germany: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2006. Laclau, Ernesto. New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time. London: Verso, 1990. ———. “Universalism, Particularism and the Question of Identity.” In Emancipation(s), edited by Ernesto Laclau, 20–35. London: Verso, 1996.

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Lefèbvre, Henri. The Urban Revolution. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003. Lefort, Claude. “The Image of the Body and Totalitarianism.” In Claude Lefort. The Political Forms of Modern Societies: Bureaucracy, Democracy, Totalitarianism, edited by John B. Thompson, 292–306. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996. Levi, Pavle. Disintegration in Frames. Aesthetic and Ideology in the Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav Cinema. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007. Lydall, Harold. Yugoslav Socialism. Theory and Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984. Naica-Loebell, Andrea. “Das totale Kino. Die Arbeit der Gaufilmstellen der NSDAP und die Jugendfilmstunde, konkretisiert am Beispiel MünchenOberbayern.” In Positionen deutscher Filmgeschichte. 100 Jahre Kinematographie: Strukturen, Diskurse, Kontexte, edited by Michael Schaudig, 179–96. Munich: Diskurs Film Verlag, 1996. Novaković, Slobodan. “Naša decenija: 1960–1969/ Ili: Teze za razgovor o jugoslovenskom filmu danas.” Filmska Kultura, no. 7 (December 1969): 42–50. Prinzler, Hans Helmut, and Eric Rentschler, eds. Der alte Film war tot. 100 Texte zum westdeutschen Film 1962–1987. Frankfurt/Main: Verlag der Autoren, 2001. Quetting, Esther, ed. Kino. Frauen. Experimente. Marburg, Germany: Schüren, 2007. Rancière, Jacques. Dis-agreement: Politics and Philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. Reichert, Ramón. Im Kino der Humanwissenschaften. Studien zur Medialisierung wissenschaftlichen Wissens. Bielefeld, Germany: Transkript, 2007. Rupieper, Hermann-Josef. Die Wurzeln der westdeutschen Nachkriegsdemokratie. Der amerikanische Beitrag. Opladen, Germany: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1993. Schäffler, Diana. “Deutscher Film mit türkischer Seele.” Entwicklungen und Tendenzen der deutsch-türkischen Filme von den 70er Jahren bis zur Gegenwart. Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, 2007. Scheugl, Hans. Erweitertes Kino. Die Wiener Filme der 60er Jahre. Vienna: Triton Verlag, 2002. Schlemmer, Thomas. “McCloys Botschafter in der Provinz. Die Demokratisierungsbemühungen der amerikanischen Kreis Resident Officers 1949– 1952.” Vierteljahresschrift für Zeitgeschichte, no. 2 (1999): 265–97. Schober, Anna. The Cinema Makers: Public Life and the Exhibition of Difference in South-Eastern and Central Europe since the 1960s. Bristol, UK: intellect books 2013). ———. “Cinema as Political Movement in Democratic and Totalitarian Societies since the 1960s.” In Public Spheres After Socialism, edited by Angela Harutyunyan, Kathrin Horschelmann and Malcolm Miles, 41–65. Exeter: intellect books, 2009. ———. Ironie, Montage, Verfremdung. Ästhetische Taktiken und die politische Gestalt der Demokratie. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2009.

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———. “Kairos im Kino. Über die angebliche Unvereinbarkeit von Subversion und Bejahung.” In räumen. Baupläne zwischen Architektur, Raum, Visualität und Geschlecht, edited by Irene Nierhaus and Felicitas Konecny, 241−67. Vienna: edition selene, 2002. Schwanebeck, Axel. Evangelische Kirche und Massenmedien. Eine historische Analyse der Intentionen und Realisationen evangelischer Publizistik. Munich: Fischer, 1990. Simmel, Georg, “The Sociology of Space.” In Simmel: On Culture, edited by David Frisby and Mike Featherstone, 137–70. London: Sage, 1997. Ugrešić, Dubravka, Culture of Lies. London: Phoenix, 1998. Veith, Uli. Gewerkschaftliche Medienpolitik und Filmarbeit. Am Beispiel des DGB und der IG Metall. Cologne: Pahl-Rugenstein, 1974. Weibel, Peter. Kritik der Kunst. Kunst der Kritik. Es says & I say. Vienna: Jugend & Volk, 1973. West, Cornel. “The New Cultural Politics of Difference.” In Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures, edited by Russell Ferguson, 19–36. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990. Wieviorka, Michel. La différence: Identités culturelles: enjeux, débats et politiques. La Tour d’Aigues, France: Editions de L’Aube, 2001. Yanitskii, Oleg. Russian Environmentalism: Figures, Facts, Opinions. Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya Publishing House, 1993.

[• Chapter 5 •]

Adjudicating Lodging Denazification, Housing Requisition, and Identity in “Red Vienna,” 1945–48 MATTHEW P. BERG

The impact of conflict on Central Europe during the twentieth century,

particularly the effects of the Second World War, sorely tested urban networks—that is, political relationships, social connections, information flow, economic exchange, and medical care—fraying them badly where they were not damaged wholesale. This was particularly true in the heartland of the Nazi regime, Germany and Austria. Devastating aerial bombardment during the later years of the war and ground assaults in the war’s closing weeks brought the Reich’s citizens a taste of what their armed forces had visited on those areas they had invaded. Policymakers among both the victorious powers and post-Nazi leaders quickly realized that, apart from addressing the humanitarian catastrophe that population centers confronted, the best hope for circumventing a resurgence of fascism lay in addressing adequately widespread, fundamental needs: food, employment, and housing. Indeed, the overriding standard by which ordinary citizens evaluated postwar governmental authorities was their ability to meet these basic concerns, including their degree of success in intervening with occupation forces to help alleviate such problems. This chapter1 focuses on the everyday life experiences of Viennese residents and the preoccupation with adequate housing during the period from the end of the war in April 1945 through the first amnesties for what Austrian denazification law designated lesser-implicated former Nazis in 1948. Everyday life experiences of those city dwellers whose existences were in jeopardy couched their personal narratives in terms of privation and want when they appealed to municipal officials for assistance. These circumstances were undeniably real—yet they allowed

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members of a society that had perpetrated, tolerated, or ignored mass human rights violations to cast themselves as victims of National Socialism or of the Allies.2 An approach geared toward the history of everyday life is particularly fruitful for a project concerned with how people narrate their urban experiences. Such a method “achieves spatial integration … by theorizing the organic relationships between the phenomena in the many everydays. It achieves temporal integration … by demonstrating pragmatic options through which ordinary people may shape their present.”3 The concerns of many tens of thousands of Viennese, expressed in the form of personal narratives of need and suffering preserved in municipal and federal archives on which I have drawn, offer the historian insights into the relationship between citizens and their elected officials. These sources reveal a striking determination on the part of citizens to hold authorities accountable to new legislation, and their expectation that governing authorities have a moral obligation to look after citizens’ needs during times of duress. This case study explores a central discourse: the right of municipal authorities to adjudicate urban living space under conditions of extreme privation. The discourse is framed by the Wohnungsanforderungsgesetz (WAG, or housing requisition law) introduced in late August 1945, both in response to a pressing postwar housing shortage and to the ways that residents lay claim to their perceived right of access to living space. Drawing on Article IV §17 of the NS Verbotsgesetz (National Socialist Prohibition Law),4 the WAG permitted seizure of apartments belonging to those who had been Nazi Party (or NSDAP) members—including even member applicants—or had been affiliated with one of its paramilitary formations between July 1, 1933, and the collapse of the National Socialist regime in Austria on April 27, 1945.5 Tenants awarded accommodations had to demonstrate need on the basis of a point system. Classification in the neediest category (Klasse I) required more than fifty points, the second class (Klasse II) between twenty-six and fifty points, and the lowest priority class up to twenty-five points. One could also lose points, for example a deduction of seventy-five if one fell under Article IV §17 of the Prohibition Law. Claims associated with this law, particularly during the initial postwar years taken into account here, reveal themselves in subtopical narratives such as their authors’ reliable, antifascist political credentials, authors’ minimalization of their Nazi affiliations, or simply fundamental human need.6 Linguist Ruth Wodak’s discourse analysis can be particularly instructive in understanding how narrative representations function. She defines discourse “as a complex bundle of simultaneous and sequential

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interrelated linguistic acts” whose “most salient feature … is the macrotopic, like ‘unemployment.’ … Each micro-topic allows many sub-topics like ‘market,’ ‘trade unions,’ ‘social welfare,’ ‘global market,’ ‘hire and fire policies’ and many more. Discourses are open and hybrid and not closed systems at all; new sub-topics can be created, and intertextuality and interdiscursivity allow for new fields of action.”7 The dominant narrative thread of this study, or macrotopic, expressed in individual personal narratives, is adequate housing. The dominant microtopic that manifests itself is one’s standing under the WAG. Those subtopics that emerge range from one’s status as a political or a racial victim of National Socialism, a former Nazi, or a loyal and steadfast Social Democrat. The WAG established the parameters of the central discourse, namely that placement in certain categories awarded an applicant more points. Higher point totals situated people in categories that could bring priority placement for housing or housing upgrades, yet the crush of highly needy Viennese meant that even some priority cases could not be adjudicated for months or even years. Thus, officially sanctioned suffering brought at least the promise of resolution, albeit not the reality of prompt solutions in which many invested their hopes. The more personal narratives could seize on experiences truthfully and effectively, the greater the potential for alleviation of suffering, however. Individual circumstances that brought the most points included documented suffering under the Nazis; having been bombed out or other reasons for acute material need; or responsibility caring for children (the more and the younger, the more points apportioned). In the overwhelming majority of instances, petitioners’ narratives demonstrated a keen awareness of the terms of the law, perception of basic human rights, or simple fairness. Although the WAG created distinct criteria that classified individuals into categories of need, petitioners appreciated the importance of individual agency—if, at times, only in the form of pure supplication. The ways in which petitioners understood the new law, and the ways in which it classified them, allowed them to employ rhetorical strategies that form distinct and significant subtopics beyond relative senses of personal privation and the need for adequate living space. For example the archival record reflects an insistence among a number of petitioners that their political bona fides should count for something to the new post-Nazi administration, and that the authorities should act quickly. Insofar as entreaties directed to the Wohnungsamt (Municipal Housing Bureau) or straight up the bureaucratic hierarchy to the Bürgermeisteramt (Mayor’s Office) convey a sense of urgency composed quite intentionally, the ar-

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chival sources allow for particular insights into perceptions of need, social justice, legal consistency, or patronage obligations. Thus, narratives manifested in these documents are no less compelling and perhaps more reliable in revealing everyday life perceptions than oral histories (contingent on the interviewer as interlocutor) or memoirs (composed at some temporal distance from events, and thus not as intimately connected to prevailing emotions or concerns, prone to ex post facto justification, or to teleological explanation).

Vienna at War’s End: Physical Conditions and Political Considerations Although Vienna did not suffer the degree of destruction absorbed by Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg, or other German-speaking urban spaces, it did not emerge unscathed. Combat during the final weeks of the war in Austria inflicted significant structural damage on Vienna’s historic city center, as well as on parts of its eastern, southeastern, and northern districts. Moreover, the frequency and intensity of Allied bombing reached unprecedented levels during the later part of 1944, as air raids struck the city’s rail stations and Danube shipping installations, in particular. Of course, many bombs wrought serious damage, even outright destruction, to housing stock and public buildings. The municipal administration estimated that 41 percent of all buildings in the Gemeinde Wien had suffered some form of damage (e.g., destroyed completely, rendered largely uninhabitable, or required significant repair).8 An investigation completed in late 1945 revealed that 36,851 structures had been destroyed—privately and municipally owned apartment houses, as well as city and federal administrative buildings—while an additional 50,024 had suffered significant damage.9 The Wohnungsamt estimated that more than one hundred thousand housing units (both single-family houses and individual apartments) had been destroyed or rendered otherwise uninhabitable. This figure corresponded roughly to the total number of lost or damaged housing units in the Austrian cities of Linz, Salzburg, Innsbruck, and Bregenz combined.10 If one takes into consideration that most of those housing units would have been occupied by more than one person, that former Nazis were subject to punitive measures that altered their housing status, and that a significant number of repatriated prisoners of war returned home to Vienna during the second half of the 1940s, we may conclude that perhaps as many as one third of all Viennese residents experienced some sort of housing-related hardship during the initial postwar years.11 The diffi-

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culties ranged from actual or impending homelessness to overcrowded quarters, to accommodations shared among strangers or even among people who considered one another enemies, to unhealthy or otherwise unsafe living conditions, to requisition of living space by foreign military authorities. Occupation soldiers and associated foreign civilian personnel requisitioned approximately six thousand apartments, another thousand rooms, and several hundred Kabinette (small bedrooms) as subtenants in apartments rented by Viennese, in addition to 150 villas, a thousand offices, and dozens of complete buildings between April and December 1945.12 The archival record reflects an important subtopic here: many residents protested French, British, American, and Soviet actions vigorously to Viennese and even federal authorities. The concerns of former Nazis introduce an additional, important subtopical element in the housing field. Even before the provisional federal government introduced the WAG, authorities in the federal provinces had begun to seize living space in unofficial or “wild” requisitions of National Socialist–owned housing between April and June 1945. The WAG eliminated this practice and formally designated those categories of former Nazis or their spouses from whom housing could be seized, however.13 People affected by the law were given two weeks’ notice to vacate their domiciles. Furthermore, the law made it possible for the Wohnungsamt to requisition living space even from non-Nazis if the authorities deemed that it was insufficiently utilized. Those who had been victims of the Nazi regime—that is, those designated politically or racially persecuted by Austrian federal authorities—sought redress for their own housing concerns, frequently at the expense of Nazis who years earlier had assumed ownership over their apartments, furniture, household items, and even their clothing. As we shall see, those affected either positively or negatively by the WAG issued counterclaims framed in quite consistent rhetorical strategies. Between the end of April and late November 1945, the Viennese Wohnungsamt had provided housing for 10,493 needy families, of whom almost 25 percent had been concentration camp prisoners incarcerated for anti-Nazi political affiliations.14 The sheer volume of requests written by people intent on protecting their living space overwhelmed not only the small staff of the central Wohnungsamt, but also the broader network of its officials working in the various municipal districts. In the great majority of cases, officials appeared to have dealt with the deluge of petitions as expeditiously and carefully as circumstances allowed, with only occasional instances of corruption, favoritism, inefficiency, or callous neglect. Nonetheless, cases remained backlogged for two to three years despite best intentions. It is not uncommon to encounter re-

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cords in which individuals pursued their petitions from 1945 into 1947, and, in a handful of examples, longer still. Letters to the municipal authorities such as the Bürgermeisteramt, the director of the City Manager’s Office (Magistratsdirektion), and the Wohnungsamt from (1) Social Democratic stalwarts, (2) newly marginalized Nazis, and (3) newly reintegrated victims, reveal detailed self-reporting—albeit at times selective self-reporting—on residents’ experiences after Austria’s absorption into the Reich. The following sections employ representative examples illustrative of the macrotopic of housing-related privation that all three categories shared, but reveal rhetorical strategies employed rather uniquely by members of each distinct group.

Social Democratic Constituents Inseparable from the microtopic of how Viennese residents experienced housing adjudication under the WAG is the subtopic of social democratic identity and its relationship to municipal authority vis-à-vis claims to living space. This relationship reveals a particular urban network grounded in power dynamics and claims to patronage, in information flow and regulation of urban space. Between 1919 and 1934 the social democratic–dominated Vienna city hall—so-called Red Vienna—had implemented an innovative housing policy to create new, modern living space for the party’s working class constituents. City authorities accomplished this objective through the creation of ambitious, model municipal housing projects financed through progressive taxation, some of which were planted in staid bourgeois neighborhoods such as the wellknown example of the Karl-Marx-Hof in the Heiligenstadt section of Vienna’s nineteenth district.15 After 1945 housing-related patronage assistance extended first and foremost to the party faithful in need. Those who had held true to their social democratic identities, despite years of fascist hegemony, turned to the newly reconstituted provisional Social Democratic city administration to address their housing concerns. As Viennese authorities, together with initially Soviet and later fourpower occupation forces, began to establish a semblance of postwar order, district and central municipal administrative power concentrated itself largely in social democratic hands. This was not surprising, given the strength of the city’s social democratic political machine during the democratic phase of the interwar republic, noted above. However, it is remarkable that Social Democratic municipal organizations reemerged with such speed and resiliency in the late spring and summer of 1945. Four years of a repressive, indigenous authoritarian government had

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driven Viennese Social Democrats underground or into exile, and the Nazi regime demonstrated an even more brutal intolerance toward them—even as it offered itself as a new home for many who were prepared to change their political colors, either to continue the struggle against Austrofascists or as a purely opportunistic calculation. Historian Siegfried Mattl accounts insightfully for this postwar strength and resiliency when he remarks that, before February 1934 and again after April 1945, the Viennese Social Democratic organization “had discovered in its system of ‘ward heelers’ (Vertrauensleute) a unique model for combining highly professionalized and bureaucratic party structures with face-to-face interactions among its members. These party operatives were, to use Antonio Gramsci’s terminology, ‘organic intellectuals’ who were able to straddle the line separating the logic of modern organizational apparatuses from the logic of everyday life.”16 Election results in November 1945 demonstrated the strength of the party organization and its appeal to voters. The Austrian Socialist Party (Sozialistische Partei Österreichs; SPÖ) controlled all but six of Vienna’s twenty-six districts outright during the first several postwar years. (This total changed with redistricting in 1954, yet the city council remained comfortably under SPÖ control. The party’s dominance has not changed significantly up to the present.) Vertrauensleute represented the party’s specific interests as party officials, and the municipal district superintendents (Bezirksvorsteher) retained their high-profile social democratic identities as civil servants at the local level. However, it was not uncommon for Bezirksvorsteher to combine their responsibilities as elected municipal representatives with the party function of Vertrauensleute as well, or to have arrived at the former office through service in the latter. Such individuals likely understood grassroots sentiments far more intimately than officials in the Rathaus would have. This, in turn, could contribute at times to differences between officials in the municipal housing authority on the one hand and individual district officials on the other. While all of the above advocated for aggrieved Social Democratic residents to the extent that the law and circumstances allowed, the latter often called for more vigorous action against former Nazis (such as summary relocation and expropriation) than was permitted under the WAG. It was at these moments that Social Democrats in search of adequate housing or facing eviction issued pleas for redress directly to the Bürgermeisteramt, often with the assistance of local SPÖ officials. Archival sources record in detail the concerns of those who submitted petitions and make plain their assertions that they alone, as antifascists and members of the social democratic milieu, were the genuine ordinary residents of Vienna—and thus deserved priority assistance.

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Viennese public housing was highly coveted by apartment dwellers due to the close detail paid to architectural features, infrastructure (laundry rooms, communal meeting spaces, even day-care facilities, kindergartens, and elementary schools), and landscaping characteristic of interwar social democratic housing initiatives. Many had internalized the dictum that had long been a hallmark of social democratic municipal apartment building (Gemeindewohnhäuser) construction: safe housing with adequate space was a basic human right. A representative example of such an orientation is evident in a petition submitted by Victor K., a young Social Democrat who served five years in the Wehrmacht and claimed to have steered clear of Nazi Party affiliation. K. implored the mayor for assistance to secure his “most fundamental human right—that of housing” upon his return from a prisoner-of war-camp. He and his wife had lost everything in an air raid during the last weeks of the war, and the two were forced to share a bed in an anteroom of his parents’ apartment. “Is there no space at all in Vienna,” he beseeched the mayor, “for two young people who sacrificed so much over the last few years? And now, moreover, we are asking the young people to bear the principal burden of reconstruction.”17 Mayor Körner’s assistant replied that despite his legitimate concern, K. would do well to remember that over one hundred thousand apartments had been destroyed and only a small fraction of them had been rebuilt or restored, and that the housing authority could not dispense living accommodations independent from the letter of the law. He, like so many others, would have to remain patient through these trying times and let the bureaucracy process petitions according to established procedures.18 Following established procedures could, however, allow for rapid action in instances where Nazis retained their housing, even though the WAG stipulated that they were subject to relocation. One of many such examples involved the local Social Democratic official Josef K., who notified the district social democratic authorities that a certain Herr and Frau J., both loyal and enthusiastic NSDAP functionaries, had recently returned to the apartment they had aryanized in 1938, but had fled during intensive Allied bombing in autumn 1944. K. lived in the building too, and was furious that the J.s expected to live undisturbed at the expense of “totally bombed out and refreshingly loyal Socialists and other antifascists.”19 A month earlier, K. alerted party colleagues that Herr and Frau Alois S., former Social Democrats who had joined the NSDAP while it was still illegal in 1934, had returned to their apartment in the same building and claimed that they had been cleared from the registration rolls for former Nazis. This couple had organized boycotts against Social Democrat business owners in the neighborhood and had

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made life miserable for known antifascists within the apartment house. “If this continues,” K. complained, “all Socialists will probably have to leave their municipal apartments. … It would thus be high time that serious measures be taken against Nazis in this regard.”20 District social democratic authorities brought this information to the attention of party officials entrusted with tracking cases of Nazis who had evaded federal denazification measures; they in turn informed the Wohnungsamt of the situation. Wohnungsamt officials enforced the WAG and relocated the Herr and Frau S. The fate of Herr and Frau J. is not revealed in the archival record. Still, SPÖ affiliation did not guarantee accelerated processing of complaints with the Wohnungsamt—or even a satisfactory outcome, if resolution required extralegal steps. The following two examples illustrate representative cases of individuals who couched their petitions within the narrative of need, but who did not quickly find satisfaction. Johanna M. explained to the Bürgermeister that she had been a loyal Social Democrat since 1920, and that the “greatest joy for an honest, orderly worker is a nice, well-cared for apartment.” At age sixty-one she claimed that she was “active in the reconstruction of our small, but beautiful Austria,” but that she could find no rest in the small room she found tantamount to a cell. Next door, a widow had been living alone in a large apartment for the previous seven years; M. did not ask that the apartment be taken away from the woman, merely that she be required to share her ample space.21 Wohnungsamt officials could not help. “Just like you, everyone who is forced to live packed into small accommodations feels it an injustice that large apartments are occupied by [so few people].” Nonetheless, there existed no legal basis to receive access to the neighbor’s apartment, and under the circumstances she could at best hope to find someone willing to exchange rooms with her.22 Karl G. received a similar reply. He had been a loyal Social Democrat since 1922, had never joined the Nazi Party, had been wounded in combat, and was imprisoned by the U.S. Army from 1943 to 1945. Upon repatriation to Austria, he and his wife could find accommodations only in a single modest room in his mother’s small, damp apartment. The darkness and moisture had contributed to his weakened eyesight and rheumatism. Moreover, as a music teacher it was difficult for him to give lessons in such a small space. The Wohnungsamt could only counsel patience.23 These examples show that Social Democratic affiliation rarely brought advantages that would supersede the stipulations of the WAG—a clear indication of the authorities’ emphasis on the importance of enforcement of a law designed to serve society at large, rather than selective interpretation of the law for patronage purposes. Although pa-

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tronage could come into play in certain instances (e.g., priority housing for civil servants), this led to frustration on the part of those party members who lacked the requisite Vitamin B (Beziehungen, or connections). Nonetheless, the party would maintain the support of most of these disgruntled residents through the SPÖ’s emphasis on reconstruction work—a commitment manifested, in part, through completion of the first wave of new social housing projects in the late 1940s and early 1950s—and because of members’ generally strong socialization in the social democratic milieu.

