Idea Transcript
Urban History Group Conference, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
THE URBAN HISTORY GROUP Annual Conference
THE CITY AND THE HOME
University of Exeter 29 – 30 March 2007
Programme and Abstracts of Papers
Urban History Group Conference, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Urban History Group Conference, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
CONFERENCE PROGRAMME THURSDAY 29 MARCH 11.00-1.00 Registration 1.00-2.00 Lunch (for those who selected this option on booking – this is not included in the one-day package, which runs from after lunch on Thursday until after lunch on Friday) 2.15-3.30 SESSION 1
MAKING THINGS REAL: MAPPINGS OF HOME AND NEIGHBOURHOOD Recreating Nineteenth Century Sheffield: The Sheffield Urban Study Project Peter Blundell Jones (University of Sheffield) Urban space and cultural identity in Greek popular cinema (1950-1970): Aspects of an intimate relationship Angeliki Milonaki (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece) and Katerina Serafeim (Technological Institution of Western Macedonia, Greece)
3.30-4.00 4.00-5.15 SESSION 2A SESSION 2B 5.30-7.00 SESSION 3A
Tea NEW RESEARCHERS’ FORUM 1 NEW RESEARCHERS’ FORUM 2 CREATING COMMUNITIES: MIGRANT SOLIDARITIES IN THE CITY Migrant presence and belonging: The establishment of St David’s Church, Liverpool Mike Benbough-Jackson (Liverpool John Moores University) Coming to the great city: immigrant families and households in the growth of Madrid, a case study (Chamberí, 1860-1930) Rubén Pallol Trigueros (University of Madrid) "The Small City within the Metropolis: Neighborhood Identity and Reactions to Urban Renewal in Rio de Janeiro from the 1960s to Present" Mark Kehren (Loras College, USA)
SESSION 3B
HIGH RISE HOMES The skyscraper settlement: home and residence at Christodora House, New York City Alison Blunt (Queen Mary, University of London) Finding a home in a flat: contrasting attitudes to living in flats, London and New York, 18701910 Dr Richard Dennis, (University College London)
7.00-8.30
Reception (sponsored by Carnegie Publishing ) and Dinner
8.30
AFTER DINNER LECTURE: John Foot Story of a house: Piazzale Lugano 22
9.30
Bar
i
Urban History Group Conference, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
FRIDAY 30 MARCH 8.00 9.00-10.30 SESSION 4A
Breakfast KEEPING UP APPEARANCES: MIDDLE CLASS HOMES Managing appearances for the nineteenth-century city: health and beauty products in the middle-class home. Tim Davies (University of Leicester) "A certain distance"? intimacies, atmospheres and thresholds in the middle-class home in England, 1850-1910” Jane Hamlett (University of Manchester) The ‘new middle class’ in Bombay and changing conceptions of the idea of ‘home’ and the ‘city’ Romil Sheth (University of Michigan)
SESSION 4B
GENDER AND THE POLITICS OF HOME Shopping for Citizenship: The Housewife, the Suburb, and the City. Charlie Wildman (University of Manchester) Pockets of resistance: anti -war women in Manchester 1914-1918 Alison Ronan (Manchester Metropolitan University) Gender, domestic space and the Left: socialists and the politics of the home in the early decades of the twentieth century. Karen Hunt (Keele University)
SESSION 4C
DOMESTICATING MEMORY Home thoughts from abroad: how migration shaped australia’s domestic traditions. Graeme Davison (Monash University, Australia) Living with the outdoors: landscapes on the walls in a ‘big’ city Tiina Peil (Tallinn University, Estonia) Declaration of the Immigrant Identity: Anatolian Carpet on the Facade Olgu Caliskan (Middle East Technical University, Turkey) and Ceren Katipoglu (Middle East Technical University)
10.30-11.00 11.00-12.30 SESSION 5
Coffee CULTURAL DISCOURSES AND DOMESTIC INTERIORS Geographies of Georgian Scientific culture: natural philosophy and the home Paul Elliot (University of Nottingham) “A Room of Great Happiness and Love": The Functions and Meaning of the British Working-Class Kitchen. Lucy Faire (University of Leicester) Water-use, the home and the politics of the urban water consumer: 1880-1973 Frank Trentmann (Birkbeck College, University of London) and Vanessa Taylor (Birkbeck College, University of London)
12.30-1.00 1.00-2.0 2.00
Urban History Group business meeting Lunch (included in one-day conference package) Conference ends ii
Urban History Group Conference, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
ABSTRACTS OF NEW RESEARCHERS’ PAPERS FORUM 1 1950’s and 1960’s London: Irish and West Indian constructions of home Helen Milne (King’s College London) My research stems from an exploration of the various ways newcomers construct knowledge of place and space in new urban environments. This ‘knowledge’ incorporates notions of mobility, in moving through and conceptualising new spaces, dependent on a negotiation of socio-spatial constraints. An engagement with facets of the self, such as ethnicity, race and gender, and with the socially prescribed spaces of the city, is a key element of this research. I draw influences from behavioural geography and feminist writing pertaining to understanding, deconstructing and reconstructing discourses of the city and space. Irish and West Indian experiences of the socio-spatial environment of 1950’s and 1960’s London, forms the research focus of my PhD. Both Irish and West Indian men and women came to London in large numbers during these decades. The experiences of each group, based on differences in ethnicity and race and similarities based on class status, gendered occupation and discriminatory practices, will be explored. Real and imagined city This paper will concentrate on the concept of London as a new home for each of these newcomer groups. It will document the expectations of London in the migrant’s imaginary in relation to the sometimes harsh realities. The differences between the two newcomer groups will