Former National Socialists National Socialists formed the primary punitive target group of the WAG, even though the estimated thirty thousand apartments in the hands of registered Nazis represented a small percentage of the total number of housing units in Vienna requisitioned under the law.24 Former Nazis turned to city authorities with their own variations on the narrative of need. In most instances, supplicants insisted that they were “ordinary party members” who “held no functionary position”25; never concerned themselves with politics and “never abused party membership … or strived for advantage not earned through work,”26 or were “Viennese by birth.”27 In a minority of cases, these individuals acknowledged the necessity of atoning for having joined the NSDAP. For example, First World War invalid Ferdinand W., age seventy-two, was referred out of his highly coveted municipally owned apartment (Gemeindewohnung). While he recognized the importance of expiation according to denazification law, he could not understand why those who had always sought to serve their fellow human beings—even through the National Socialist People’s Welfare Association (NSV)—should suffer as he did. “For old people who have always lived only through working with their own hands,” he lamented, “their apartment is their great source of happiness. It was taken away from us … [,] a hard, undeserved punishment.”28 Leopold B. established his bona fides as a native Viennese, a “member of a family that has resided here for centuries,” and a longtime employee of the municipal electrical works. Because he had been a longstanding NSDAP member (since 1932), he was dismissed from his position as a city employee; brought back through a law requiring mandatory labor service for former Nazis, he expressed joy “to be able to contribute at least a small part to Austria’s reconstruction,” albeit at a fraction of his former wages.29 This man and his family had been evicted from their single-family unit in a municipal housing development and

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relocated into a smaller space. Viennese officials remained unmoved; the WAG stipulated that someone in his position could reckon with such an outcome. While the dominant narrative among former Nazis was that of need linked with property, as evident in the previous example, in most cases these narratives lacked any sense of atonement or (co)responsibility. The correspondence between Matthias O. and municipal officials is a clear example. O., a Nazi Party member since 1940, made his way from an American prisoner-of-war camp back to his native Vienna in October 1945 to find that the Wohnungsamt had placed Herr Franz S. in his apartment with rights to the lease and furniture. O.’s wife and daughter resided as subtenants in what had been their own home. O. complained that his daughter now lived far-removed from her school and that the family was reduced to dependency on S.’s good graces. Even more irksome to O., Herr S. disposed of their property in what had been the O. family’s intimate and trusted private sphere. City officials rejected the grounds for O’s two-year struggle to reacquire rights to the apartment and furnishings, but urged him to take his case up again after 1947 when an anticipated modification of denazification law might offer morelenient treatment to lesser-implicated Nazis.30 The archival record does not contain any subsequent action on O.’s part.

Victims of National Socialism Consistent with Austrian law adjudicating restitution in the immediate postwar years, the WAG gave precedence to those who had suffered political persecution at the hands of the Nazis, whether they had been in concentration camps or otherwise disadvantaged. A handful of these people were Jews imprisoned specifically for their political activity prior to 1938. Those who had suffered under Nazi racial laws—mainly, but not exclusively, Jews—did not receive priority treatment. Even if the National Socialist regime understood race in political terms (thus, arguably, Jews had been political victims because they were racial victims), the new Austrian Republic accorded political victimhood status to those who were targeted because of their engagement for a free and independent Austria. While most Austrian Jews who survived the Third Reich within Nazi-controlled Europe chose to emigrate when the conflict ended, a number who had emigrated after the Anschluss did, indeed, seek return from the United Kingdom, the United States, Shanghai, and other locations, and asserted their rights to property confiscated in their absence.31 In almost all these cases people who had been persecuted by

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the Nazis—regardless of legal category—sought redress on the basis of need. Political prisoners’ families had been disadvantaged by the regime, including either having been forced into subtenant status or forced to take on subtenants. Jewish property had been seized outright through what was called aryanization. Kurt R. spent a year in a concentration camp, and after his return found himself waiting four months for an apartment assignment. “Full of hope, I half forgot the difficult time that lay behind me when I saw my dear Vienna before me. Yet the people have remained the same, evil. … Moreover, I have married. My wife lost both parents and lives with an aunt and I live at my parents; that no good can come of this is evident to anyone.”32 In another case, Emma S., age sixty-five, had been arrested by the Gestapo and sentenced to three years in prison for “listening to foreign radio broadcasts, fanatical opposition to the Hitler regime and friendliness toward Jews.” Upon her return to Vienna in May 1945 she found the nightclub she owned had been taken over by an influential Austrian Nazi, and her apartment—including the most valuable furniture and kitchenware—was occupied by a German Nazi. Two rounds of litigation, in which she battled the German’s subtenant (he had returned to Germany at Christmas 1944) in order to gain access to the main room, the kitchen, and the bathroom of her old apartment, resulted in a judgment requiring S. to retain the subtenant and concede the woman space in the small Kabinett. The subtenant countersued. This fortified S. with new resolve to reacquire control over the whole apartment and have the authorities relocate the subtenant—an endeavor made more urgent by S.’s declining health and her need to employ a full-time nurse.33 Both Kurt R. and Emma S. directed their appeals to the Bürgermeisteramt, and were invited to discuss their respective cases with the mayor himself. The paper trail ends there in each instance. However, in these two and scores of other cases those able to demonstrate need and document their status as former political prisoners could ultimately find an audience at city hall to discuss their petitions. This, in turn, could lead to priority placement in new housing or (re)securing complete control over their former apartments. Still, need alone did not necessarily lead to satisfaction under terms of the WAG. For example, after Bruno M.’s wife had returned from incarceration in a concentration camp, the couple and their child found accommodations in Emil H.’s apartment. Herr H. planned to move to the United States, but reached an agreement with Herr and Frau M. that they would allow Emil’s brother Otto, and Otto’s wife, to reside in the apartment until they could follow Emil across the Atlantic. Bruno M. applied for status as principal tenant shortly after Emil’s de-

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parture, but the situation became dire; Otto would not be able to leave for at least two months and Otto’s wife fell ill and was forced to remain in bed in the vestibule room in which the M. family slept. The situation reached a breaking point when Bruno learned from a neighbor that she had received permission to occupy this very apartment, in which his family had lived for four months, as the new principal tenant. Bruno appealed to the mayor to intervene on his behalf with the Wohnungsamt. To his dismay, the Bürgermeisteramt informed him that he would have to contact the Wohnungsamt branch in his district for referral into a different apartment. Since the neighbor had applied for a new housing assignment earlier than M. had, she had been selected on the basis of need to become principal tenant of the Emil H. apartment. Wohnungsamt and Bürgermeisteramt officials felt bound by this adjudication.34 Scrupulous observance of the law left the immediate need experienced by a victim of fascism unaddressed. In this as in other examples, dissatisfied citizens were left with no recourse and felt that the Wohnungsamt was either corrupt or favored those who could bring influence to bear. In the case of returning Jews whose homes had been confiscated by Nazi authorities and assigned to Aryans, makeshift housing had to be found while individuals began the lengthy process of filing petitions with the Wohnungsamt and awaiting its decisions. Sympathetic officials at the Viennese housing authority argued that restitution of aryanized property was a moral obligation, and the Bürgermeisteramt agreed that a petitioner would receive priority if in 1938 she or he had legally occupied the apartment in question and could verify that it had been lost as a direct result of the Nazi seizure of power.35 Historians Brigitte BailerGalanda, Eva Blimlinger, and Susanne Kowarc note that this placed an unfair burden of proof on Jewish Viennese, since in a great number of cases they could not provide the specific documentation to satisfy postwar city officials’ requirements. Often such documentation never existed, or had been couched in such a way that expropriation looked voluntary and legal. This indicates a persistence of antipathy toward Jews into the postwar period—really no surprise, Bailer-Galanda, Blimlinger, and Kowarc conclude, given that it is unrealistic to conclude that Austria experienced a Stunde Null in April 1945, and thus that the utter collapse of Nazi hegemony would have changed significantly widespread attitudes toward so-called outsiders from one moment to the next.36 Along these lines, Ruth Beckermann has pointed out that “Jews were no longer marked and murdered after the destruction of the ‘Third Reich’ in Austria, but there was no doubt that they were made to understand that they were undesirable strangers.”37 This persistence of hostile sentiments manifested itself in federal legal structures as well as local

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practice. For instance, Austrian law placed Jews qua Jews—as opposed to political victims who happened to be Jewish—rather low on the privileged hierarchy of victims of Nazi terror with respect to priority for social welfare assistance. Jews could receive higher ranking, though, if they could demonstrate either active or passive political engagement. As of May 1945 Austrian federal officials divided victims into three categories: Group A: 1) Next of kin of: a. slain Austrian freedom fighters (partisans); b. Austrian political prisoners (anti-Nazis) whose activities led to their arrest and subsequent murder in Nazi custody; c. Austrian Wehrmacht soldiers or police killed during service [to the National Socialist regime]. 2) Political prisoner involved in organized [emphasis in original] illegal political for Austria (subject to rigorous verification) with: a. More than three year term in custody; b. Between eighteen and thirty-six months in custody; c. Between six and eighteen months in custody. 3) Austrian Freedom Fighters: a. Armed partisans; b. Organized illegal political activity for Austria (recognized through central committee or party leadership of political parties); c. Prevention of destruction or removal of vital firms or infrastructure. Group B: Passive Resistance 1) Political prisoner not involved in organized political activity with: a. More than three year term in custody; b. Between eighteen and thirty-six months in custody; c. Between six and eighteen months in custody. 2) Those taken into custody by the Gestapo or Military Police: a. Deserters held for at least six months; b. Those who had gone into hiding for at least one year; c. Those who provided illegal shelter for those in hiding for at least one year. 3) Non-political concentration camp prisoners with: a. More than three year term in custody; b. Between eighteen and thirty-six months in custody; c. Between six and eighteen months in custody. Group C: Racially or Nationally Persecuted a. Jews or those who were considered Jews (required to wear Star of David);

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b. “Privileged” Jews (not required to wear Star of David); c. First Degree “Mischlinge” married to Jews; also those persecuted because of nationality.38

Placing Jews and others persecuted on the basis of race or nationality in Group C rather than Group B/3, or not prioritizing them higher still, marginalized their suffering. As early as July 4, 1945, several weeks before the WAG entered into effect, Mayor Körner’s city manager made a particular point to apartment house owners and their representatives that tenants identified in the Verbotsgesetz be evicted to make room for victims of Nazi terror, broadly understood.39 Little suggests that Wohnungsamt officials went out of their way to extend special consideration to Jewish concerns, however. Insofar as housing represented a significant component of welfare provision to citizens, one might raise the question of whether deprioritization of Jewish suffering on the legal scale of victimhood manifested itself indirectly in adjudication of Viennese housing petitions, or whether anti-Semitism itself played a direct role. There is ample archival evidence to suggest that Jewish petitioners were divided over the latter question, yet tended somewhat more consistently to perceive the former 40 Regardless of perspective, redress could not come fast enough for Jewish Austrians in need. David Brill, president of the Jewish Community in Vienna, spoke for significant numbers of his constituency when he noted the ongoing frustration of many Viennese Jews, particularly given that so many people retained residency in housing that they had aryanized and kept possession of furniture or other items they had seized after their Jewish neighbors had been deported.41 Many scores of petitions from Viennese Jews to the Wohnungsamt or Bürgermeisteramt can be found in the archival record, but perhaps none quite manifests the frustration and despair quite as clearly as that of David S., a loyal Social Democrat for thirty-five years and active member the Viennese Jewish community. Herr S. explained in a petition to the Bürgermeisteramt that he lost his apartment in 1938 to aryanization. He and his wife spent the years 1941–45 in forced labor camps. They were fortunate to have survived; S. had lost more than twenty of his relatives to the Nazis. His wife suffered lingering rheumatism due to difficult conditions in the camps, and he claimed that he was plagued with a chronic middle-ear infection that had developed during those years. Both maladies required ongoing medical care. “Despite all of this, as an innocent man I have been unable to this point to secure the apartment of an implicated National Socialist in either a municipal apartment building or a private building

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… although it has become common knowledge through the press and otherwise that the injustice suffered to the racially persecuted must be made good.”42 The housing authority urged continued patience. His case had been duly noted, but there were others who had already become homeless whom municipal officials had to help first; Herr and Frau. S. at least had a roof over their heads that they could count on for the openended future.43 For Jewish and non-Jewish Viennese citizens alike, this was often the most the Wohnungsamt could offer until such time that large-scale reconstruction—or new housing construction—could be completed. However, for Jews who had suffered so grievously and so early under Nazi rule in Austria, fresh indignities after April 1945 could be understood as a broader, structural challenge by only the most optimistic and supremely patient.

Concluding Thoughts Although concerns such as unemployment or adequate nourishment must not be overlooked when historians examine reconstruction in the wake of total war, housing remained a paramount concern for Viennese and other residents of heavily damaged urban centers within the former Reich. In the Vienna case study, the small cross-section of representative examples provided here offers keen insight into a discourse of need. Taken together with narrative subtopics such as extenuating circumstances, sense of entitlement, political loyalty, and suffering under the Nazis, the historian is able to demarcate individuals who identified with particular groups, or those who found themselves subject to certain categories of treatment before the law from the vantage point of federal and local officials. In practice, the WAG stipulated the conditions under which housing seized and reallocated and who would be favored or disadvantaged. However, the sheer volume of cases housing authority officials faced led to delays, and thus to impatience and intensification of need on the part of petitioners. In the end, satisfaction with the adjudication of petitions or unhappiness with forced relocation created—or, in many cases reinforced—a distinct sense of winners and losers, of new victims of a democratic regime, of vindicated opponents of fascism. Many tens of thousands who waited two or three years for claims to be processed felt victimized themselves. In a new Austrian state grounded on the Opfermythos (i.e., that Austrians were the first victims of Nazi German aggression in 1938) those targeted by the Nazis, “ordinary Austrians” who had been complicit in the regime or who opposed it quietly and longed for its collapse, and

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even former Nazis subject to denazification regulations embraced and sustained this discourse. Regardless of the category into which the WAG placed a petitioner (and the potential therein for assistance, restriction, or punishment), the narratives petitioners crafted about themselves and their experiences as they negotiated the city’s new challenges were cast in the trope of suffering. These entreaties reveal the often sophisticated rhetorical strategies Viennese citizens employed, with an understanding of themselves as agents and as victims, as they attempted to negotiate for assistance with new, democratically elected authorities. Matthew P. Berg is Professor of History at John Carroll University, where he teaches courses on twentieth-century Germany, human rights, genocide, and conflict and peace building. His research focus is social democracy in Austria after 1945. His work has appeared in Central European History, Austrian History Yearbook, German History, the Journal of Modern History, and Contemporary Austrian Studies. He is principal editor of The Struggle for a Democratic Austria: Bruno Kreisky on Peace and Social Justice (Berghahn Books, 2000); coeditor with Greg Eghighian of Sacrifice and National Belonging in Twentieth-Century Germany (Texas A&M University Press, 2002); and coeditor with Maria Mesner of After Fascism: European Case Studies in Politics, Society, and Identity Since 1945 (Lit Verlag, 2009). He is currently preparing a monograph on identity, milieu, and reconstruction in Vienna between 1945 and 1949. Notes   1. Primary source research for this project draws almost exclusively on documents housed in Vienna’s Municipal and Provincial Archive (Wiener Stadt-und Landesarchiv, or WStLA), Office of the City Manager (Magistratsdirektion, or MD). It forms part of my larger study of the reconstruction of a Social Democratic milieu in Vienna during the immediate postwar years.   2. This was equally true in occupied Germany, of course. See, for example, Josef Foschepoth, “German Reactions to Defeat and Occupation,” in West Germany under Construction: Politics, Society, and Culture in the Adenauer Era, ed. Robert Moeller (Ann Arbor, 1997), 73–89. The 1990s marked the most consequential period of research into Austrian self-conceptions of victimization (the Opfermythos). See, for example, Günter Bischof, “Die Instrumentalisierung der Moskauer Erklärung nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg,” Zeitgeschichte 20 (1993): 345–66; Gerhard Botz und Gerald Sprengnagel, eds., Kontroversen um Österreichs Zeitgeschichte. Verdrängte Vergangenheit, Österreich-Identität, Waldheim und die Historiker (Frankfurt/Main and New York, 1994); Anton Pelinka and Erika Weinzierl, eds., Das große

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3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8. 9. 10. 11.

12.

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Tabu. Österreichs Umgang mit seiner Vergangenheit, 2. Auflage (Vienna, 1997). Paul Steege et al., “The History of Everyday Life: A Second Chapter,” Journal of Modern History 80, no. 2 (2008): 362. See also Alf Lüdtke, The History of Everyday Life: Reconstructing Historical Experiences and Ways of Life (Princeton, 1995). Staatsgesetzblatt (hereafter, StGBl), Nr. 13/1945, “Verfassungsgesetz vom 8. Mai 1945 über das Verbot der NSDAP (Verbotsgesetz).” After the provisional government handed power to the first elected postwar government, the law was revised as StGBl, no. 127/1945, then amended again as the Nationalsozialstengesetz Bundesgesetzblatt für die Republik Österreich (BGBl), Nr. 16/1946 and once more the following year. The law experienced additional revision over subsequent decades. StGBl,138/1945 §7, “Gesetz vom 22. August 1945, betreffend die Anforderung von Wohn- und Geschäftsräumen (Wohnungsanforderungsgesetz).” This version of the law remained in effect until the end of 1947; the Austrian Parliament subsequently extended it, with various revisions, until the end of 1955. Staatsgesetzblatt für die Republik Österreich, Ausgegeben am 1. September 1945, 33 Stück, 138. The WAG appeared in the Amtsblatt der Stadt Wien, Jg. 50, 24. Oktober 1945, as “Kundmachungen: Verordnung des Bürgermeisters der Stadt Wien vom 18. Oktober 1945 zur Durchführung des Wohnungsanforderungsgesetzes,” 4–5. To protect the anonymity of ordinary Viennese citizens whose petitions I cite, I have provided only their first names and first initial of last names. The volume of sources available is quite extensive, and I have chosen representative examples from an abundance of possible cases. Responses from the city authorities to individual petitioners are not always present for each individual petitioner’s case, but there are ample instances of complete correspondences with adjudication. The slight imbalance on the side of petitioners’ documentation is no hindrance to my research, since the rhetorical strategies that Viennese citizens employed to frame their requests is of particular importance for this study. See Ruth Wodak, “The Discursive-Historical Approach,” in Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, ed. Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer (London, 2001), 66. Magistrat der Bundeshauptstadt Wien, ed., Verwaltungsbericht vom 1. April 1945 bis 31. Dezember 1947 (Vienna, 1949), 218. Ibid., 330. Ibid., 218. Precise figures are impossible to determine, and estimates vary. For example, historian Gustav Bihl places the number of Viennese affected at ca. 270,000. See Bihl, “Wien 1945–2005. Eine politische Geschichte,” in Peter Csendes and Ferdinand Opll ed., Wien: Geschichte einer Stadt. Band 3: Von 1790 bis zur Gegenwart (Vienna, 2005), 547. Felix Slavik, “Das Wohnungsamt der Stadt Wien,” Amtsblatt der Stadt Wien Nr. 9, Jahrgang 50, 5. Dezember 1945, 1–2. According to the Wohnungs-

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anforderungsgesetz, §6 (4), rooms were spaces designated fifteen square meters or larger, whereas spaces less than fifteen square meters were designated Kabinette. 13. For example, people who had been in concentration camps or prison for political opposition to the National Socialist regime could receive fifty points. Loss of housing due to war-related damage brought thirty points; the need for restitution due to housing seized during the Third Reich was worth thirty points. Families with children received ten points, with four additional points for every child up to age six. Health issues factored into point rankings, too: individuals who contracted tuberculosis received fifteen points, and those disabled during service in the Wehrmacht could earn between five and thirty points, depending on the severity of injuries. On wild requisitioning prior to legal regulation of housing reallocation, see Brigitte Bailer-Galanda, Eva Blimlinger, and Susanne Kowarc, “‘Arisierung’ und Rückstellung von Wohnungen in Wien; Die Vertreibung der jüdischen Mieter und Mieterinnen aus ihren Wohnungen und das verhinderte Wohnungsrückstellungsgesetz,” September 2000, http://www.historikerkom mission.gv.at/pdf_hk/d_Mieter.pdf, 39–40. 14. Slavik, “Wohnungsamt der Stadt Wien,” 1. 15. The literature treating social democratic housing policy during the First Republic is vast. For present purposes, see Helmut Weihsmann, Das Rote Wien. Sozialdemokratische Architektur und Kommunalpolitik 1919–1934, 2nd revised ed. (Vienna, 2002); Eve Blau, The Architecture of Red Vienna 1919–1934 (Cambridge, MA, 1999); Alfred Georg Frei, Rotes Wien: Austromarxismus und Arbeiterkultur. Sozialdemokratische Wohnungs- und Kommunalpolitik 1919–1934 (Berlin, 1984). 16. Siegfried Mattl, “Vienna since World War II,” in Composing Urban History and the Constitution of Civic Identities, ed. John J. Czaplicka and Blair A. Ruble (Washington DC, 2003), 251. 17. WStLA, MD A6/12, BA 4820/46, letter from Viktor K. to Körner, 21 November 1946. 18. WStLA, MD A6/12, BA 4820/46, letter from Antos to Viktor K., 2 December 1946. 19. Verein für die Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung—Neues Parteiarchiv (VGA—NPA), Referat zur Liquidierung des Nationalsozialismus, Ehepaar S. (Alois), 24. Oktober 1945. 20. Ibid., 29. September 1945. 21. WStLA MD A6/16, BA 2523/47, Johanna M. an den sehr geehrten Herrn Bürgermeister, 2. Mai 1947. 22. WStLA MD A6/16, BA 2523/47, Antos an Johanna M., 5. Mai 1947. 23. WStLA MD A6/12, BA 4638/46, Karl G and den sehr geehrten Bürgermeister, 7. November 1946; reply dated November 21, 1946. 24. WStLA, MD A1 1946, Box 633, MD 200/46, 17. Jänner 1946. Felix Slavik estimated in this note to Bürgermeister Theodor Körner that by the beginning of 1946 two-thirds of these apartments had been subjected to the WAG. The thirty thousand apartments must be balanced against the

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29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38.

39. 40.

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115,747 Viennese required to register as Nazis under prevailing denazification legislation. See WStLA, MD A1 1946, Box 645, MD 2549/46 Beilage A. See, for example, WStLA, MD A1 1947, Box 651, MD 493/47, Matthias O. an die Magistratsdirektion, 21. November 1945. See WStLA, MD A1 1946, Box 648, MD 3470/46, Leopold B. an den Herrn Bürgermeister der Stadt Wien, 21. Dezember 1946. WStLA, MD A6/12, BA 4557/46, Stefan H. an die Magistratsdirektion, 5. Dezember 1946. WStLA, MD A6/12, BA 4650/46, Ferdinand W. an Herrn Bürgermeister der Stadt Wien, Dr.h.c. Theodor Körner, 7. November 1946. H.’s appeal did not meet with success; Wohnungsamt officials pointed out that a suitable apartment exchange had referred H. and his wife into a space commensurate with their needs, while their more spacious former apartment became home to a larger family who demonstrated more pressing need. WStLA, MD A6/12, BA 4650/46, Mag.Abt.50/Zl.19.045/Zwt.46, 2. Dezember 1946. WStLA, MD A1 1946, Box 648, MD 3470/46, Leopold B. an den Herrn Bürgermeister der Stadt Wien, 21. Dezember 1946. WStLA, MD A1 1947, Box 651, MD 493/47, Matthias O. an die Magistratsdirektion, 18. Februar 1947 and reply from municipal authority to the O. family’s attorney dated April 5, 1947. See Bailer-Galanda, Blimlinger, and Kowarc, “ ‘Arisierung’ und Rückstellung,” 43–67. WStLA, MD A6/7, BA 733/46. WStLA, MD A6/10, BA 3665/46. WStLA, MDA6/17, BA 3613/47. WStLA, MD A1 1947, Box 651, MD 589/47, “Bericht des Herrn Senatsrat Dr. Antos betr. Wiedergutmachung des Wohnungsamtes, 4. März 1947.” See Bailer-Galanda, Blimlinger, and Kowarc, “ ‘Arisierung’ und Rückstellung,” 36. Ruth Beckermann, Unzugehörig: Österreicher und Juden nach 1945 (Vienna, 1989), 71; for a detailed overview, see the now classic study by John Bunzl, Antisemitismus in Österreich: sozialhistorische und soziologische Studien (Innsbruck, 1983). WStLA, MD A6/2, BA 577/45, Magistrat der Stadt Wien, Verwaltungsgruppe X, Wohlfahrtswesen, Zentralregistrierung der Opfer des Naziterrors in Österreich—Rundschreiben an alle Staatssekretariate, Parteivorstände der politischen Parteien, Bürgermeister, Stadträte, Fürsorgungsinstitute der Gemeinde Wien und Volkssolidaritätsausschüsse, May 1945. WStLA, MD A1, BA 402/45. See, in particular, the documentation surrounding criticisms raised in U.S. newspapers regarding the lack of progress in tending to the needs of Jewish victims in Vienna. These reports prompted Mayor Körner—a man never known to be hostile toward Jews—to reject reports of antisemitism in his city administration and the city as a whole as a fairy tale. His comments appeared in the 9 February 1947 edition of the Wiener Zeitung under the

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title “Das Märchen vom Antisemitismus in Wien.” Publication of the article prompted dozens of letters to Körner’s office from Viennese Jews, rich with anecdotes contesting his statement. See, for example, WStLA, MD A6/14, BA 708/47 in which Max A. recounts the viciousness that he and surviving friends and relatives encountered in interactions with those who had aryanized their residences or businesses; WStLA, MD A6/14, BA 763/47 details the abuse that Social Democrat and Theresienstadt survivor Aurelie B. experienced repeatedly from a neighbor (“Pity that Hitler didn’t gas all Jews,” “Hitler killed too few Jews,” “The red rabble ought to be strung up”); or WStLA, MD A1, MD 2500/47, a series of reports from the Viennese police and Wien-Innere Stadt district representative’s office detailing verbal attacks against Jews and against Mayor Körner himself by Aloisie M. and her husband). A rather smaller number of submissions supported Körner’s assertion in the Wiener Zeitung. See, for instance, WStLA, MD A6/14, BA 1523/47: Hans W. wrote “Since my return to Austria [July 1945] I have not personally experienced even the slightest trace of antisemitism”; or WStLA, MD A6/14, BA 1524/47, in which Joseph O., a long-time Social Democrat, praised Körner’s commitment to democratic freedoms so central to keeping antisemitism at bay. 41. Cited in Bailer-Galanda, Blimlinger, and Kowarc, “ ‘Arisierung’ und Rückstellung,” 44. 42. WStLA, MD A6/19, BA 5313/47, David S. an das Wohnungsamt der Gemeinde Wien, 20. September 1947. 43. Ibid., Vorstand des Wohnungsamtes an Herrn David S., 28. Oktober 1947.

References Primary Sources printed sources

Amtsblatt der Stadt Wien. Wien: Stadt Wien. Bundesgesetzblatt für die Republik Österreich (BGBl). Wien. “Kundmachungen: Verordnung des Bürgermeisters der Stadt Wien vom 18. Oktober 1945 zur Durchführung des Wohnungsanforderungsgesetzes,” In Amtsblatt der Stadt Wien 50 (October 24): 1945, 4–5. Magistrat der Bundeshauptstadt Wien, ed. Verwaltungsbericht vom 1. April 1945 bis 31. Dezember 1947. Vienna: Statistisches Amt, 1949. Slavik, Felix. “Das Wohnungsamt der Stadt Wien,” Amtsblatt der Stadt Wien 50, no. 9 (December 5, 1945): 1–2. Staatsgesetzblatt für die Republik Österreich (StGBl).

archival sources

Verein für die Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung—Neues Parteiarchiv (VGA— NPA), Referat zur Liquidierung des Nationalsozialismus. Wiener Stadt-und Landesarchiv, Magistratsdirektion (WStLA, MD).

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Secondary Sources Bailer-Galanda, Brigitte, Eva Blimlinger, and Susanne Kowarc. “‘Arisierung’ und Rückstellung von Wohnungen in Wien; Die Vertreibung der jüdischen Mieter und Mieterinnen aus ihren Wohnungen und das verhinderte Wohnungsrückstellungsgesetz.” September 2000, http://www.historikerkomm ission.gv.at/pdf_hk/d_Mieter.pdf Beckermann, Ruth. Unzugehörig: Österreicher und Juden nach 1945. Vienna: Löcker Verlag, 1989. Bischof, Günter, “Die Instrumentalisierung der Moskauer Erklärung nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg.” Zeitgeschichte 20 (1993): 345–66. Blau, Eve. The Architecture of Red Vienna 1919–1934. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1999. Botz, Gerhard, and Gerald Sprengnagel, eds. Kontroversen um Österreichs Zeitgeschichte. Verdrängte Vergangenheit, Österreich-Identität, Waldheim und die Historiker. Frankfurt/Main: Campus Verlag, 1994. Bunzl, John. Antisemitismus in Österreich: sozialhistorische und soziologische Studien. Innsbruck, Austria: Inn-Verlag, 1983. Frei, Alfred Georg. Rotes Wien: Austromarxismus und Arbeiterkultur. Sozialdemokratische Wohnungs- und Kommunalpolitik 1919–1934. Berlin: DVKVerlag, 1984. Foschepoth, Josef. “German Reactions to Defeat and Occupation.” In West Germany under Construction: Politics, Society, and Culture in the Adenauer Era, edited by Robert Moeller, 73–89. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1997. Lüdtke, Alf, ed. The History of Everyday Life: Reconstructing Historical Experiences and Ways of Life. Translated by William Templer. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995. Mattl, Siegfried. “Vienna since World War II.” In Composing Urban History and the Constitution of Civic Identities, edited by John J. Czaplicka and Blair A. Ruble, 242–62. Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2003. Pelinka Anton, and Erika Weinzierl, eds. Das große Tabu. Österreichs Umgang mit seiner Vergangenheit. 2nd ed. Vienna: Österreichische Staatsdruckerei, 1997. Steege, Paul, Andrew Stuart Bergerson, Maureen Healy, and Pamela E. Swett. “The History of Everyday Life: A Second Chapter.” Journal of Modern History 80, no. 2 (2008): 358–78. Weihsmann, Helmut. Das Rote Wien. Sozialdemokratische Architektur und Kommunalpolitik 1919–1934. Zweite., vollkommen überarbeitete Ausgabe. Vienna: Promedia, 2002. Wodak, Ruth, and Michael Meyer. Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Sage, 2001.

Part III

[•] Living and Working in the City

[• Chapter 6 •]

Urban Information Flows Workers’ and Employers’ Knowledge of the Asbestos Hazard in Clydeside, ca. 1950s–1970s RONALD JOHNSTON and ARTHUR McIVOR

In this chapter we utilize oral history methodology to explore the

strengths and weaknesses of working-class information channels regarding lay knowledge of life-threatening industrial hazards. Our case study is the growing realization since the 1950s of the dangers of working with asbestos in the west of Scotland. Several historians have used oral history to investigate similar urban linkages and networks.1 In this instance, we examine how knowledge of dangerous and unhealthy working practices was disseminated, or not disseminated, among those directly involved. To this end we reflect, first of all, on our reasons for employing oral history interviewing as a way of examining occupational health. Next, we delineate the roots of the asbestos problem in the Clydeside region and illustrate how the use of asbestos fit into the overall nature of the heavy industry that dominated the Clydeside economy during this period. We then focus on how the workers perceived and rationalized the known risks associated with working with asbestos, and how this knowledge spread across a diverse range of worksites. The idea of urban networks can be perceived in several ways. For example, Michael Savage has argued that class formation and class sustainability is strongest among social groups who are capable of forming strong networks—and he refers to the upper-middle-class “old boys” network as an example of how a class can be quite dispersed, but remain strongly unified.2 More recently, Jouni Häkli and Claudio Minca, arguing from a geographical perspective, emphasize the importance of trust transmitted through urban networks in sustaining urban development.3 An important element of such conceptions of urban networks is

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the importance of information flow and the ease of identification with accepted norms and values. This fits to some degree with business historians’ research on trading networks—also very dependent on trust and information flow. From the turn of the century through about 1950, an integrated business class formed in the United Kingdom, and one of the main factors underpinning this process was the strengthening of important commercial interlinkages—for example, by the mid 1950s nearly half of Britain’s manufacturing sector was subject to agreements that restricted competition in some way.4 In many cases, trading agreements rested on a series of employer organizations designed specifically for the purpose of labor relations.5 This was certainly the case in western Scotland, where, by the early twentieth century, there were 150 national and local employers’ associations of this type, with by far the strongest of these organizations in the shipbuilding and engineering industries.6 Through membership in such organizations, employers could circulate inquiry notes or blacklists, while lockouts could be efficiently orchestrated during trade disputes. It is precisely here that we may identify a fine example of what one commentator has referred to as a “system of structured information flows.”7 However, in contrast to this middle-class interlinking, the working classes have historically been disadvantaged regarding such information channels.8 As we will argue, this was certainly the case with information regarding the dangers of asbestos in the workplace. As labor historians with an interest in occupational health, we realized that research on the impact of asbestos at work, based exclusively on documentary evidence, would not allow us to either reconstruct the social and individual consequences of contracting an asbestosrelated disease, or increase our awareness of workers’ attitudes to risk in the workplace. It was primarily because of the shortcomings of primary source evidence that we resolved to incorporate an oral history dimension into our methodology. The focus on victims was an explicit part of our research strategy. Much had been written on asbestos from the legal, medical, state, and company standpoints; therefore, we felt that an approach focusing on the bodies of those directly affected by the catastrophe would add an important counterbalance. Moreover, there is also a contentious debate within the literature on the extent to which the key gatekeepers—the government, employers, management, and the medical profession—were culpable. Some scholars defend the industry and the regulators, arguing that given the state of medical knowledge in the 1960s and the lack of countervailing forces, little else could have been done to prevent the high death toll from asbestos.9 At the other extreme are those who argue that, in general, industry was

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aware of the dangers, that rapacious asbestos producers, manufacturers, and secondary users (such as the subcontracting insulation companies) opposed protective legislation, suppressed vital medical evidence, or refused to accept liability for their actions and fought to minimize compensation to victims.10 The oral testimonies from Clydeside provide a fresh perspective on this debate; here we focus specifically on how medical understanding of the dangers of working with asbestos was disseminated to employers and workers. We contend that employers, in the main, received the most up-to-date knowledge of dangers, and that such knowledge was frequently transmitted through employer networks. In many cases, though, those working with asbestos products did not receive such accurate information. Only the increasing death toll from asbestos-related disease and increasing media interest in asbestos led to a gradual spread of knowledge of asbestos dangers through Clydeside’s industrial sectors. Our methodology involved semistructured interviews in which we asked workers to comment on the nature of their exposure to asbestos, to describe the impact that asbestos-linked illness had on their lives, and to relate what they felt about their exposure and subsequent disability. With the help of the principal support agency for asbestos victims in Scotland (Clydeside Action on Asbestos, or CAA) we subsequently interviewed thirty-one individuals who had experience working with asbestos over the period from 1940 to 1990. The testimonies provided an unprecedented, evocative, and multilayered exposé of the interconnected economic, psychological, and social effects of contact with this deadly material on victims and their families. With certain qualifications the testimony supported the more pessimistic interpretations found in the literature.

Asbestos in the Clydeside Economy By the middle of the twentieth century Scotland possessed a diversified, mature industrial economy—although one in which employment was concentrated within a cluster of traditional heavy industries such as coal mining, iron and steel manufacture, heavy engineering, and shipbuilding. Sharp contrasts existed between the industrial heartland of west-central Scotland centered on Glasgow—known as Clydeside—and the primarily commercial and administrative activities of Edinburgh to the east. The Clydeside industrial conurbation dominated the Scottish economy; the region employed approximately half of the country’s total working population, and much of its industrial output found its way to

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export-oriented capital goods markets.11 A long commitment to producing high-quality, spec-built goods for overseas capital goods markets resulted in a highly skilled, but low wage, economy by the 1950s, and in an extremely harsh boom-and-bust business cycle. Historian Peter Payne notes, in connection with what he calls the “glacial slowness of structural change” in Scottish industry and its dedication to heavy industry, that in 1939 the Scottish economy was very similar to what it had been in 1914.12 Throughout the 1920s and 1930s the Scottish economy had remained fully committed to what would later be labeled the declining industries: coal, iron and steel, shipbuilding, and heavy engineering. This industrial commitment left marks on Scottish society that would still be discernible in the 1960s and 1970s. One such mark was a resilient form of workplace-centered collectivism. To a considerable extent this was the result of the concentration of men in large industrial sites. The resulting strong workplace and community-based identity, characterized by fault lines of sectarian tribalism, would only begin to disappear in the 1970s as a product of deindustrialization and urban displacement. In shipbuilding communities such as Clydebank, boys followed their fathers into trades such as welding, plating, engineering, and joinery. The rich mix of sectarianism and widespread demarcation sustained strong collectivist forces throughout urban society—forces further augmented by a hostile industrial relations climate. It is within this milieu of a dangerous and harsh working environment that the use of asbestos must be contextualized. The manufacture of asbestos products was well-established in Scotland by the 1950s. Apart from its uses in building construction, thermal and electrical insulation, friction materials (especially brake and clutch linings), and asbestos textiles, it was used in abrasives, lubricants, adhesives, in flooring materials, paint and road building, for fire resistant protective clothing and hoses, and as filters in gas masks and even in cigarettes. However, it was in the shipyards, engineering sector, and the construction industries that asbestos was most widely used. In the shipyards, asbestos insulated boilers and pipes and served as a fire retardant to comply with increasingly strict fire prevention regulations in ship construction and in the building trade. Boiler companies and pipecovering companies proliferated, specializing in the application of thermal insulation. By the 1920s several of these small-scale companies had formed an employers’ organization to represent and protect their collective interests. This organization became the Scottish Thermal Insulation Engineers’ Association in the 1940s after it expanded to absorb other Scottish firms. The records of this organization show that through co-

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ordination with the English Thermal Insulation Engineers’ Association and asbestos manufacturers, it opposed an extension of the Shipbuilding Regulations that was designed to protect workers from the dangers of asbestos.13 This effectively delayed statutory controls over asbestos use in the shipyards until the early 1960s. The recognition of an occupational health hazard is a complicated process involving the interplay of medical experts, employers, the state, and workers and their trade unions.14 As far as asbestos was concerned, evidence points to the fact that many employers were aware of the danger of asbestosis in manufacturing workers as early as 1929–31, of lung cancer among manufacturing workers by 1955, of mesothelioma among manufacturing workers by 1964–65, of asbestosis among insulation workers by 1945, of lung cancer among insulation workers by 1955 (perhaps even earlier), and of mesothelioma among insulation workers by 1960.15 By the late 1960s knowledge of the health hazards of asbestos had become widespread in the United Kingdom. For example, British Rail stopped using asbestos insulation in 1967, and that same year a study conducted by a group of Belfast insulation engineers found that only 40 of 162 had survived prolonged exposure.16 Increasing media coverage, including several television programs on the asbestos issue, meant that by the late 1970s few were unaware of the dangers that asbestos posed. Almost 6 percent of all male lung cancer cases in the west of Scotland between 1975 and 1984 were linked to asbestos.17 The shipyards and most heavily industrialized areas of the region suffered the highest rates of disease, with the highest incidence among construction workers, insulation workers, maintenance and other fitters, plumbers, pipe fitters, heating and ventilation engineers, gas fitters, carpenters, joiners, and electricians. Most significant for present purposes is the dissemination of knowledge of the hazards over the years from the 1950s until about 1970, specifically among the engineers—known as laggers—who worked for the small insulation companies. Both the documentary and the oral evidence indicate that there was no effective protection for these workers until the introduction of the asbestos provision into the Shipbuilding Regulations in 1960. This was despite widespread employer knowledge of the dangers of working with asbestos, including a Factory Inspector’s Circular in 1945 and formal warning from the Shipbuilders’ Employers’ Federation in 1955 admonishing their members to stop using asbestos.18 Therefore, in far too many cases profit continued to be prioritized over workers’ health. Even as late as the mid 1980s, some employers and their organizations still championed the cause of asbestos.