be analysed taking account of contrasting historical trajectories and socio-spatial expectations. For example, the conception of London as emblematic of Britain as ‘Mother Country’ would have conjured particular visions in the minds of West Indian newcomers. How did the real spaces and places of the city live up to these expectations? ii. Carving a place of one’s own Using examples from particular place-based activities in space created by newcomers, this paper also seeks to understand the various ways that newcomers create new spaces in the urban milieu. This will include obvious large-scale examples such as the Notting Hill Carnival and the St Patrick’s Day festivities, as well as less obvious developments in the minutiae of daily life, influenced by each newcomer group. Thus the various ways that Irish and West Indian groups have negotiated the city and managed to carve a place for themselves in old, new and contested territories will be explored.
-1-
NEW RESEARCHERS’ FORUM 1
Urban History Group Conference, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Shifting homes through migration: the possibilities of multiple belonging Lidija Mavra (King’s College London) This study will explore the changing experiences of ‘home’ and ‘belonging’ in the context of migration, specifically relating to Serbian immigrants in London. It will focus on what these two elements reveal about migrants’ ethnic identification, and the extent to which they impact upon their social relationships. This study is based on in-depth interviews and participant observation conducted with Serbs in London. The discussion will begin with how migrants themselves define their ‘home’, given that this is not always confined to a geographical area but can also relate to a familial ambience, or a sense of personal inner well being and fulfilment. Linked to this will be the question of where migrants feel they belong now and the key factors influencing that feeling, considering, for example, reasons for migrating (e.g. if forced or voluntary), changes in socio-economic status through the migration process, and potentially dramatic changes in the social fabric around them (e.g. if moved from a rural area straight to London). Following this, the argument that the ‘home’ (here referring to the actual physical dwelling) can reveal some of the most authentic expressions of an individual’s values given the private nature of this sphere, will be debated in relation to how far the space of the home conveys migrants’ sense of ethnicity in their new environment. Next, the function of the home in migrants’ lives will be explored specifically with a view to examining the impact of the home on their familial and social relationships – how frequently and to what intensity are these played out in the space of the home? And how may feelings of belonging to particular groups that come together in the private sphere of the home differ to feelings of belonging generated by socialising more ‘publicly’? Finally, the aspects explored above will be reviewed in light of age and gender – how particularly gendered and generational definitions (and experiences) of the home interact with the process of migration in complex ways so as to produce particular constructions of ethnicity and socialising tendencies. Concluding points of this discussion will focus on the following questions: To what extent can there exist a sense of simultaneous belonging to two (or indeed more) places? To what extent is there cohesion or contradiction between where migrants feel ‘home’ is and where they feel they ‘belong’? Is there such a group as ‘Serbian Londoners’? Where – geographically and psychologically – do migrants identify their ‘home’ and ‘belonging’ following their migration, in comparison to their pre-migration lives?
-2-
NEW RESEARCHERS’ FORUM 1
Urban History Group Conference, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Home making: domestic material culture in eighteenth-century Norwich Amy Barnett (University of Northampton) What made a house into a home? This question is central to, if largely implicit within, many attempts to understand the nature of domestic material culture and its relationship with domestic life. Drawing on the rich vein of evidence contained in seventeenth and early eighteenth-century probate inventories, studies have sought to trace the emergence and use of novel or luxury items, their location within the house, and the link between ownership and status (e.g. Weatherill, 1996; Overton et al, 2004). Yet, despite a focus on rooms and room use, surprisingly little attempt has been made to reconstruct whole rooms, either as a context for the consumption of sets of (novel) goods or as spaces for living. The essentially quantitative nature of much analysis makes it difficult to judge how individual rooms were furnished and how they viewed by their owners; how they fitted into the broader context of the home as a space of (social) production and reproduction; or how their occupants constructed and experienced them as lived spaces. Drawing on probate and diary evidence from eighteenth-century Norwich, this paper seeks to recreate the homes of a small number of individuals. Rejecting the simple dichotomy of front- and back-stage (Weatherill, 1996) – and the modes of behaviour with which these are unproblematically associated – our analysis highlights the liminal nature of many rooms: how they served a variety of functions and reflected a range of social identities. In particular, we emphasise the ways in which specific items gained meaning and emotional significance from a material context comprising other goods as well as the built space of the house (see Andersson, 2006). That these contexts could readily be manipulated to communicate key messages about status and identity underlines the home as a social as well as a material construct.