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Knowledge of the Dangers of Asbestos: The Oral History Evidence In contrast to documentary evidence that points to a general spread of awareness of the asbestos hazard from the 1950s on, oral testimony reveals that clear information on the profound danger of working with asbestos was slower to get to where it mattered most: the workplace. One of the main reasons for this was the dispersed nature of the use of asbestos in industry. The term “asbestos industry” really only applied to asbestos manufacture. Many more workers were exposed because of the application of asbestos across a broader range of processes than simply in manufacturing, but networks of knowledge dissemination were either nonexistent or tightly industry-specific. Moreover, unlike in the case of coal mining, where single-industry towns and villages facilitated an easy spread of lay and professional knowledge of working hazards in the pits, the dispersed nature of asbestos use in urban industry meant that communication channels were problematic. It is important to contextualize the asbestos issue within the conditions of Clydeside’s urban environment. Working conditions in the Clyde shipyards were notoriously harsh during this period. One ex-shop steward explained that asbestos was only one of a great number of occupational health issues: “When you saw the conditions on the Clyde it was like trying to fight an atomic war with a bow and arrow.”19 An independent, deeply entrenched machismo work culture in the yards meant that workers accepted very high levels of risk on the job, and the environment was invariably dirty and dangerous. A riveter employed in John Brown’s Clydebank shipyard recalled of the 1930s, “You couldnae get a dirtier job. … You were black from head to foot; grime and sweat. Every riveter’s shirt was torn—we walked about the shipyard like ratbags.”20 “Riveting in winter was really cruel,” noted another. “Conditions were pathetic in the shipyard.”21 Things had not changed much by the 1960s; due to the intense foreign competition the Clyde yards faced, this was to remain the case as the industry atrophied. One marine engineer remembered the mid 1960s in this way: “In the shipyards there was no health facilities when I was there. There was nothing. If it was raining you worked out in it or did your best, you know. There wisnae even any toilets aboard the boats that you could use. But eh, oh, it was something awful. You just didnae think oh it. You just worked on.”22 Another respondent remembered the sheds in which the men took their lunch breaks: “When I started working it was disgraceful, I mean you shared your cabin, whatever, you built the cabin yourself practically. You shared it with the rats and everybody else.”23 Another lagger also remembered

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these primitive on-site accommodations: “You went for your dinner and you went into a hut, and there were rolls of asbestos cloth. All kinds of asbestos … They made mats, asbestos mats in the hut for round flanges and valves. That was all lying about.”24 Yet another lagger recounted what his work involved: “You opened the mat up and left enough so you could stitch it up. You filled it with asbestos … Then you patted it all to try and make sure—just an inch and a half or two inches—so it was all the same. And sometimes it was hard stuff so you got big lumps of wood and battered it. So you could just picture. … You worked in a fog making this up.”25 Because of the dispersed nature of their work in shipbuilding, the laggers were frequently required to work alongside other finishing trades and among those involved in routine maintenance and repair work. As one Clyde shipyard worker put it, “We always knew we were working in asbestos environments, but nobody, absolutely nobody told us about the dangers behind the use and misuse of asbestos in yards, especially in shipyards because of the type of setting you’re in. You’re in wide open spaces inside a hull of a ship so it could be eight, ten twelve different trades working together in the same space.”26 Another recounted how his job frequently put other tradesmen in danger: “We used tae insulate the boilers actually on the boat, and the place was covered in asbestos when we were dain that. And the same in the engine room. … There were pipes everywhere. … You used to saw the stuff. Well the … teased up stuff and the dust just a’ floated. It floated round and everybody got their share.”27 Knowledge of health risks was initially limited or nonexistent. One sixty-nine-year-old lagger reflected on what his employers had told them about working with asbestos: “Well, we were continually told, if you complained about working in a dusty environment, that it didnae dae you any harm, that it contained magnesia which was good for the stomach [laughs]. … You were told these things. And eh, as for supplying masks: when it did come out you were supposed to get masks and that, but we never got masks off anybody.”28 Another respondent also testified to the ignorance or denial of the dangers that prevailed, and the shock he felt around 1969–70 when he first realized the possible effects of years of exposure to asbestos: … it started coming out that certain squads were put on the asbestos stuff, and they worked away from anybody else. This was when it first started really. And you were saying to yourself “what the hell were we dain all these years? What damage has been done?” … [That was] when they started bringing out big vacuums and everything. One man was

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cutting, one man standing with the vacuum, and you had masks, goggles, gloves, and all of a sudden this was all coming in.29

A Clydeside docker, Owen McIntyre, recalled in an oral interview that it was around the same time that he became aware of the health hazards of working with asbestos, though he and fellow dockers had unloaded the hessian bags of raw fiber for many years before without knowing the dangers of working with it. He cited his trade union and the newspapers as the main sources of information. The Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU) strategy at that time was to support any docker members who refused to work with asbestos, while negotiating a generous “dirty money” bonus rate as both a deterrent to employers and some compensation for the risk to members who continued to work with it. Although this identified and telegraphed the risk to health, it was a controversial policy, criticized by some as blood money. Owen McIntyre recalled: [OM] After they found out what asbestos done tae yer health … what we called “dirty money” you got for that was sky high. But when I found out about asbestos I refused tae work at it. And they were “Why are ye doing that, think of the money ye are losing?” “Keep yer money.” … I just refused tae work with this stuff. … I thought my health was more important than money. [DW] But your trade union? What was their line on it … what did they actually say about it? [OM] Well, it is a danger to your health and if ye don’t want tae work at it ye don’t have tae. So, I took that stance … no way was I working at it. [DW] Were there friends of yours who decided to work with it? [OM] Oh yes, yes. [DW] And did you try and persuade them not to? [OM] Naw, naw, I left that entirely up to themselves. If they wanted tae … any job on the docks was dangerous anyway, no matter what, but that affecting yerself … they used tae get the asbestos and make beards oot it and moustaches and all that, aye, that’s what they used tae do, especially if it was near Christmas time, ye know. Well possibly at that time they didnae even know how dangerous asbestos was.30

The gap between lay knowledge of the asbestos hazards and medical knowledge persisted for some time. The most dangerous type of asbes-

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tos was known to be the blue variety, or crocidolite. This was the first type of asbestos to be banned from industrial and commercial processes, although very quickly scientists discovered that exposure to white asbestos, or chrysotile, posed no less serious a health hazard. One factory worker remembered working with blue asbestos at a Clydebank asbestos factory in the 1960s: We were offered masks and told tae use them if we were upstairs at the beaters with blue asbestos, the dry form which if you breathed it in it was bad for you. The didnae tell you that once it came down [to the lower floors of the factory] it was wet then it dried out it could make you just as ill. You never got any warnings of that kind. You never got any warnings about brown asbestos; you never got any warnings about white asbestos. Ah, you weren’t told that when you took it home in your clothes your wife was going to breathe it in as well. As far as we were concerned the only dangerous stuff was the stuff that came out the bag and went intae the beater.31

In addition to its own asbestos factory, the town of Clydebank was also the home of John Brown’s shipyard, the birthplace of the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, the famous Cunard liners built in the 1930s and 1940s. When the Queen Elizabeth the Second (QE2) was under construction at John Brown’s in the 1960s asbestos use remained heavy. This was due to the Cunard Company’s insistence that the new ship meet rigid U.S. fire prevention standards. Many of the more than three thousand workers involved in the QE2’s construction were heavily exposed to the dangerous dust. Joiners cut and fixed asbestos sheets to the ship’s bulkheads, and heavy use of an asbestos boarding known as Marinite found its way into the walls and ceilings. By 1957 it was known that at least six Clydeside workers had contracted asbestosis. Ten years later, fifty-three laggers had contracted asbestos-related diseases, and fourteen had died—several from the asbestos-related cancer mesothelioma.32 By this time the increasing death toll among insulation engineers attracted workers’ attention, and some five hundred insulation engineers went on strike over job hazard concerns. Among the issues that had surfaced was the fact that 75 percent of Clydeside insulating firms were known to not provide workers with proper masks.33 After the 1967 strike, employers set up a Health Committee and promised to ensure that laggers would receive medical inspections every two years. However, the Health Committee only met a handful of times, and the men had only one medical inspection over the course of the decade following the dispute.34

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Another consequence of the strike was that the laggers obtained a pay raise for working with a dangerous product. Although a shop steward complained that his crew members were “so concerned about the cutting of any form of asbestos that they are prepared to stop work and not even cut it for 3d,” this did not happen.35 This represents an important but forgotten aspect of the asbestos story. Employers were not the only group who had a stake in ensuring that the use of asbestos continued; many workers’ livelihoods depended on working with asbestos, too. The gradual acceptance by workers that they were dealing with lifethreatening work processes involved a reconfiguration of their concept of workplace risk. Moreover, it was now also becoming apparent that the problem extended far beyond the laggers and the joiners, as other shipyard workers were now contracting asbestos-related illnesses. These included electricians and plumbers (both would have frequently had to cut holes in asbestos boarding for cables or pipes) and engineering workers, as well as those workers who just happened to be in the proximity of men working with asbestos. Although rumors had been rife in the early 1960s, from the mid 1960s the word began to spread from the shipyards to other industrial sites in Clydeside that asbestos was causing serious problems. This was due primarily to the transient nature of the labor force; insulation workers, electricians, plumbers, and joiners frequently shifted from the building sites to the shipyards and back again. One lagger expressed this in this way: “At our trade, you could start one job on a Monday, chuck it the Monday afternoon and get a new job on the Tuesday, there was just that much work.”36 Another lagger remembered how the message spread from the shipyards: “The QE2 had started then, and there were certain precautions being taken there against asbestos. The word from the shipyards was that asbestos might be dangerous and it was taken up by some of the men.”37 Similarly, an electrician remembered a special meeting in his workplace when a lagger with an asbestos-related disease spoke to the assembled men: That was a lad who had asbestos—an’ there wasnae a dry eye in the house. But that was the first time that people got an awareness. They were the insulators and [we thought] it couldnae affect us. So you had all these people working beside them. … And this lad came and he explained it all in a way that I’d never heard it before. From the heart. And honest to Christ, it woke everybody up. We then began to ask questions from the union about asbestos.38

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At the same time as construction on the QE2 was under way at Clydebank, a major building project had been launched in the north of Glasgow that also required large-scale application of Marinite. This was the construction of the Red Road flats, for a short time the largest apartment block in Europe. The joiners who cut and fitted the thousands of asbestos boards required to make the units as fireproof as possible earned the nickname the “White Mice” due to the color of their dust-covered overalls at the end of the day. These workers were initially informed about the dangers of working with Marinite by men who had worked on the QE2. This information was not initially welcomed by the men—another indication of the dilemma regarding wages and risk. One lagger and trade union activist remembers how he was told of dangerous work practices at Red Road. His testimony, like much of the testimony gathered for this project, illustrates how the masculine working environment affected standards of occupational health and safety: I got a complaint from my members who were up there [at Red Road] working for an insulation company, and when I went up there they were complaining about the dust they [the joiners] were making with the rip saws and the boards. … Now they says to me—well they used abusive language, which we a’ can use if we want—they used abusive language and told me to get to f … , in a nice abusive manner. … We were complaining about the dust but they wouldnae listen to us. So I went away and phoned up a factory inspector, and he created [a fuss] and made them polythene it off. Do you know these ten joiners I warned? Every one of them’s dead! There’s the climax. Now they got a warning and wouldnae take it. Now ten of them’s dead.39

This example indicates clearly that although lay knowledge of workplace danger could be disseminated though urban networks, such knowledge was not always being utilized to good effect. This challenges us to assess the role of the trade unions as conduits of knowledge with respect to workplace hazards. Studies of occupational health tragedies in the United States have invariably cited a strong trade union movement in Britain as a key player in earlier regulation of hazards. Asbestos, coal, and byssinosis are all pertinent examples of earlier and more effective regulation in the United Kingdom than in the United States.40 Paradoxically though, literature on this topic is generally critical of the historical role of the British trade unions on occupational health. It maintains that British unions invariably failed to prioritize occupational health, to develop their own alternative body of scientific knowl-

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edge, or to lead a sustained and effective critique of a medical orthodoxy that tended to minimize risks and promoted the view that hazardous products and toxins could be controlled by science and technological fixes (e.g., improved ventilation and medical monitoring). Thus, the unions failed to act as an effective countervailing force. It was only from the late 1960s that victims’ and activist pressure groups emerged that pioneered knowledge accumulation and research, campaigned vigorously, and ensured wider and more-effective dissemination of information about workplace hazards. The Society for the Prevention of Asbestos and Industrial Disease and CAA are two examples. At least in part these organizations were created by individuals frustrated by the slow pace of progress achieved by the trade unions and the political process. The Glasgow insulation engineers had their own branch of the TGWU, and in the 1950s this branch had a membership of some six hundred—a total that represented almost 90 percent of potential membership. Although wages and work hours were the main issues this union addressed, in 1951 it secured a substantial wage increase for asbestos sprayers on the basis of “danger to health, the awkwardness of working with masks and the uncongenial nature of the work.”41 Notwithstanding the award, the employers continued to assure the men that the spraying of asbestos posed no danger to health. In 1974 a conference of thermal insulation engineers called on the government to bring about licensing of the thermal insulation industry. This request, which found support from the Trade Union Congress, was also rejected. As noted above, by the 1950s and 1960s advancing knowledge of the asbestos hazards was disseminated through several information networks and via the media. However, the message was far from definitive. On the one hand, professional medical knowledge of the increasingly apparent links between short-term exposure to asbestos and the most fatal of the asbestos-related diseases, mesothelioma, was initially confined to a small circle of professionals; in working-class areas where asbestos was used, general practitioners were the ones most frequently aware of the risks. However, on the other hand many employers on the Clyde were informed of the risks by their employer organizations and by government circulars. For the workers, though, the network that the trade unions should have forged to keep them fully informed was inadequate. There were several reasons for this. First, asbestos manufacture and use in the west of Scotland was scattered across many industries and occupations, where, in the main, trade union presence was weak. Moreover, in many workplaces, such as construction sites and shipyards, exposure to asbestos affected only a relatively small proportion of the

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total workforce. This made it difficult for workers to form a unified front against the asbestos problem. Legislation passed in 1977 allowed safety committees to be formed in workplaces with a trade union presence in order to police health and safety. A shipyard plater recalled his efforts to get such a safety committee to take up the issue of asbestos: “Everybody gave their opinion of what was dangerous, and I brought up asbestos. But at the same time the men that were in the engine shop, they werenae involved with asbestos … and you couldnae get the backing of them.”42 A marine engineer had this to say about trade union safety officers in shipyards in which he worked: “I mean, I suppose, straightforward things like if you were doing something silly the safety officer might come up and say to you ‘hey don’t do that that’s dangerous.’ But certainly, as far as asbestos went, no safety officer ever approached me and told me that asbestos was a dangerous substance.”43 Several of our respondents looked back on their trade union’s record on health and safety with jaundiced eyes. When an insulation engineer was asked about trade unionism in his industry he replied, “It was an arsehole thing. … It’s always been run by a shower of would-be gangsters.”44 Similarly, a lagger reported that in most cases it was the men themselves who came to decisions regarding working in dangerous dust. Such testimony, though, should be kept in perspective. Members of the insulation branch of the TGWU were central to the formation of CAA in 1983, the principal pressure group for asbestos victims in the west of Scotland. CAA became an important channel for dissemination of information on asbestos dangers and compensation procedures throughout the west of Scotland and beyond. Crucially, CAA also provided valuable assistance to asbestos victims and their families through the daunting task of finding witnesses who could verify that workers were exposed to asbestos twenty or thirty years previously. The relative failure of trade unions to deal with the asbestos disaster contrasts with the experience of trade unions in coal mining. Here there was a sustained campaign to challenge medical orthodoxies, to generate alternative knowledge, and to use lay knowledge in campaigns to regulate hazards and control risks. Our recent oral history evidence collected from three British coal mining regions clearly supports the contention that the National Union of Mineworkers played an important role in knowledge dissemination regarding miners’ dust disease.45 In this particular industry, a combination of rank-and-file vigilance in the workplace and more-effective pressure group activity at the national level helped ensure that British miners’ health concerns received attention earlier and more comprehensively than was the case with asbestos. As

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importantly, though, strong links between the coal mining community and the workplace facilitated the dissemination of both lay and professional knowledge of the dangers of coal dust inhalation. These links were not as strong in the urban environment, where asbestos use in industry was concentrated.

Conclusion As far as occupational health struggles in twentieth-century Britain were concerned, power and knowledge found themselves linked together in a complex, symbiotic relationship. Clearly, the distribution of power was unequal and, throughout the twentieth century, big business interests were capable of manipulating medical knowledge on occupational health and influencing the regulatory process. In turn, workers in many industries found themselves deprived of full knowledge of the hazards and the levels of risk. Lack of awareness of the asbestos danger disempowered the labor movement and contributed to the passage of flawed and ineffective regulations in 1931, which in turn contributed to the persistent exposure of workers into at least the 1960s. Any project that looks at how urban experiences are narrated should take account of how information is disseminated throughout the urban environment. This is what this study has undertaken through its investigation of the growing knowledge of the risks posed by asbestos. Oral history evidence from Clydeside certainly suggests that worker information channels in the urban environment were flawed regarding the risks of asbestos, risks that were increasingly understood by the employers and by broader sectors of society. The dispersed nature of work sites in which asbestos was used was one of the main reasons for this; moreover, most asbestos was handled by workers employed in the asbestos manufacturing industry itself. In contrast to this, away from the large urban conurbations, information networks regarding occupational health risk were much more effective in the mining villages where the workplace and the community enjoyed stronger links. There, a strong trade union structure, combined with community solidarity focused on a single industry employer, made for effective channels through which knowledge of work-related health risks could flow. Oral history is the only means by which we can hope to understand the transmission of knowledge of industrial hazards in particular settings, and chart any changes in workers’ perceptions of workplace health risks. However, we are well aware that such evidence must be treated very carefully, using the normal conventions of cross-verification and corrob-

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oration. To this end we have consistently sought to verify information by asking respondents the same or similar questions—and, where possible, by corroborating oral testimony against documentary evidence. While we accept that memory should not be regarded as “innocent empirical evidence,”46 we nonetheless maintain that oral history testimony, if used sensitively, can illuminate many obscure areas of human experience. We were also aware that many of the men we interviewed had been damaged by the workplace. Consequently, they were not only reflecting on their pasts, but also trying to make sense of how the past has damaged their bodies. Their testimonies, then, are a constant and complex interplay of the past on the present and the present on the past. Feelings of anger, the need to apportion blame, and elements of guilt that they may have in some way contributed to their own and others’ injuries intermingle and sometimes clash with the need to recount to a researcher as accurately as possible what happened to them many years ago. Certainly the machismo discourse of the Clydeside shipyards and the building sites— frequently employed to explain slipshod health and safety attitudes by workers as well as by their employers—was at times exaggerated. For several of the respondents, though, it was only through reference to such a fatalistic work culture that their present predicaments could be rationalized. Despite the internal contradictions, then, oral history testimony still provides us with the only practical means to access individual experiences and perceptions of dangerous working practices, and to best understand the ramifications of occupational health disasters such as that caused by widespread exposure to asbestos.

Ronald Johnston is retired, previously professor of History at the School of Law and Social Sciences, Glasgow Caledonian University. He is the author of Clydeside Capital, 1880–1920 (Tuckwell Press, 1999); and coauthor with Arthur McIvor of Lethal Work (Tuckwell Press, 2000) and Miners’ Lung (Ashgate, 2007). Arthur McIvor is professor of Social History at the University of Strathclyde. He is the director of the Scottish Oral History Centre. He is a specialist in the social history of work and has published extensively in this field. He serves on the editorial board of Labour History Review. His recent works include A History of Work in Britain, 1880–1950 (Palgrave, 2001); Organised Capital (Cambridge University Press, 1996; paperback, 2002); Working Lives: A History of Work in Britain since 1945 (Palgrave, 2013) and, with Ronnie Johnston, Lethal Work (Tuckwell Press, 2000) and Miners’ Lung (Ashgate, 2007).

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Notes 1. Chris M. Ealham, “Class and the City: Spatial Memories of Pleasure and Danger in Barcelona 1914–23, Oral History 29, no. 1 (2000): 33–47. In the same volume, Gavin Philip Brown, “Listening to Queer Maps of the City: Gay Men’s Narratives of Pleasure and Danger in London’s East End,” 48–61; Leslie Diack “Myths of a Beleaguered City: Aberdeen and the Typhoid Outbreak of 1964 Explored through Oral History”: 62–72. 2. Mike Savage, “Space, Networks and Class Formation,” in Social Class and Marxism, ed. Neville Kirk (Aldershot, 1996). 3. Jouni Häkli and Claudio Minca, Social Capital and Urban Networks of Trust (Aldershot, 2009). 4. Gordon Boyce, “Network Knowledge and Network Routines: Negotiating Activities between Shipowners and Shipbuilders,” Business History 45, no. 2 (April 2003): 52–76. See also Forbes Munro and Tony Slaven, “Networks and Markets in Clyde Shipbuilding: The Donaldsons and the Hogarths, 1870–1939,” Business History 43, no. 2 (April 2001): 19–50; and John F. Wilson and Andrew Popp, eds., Industrial Clusters and Regional Business Networks in England, 1750–1970 (Aldershot, 2003). 5. For an example of such a network in the north of England, see Arthur McIvor, Organised Capital (Cambridge, 1996). 6. Ronald Johnston, Clydeside Capital: A Social History of Employers (East Linton, Scotland, 2000). 7. Boyce, “Network Knowledge,” 53. 8. Mike Savage and Andrew Miles, The Re-Making of the British Working Class (London, 1994). 9. See, for example, Peter Bartrip, “Too Little, Too Late? The Home Office and the Asbestos Industry Regulations, 1931,” Medical History 42 (1998): 421–38. 10. See Ronald Johnston and Arthur McIvor, Lethal Work: A History of the Asbestos Tragedy in Scotland (East Linton, Scotland, 2000); Geoffrey Tweedale, From Magic Mineral to Killer Dust (Oxford, 2000). 11. See William Knox, Industrial Nation (Edinburgh, 1999). 12. Peter Payne, “The Economy,” in Tom M. Devine and Richard J. Finlay eds., Scotland in the Twentieth Century (Edinburgh, 1996), 22. 13. Johnston and McIvor, Lethal Work, 152. 14. For examples of the contested nature of occupational disease, see Richard Gillespie, “Accounting for Lead Poisoning: the Medical Politics of Occupational Health,” Social History of Medicine 15, no. 3 (1990): 303–31; Barbara Harrison, Not Only the Dangerous Trades (London, 1996); Peter Bartrip, The Home Office and the Dangerous Trades (Amsterdam, 2002); Paul Bellaby, Sick From Work, The Body in Employment (Aldershot, 1999). 15. House of Commons Employment Committee 1982–83, “The Work of the Health and Safety Commission and Executive: Asbestos,” Minutes of Evidence [87-I]: 8. See also Johnston and McIvor, Lethal Work, passim.

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16. Johnston and McIvor, Lethal Work, 118; Peter C. Elmes and Marion Simpson, “Insulation workers in Belfast. A further study of mortality due to asbestos exposure (1940–75),” British Journal of Industrial Medicine vol. 34 (1977): 174–80. 17. Helen De Vos Irvine et al., “Asbestos Lung Cancer in Glasgow and the West of Scotland,” British Medical Journal 306 (1993): 1503–6. 18. Sunday Mail, 1 March 1992, 14. 19. Asbestos Oral History Project, Scottish Oral History Centre Archive (SOHC/16), Interview A 8 (hereafter cited by interview number only). 20. Alan McKinlay, Making Ships, Making Men: Working in John Brown’s, Clydebank Between the Wars (Clydebank, Scotland, 1989), 28. 21. McKinlay, Making Ships, Making Men, 29. 22. Interview SOHC 16/A 15. 23. Interview SOHC 16/A 8. 24. Interview SOHC 16/A 14. 25. Interview SOHC 16/A 21. 26. John Ower, Hidden Hazards, Forgotten Victims, VHS, Directed by M. Traynor, B. Sullivan and T. Gorman (Glasgow, Scotland: Clydeside Action on Asbestos / Glasgow Caledonian University, 1995). 27. Interview SOHC 16/A 5. 28. Interview SOHC 16/A 14. 29. Interview SOHC 16/A 17. 30. Interview by David Walker with Owen McIntyre (born 9 March 1947), 13 August 2009 (Glasgow Dock Workers Oral History Project, CSG CIC Glasgow Museums and Libraries Collections). 31. Interview SOHC 16/A 19. 32. Johnston and McIvor, Lethal Work, Chap. 3, passim; Glasgow Herald, 24 February 1967, 24. 33. The Newsletter, 24 June 1967 (John Todd Papers; Clydeside Action on Asbestos Archive); Glasgow Herald, 13 June 1967, 11 and 19 June 1967, 16. 34. See John Todd’s testimony in Alan Dalton, Asbestos Kills (1979), 99. 35. Clyde Shipbuilders’ Association, Minutes, 20 December 1967 Mitchell Library, Glasgow (TD 241/12/1136). 36. Interview with Hugh Cairney (SOHC Archive 16/A 29). 37. Glasgow Herald, 27 June 1984, 4. 38. Interview SOHC 16/A 13. 39. Interview SOHC 16/A 22. 40. See David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, Deadly Dust, Silicosis and the Politics of Occupational Disease (Princeton, NJ, 1991); Alan Derickson, Black Lung: Anatomy of a Public Health Disaster (Ithaca, NY, 1998); Charles Levinstein and John Wooding, eds., Work, Health, Environment: Old Problems, New Solutions (New York, 1997). 41. Scottish Insulation Engineers’ Employers Association Minutes, 11 April 1951. Mitchell Library, Glasgow (TD 241/12/1136). 42. Interview SOHC 16/A 3.

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43. Interview SOHC 16/A 8. 44. Interview SOHC 16/A 14. 45. See Arthur McIvor and Ronnie Johnston, Miners’ Lung: A History of Dust Disease in British Coalmining (Aldershot, 2007). 46. Mary Chamberlain and Paul Thompson eds., Narrative and Genre (London, 1998), xiii.

References Primary Sources Clydeside Action on Asbestos (CAA) Archive, Glasgow, Scotland, John Todd Papers. Clyde Shipbuilders’ Association, Minutes, 20 December 1967 Mitchell Library, Glasgow (TD 241/12/1136). Glasgow Herald, 24 February 1967; 11, 13 and 19 June 1967; 27 June 1984. House of Commons Employment Committee 1982–83, “The Work of the Health and Safety Commission and Executive: Asbestos.” Minutes of Evidence [87-I]. The Newsletter, London, 24 June 1967. Scottish Insulation Engineers’ Employers Association Minutes, 11 April 1951. Mitchell Library, Glasgow (TD 241/12/1136). Scottish Oral History Centre Archive (SOHCA), University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland. Asbestos Oral History Project. Deposit reference 16. Sunday Mail, Glasgow, Scotland, 1 March 1992.

Secondary Sources Bartrip, Peter W.J. The Home Office and the Dangerous Trades: Regulating Occupational Disease in Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002. ———. “Too Little, Too Late? The Home Office and the Asbestos Industry Regulations, 1931.” Medical History 42 (1998): 421–38. Bellaby, Paul. Sick From Work, The Body in Employment. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999. Boyce, Gordon. “Network Knowledge and Network Routines: Negotiating Activities between Shipowners and Shipbuilders.” Business History 45, no. 2 (April 2003): 52–76. Brown, Gavin Phillip. “Listening to Queer Maps of the City: Gay Men’s Narratives of Pleasure and Danger in London’s East End.” Oral History 29, no. 1 (2000): 48–61. Chamberlain, Mary, and Paul Thompson, eds. Narrative and Genre. London: Routledge, 1998. Dalton, Alan. Asbestos Kills. London: British Society for Social Responsibility in Science, 1979.

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Derickson, Alan. Black Lung: Anatomy of a Public Health Disaster. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998. De Vos Irvine, Helen, Douglas W. Lamont, David J. Hole, and Charles R. Gillies. “Asbestos Lung Cancer in Glasgow and the West of Scotland.” British Medical Journal 306 (1993): 1503–6. Devine, Tom M., and Richard J. Finlay, eds. Scotland in the Twentieth Century. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996. Diack, Leslie. “Myths of a Beleaguered City: Aberdeen and the Typhoid Outbreak of 1964 Explored through Oral History.” Oral History 29, no. 1 (2000): 62–72. Ealham, Chris M. “Class and the City: Spatial Memories of Pleasure and Danger in Barcelona 1914–23.” Oral History 29, no. 1 (2000): 33–47. Elmes, Peter C. and Marion Simpson. “Insulation workers in Belfast. A further study of mortality due to asbestos exposure (1940–75).” British Journal of Industrial Medicine 34 (1977): 174–80. Gillespie, Richard. “Accounting for Lead Poisoning: the Medical Politics of Occupational Health.” Social History of Medicine 15, no. 3 (1990): 303–331. Häkli Jouni, and Claudio Minca. Social Capital and Urban Networks of Trust. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009. Harrison, Barbara. Not Only the Dangerous Trades. London: Taylor and Francis, 1996. Johnston, Ronald. Clydeside Capital: A Social History of Employers. East Linton, Scotland: Tuckwell, 2000. Johnston, Ronald, and Arthur McIvor. Lethal Work: A History of the Asbestos Tragedy in Scotland. East Linton, Scotland: Tuckwell, 2000. Knox, William. Industrial Nation. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999. Levinstein, Charles, and John Wooding, eds. Work, Health, Environment: Old Problems, New Solutions. New York: Guilford, 1997. McIvor, Arthur. Organised Capital. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. McIvor, Arthur, and Ronald Johnston. Miners’ Lung: a History of Dust Disease in British Coalmining. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. McKinlay, Alan. Making Ships, Making Men: Working in John Brown’s, Clydebank Between the Wars. Clydebank, Scotland: Clydebank Library, 1989. Munro, Forbes, and Tony Slaven. “Networks and Markets in Clyde Shipbuilding: The Donaldsons and the Hogarths, 1870–1939.” Business History 43, no. 2 (April 2001): 19–50. Ower, John. Hidden Hazards, Forgotten Victims. VHS. Directed by M. Traynor, B. Sullivan and T. Gorman. Glasgow, Scotland: Clydeside Action on Asbestos / Glasgow Caledonian University, 1995. Rosner, David, and Gerald E. Markowitz. Deadly Dust: Silicosis and the Politics of Occupational Disease. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991. Savage, Mike. “Space, Networks and Class Formation.” In Social Class and Marxism: Defences and Challenges, edited by Neville Kirk, 58–86. Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996.

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Savage, Mike, and Andrew Miles. The Re-Making of the British Working Class. London: Routledge, 1994. Tweedale, Geoffrey. From Magic Mineral to Killer Dust. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Wilson, John F., and Andrew Popp, eds. Industrial Clusters and Regional Business Networks in England, 1750–1970. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003.

[• Chapter 7 •]

Creating a Familiar Space Child Care, Kinship, and Community in Postsocialist New Zagreb TIHANA RUBIĆ and CAROLIN LEUTLOFFGRANDITS

A

huge housing complex called Mamutica (mammoth building) is the landmark of Travno, an urban settlement in the Croatian capital’s southern district of New Zagreb. With its eighteen-story façade extending four hundred meters on two parallel blocks, Mamutica houses some 4,500 inhabitants. Some claim it is the largest apartment complex in the former Yugoslavia; whether or not this is accurate, it is perhaps the plainest physical representation of the socialist idea to transform peasants into workers, and a clear example of the former regime’s efforts to address housing shortages. The regime planned ambitiously, and housing construction like Mamutica gave brick and mortar form to its agenda of urbanization and industrialization and the concomitant goal of promoting new values for a modern socialist family.1 Work on Mamutica began in 1973 and concluded in 1976; its completion marked part of a larger urban planning project that included the creation of ten settlements on an open field in Zagreb, across the River Sava, to house a rapidly increasing population of industrial workers.2 In the year 2005–6 Travno was the site of a nine-month social anthropology fieldwork project that we conducted within the framework of an European Union study on kinship and social security.3 We focused on family and neighborhood networks that provide social security in everyday life—for example, arrangements that provide instrumental support, emotional security, and financial assistance. This project examines ways these care networks are embedded in the communal Travno settlement itself; ways these networks transform anonymous, urban space into an intimate, localized sense of place; and how people made use of their net-

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works to manage the demands of everyday life. We have chosen here to demonstrate these dynamics through the lens of child care, as this was the most frequently highlighted element of social security expressed by members of the selected target group.4 Mutual assistance presupposes that child care is a lived experience, a network of social relations that has spatial expressions, and can therefore contribute to our conceptualization of a familiar urban space. We have found in this 1970s pilot settlement that combined mass housing with public child care never provided sufficient capacity, and that grandparental child care remained important if both spouses were to work. Since grandparents frequently lived elsewhere and the spatial distances between Travno’s inhabitants and their parents were often significant, neighbors would assume child-care responsibilities. This often led to the development of surrogate kinship relations. Ironically, a model urban setting designed to promote a supranuclear family solidarity wound up doing just that—but by creating an alternative sense of extended family, rather than the solidarity among peasants and workers imbued with a state-socialist-shaped class identity that the regime strived to establish. Two additional considerations guided our field research. First, we were mindful of an economic dimension in which child-care practices among Travno inhabitants can be read against new market conditions and other economic challenges (e.g., the privatization of apartments and state firms dating from the early 1990s, economic crises, and bankruptcies). Second, we took into account the cognitive and cultural components of child-care practices, in that we were mindful of emic perspectives on social roles with respect to gender and generation, and of the importance of family solidarity. These points helped us to frame the actions of inhabitants in this postsocialist urban settlement and to appreciate factors that contributed to the creation of a familiar urban space.5 After the collapse of Yugoslav socialism, intergenerational help acquired new significance.6 Where ever possible, grandma service (baka servis) became the desired solution for rearing small children, reflecting an underlying assumption that children were best cared for within the family circle. Yet socialist tradition had introduced a surrogate principle in cases where grandparents were not available: neighbors were asked to substitute for relatives. After socialism, newly launched private childcare business initiatives (perceived largely as modern, i.e., Western) began to take root in the settlement. A key example of this was the phenomenon of private children’s playrooms combined with daily preschool education. Given the costs of sending children to these private in-house facilities, many parents sought the very substitute family care to which we have referred.

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The first part of this chapter examines continuities and changes in Travno prior to and after the transition from socialism to postsocialism. The second part explores female care-giver roles and kinship support in postsocialist Travno, specifically. In the third part we reflect on some examples of child care in socialist Travno. The fourth part focuses on the notion of baka servis and child care in the neighborhood, and is followed by conclusions about the links between child-care networks and the creation of greater social intimacy in urban space.

Setting the Scene: Travno from Socialism to Postsocialism Travno was part of a larger socialist urban planning project that called for the construction of ten housing communities between the 1950s and the mid 1980s on the southern banks of the Sava River.7 This new planned settlement was designated Southern Zagreb, or Novi Zagreb (New Zagreb). It was an initiative along the lines of satellite settlement implantation in Novi Beograd in the capital of the Yugoslav federal state from 1947 into the 1970s, as well as many other settlements following the standards for new socialist urban development introduced in Bucharest, Sofia, East Berlin, and elsewhere in Eastern Europe during the 1970s. Novi Zagreb’s construction can be likened to European urban development projects in nonsocialist countries during the peak or golden age of the welfare state in the 1960s and 1970s, too, when the construction of social housing experienced a boom (e.g., Gropius-Stadt in West Berlin). Throughout these phases of Travno’s development, the authorities called for apartment construction with nuclear families in mind—that is, units ranging from fifty to eighty square meters that would provide living space for working parents with one to three children. Travno construction situated buildings around the green space that gave the settlement its name. (The name “Travno” is a derivative of the Croatian word for “grassy meadow.”) Kindergartens, primary schools, sport facilities, and some shops within walking distance to all units enable inhabitants to manage much of their everyday lives within the boundaries of the settlement. However, up until the 1990s the majority of economic, cultural, and administrative facilities, as well as institutions of secondary and higher education, were situated closer to the Zagreb city center at an inconvenient distance. This meant that Travno’s residents had to cross the Sava River in order to reach public offices and services; if they availed themselves of public transportation they could face an average commute of forty minutes.

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Figure 7.1. Travno Detailed Urban Development Plan (Detaljni urbanistički plan), 1:1,000, 1972 Source: Map by Miroslav Kollenz, main architect of the Travno settlement, provided by the Arhiv Gradskog zavoda za prostorno uređenje Grada Zagreba (City Bureau for Physical Planning Zagreb) and with the permission of Arhitektonski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu (Faculty of Architecture of University of Zagreb). The map was produced by Zavod za urbanizam (Institute of Urbanism) in Zagreb. In 1984 Zavod za urbanizam was renamed Zavod za urbanizam i prostorno planiranje (Institute of Urbanism and Spatial Planning). Today it is Zavod za urbanizam, prostorno planiranje i pejzažnu arhitekturu (Institute of Urbanism, Spatial Planning and Landscape Architecture).

A significant number of Travno’s inhabitants during the socialist period were manual workers affiliated with what at the time were prosperous state firms. Furthermore, a considerable number of inhabitants were Yugoslav military officials, mainly affiliated with the main Yugoslav National Army military base (kasarna Maršal Tito) situated in the vicinity. The majority of residents were administrative and factory workers. Upon completion of construction, most inhabitants who moved to Travno were couples in their twenties to forties, often with small children. They had received tenant rights (stanarsko pravo) through their agencies, firms, or the military units—that is, that they held permanent housing rights, according to a distribution schema that took into account a number of social criteria, including but not limited to the

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number of household members, the number of children, their current housing situation, and years of employment or service.8 From the 1960s onward, many other residential complexes with socially owned apartments (društveni stanovi) were built in planned settlements like Travno and distributed by socialist firms and factories.9 The extension of workers’ social welfare benefits other than housing increased social well-being, too. For example, pension insurance guaranteed regular payments during old age, although they covered only very basic living expenses; child-care facilities enabled women to participate in the labor market, although these positions were not available for all, due to the limited number of places in the nursery and kindergartens.10 Health-care insurance was available for workers, dependent children, and spouses. Child-rearing benefits and maternity leave allowed couples to start their families while continuing to work. (These services developed only at the end of the socialist regime, it should be noted.) These social entitlements extended not only to inhabitants in Travno, but also were available to people in all of socialist Yugoslavia’s republics and constituted an important aspect of welfare, urbanization, and modernization policies.11 The development of social relations between inhabitants of these new urban settlements was mainly influenced by the fact that many tenants were already acquainted from common workplaces before they became neighbors. Our interviews revealed that in a large number of cases people socialized at work, in the local housing committees, in the central park space, or while shopping in stores within the Travno settlement. Thus, they forged overlapping mutual relationships that provided the foundation for strong ties and common processes of identification. This latter point will be elaborated in the section on child-care practices during the socialist era, below. Creating dense networks of conviviality between neighbors was not the only way that people in Travno situated themselves socially within the settlement. As Croatian anthropologist Dunja Rihtman-Auguštin revealed in her fieldwork on residential experience in Travno, tenants adapted this planned urban space to their own imaginations and needs. For instance, they created new footpaths in the park that were used more frequently than the official walkways, or they modified their apartments to meet their own fancies (e.g., by taking out walls, painting walls, or adapting balconies for living space). In common areas they established small garden plots or bocce alleys (boćališta), or little niches with benches in order to spend free time engaged in activities with friends. This transformation of individual and common spaces alike demonstrates residents’ keen sense of agency in creating an environ-

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ment that satisfied any number of everyday needs—a phenomenon that Rihtman-Auguštin has broadly described designates as alternative urbanization.12 Indeed, these activities promoted a form of civil society, a place for (self-)identification and familiarity.13 In contrast to this emic view, people who did not live in Novi Zagreb often described these buildings pejoratively as spavaonice (dormitories).14 Inhabitants commuted to their workplaces, and—given the lack of cultural institutions such as theaters or cinemas—at the end of the day social activities appeared quite limited.15 This is, again, reminiscent of reaction to other large-scale planned settlements in both East and West Europe. The image of a dormitory suggests something anonymous, impersonal, and perhaps dull, with the expectation that inhabitants of settlements like Travno suffered from underdeveloped social relationships.16 The violent collapse of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s changed the urban landscape in the former constituent republics dramatically.17 The secessionist wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina shattered identities, divided families, and left people traumatized.18 These conflicts also affected the social profile of Travno, not least because a considerable number of military officers who lived in Travno were Serbs. After 1991 they turned into enemy aliens and, according to a newly established residence law, lost their residence permits in Croatia. Personal narratives reveal that many were forced to move out. Demographic change in Travno had more than an ethnic character, however: it also reflected the consequences of a postsocialist privatization process that affected apartment ownership, the viability of formerly state-owned enterprises and employment, and the stability of the economy more generally throughout the 1990s. During the privatization process in Croatia that began in the early 1990s, residents who had held tenancy rights over their state-owned apartments enjoyed the privilege of purchasing their units below market price.19 Still, a considerable percentage of tenants lacked the financial means to do so.20 Some chose installment payments over the course of twenty years, while others swapped tenant rights over their larger apartments for tenant rights over smaller ones in Mamutica or elsewhere in Zagreb before the privatization process began in earnest. (This allowed them to pay off the smaller, more-affordable units instantly.) The subsequent relocation of people contributed to a degree of fragmentation in the neighborhood networks that residents had developed over years in the settlement, and increased the atmosphere of anonymity in the buildings.21 A second significant reason for social stratification and demographic changes within Croatian residential areas during the early 1990s was the high rate of unemployment among inhabitants. The ethnic conflict and

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bankruptcy of state firms put many families in a precarious situation— an experience shared by citizens in other socialist societies in transition after 1989–91. So-called technological surplus (tehnološki višak) forced many employees into early retirement; many found themselves unemployed, despite an eagerness to continue working and their relative youth. As former state-owned companies closed down, unemployment hit the middle-aged population hard, especially those in their forties. Others faced the new reality of underemployment just as inflation began to drive up prices. Finally, many younger and less-educated adults without prior working experience could not compete with others under the new market conditions.22 A factor that contributed to demographic change in Travno, in particular, was the presence of a high percentage of senior citizens. People who moved into the area in the 1970s were largely young, married couples with small children, but thirty years later elderly parents remained after their children had gone. There are cases, however, where young people who had been brought up in Travno have remained in the settlement—for example, when an apartment was large enough for a multigeneration family, when the middle generation could not afford to establish their own independent households elsewhere, or if the parents died and children assumed tenancy. Today young married couples generally have one or two children; families with three or more children are rare. Our research suggested that this is largely due to living space and financial constraints, or feelings of uncertainty.23 This corresponds with the overall statistical picture in Croatia, where the birth rate has fallen since the 1990s. Married couples are usually double breadwinners who are often reluctant to sacrifice their wages or salary productivity. Women who give birth tend to take one year’s maternity leave and then return to their jobs full time. Usually they are away from home nine to ten hours each day, which means they experience a pressing need for both shared housework and daily childcare assistance. On the other hand, the number of shops and services in Travno has increased dramatically during this period. For example, postsocialist cultural institutions such as the društveni dom24—a community center where various public cultural activities are held, and in which administrative offices, entertainment centers, shopping areas, and religious institutions are located—have been constructed in or close to Travno to meet (or create) new demand. Among these new services are facilities for child care, such as the private playrooms and private kindergartens to which we have referred above, as well as various educational workshops for parents organized on a weekly basis by nongovernmental organizations or public kindergarten staff members.

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“Women Should Be the Ones Who Organize the Life of the Household”: Ethnographies of Child Care in Postsocialist Travno In order to better appreciate how care-giving networks in the urban settlement of Travno have functioned, it is essential to understand the perspective of young women and their strategies to reconcile family life with wage work. How do they envision their roles in society, and what are the connections between these perspectives and social values on the one hand, and material conditions on the other? What kind of child-care concerns do women express, and how do they put them into practice? To what extent do space and place matter for implementation? We interviewed young women between the ages of twenty-six to thirtyfive, and found that the predominant sentiment they expressed was a preference to work and a desire to make use of not more than one year of maternity leave. The impetus for returning to the workforce varied, however. Some felt compelled to return to work due to financial necessity; maternity leave payments cover only one year, and electing to stay home to look after their children longer than this could lead to loss of positions in a competitive labor market. As Vesna, a highly educated scientist of thirty-four and a mother of one son put it, “It is difficult to save something, even with a double income.”25 At the same time, many of our female interview partners who worked full-time openly expressed a sense of guilt for being absent from home. The majority of them did not relish daily separation from their preschool-aged children, and sought to provide them with a cozy domestic environment by having family members present to look after them during the day.26 For children less than three years old, they generally preferred to rely on grandmothers or a trustworthy female neighbor to care for their children with a “family spirit and warmth” rather than on formal institutions such as nursery schools.27 In cases where both spouses worked due to financial necessity and no female relative was available to look after children, interviewees often referred to nurseries as a “necessary evil” (nužno zlo).28 Behind this attitude was not only skepticism toward the quality of institutional child care—for example, interviewees remarked that individual time for each child is limited, and children have a tendency to contract viruses in nurseries—but also the culturally reinforced perception that proper child care takes place inside the family and that “good” mothers ought to stay with their children. Notions of the “good” mother were also transmitted by nursery and kindergarten pedagogues themselves: in a creative and educative workshop for parents and their children, an education scholar affiliated with the

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Travno kindergarten suggested to parents a likely connection exists between a child’s aggressive behavior and early separation from his or her mother.29 In the 1990s early transitional political discourse also influenced notions of what constitutes “good” motherhood. Political parties promoted an ideal image of women who look after children and the household during that period, irrespective personal preferences or socioeconomic considerations that might influence a woman’s decision not to be a stay-at-home mother. The political right was particularly vocal on this theme. Right-wing nationalist parties and conservative Catholic clerics proclaimed the new institution of the parenting mother (majka odgajateljica) as a strategy to decrease female unemployment and counter a decline in fertility rate that led to the birth of fewer than 1.3 children per woman.30 Parenting mothers were to stay at home and look after children, and in return they would receive a regular monthly stipend provided by the state. A lack of financial stability prevented the introduction of this program, however. Influenced by such discourses, many young women nonetheless came to see themselves primarily as child caregivers and responsible for housework, even if circumstances compelled them to enter the workforce as second breadwinners. As fifty-six-year-old Lidija, who gave birth to her fourth child in the mid 1990s and then lost her job in a wave of mass lay-offs, explained, “I truly counted on this law at the time, since I had no other choice. At work they sent me a clear message they did not need me anymore. However, this ‘law of parenting mother’ sent me another kind of message—that someone appreciates at least that I am a mother of four children and that I have to live somehow. … [Of course] this law was never launched.” Generally, the most commonly used expression interviewees employed to describe their situation is that of a dvostruki teret (double burden)—that is, they faced responsibilities in the workplace and at home. In various cases, women (mothers) complained, yet at the same time accepted such a role. They could make sense of their double burden by perpetuating this motherly and gender-determined role, seeing the development of desirable values and personal qualities in their children as a form of compensation for their own sacrifices and hardship. When young mothers returned to the workforce, they relied either on child-care institutions or on informal arrangements. Sometimes they combined them. To rely on female relatives was clearly generally preferred and was facilitated by the close physical proximity between young families’ residences and those of parents or parents-in-law. In fact, half of the working married couples interviewed had at least one part of the parental generation living nearby, and sometimes even the parents of

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both spouses within the housing estate itself. The latter situation was mainly the result of both young spouses growing up in the same settlement and developing a connection from early childhood, marrying, and staying in the settlement. Two such young married couples mentioned this life course. One of the husbands explained, “It is a common thing in Travno for young people to know each other from their earliest years, to fall in love, to marry, and to remain [here].” This reinforced a tendency among many people to identify closely with the part of town in which they had grown up, or where they lived for a longer period. In the case of Travno, long-term residence in this urban setting became the basis for notions of belonging and of sharing everyday life, that is for the creation of a symbolic community.31 In most cases where interview partners placed their infants or toddlers in a formal daycare setting, they either had no relatives living nearby or their relationship with parents or in-laws had been disrupted. One young mother explained that it was her choice to remain autonomous in this respect: “I do not want to rely on ‘grandma service’ and thus feel as if I owe someone something in return for her taking care of my child.” Although she valued her independence from any sort of family obligations in this regard, the woman comprehended kin relationships as reciprocal, with their own set of implied demands. It is worth noting that she expressed that strained relationships within her close kinship network represented a kind of deviation from the rule. This case shows that caring for grandchildren is also a means of family cohesion and of transmission of family values between generations. Avoiding child care provided by grandparents can thus be understood as a strategy for freeing oneself from family norms and obligations—but often at the cost of family cohesion.

Turning Neighbors into Kin: Notes on Child Care in Socialist Travno With its three kindergarten buildings and space for four hundred children between the ages of three and seven, as well as a nursery for one hundred children up to the age of three, Travno had been at the forefront of the provision of public child care in socialist Yugoslavia. However, even during the time when Travno had been built, Yugoslav child-care institutions were able to cover less than 30 percent of potential demand.32 In many instances, parents preferred to avail themselves of willing grandmothers. The persistence of these insufficiencies made the assistance of neighbors as important as that of families.

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Later, due to lags in housing construction and generally poor public transportation networks during the 1970s and 1980s, grandparent care turned out not to be easily accessible for a great many Travno residents. In some cases, working parents sent their toddlers to stay with grandparents in rural areas or in distant parts of the same urban areas, which meant that parents could see their children only on weekends. This was generally not understood as problematic, insofar as parents assumed that children cared for inside the family (kod svojih) would be looked after properly. The lack of child care did not change after the collapse of state socialism. Both in the socialist era and after 1991, grandparents—especially grandmothers—made it possible for working mothers to balance work and having children.33 Those who did not receive a place in public child-care institutions and who did not have close relatives living nearby relied on trusted neighbors. Common in other social contexts, too, these child minders were mainly middle-aged housewives who remained at home to care for their own children and manage their households. Indeed, even under socialism, where large-scale inclusion of women into the labor force was part of the socialist gender order, the participation of housewives as actors in an informal economy was a widespread phenomenon in Croatia. Such instances reflected both traditional values and sufficient household income brought in by the male breadwinner.34 These women were paid in cash for their child-care assistance. They never thought about registering formally as service providers; they did this as an “easy way to earn money,” but “with a desire to help someone in the neighborhood who is in a need of child care” and “to be surrounded by the joy that small children bring,” according to Draga, an elderly woman who worked as a child minder during the socialist period. In effect, privately organized child care in Travno constituted kinship-like relations among neighbors. Children would not only be reared by their (female) neighbors, but they also would have established close, familial relations with neighborhood women whom they came to call auntie (teta) or grandma (baka), depending on a woman’s age. Coffee, snacks, news, and gossip would be shared between households as part of everyday life—an expression of a good and close neighborly relationship, according to interviewees’ reported experiences. This too, did not change after the collapse of the socialist system. Although child care in socialist Travno had become increasingly institutionalized, it had not been monopolized by public institutions. Alternative child-care options, including a rather conservative model of women’s roles inside the family, remained a widespread and significant feature of residents’ everyday experiences, and remained so. Also, more

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recently young parents search primarily inside the housing estate for sitters, and most often informal child care is still conducted by women from the neighborhood, either in the neighbor’s apartment or in that of a child’s parents. A noteworthy difference between pre- and post-1991 circumstances is the preferred age of a child-care provider. During the socialist era somewhat older sitters of fifty years plus were preferred on the assumption that her own familial experience made them suitable, whereas since the 1990s young women and female students have become a somewhat more desirable choice, as they are seen as more capable of preparing children for new social expectations and different social roles.35

“European” Working Hours, but “Albanian” Payment: Reappraisal of Grandmothers and Neighbors in Postsocialist Travno Along with a diminished and restructured formal industrial labor market, after 1991 those fortunate to retain their jobs in the industrial sector have experienced changes in their workday schedules. Working hours tend to last from 8:00 or 9:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m., rather than the 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. shifts common under the socialist system.36 This leaves parents without much afternoon time to spend with their children. Moreover, parents’ work schedules can be quite diverse, ranging from night shifts to double shifts. Schedules can change from week to week, and daily schedules are at times unpredictable; interviewees stressed that employers frequently expect them to remain on the clock until 6:00 p.m. Not surprisingly, this has generated new child-care concerns for those working parents who rely on public kindergartens that have not adequately modified their hours to reflect new, postsocialist work schedules. These institutional deficits have made the availability of grandparents for child care all the more relevant. But how have the changes discussed above affected the perceptions of grandmothers with respect to child care? How do they reflect family values and gendered positions in the family? Most grandmothers interviewed indicated that they felt obliged to help out. They accepted that looking after grandchildren is something expected from grandmothers, particularly given what they tended to perceive as the dynamics of contemporary life (as opposed to what they had experienced earlier under socialism). Members of the grandparents’ generation appear to embrace the notion that they must do what they can to support their children in the new, liberalized work environment—

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not merely so that the children can make ends meet, but also so that they might seize opportunities for professional advancement. Interview partners remarked that young people today have to be more efficient and have less economic and job security compared to circumstances prior to 1991, that employment is insecure and highly competitive, and that there are no housing rights attached to jobs. The former had all received entitlements that were of fundamental value to their own social existence during the socialist period. Nada, a retired woman aged fifty-five, put it this way: Young people today do not have any security. I never lived in such insecurity, to not have work tomorrow. I knew I could work as long as I wanted to work. This means a lot. You now have European working hours, but “Albanian” payment. Two thirds of your working life you eat dried [cold] meals, while I always had cooked meals. … And in the old system you could receive an apartment, but today you cannot obtain anything. And in firms nobody works who has higher qualifications— and as soon as you have a higher qualification, you are not registered as such. This has horrible consequences later for your pension. This is difficult and bad for the youth, you live under a lot of stress all the time in relation to these issues, mainly how long you will stay in your job, will your boss acknowledge you, and so on.37

Such reflections on changes in a transitional labor market are based on objective circumstances that we have identified (e.g., changes in work schedules, lack of job security in Croatia since the 1990s).38 Indeed, baka servis does not require expenses, while nurseries and kindergartens demand fees. A grandmother puts it this way: “They did not plan to give the child to the nursery; they have to pay off loans and have other expenses, and therefore they rely on grandmas.”39 Subjective reflections on these changes (e.g., “it was better in the past”)40 served to reinforce the solidarity that elderly people felt toward the adult children, too. As significant as intergenerational solidarity is when confronted with the transitional challenges we have noted, the extent to which grandmothers enjoy being with their grandchildren should not be underestimated. Dragica: We need the grandchildren and the grandchildren need us. Ana: The grandchildren have joy with us and we too with them. Draga: I do not merely provide childcare service, I enjoy it!41

As these sentiments demonstrate, grandmothers tended to see their engagement as a kind of natural investment of time that benefits both

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sides.42 In two cases, family members even moved from another part of town or from another region of Croatia into the Travno settlement specifically. As they put it, they wanted to be “at the disposal” of their adult children and grandchildren. In two other cases, grandmothers gave up their own employment in order to assist working adult children by looking after the grandchildren (figures 7.2 and 7.3).43 The value placed by many parents of having grandmothers or trusted neighbors involved in child care suggests an ongoing exercise in community building. Indeed, postsocialist Travno has not become an alienating space in which social relations have been torn apart by new socioeconomic challenges. More to the point, child care has served a valuable role in the revitalization of community and localization of urban space.

Conclusions: Creating a Familiar Space In socialist Yugoslavia special settlement patterns, socialist welfare provisions, and intensive neighborhood and community relations created a distinct social space in Travno. The postsocialist transition challenged

Figure 7.2. Grandmothers looking after their grandchildren in the park in Travno Source: Photo by T. Rubić, September 2005.

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Figure 7.3. Grandmother looking after her grandchild in the park in Travno Source: Photo by T. Rubić, September 2005.

this environment. Familiar social space became rather fragmented through movement of new residents in and older residents out, with a consequent increase in social differentiation among inhabitants. Growing consumerism, competitiveness, and a flexible and demanding job market changed attitudes toward work and leisure. From an etic perspective, one might suggest that Travno would become an increasingly antisocial space with increased anonymity. In this scenario, a decline in sociability would result in significant changes in children’s experiences and for the provision of child care. This has not quite been the case, however. While our interview partners at times characterized neighborhood relations in terms of the atmosphere of anonymity, discussions revealed that intergenerational family ties have been strengthened. First, this is due to increased proximity of family members’ households in the settlement. As Travno’s pioneer generation ages, its adult children remain and make use of baka servis with greater frequency. Interview partners themselves stressed the proximity of relatives’ households as vital to emotional security—that is, that everything and everyone is situated

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nearby. In some cases, grandmothers even moved into the settlement from other parts of town or the country in order to be readily available for child care. Second, there is also an increased emphasis on localized family networks of solidarity in order to cope with the new challenges of a neoliberal market economy. Grandparents involved in child care, especially grandmothers, saw it as an economic necessity to support their children and enable them to work and perhaps advance their careers. These practices tend to place a premium on female caregiver roles, as well as on the notion that good child care takes place inside the family, in a familiar (i.e., familial) setting—as opposed to an emphasis on institutional child-care settings as experienced under socialism. This chapter illustrates the dynamics, systems, and cultural practices linked to the questions of family and social values, social security, and social relationships in an urban settlement. Our research emphasis is that of urban ethnography as a means of qualitatively describing and analyzing strategies for organizing family and work, child care, and neighborhood help, as a way to understand how people operationalized the everyday. These features of Travno’s everyday experience form a constitutive element of social familiarity, the domestic environment, and an intimate urban space within the boundaries of the settlement. The everyday actions of inhabitants in the erstwhile socialist and now postsocialist urban setting, organized around child-care practices and networks, proved to be a fertile analytic frame for examining fundamental concepts of interest shared with other chapters of this study—that is, everyday life, place, space, and narration. Tihana Rubić is senior assistant/research associate in the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, at the University of Zagreb. Her research focuses on unemployment, informal economy, family, kinship, gender roles, and identity construction. She has done research on several international projects dealing with family relationships, symbols of identification, ethnic minorities, collective memory, folklore societies, and music. Carolin Leutloff-Grandits is senior research fellow at the University of Graz, where she works in the field of social anthropology. Her current work focuses on Kosovar Albanian family solidarity and transnational networks. She is author of the book Claiming Ownership in Post-War Croatia: The Dynamics of Property Relations and Ethnic Conflict in the Knin Region (Lit Verlag 2006), as well as coeditor (with Tatjana Thelen and Anja Peleikis) of Social Security in Religious Networks: Anthropological Perspectives on New Risks and Ambivalences (Berghahn Books, 2009).

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Acknowledgments We would like to thank the editors of this volume and Valentina Gulin, PhD, for comments on earlier versions of this text. We are also grateful to Prof. Jasenko Horvat, PhD, and the late Željko Horvatek for providing us with visual material for this paper. Notes 1. Valentina Gulin Zrnić, Kvartovska spika. Značenja grada i urbani lokalizmi u Novom Zagreb (Zagreb: Naklada Jesenski i Turk 2009), 61–68, 97–103. 2. Detailed plan of housing estate Travno, Miroslav Kollenz, “Travno. Urbanistički plan naselja u južnom Zagrebu,” Glasilo arhitektonskog fakulteta Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, Vol. 1, Zagreb 1975, 8. 3. Ethnographic research in Travno, Croatia was conducted by the authors as part of the international research project Kinship and Social Security (KASS) funded under the 6th Framework Program of the European Union. The KASS project was organized and coordinated by Patrick Heady of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale, Germany, and Hannes Grandits from the University of Graz, Austria. The ethnological research focused on two particular Croatian settings—one urban (Travno in the city of Zagreb) and one rural (Ciglane parish near the town of Bjelovar); both reveal the significant impact of everyday kinship assistance in the terms of social security provided to both individuals and family groups. See Carolin Leutloff-Grandits, Danijela Birt and Tihana Rubić, “Two Croatian Localities,” in Family, Kinship and State in Contemporary Europe, Vol. 2. The View from Below: Nineteen Localities, ed. Patrick Heady and Peter Schweitzer (Frankfurt/Main, 2010), 129–68. During the nine months of field research in Travno, we employed several methodologies: quantitative interviews (Kinship Network Questionnaire—KNQ); qualitative, narrative interviews; other qualitative research methods, such as participant observation; and archival and library work. In Travno we carried out thirty semistructured narrative interviews in the native language and mostly in the interview partners’ homes in order to create a friendly, informal atmosphere. Conversations generally focused on specific topics linked to social security concerns: for example, care for the elderly, child care, family rituals and cognition, aid practices, expectations, and values. We conducted a separate set of interviews with experts from various formal care-giving institutions—for example, a preschool education expert, a pedagogue and director of a senior care facility, elementary school teachers from the public kindergarten and from a private nursery school, both situated in the Travno settlement, as well as at a private kindergarten located in a nearby district. Most interviews were recorded and transcribed. Portions of the interviews have been translated for this chapter by the authors of this chapter. The project’s internal working material

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5.

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were forms for field notes, which were intended to help the researchers more efficiently structure notes taken in the field (i.e., in the course of the narrative interviews and participant observation). Each form should have contained some general data (temporal, territorial and personal), as well as more essayistic data that included mainly researchers’ written descriptions and notes taken in the course of the research and based on the researchers’ observations of atmosphere, setting, interviewee, and so on. These materials will be cited in this chapter as part of Ethnographic Report Croatia: The Urban Fieldsite Travno/Zagreb, manuscript, first draft, KASS project website, Graz, June 2006. The target group we interviewed in the category child care was nuclear families (mainly double-breadwinner parents with young preschool children) and grandparents—almost invariably grandmothers—in their capacity as providers of social and family welfare, in other words, child care. Our findings are based on narrative interviews conducted with nine individuals: four women (ranging in age from twenty-eight to thirty-five), two grandmothers (ages sixty and sixty-five), one grandfather (age seventy-two), and two men (ages thirty-five and forty-five). Patrick Heady, “Introduction: Care, Kinship and State in Contemporary Europe: A Brief Overview of the Three Volume Series,” in Family, Kinship and State in Contemporary Europe, Vol. 2, The View from Below: Nineteen Localities, ed. by Patrick Heady and Peter Schweitzer, 13–60 (Frankfurt/ Main, 2010), 13–60. The important role of grandparents as caregivers has also been stressed by Martine Segalen, “The Reality of Kinship: Sources and Significance of New Kinship Forms in Contemporary Europe,” in Family, Kinship and State in Contemporary Europe, Vol. 3: Perspectives on Theory and Policy, ed. Patrick Heady and Martin Kohli (Frankfurt/Main, 2010), 249–70, 256; Tatjana Thelen, “Caring Grandfathers: Changes in Support Between Generations in East Germany,” in Generations, Kinship and Care. Gendered Provisions of Social Security in Central Eastern Europe, ed. Haldes Haukanes and Frances Pine (Bergen, 2005), 163–88. The proximity of households made up of close kin has also been identified in other urban settings across Europe, for example in Vienna’s Karl-Marx-Hof, La Liberté in France, Marzahn-Hellersdorf in Germany, Porta Genova in Italy, Tare Miasto in Poland, and Välingby in Sweden. In addition to Segalen op cit., see Elizabeth Strasser and Peter P. Schweitzer, “Lost? Family, Neighbourhood and Social Networks in an Austrian Setting,” in Family, Kinship and State in Contemporary Europe, Vol. 2, The View from Below: Nineteen Localities, ed. by Patrick Heady and Peter Schweitzer, 13–60 (Frankfurt/Main, 2010), 108, 173–90. See Ivan Szelenyi, “Urban Development and Regional Management in Eastern Europe” Theory and Society 10 (1981): 169–205; as well as Valentina Gulin Zrnić, “Meanings of the City: Zagreb’s New Housing Communities,” in Testimonies of the City. Identity, Community and Change in a Contemporary Urban World, ed. Richard G. Rodger and Joanna Herbert (London, 2007), 97–118, 101.

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8. Distribution of apartments was guided prominently by the idea of resolving workers’ residential issues, yet it also operated according to political criteria—for example, party membership, public position, the designated importance of the workplace in the overall economic constellation, or military rank. Therefore, despite the proclaimed socialist ideal of equality, military officials, university professors, politicians, athletes, and highly educated parents with three or more children could receive larger apartments than the fifty- to seventy-square meters assigned to the average household. Others would generally not receive adequate housing, as the firms for which they worked had only a rather small stock of housing for distribution. Generally, housing was still a scarce resource and therefore many families lived in rather cramped conditions. This was also the case in Travno. Carolin Leutloff-Grandits and Tihana Rubić, Ethnographic Report Croatia: The Urban Field Site Travno/Zagreb, unpublished 2006 KASS project study, 11–12. 9. So-called društveni stanovi (society-owned apartments), which were largely situated in newly established settlements, were given to inhabitants in Socialism. See Nikša Božić, “One last battle fort he public space: The case of Travno park in Novi Zagreb,” (paper presented at the CINEFOGO conference “Citizen Participation in Policy Making,” Bristol, UK, February, 2007). Within the capital, extensive housing construction occurred in Novi Zagreb and other areas of the city, including close to the Zagreb city center (e.g., Šubićeva and Zvonimirova Streets). 10. A lack of institutional child care persists, however. Since the 1970s, “only 15 percent of children between the ages of one and three and 35 percent of children between the age of three and seven attend public pre-school institutions.” The preschool educational capacity in Croatia has not changed significantly into the second decade of the twenty-first century. “That means that the working parents had to rely on informal childcare services, mainly on members of close or broader kinship circles, which has inevitably influenced the formation of longer standing traditional ties relations.” See Vlado Puljiz and Siniša Zrinščak, “Croatian Family Policy in the European Context,” Revija za socijalnu politiku, 2002, 117–137, http://hrcak.srce.hr 11. Due to the worsening economic crisis in socialist Yugoslavia during the 1980s, jobs could not be provided to all who needed them. Also, labor migration to Western European countries became widespread and from the late 1960s onward many who remained relied on state support at great economic and social cost. See Ivo Baučić, “Die Auswirkungen der Arbeitskräftewanderung in Jugoslawien,” in Ausländerbeschäftigung und Internationale Politik, ed. Reinhard Lohrmann and Klaus Manfrass (Munich, 1974), 171–206. 12. D. Rihtman-Auguštin explains that contemporary theories of architecture and urbanism employ this syntagma in a different mode than employed in ethnology. Instead of “planning the alternatives,” its ethnological meaning is “more or less spontaneous divergence from the planned one” and “it is a basis for the creation of inhabitants’ collective identity in the newly formed settlement.” Dunja Rihtman-Auguštin, Etnologija naše svakodnevice (Za-

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greb, 1988), 96–97. Rihtman-Auguštin used the example of walking paths that people have gradually beaten in the grassy surfaces to crosscut or link the concrete sidewalks: “Very nicely planned routes became suddenly embroidered with—diversions. On green paths formed between two streets, residents and dogs are forming their walking paths” (98). Compare with Gulin Zrnić, Kvartovska spika. This is elaborated in detail by Valentina Gulin Zrnić. Ibid., 109, 110–18. According to the “Detailed Plan of the Housing Estate Travno” from 1971, which was valid at the time Travno was built (1972). Kollenz, “Travno.” More precisely, other features, such as a swimming pool, were planned, but eventually only the reduced version of the plan was realized. See Gulin Zrnić, Kvartovska Spika, 2009. Ibid., 180–85. Contrasts between emic and etic perspectives vis-à-vis an urban settlement are also explored in Leeke Reinders, “Re-imagining Nieuwland: Narrative Mapping and Everyday Urban Space in a Dutch Multiethnic Neighborhood” in this volume. Reinders examines the Nieuwland housing project and highlights differences in the formal mapping and informal perceptions of the how space is actually used versus how urban space is symbolically owned and shared. Demographic turmoil occurred both in the war years (1991 to 1995) and in the postwar period. Data on refugee return indicate some of these drastic changes. See Report on Return of Displaced Persons and Refugees in Croatia from 2000—2003, which illustrates quantitatively the dynamics of displacement, counted in a hundred of thousands: “Since the beginning of the return process in 1995, the number of registered returnees at the end of September 2003 reached 315,102.” Although conflict in the Croatian case in took place largely in areas farther away from the Croatian capital (e.g., most significantly in Dalmatia and Slavonia), trauma and uncertainty were omnipresent. The war in Croatia was part of the brutal ethnic conflict on the territory of former Yugoslavia during the first half of the 1990s that “generated more victims and greater transfers of population than any other seen in Europe after World War II. Approximately 250,000 people lost their lives and more than 2,000,000 fled their homes.” Rozita Dimova, From Protection to Ordeal: Duldung Status and Bosnians in Berlin, Working Paper No. 87 of the Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Halle/Saale: Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, 2006), 2. See Zakon o prodaji stanova na kojima postoji stanarsko pravo, Narodne novine, NN 1991/27. The most economical solution for purchasing an apartment was to pay cash up front, as this would reduce the total price enormously. Not all holders could afford to do so, however. The most prominent anfavorable reason was Many of those who could not pay cash on the barrelhead still made monthly instalments, often on a twenty-year payment plan. Ognjen Čaldarović, “Privatizacija kroz otkup stanarskih prava. Prvi socijologijski nalazi i aspiracije,” Društvena istraživanja 8, no. 6 (1993), 1021–40.

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21. Since people reach their apartments by elevator, and the short duration of the ride is not conducive to much conversation in depth, there is often very little in the way of relationships between residents of the same building. Furthermore, there is a great deal of suspicion toward people whom residents do not know, especially among single, elderly women—a suspicion reinforced by a number of robberies in summer 2005. See Leutloff-Grandits and Rubić, Ethnographic Report Croatia, 24. 22. Ibid., 13 The Croatian Employment Service defines several social groups “with the potential for legal employment” in Spomenica Hrvatskoga zavoda za zapošljavanje od 1906. do 2006 (Zagreb, 1906–2006), 57. These groups include, but are not limited to, young people with no work experience and long-term unemployed senior citizens. Since the late 1990s, “the first set of National Labor Market Policy Implementation Measures [ … ] introduced co-financing of employment for young people with no professional experience” and several years later were extended with “additional measures regarding the co-financing of the employment of older people (women over 45 and men over 50 years of age).” Ibid., 57. 23. Ibid., 14. During the course of our field research only one such case was mentioned, and by only one interview partner at that—an unemployed, single mother. 24. These cultural/political projects were postsocialist versions of “Houses of Culture.” After the collapse of state socialism, they became institutions designed to nurture and promote national instead of socialist culture, in most cases with insufficient financial resources. In the end, this made their sustained existence quite difficult, indeed often impossible. Although built in the mid 1990s, Društveni dom in Travno lacked any continuity with its regular cultural activities from the years before 2007. A Puppet Theater found a home here after 2007, the second such venue in Zagreb. The first was founded in the 1950s, and is situated in the City Center. 25. Leutloff-Grandits and Rubić, Ethnographic Report, 13. 26. These tendencies could also be observed in East Germany after unification. See Tatjana Thelen, and Astrid Baerwolf, “Traditionalisierung in der Flexibilisierung: Familiäre Geschlechterrollen in Ostdeutschland,” in Flexiblisierung. Folgen für Arbeit und Familie, ed. Marc Szydlik (Wiesbaden, 2008), 275–94. 27. Travno has three such formal institutional buildings that hold the nursery, kindergarten, and preschool programs, with a total capacity of up to eighteen kindergarten and six nursery groups. The markedly smaller number of nursery groups indicates that institutional child care in Travno is rather limited for children up to three years of age. This suggests that after the maternity leave has concluded and the child is one year old, institutional care in the settlement does not provide a sustainable capacity to meet parents’ needs. As a result, parents tend to rely heavily on informal modes of child care (grandmothers or reliable neighbors) to fill this gap until children are at least three years old.

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28. Leutloff-Grandits and Rubić, Ethnographic Report, 32 29. Ibid. 30. See Zakon o radu, Narodne novine, NN 38/1995. See also http://www.cro info.com/3Gospodr/Demografska_Politika/Sto_Kaze_Demografija.html 31. See Gulin Zrnić, Kvartovska spika. Compare, for example, with the ethnographic findings from the Austrian KASS research team in the socialist Karl Marx-Hof (a site also mentioned in chapter 5, this volume), where authors concluded that for the inhabitants the site is more than just “a physical address”; it is “the communal frame of reference.” See Elisabeth Strasser and Peter P. Schweitzer, “Community Lost? Family, Neighborhood, and Social Networks in an Austrian Urban Setting,” in Family, Kinship and State in Contemporary Europe, Vol. 2, 95. 32. See Nada Kerovec, “Položaj žena na hrvatskom tršištu rada,” in Nacionalna obiteljska politika, 2nd rev. ed., ed. Vlado Puljiz, and Decana Bouillet (Zagreb, 2003), 323–55; Vlado Puljiz and Siniša Zrinšćak, Demografska kretanja i obiteljska politika (Zagreb, 2004), 1–33; Nada Stropnik, “Impact in Transition on Family Policy,” in Population of Central and Eastern Europe: Challenges and Opportunities, ed. E. Kotowska and J. Joźwiak (Warsaw, 2003) 559–96. 33. On the role of grandmothers in support of their families, see also Susan Gal and Gail Kligman, eds., Reproducing Gender: Politics, Publics and Everyday Life after Socialism (Princeton, 2000), 3–19, 53. 34. Ibid., 5. Gal and Kligman stress the point that socialist gender arrangements were ambivalent and contradictory, both for women-as-workers and for women-as-mothers. 35. In the meantime, there was an expansion of ads and agencies that promoted au pair and babysitting services abroad (predominately in Great Britain). In the 1990s it was widely perceived that to babysit abroad was a most desirable job for young Croatian girls, since, “You go abroad, do a decent job, and earn good money.” This might have helped to render the notion prominent that a child minder is a young female of student age. Leutloff-Grandits and Rubić, Ethnographic Report. 36. See Elizabeth Dunn, Privatizing Poland: Baby Food, Big Business, and the Remaking of Labor (Ithaca, NY, 2004). 37. Leutloff-Grandits and Rubić, Ethnographic Report, 14. 38. See data in the poster presentation, Rubić Tihana, doctoral research proposal, http://www.ucl.ac.uk/mariecuriesocanth/research_files/tihana3.pdf 39. Ibid., 14. 40. Leutloff-Grandits and Rubić, Ethnographic Report. 41. Ibid., 27f. Emphasis added by the authors. 42. See Tatjana Thelen and Carolin Leutloff-Grandits, “Self-Sacrifice or Natural Donation? A Life Course Perspective on Grandmothering,” in New Zagreb (Croatia) and East Berlin (Germany),” Horizontes Antropologicos ano 16, no. 34 (2010): 427–52. 43. Leutloff-Grandits and Rubić, Ethnographic Report, 28.

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Jensen, A.M., ed. Children’s Welfare in Aging Europe. Vol. 2. Norwegian Center for Child Research, Tartu: Tartu University Press, 2004. Kerovec, Nada. “Položaj žena na hrvatskom tršištu rada.” In Nacionalna obiteljska politika, 2nd rev. ed., edited by Vlado Puljiz and Decana Bouillet), 323– 55. Zagreb: Državni zavod za zaštitu obitelji, materinstva i mladeži, 2003. Leutloff-Grandits, Carolin, and Tihana Rubić. Ethnographic Report Croatia: The Urban Field Site Travno/Zagreb. Unpublished report of the KASS project, 2006. Leutloff-Grandits, Carolin, Danijela Birt and Tihana Rubić. “Two Croatian Localities.” In Family, Kinship and State in Contemporary Europe, Vol. 2. The View from Below: Nineteen Localities, edited by Patrick Heady and Peter Schweitzer, 129–68. Frankfurt/Main: Campus, 2010. OSCE Mission to Croatia Headquarters. 2001. Internally Displaced Persons, refugees and Return Migrants. Rihtman-Auguštin, Dunja. Etnologija naše svakodnevnice. Zagreb: Školska knjiga, 1988. Segalen, Martine. “The Reality of Kinship: Sources and Significance of New Kinship Forms in Contemporary Europe.” In Family, Kinship and State in Contemporary Europe, Vol. 3: Perspectives on Theory and Policy, edited by Patrick Heady and Martin Kohli, 249–70. Frankfurt/Main: Campus, 2010). Strasser, Elizabeth and Peter P. Schweitzer. “Lost? Family, Neighbourhood and Social Networks in an Austrian Setting.” In Family, Kinship and State in Contemporary Europe, Vol. 2: The View from Below: Nineteen Localities, edited by Patrick Heady and Peter Schweitzer, 173–90. Frankfurt/Main: Campus, 2010. Segalen, Martine et al., “Three French Localities.” In Family, Kinship and State in Contemporary Europe, Vol. 2: The View from Below: Nineteen Localities, edited by Patrick Heady and Peter Schweitzer, 169–224. Frankfurt/Main: Campus, 2010. Stropnik, Nada. “Impact in Transition on Family Policy.” In Population of Central and Eastern Europe: Challenges and Opportunities, edited by E. Kotowska and J. Joźwiak, 559–96. Warsaw: Statistical Publishing Establishment, 2003. Szelenyi, Ivan. “Urban Development and Regional Management in Eastern Europe.” Theory and Society 10 (1981): 169–205. Thelen, Tatjana, and Astrid Baerwolf, “Traditionalisierung in der Flexibilisierung: Familiäre Geschlechterrollen in Ostdeutschland.” In Flexiblisierung. Folgen für Arbeit und Familie, edited by Marc Szydlik, 275–94. Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2008. Thelen, Tatjana, and Carolin Leutloff-Grandits. “Self-Sacrifice or Natural Donation? A Life Course Perspective on Grandmothering in New Zagreb and East Berlin.” Horizontes Antropologicos 16, no. 34 (2010): 427–52.

Index A action, 139, 144, 147, 150, 161, 169, 170 activism, activist, 139–53, 157, 162–65 (see also enthusiasm, enthusiast) actor-network theory, and the everyday, 8 and narratology, 28 and space, 15 Adorno, Theodor, and popular culture, 7 aesthetic form, 151 (see also style) agency, and consumerism, 7 vs. determinism, 15 allotment garden, 110, 118, 120, 126 Alltagsgeschichte, and the everyday, 9 Althusser, Louis, and narrative theory, 23 on ritual, 6 amateur, 145, 153 ambiance maps, 106 ambivalence, 153–54, 165 Amsterdam, 122 Annales school, and the everyday, 8–9, 91n6, 92n8 and determinism, 14 anonymity, 224, 233 anthropology, and the everyday, 9 impact on other disciplines, 9–10, 31–32 Arcaya, Pedro M., 93n13 Ariès, Philippe, and the everyday, 8 Aristotle (on rhetoric), 28

artist, 143–45, 148, 155, 157, 161, 163–65 asbestos-related diseases, 207–8 [See also asbestosis, mesothelioma, Clydeside Action on Asbestos, Society for the Prevention of Asbestos and Industrial Diseases (SPAID)] asbestosis, 203, 207 ascription, 127 attachment, 100–101, 102, 110, 114, 128 audience 141–43, 145, 148, 155 Auster, Paul (New York Trilogy novels), 1 Austrian Socialist Party (Sozialistische Partei Österreichs; SPÖ) (see also Social Democrats, 180–84) municipal district superintendents, 181 ward heelers, 181 avant-garde, 139, 142 B backwardness, 18 Bailer-Galanda, Brigitte, 187 Bakhtin, Mikhail, and the interplay of narration, space and the everyday, 2 and chronotopos, 2, 27 Barcelona, 122 Baudelaire, Charles, Paris poems, 1 on the flâneur, 17, 19, 21

244

Index

beaux arts, 81, 93n11 Beckermann, Ruth, 187 belonging, 99, 101–102, 110–11, 127 Belyj, Alexander (Petersburg novel), 1 Benjamin, Walter, 84 Berger, Peter L., 61 Bezirksvorsteher. See under Austrian Socialist Party, municipal district superintendents Black Friday. See under Venezuela Blanco, Andrés Eloy, 82 Blimlinger, Eva, 187 Bloch, Marc, 8 Blumer, Herbert, 61 Booth, Wayne, on narrative manipulation, 25 borders. See under Boundaries boundaries, 112, 127, 128 bourgeois, 149–50, 156 bourgeois cities. See under Latin America Braudel, Fernand, and determinism, 14 breadwinner, 225, 227, 229, 236 Brody, Hugh, 106 Browns (John) Shipyard, Clydebank, 204, 207 Burckhardt, Jakob, and narration in historiography, 29–30 Bürgermeisteramt. See under Vienna, Municipal Government, Mayor’s Office Burgess, Ernest W., 94n26 Burke, Peter, 10, 92n6 byssinoisis, 209 C Campbell, Joseph, and mythology, 32 Caracas, (see also Venezuela), Caracazo [revolts], 79 center, 76, 78, 85–86 demographic growth, 75–76, 78 master plan [plano regulador], 77–78 motorways, 78, 81

night life, 84–85 Quintas [villas], 81 shanties [ranchos], 78, 86 shopping centers, 79, 81, 90 skyscrapers, 78 spatial segregation, 79, 81, 86, 89 street vendors [buhoneros], 79, 86 subway, 78, 81, 90 tenement houses, 81, 84 urban sprawl, 76–77 Urbanizaciones [developments], 77, 81, 86, 88–90 violence, 89–90 Caracazo. See under Caracas Carthesian space, 105 care, child care, 219–21, 223, 225, 229, 234 family care, 220 health care 223 caregiver 221, 227, 234, 236 care networks 219, 226 cartography, 98–100, 104, 128 Casita, 101 censorship, 151 center, 20 Certeau, Michel de, 92n6, 97–99 and pedestrian perspective, 21 and the interplay of narration, space, and the everyday, 2, 5 Chauncey, George, (on spatial practices), 17 Chicago, in fiction, 1 Chicago School [of architecture], 93n11 Chicago School [of sociology], 88, 94n26 chrysotile (white asbestos), 207 CIAM. See under Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne Cinema, alternative cinema 152, 161, 163 art house cinema, 148

Index

cinema club, 139, 148, 151 cinema movement 139, 164, 168 communal cinema, communal cinema movement, 29, 164, 170 expanded cinema, 139, 148, 152–53, 157, 161, 163–64, 168, 170 Novi Film (Crni Talas, Black Wave, Open Cinema), 139, 152, 155–56, 161–64, 169–171 (see also kino klub, amateur film club, Freies Kino) city space, 139, 152 (see also urban space) civil society (see also public sphere), 140, 165, 224 class, (see also working class), 4 Clydeside Action on Asbestos (CAA), 201, 210–11 Cognitive mapping. See under mental mapping collectivism, 202 Collins, Randall, on narration in mathematics, 28 commerce. See under consumerism Communist Party (communism, communist) 145, 149, 152, 159, 161, 168, 169 attachment, 128 building, 232 center, 118 community ethnicity, 66 familiarity, 112 garden, 118 locality, 101 loss, 127–28 neighborhood, 110 St. George trial of 1922, 67 working-class, 128 compensation, industrial disease, 201, 206, 211 competitiveness, 233

245

Comte, Auguste, 93n13 Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne [CIAM], 78, 93n11 conflict, 101, 102, 110, 113, 126–27 constructionism, 99, 100, 101–102, 104–106, 109, 110, 125–26 constructivism, and space, 15 consumerism, 233 and agency, 7 and the everyday, 11 counterhistories, 30 Criollismo [nativism]. See under novel crocidolite (blue asbestos), 207 cross-disciplinarity, 2 Curaçao, 122, 123, 124 Cold War 159 cooperative 142–43, 148, 153, 163, 168 cultural studies, 7, 139, 144–45, 147, 153, 155, 161, 163, 165 culture, 150, 152, 154, 161–62, 165 Currie, Mike (on narrative manipulation), 25–26 cyberspace, 12 D danger money, 208 Darnton, Robert, and the everyday, 10 Darwin, Charles, 93n13 de Balzac, Honoré, (and realism), 11 deconstructivism, 23 deindustrialization, 202 Deleuze and Guattari, and vertical thinking, 6 Deleuze, Gilles. See under Deleuze and Guattari democracy, 5–6, 139, 142, 153, 159, 168–69 and literature, 11 and public sphere, 16 and theory, 2 denazification (Austria). See under Verbotsgesetz

246

Index

detachment, 98, 118 determinism, and geography, 14 social determinism, 14–15 Díaz Rodríguez, Manuel, 82 Díaz Sánchez, Ramón, 84 Dickens, Charles, (A Tale of Two Cities novel), 1 on London 1, 19 differences, 140, 149, 153–57, 162, 164–66 ethnic 164,-65, 171 gender 139, 163, 165 dig-where-you-stand movement, 9 discourse, (see also reeducation, education), 147, 151, 164 and analysis, 21, 28 spatial, 13, 220 urban, 1 discursive representation, 99, 106, 109, 125 discursive maps. See under Narrative maps disengagement, 115 Dixon, John, 106 Döblin, Alfred, (Berlin Alexanderplatz novel), 1 Dodge, Martin, 105 Donald, James, 1, 17 Downs, Roger M, 103–105 Duby, Georges, 8 Durrheim, Kevin, 106 dwelling, 98, 100, 101, 107, 109–10, 116–18, 122, 125 E Eagleton, Terry (After Theory), 24 economy, informal, 229 education, educational 144, 146–47, 149, 150, 152, 167 Elias, Norbert, 92n6 emotional maps. See under maps emotions, 100, 103, 125 employers’ organizations, 200, 202, 210

empty space, 99–100, 126–27 English Thermal Insulation Engineers’ Association, 203 Enlightenment, and the everyday, 2–3 and popular culture, 7 enthusiasm, enthusiast, 142–44, 146, 151, 165 environment 226, 233–34, domestic 234 essay. See under novel ethnic groups, 109, 113 ethnography, 107 ethnology, 3–4, 9 ethnomethodology, and the everyday, 8, 31–32 everyday, 98–100, 104, 106, 109–110, 125–26, 128 interplay with narration and space, 1–2 and Romanticism, 2f. and Enlightenment, 2, 4 and language, 3 and Ethnology, (see also Ethnology), 3–4 and temporality, (see also Time), 3 in France, 3 in USA, 3 in Central, Southern and Eastern Europe, 3 and folk culture, 4 and rituals, 4 and sociolinguistics, 4 and urban ethnography, 4 and class, 4 and democracy, 5 and reality, 5 and authenticity, 5 definition, 4 and ritual, 5f research strategy for, 6 operationalization of, 6, 8–10, 12 and hegemony (see also hegemony), 6

Index

and power, 6 and authenticity, 7 and space, 21–22 life and lives, 219–20, 228–92, 234 needs, 224 F Fabbiani Ruiz, José, 84 fabula. See under narratological concepts familiarity, 224, 234 Family, 219–20, 225–36, 229–30, 233–34 cohesion, 228 norms, 228 nuclear, 221, 236 obligations, 228 socialist, 219 fascism, 159 Febvre, Lucien, and the everyday, 8 Featherstone, Mike, 127 fiction, urban, 1 and the everyday, 10–12 fictional writing (see also fiction), 1 filmmaker, 142–43, 163, 168 flâneur, and realism, 11, 17, 19, 21 Flaubert, Gustave, and realism, 11 Fontenrose, John, on mythology, 32 formalism, 23, 27 forwardness, 18 Freies Kino, 143, 148, 158, 161, 163, 169 full space, 100, 126 functionalism, and urban space, 20 Furusato, 101 G Galicia (Habsburg Monarchy), 63 Gallegos, Rómulo, 81, 93n12 garden, 109, 110, 112, 118, 120, 122, 124, 126 Garmendia, Salvador, 81, 85, 88, 90 Gemeinde Wien. See Vienna, Municipal Government

247

Gemeindewohnung. (See under Vienna, Municipal Government apartments) gender, 7, 17–18, 64, 140, 163, 220, 227, 229–30, 234 and space 17–18 generation, 220, 228–30, 234, 236 Geertz, Clifford, and thick description, 5 gender, and space, 17, 18 Genette, Gérard, on narratology, 24 geography, and determinism (see also determinism), 14 and history, 8, 15 and race, 14 and space, 14, 19 and territory, 14 cultural geography, 14–15 Gil Fortoul, José, 82, 93n13 Ginzburg, Carlo, and microhistory, 5, 9 Gómez, Juan Vicente, 75, 82 González León, Adriano, 81, 89 grassroots mobilization 152 (See also activism, enthusiasm) Goffman, Erving, and the interplay of narration, space and the everyday 2 and the everyday, 10 and narration, 32–33 Goldschmidt, Walter, and cultural anthropology, 32 Gramsci, Antonio, on cultural hegemony (see also hegemony), 6–7 grandmother(s), 228–32, 234, 236, 239, 240 grandparents, 220, 228–30, 234, 236 Greene, Graham, The Third Man, 19 Greenwich Village (New York), 22 grounded theory, and anthropology, 10 Guattari, Félix. See under Deleuze and Guattari

248

Index

Günther, Hans F.K., and race in geography, 14 H Habermas, Jürgen, and space, 16 Habsburg monarchy, 59 habitus, 125, 127 Hakli, Jouni, 199 Harvey, David, Consciousness and the Urban Experience, 18 health care, 223 hegemony, and the everyday (see also everyday), 2, 6–8, 33 and folk culture, 7 and media, 8 and narration, 2, 23, 26, 33 and naturalness, 7 Herodotus, and critique of narration, 29 heterotopia, 17–18 Helmond, 122 Highmore, Ben, 64 historical-critical method, 30 historiography, and legitimation of narrative forms, 29–30 and realism, 11 and the everyday, 8–10 Soviet, 60 Ukrainian, 60–62 Western, 60 history workshop, and the everyday, 9 Hobsbawm, Eric, and constructivism, 23 Hoggart, Richard, and working class spaces, 21 home, area, 110 belonging, 99, 101–102, 110 country, 124 disruption, 111, 127 making, 99, 100, 110, 123, 125–27

place, 100–102, 110 sense of, 98, 106, 111, 114, 118, 125, 127–28 Hollywood, 142–43, 150, 157, 164 Holocaust, 65, 67 Holyk, Roman, 64–65 Horkheimer, Max, and popular culture, 7 Housing Requisition Law (Wohungungsanforderungsgesetz, WAG, Austria), 176–77, 179–86, 189–91, 192n5, 193n24 hot space, 127 household, 23, 225–29, 233, 236–37 housing, 219–23, 228–31, 235–38 and middle class, 108–109, 114, 118 and rights, 222, 231 Hugo, Victor, on Paris, 1 human geography, 102 I identity, 10, 13, 17–18, 37n40, 64, 65, 67, 97, 104, 106, 126, 127, 140, 175–91, 202, 220, 234. See also place and national, 7 ideology, 6, 23, 27, 59, 66, 151–53, 156, 167–68 imageability, 103 image environmental, 99, 126 mental, 99, 102–105, 125 on paper, 115 purified, 98 surface, 106 urban, 103–104 imaginations, 223 immigration. See under Venezuela imperialism, imperialist, antiimperialist, 149, 160, 162 individual, individualism, 139, 150–51, 153, 156–57, 163, 165 industrialization, 219

Index

information networks. See under networks institutions, 221, 224–29, 235, 237, 239 interactionism, and the everyday, 8–10, 15 International Style [in architecture], 81, 93n11 investment, 231 Islam, 117, 120 Ivan Kryp’iakevych Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 62 J Jakobson, Roman, on realism, 11 Jews: Austrian, 185–90, 194–95n40 and anti-Semitism, 189 Jodelet, Denise, 104 Joe Bloggs. See under Juan Bimba Joyce, James, 80 Juan Bimba [Joe Bloggs], 82–83, 85, 89–90 K Kahane, David, 67 Kindergarten, 221, 223, 225–28, 230–31, 235, 239 King, Peter, 100 kino klub, 145–47, 150, 152, 155, 160–63, 170 kinship, 219–21, 228–29, 234–37 Kitchin, Rob, 105 Körner, Theodor, 182, 189, 193n24, 194n28, 194–95n40 Kowarc, Susanne, 187 L Laclau, Ernesto, on hegemony (see also hegemony), 6 on space, 18f. on the everyday, 3 landmark, 100, 103, 126, 128 Latin America, Bourgeois cities, 79–80, 91n3

249

mass cities, 80, 82 Modernismo [modernism], 81, 84 modernization, 82 positivism, 93n13 working class, 80 Latour, Bruno, on verticality, 6 and narratology, 28 Lazarsfeld, Paul, and quantitative sociology, 30 Le Corbusier, and functionalism, 20 Lefèbvre, Henri, and the interplay of narration, space and the everyday, 2 Critique of Everyday Life, 16 Practice of Everyday Life, 16 The Production of Space, 15 Lefort, Claude 168 (See also people as one nation), 139, 140, 147, 149, 150, 152–55, 162, 164 Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel, and microhistory, 5 Lévi Strauss, Claude, and narratology, 32 life course, 228 Lippard, Lucy R., 105 literary techniques, and the everyday, 11–12 literary theory, and historiography, 29 innovation in, 2 and natural sciences, 23 and space, 19 and realism, 11f localization, 132 London, Jack, on San Francisco, 1 López Contreras, Eleazar, 77 Lotman, Yurii M., and narratology, 26 Lowenthal, David, 103, 105 Luckmann, Thomas, 61 Lynch, Kevin, 103–105, 126 Lyotard, Jean-François, on narration in science, 28

250

Index

M Madrid, Antonieta, 81, 89 Magistratsdirektion. See under Vienna, Municipal Government, City Manager’s Office Maines, David R., on narrative sociology, 22, 28 Mallet, Shelly, 101 Mamutica, 219, 224 map biography, 106 maps, 13, 17, 19 and emotional maps, 105 and mental mapping, 99–100, 102–106, 110, 125 and narrative mapping, 98–100, 105–107, 110, 118, 125–28 Maracaibo [Venezuela], 83 Marcuse, Herbert, and popular culture, 7 Mariño Palacio, Andrés, 84 Marinite, 207, 209 Marx, Karl, 92n8, 93n13 Marxism, 60 and neo-Marxism, 27 masculinity, 204, 209, 213 mass, 83–85, 89 Components, 82 democratic rights, 82 odyssey, 80, 89–90 See also Latin America Massiani, Francisco, 81, 88, 90 master narrative, 30 master plan. See under Caracas Mattl, Siegfried, 181 McIntyre, Owen, 205 McKenzie, Roderick D., 94n26 Medina, Isaías, 77 Medina Febres, Mariano [Medo], 82 memoralization, 106 memory, 119, 213 maps, 106 memories, 100–102, 105, 110, 114 place, 100, 127

Meneses, Guillermo, 81–82, 84, 86, 90 mental mapping. See under maps. mesothelioma, 203, 207, 210 metropolis, 89 segregation, 89 structure, 80 miasma theory, as determinism, 14 microhistory, 5, 9, 80, 92n8 microlocale, 100, 109, 128 migration. See also Venezuela Milgram, Stanley, 104 Minca, Claudio, 199 Mitchell, W.J.T., on narrative turn, 22 and realism, 11 and spatial discourse, 13 mixed-income housing, 109, 115 mnemonic device, 104 modernization, 223 and narration, 30 modernismo [literary modernism]. See under Latin America Moon, William Least-Heat, 106 moral region, 88, 94n26 Morley, David, 101 Morris, Meaghan, on shopping centers, 21 Moscow-Tartu school, and narratology, 26 and anticipation of spatial turn, 27 motherhood, 227 Mouffe, Chantal, on hegemony, (see also hegemony), 6 N Nakonechnyi, Ievhen, 67 nationalism, 60 narration, and agency, 15 and hegemony, 26 and historiography, 29–31 and ideology, 23, 27 and qualia, 10f, 12, 25–26, 31, 33 and self-reflection, 28

Index

and sociology, 28 and space, 26–27 and the political, 23, 26f, 28 and urban experience, 19 factual narration, 12, 24, 27 fictional narration, 11–12, 22, 24, 29 in law, 28 interplay with space and the everyday, 1f ubiquity of, 24, 28 narrative sociology, 22, 28–29 narrative theory, 23–25 and ideology, 23 and the political, 23 narrative time, 11 narrative turn, 22 narrativism, (see also new historicism), diegesis, 24–25 distance, 24–25, 43n108 focalization, 24–25, 31 plot, 11–12, 30 point of view, 25, 27, 30–31 subject/addressee, 24 narratology, 23–25, 28 and historiography, 29 and the political, 24, 26 impact on other disciplines, 24, 27, 31, 38n43 operationalization of, in other disciplines, 27 National Socialist German Workers’ Party and Austrian Federal Prohibition Law, 176, 189, 192n4 (Nationalsozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands, NSDAP), 176, 182–85 National Union of Mineworkers, 211 Nazi occupation, 65 Nazi Party. See under National Socialist German Workers’ Party

251

neighborhood, 219, 221, 224, 229–30, 232–34, 238 community, 110 conflict, 113 decline, 113, 127 demographic change, 110, 116–118, 119–120 multi-ethnic, 107–109 post-war, 99 relationships, 111, 112–116, 122, 125, 127–28 renewal, 101, 107, 110 research setting, 109–110 space, 98–102, 106, 110–111, 115, 118, 120, 123–24, 126, 128 surveillance, 117 neighbors, 220, 223, 226, 228–30, 232, 239 neo-Marxism. See under Marxism networks, 162–63, 170n51,219, 221, 223–24, 226, 229, 234 and social, 67–68, 101, 110, 116, 127–28 and urban, 175, 199–201, 204, 209–212 new historicism, on narration and history, 29, 92n6, 92n8 New York, 97, 101 New Zagreb, 219, 221 novel, and essay, 80 criollismo [nativism], 81, 88, 93n12 dramatis personae, 80–81, 86, 90 habitantes [inhabitants], 86 oil novel, 83–84 pequeños seres [little beings], 86, 90 realism, 10–11, 84, 88–89 modernismo (See also Latin America) NSDAP, Nazi regime 147, 149, 154, 167

252

Index

O odyssey. See under mass OHO (avante-garde cinema circle) 139, 144–46, 155, 160–61, 164, 166 one-party, 139, 151 (See also socialist, socialism, totalitarian) Ontological narrative, 126 Opfermythos (Austrian “Victimization Myth”), 190, 191n2 opposition, oppositional, 150, 158, 162 oppressed, the, history of, 31 oral history, 199–201, 203–204, 211, 212–213, 30f., 44n130 and narratology, 31, 45n136 and the everyday, 9 Otero Silva, Miguel, 81–82, 84, 89 owner-occupied housing, 107, 109, 116–118 P Pamuk, Orhan, Istanbul (novel), 1 parents, 220–21, 225–30, 232, 236–37, 239 Paris, 10, 14–15, 18 in fiction, 1, 19 Park, Robert E., 88, 94n26 partisan, 149, 150, 152 Payne, Peter, 202 pedestrian perspective, 21 people, the, 3, 34n9 as one, (see also Lefort, Claude), 149, 150, 154, 156 Pérez Jiménez, Marcos, 77, 86 Pérez, Carlos Andrés, 79 periphery, 20, 27 phenomenology, 100 and space, 12, 14, 16–17, 19–21 place, 219, 223–24, 226, 234 and attachment, 100–102, 110, 114, 128 and aversion, 115 and identity, 100–101, 106, 126

plot. See under narratological concepts Pocaterra, José Rafael, 81, 84 Poland, 59, 63 Polish-Bolshevik War, 65 politicization, (see also social movement; working class; student movement), 39, 161 positivism. and realism, 11 (see also Latin America) post-Marxism, and the everyday (see also everyday, Marxism), 7, 38n45 postmodernism, 5 and narratology, 10, 23, 25, 27 on ideology and narration, 23, 27 and space, 16, 18 and private life, 8 post-Soviet city, 59 postsocialist, 219–21, 224–26, 230, 232, 234, 239 power, 66 privatization, 220, 224 Propp, Vladimir, on narratology, 24 Proximity, 227, 233, 236 psychogeography, 106 public sphere, 153, 155, 161, 163, 165, 169; informal 155, 161, 163, 169 (see also civil society) Q qualia, 25, 31 and experience, 26f. and narration, 10–12, 25–26, 31, 33 qualitative sociology, and the everyday, 8 quality. See under qualia quantitative sociology, 30 R Ranke, Leopold von, 91n6 and narration in historiography, 29–30

Index

Realism, literary, 81, 84, 88–89 (see also novel) and modernity, 11, 38n45 and the everyday, 10–12 definition of, 11, 38n45 in Russia, 11 Red Road Flats (Glasgow), 209 reeducation, (see also discourse, educational discourse), 147 reflection of methodology, 31 representation, of space (see also space), 15, 18, 26 Residential history, 110, 128 resistance, 65–66 rhetoric, and narration, 23, 43n108 in law, 28 rights, tenant rights, 222, 224 risk (at work), 204–205, 208–210, 212 ritual, and narration, 32–33 and space, 20 and symbolism, 9 and the everyday, 4, 5, 6 as subject of historiography, 10 Roberts, John, 67 Rodman, Margaret, 102 Romero, José Luis, 80, 82 Rotival, Maurice H., 77 Rotterdam, 98, 112–113, 122, 125 S San Francisco, in fiction, 1 Sauer, Carl O., critique of determinism, 14 Savage, Michael, 199 Schütz, Alfred, 61 Scottish Thermal Insulation Engineers’ Association, 202–23 science, and narration, 28, 30 sectarianism, 202 security, 219–20, 231, 233–35 (see also insecurity), 231 segregation, socio-spatial, 18

253

self-reflection, and the political, 25 in anthropological research, 10 self-reflectiveness, 31 semiotics, in Soviet Union, 26 Russian, 26 Sennett, Richard (on urban fiction), 1 Sereda, Ostap, 63 settlement, 219–26, 228, 232–35, 237–39 satellite, 221 urban, 219–20, 238 sexuality, 151 shanties. See under Caracas Shipbuilders’ Employers’ Federation, 203 Shipbuilding Regulations, 1960 (UK), 203 shopping centers, 21 Simmel, Georg, 86 Sinclair, Upton (on Chicago), 1 Situationist International, 106 socialist (socialism), 139, 150, 155, 159, 170, 220–21, 229–30, 234, 237, 239 state-, 151, 153–55, 159, 170 socialization, socializing 140–42, 145, 147, 151, 163 social movement,139 (See also political movement, working class, environmentalism, student movement) social security, 219–20 Society for the Prevention of Asbestos and Industrial Diseases (SPAID), 210 solidarity, 220, 231, 234 sources, oral, 30 South Side (Chicago), 22 Soviet Union, 59, 146, 147, 149, 150 space, alienating, 232 alternative spaces, 16–17

254

Index

and culture, 7, 18–21 and disability, 17 and gender, 18 and hegemony, 13, 15, 16 and identity, 17–18 and imagination, 13 and language, 18–19 and logic of, 18 and narration, 3, 12, 26–27, 33 and place, 12, 16 and the public sphere, 16 and the sacred, 17, 21 and segregation, 18 and visibility, 17 antisocial, 233 appropriation of, 19–20 as category, 12–13 as container, 18, 22 as practice, 15 familiar (space), 219–20, 232–33 in geostrategy, 13 interaction with the everyday, 2, 16 interplay with narration and the everyday 1–2, 21 operationalization of the concept, 16 physical space, 13–16 production of, 15–16, 19 representational space, 15–16 representation of, 18 Soja, Edward and, 15–16 urban (space), 12, 17–18, 19, 22, 63–64, 219–20, 222–23, 232, 234 spatial turn, 19 Spencer, Christopher, 102 Spencer, Herbert, 93n13 Stalin, 60, 150 Status differences, 100 Stea, David, 103 Stieber, Nancy, 92n8 storytelling sociology, 28 strategy (strategies), 140, 147–48, 151–52, 154, 167

strikes (Clydeside asbestos laggers), 1967, 207–8 structuralism, 16, 23 anticipation of spatial turn, 19, 27 in Czechoslovakia, 23 in Russia, 23 legacy of, 23f., 28 student movement, 148, 158 “1968”, 139, 157–159, 161–62, 164–65, 168, 170 style, 146, 152, 153, 156, 159 (See also aesthetic form) subway. See under Caracas surveillance, 100–101, 117, 127 support, 219, 221, 237, 240 Suttles, Gerald, 16 symbolical interactionism. See under interactionism symbolism, 100, 103–4, 109–110, 126–28 in rituals, 9 T talking maps. See under Narrative maps The Hague, 125 theory, democratization of, 2 of narration. See under narratology thick description, 5 time, 3, 13, 17 and narration, 11 and space, 16 Tito, Josip Broz, 149–50, 153–54, 168 Todorov, Tzvetan, on narratology, 24 totalitarianism, 156, 164, 168–69 Toporov, Vladimir, and narratology, 26 Trade Union Congress, 210 trade unions, 203, 205, 209–211 See also Trade Union Congress; Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU)

Index

translocality, 19 transnational, 139, 147, 162, 165 Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU), 205, 210–211 Travno, 219–30, 232–39 Trubetskoy, Nikolay, reception in cultural anthropology, 32 Tuan, Y-Fu, 104 U Ukraine, 59–60 Academy of Sciences of, 62 university system, 59 Ukrainian-Polish War, 65 uncertainty 225, 238 unemployment 224–5, 227 United States, U.S. 147, 150–51, 154, 159, 160–62 See also America, American urban development 221–22 urban cultural history, 80, 92n8, 92n9 urban networks, 199–200, 209–212 urban planning 219, 221 urban renewal, see under Neighborhood renewal urban restructuring. See under Urban renewal urban space (see also city space), 140, 144 urbanization 219, 223–24 V Vallenilla Lanz, Laureano Jr., 81, 93n13 Venezuela, and bourgeoisie, 80 and immigration, 77–79, 82, 86, 89 and modernization, 82, 88 and oil bonanza, 76, 78, 81, 89 Black Friday, 79 oligarchy of, 79, 91n3 rural-urban migration, 76, 78, 83, 86, 89

255

urbanization, 75, 82 (see also Caracas) Verbotsgesetz. See under National Socialist German Workers’ Party, Austrian Federal Prohibition Law verticality, 2, 6, 18 Vertrauensleute. See under Austrian Socialist Party, ward heelers Vienna, Municipal Government. City Manager’s Office, 180 Mayor’s Office, 177, 180–81, 186–87, 189 municipal apartment building, 182 municipally-owned apartment, 184 Municipal Housing Office, 177– 80, 183, 185, 187, 189–90 Villanueva, Carlos Raúl, 77 W WAG (Wohnungsanforderungsgesetz). See under Housing Requisition Law, Austria Walker, David, 206, 215f30 walking. See under pedestrian perspective Walkowitz, Judith City of Dreadful Delight, 18 on spatial practices, 17 Watt, Paul, 127 Weber, Max, 92n8 Weetman, Marie, 102 welfare, 221, 223, 232, 236 Welsh, Roger, 106 White, Hayden, on narration and history, 29 Williams, Raymond, and literary theory, 23 Willis, Paul, and profane spaces, 21 Wodak, Ruth, 176 Wohnungsamt. See under Vienna, Municipal Government, Municipal Housing Office

256

Index

work culture, 204, 213 worker, 140, 148, 150, 152, 154, 168, 170 working class(es), 199, 200, 210 World Trade Center, 97, 125 World War I, 65 World War II, 63–55, 67–88, 147, 149, 152

Y Yugoslavia 219, 223–24, 228, 232, 237–38 Z Zola, Émile, Le Ventre de Paris [novel], 1