-3-
NEW RESEARCHERS’ FORUM 1
Urban History Group Conference, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The principle of privacy: spatial and social management in the mid-Victorian elite home. Lesley Hoskins Queen Mary, University of London Debates about the privacy of the Victorian home have largely concerned the relationship between the home and the ‘outside world’. But this paper focuses on privacy inside the midVictorian elite home, where it was as much a matter of defending the middle- and upperclass adult family and their guests against the indispensable outsiders within – namely the servants - as of defending it from those outside. In this context privacy was the basis of a system of physical spatial management and segregation that was intended to structure social relationships according to class distinctions and the practices of elite social and cultural behaviour. Not that the system was without contradictions and transgressions. The desire of the dominant class to keep their servants invisible conflicted with both a dependence on them and the desire to keep them under surveillance. Additionally, the spatial arrangements for the formal sociability that cemented class solidarity were sometimes at odds with a desire for intimate familial relationships and personal defensible space. Privacy within the home was intended to position everything and everybody manageably in its right place; this vision of order was the polar opposite of contemporary representations of the habitations of the urban poor as teeming, chaotic, and promiscuous. As Olsen suggests (1974), the techniques of physical segregation and management used to control the working class in the elite domestic environment paralleled the techniques used to control the working classes in the environment of the city. We can see a similar shape in the social geography of home and city.
-4-
NEW RESEARCHERS’ FORUM 1
Urban History Group Conference, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Tammany versus Temperance or Green against Orange? Dublin Municipal Politics 1899 to 1922 Ciaran Wallace (Trinity College Dublin) In the later 19th century Dublin faced an unusual situation. The decaying city centre was governed by a Nationalist council, while an increasing number of Unionist townships surrounded it. To address the city's pressing social and infrastructural problems the council desperately needed to expand its territory and thus increase its tax base. The self-governing townships vigorously defended their independence from, what they saw as, the inefficient and corrupt city council. The 1898 Local Government (Ireland) Act dramatically increased the municipal franchise and had the potential to radically change the political landscape across Dublin, Ireland and perhaps even the U.K. Coupled with this electoral reform, the threatened expansion of the city boundaries into Unionist districts was regarded by many as a precursor to Nationalist Home Rule. The Irish Parliamentary Party also had cause for concern over the new electoral roll. Could Irish Unionists hold onto their councils, would Nationalists retain the support of the newly enfranchised workers, how would the Labour Electoral Association affect the traditional contest between Green and Orange? Local election campaigns from 1899 to Irish independence in 1922 provide much useful information for assessing both municipal and national politics. Dublin city and its townships make an interesting study when placed in their United Kingdom context, alongside the Orange and Green lodges of Belfast and Liverpool or the principled reformers of Birmingham and Leeds. My work attempts to interpret shifts in public opinion and local politics across the period. I hope to evaluate how political, ethnic and class identities fuelled electoral debates. I will investigate whether existing models for British and American urban history are applicable to Dublin and its hinterland.
-5-
NEW RESEARCHERS’ FORUM 1
Urban History Group Conference, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
ABSTRACTS OF NEW RESEARCHERS’ PAPERS FORUM 2 Sustainable Suburbia: Engaging with current debates and historical remnants Felicity Paynter (Queen Mary, University of London) My research is concerned with exploring how and why culture is being utilised within suburban regeneration strategies, by addressing the different forms and locations that culture-led regeneration is taking in the homes, streets and communities of suburbs. Suburbs have, until recently, been largely absent from debates around regeneration, and have been unable to access regeneration funds. It is beginning to be recognised that not all suburbs are sustainable, and can not be expected to ‘potter along on their own, while focus and money are directed at the centre’ (Boland, 2005:1). Alongside this movement to approach suburbs in terms of sustainability and regeneration, has been the growing importance of culture as a regeneration tool. Culture and the arts are being called upon to attract investment and renew suburban areas but little academic attention has been paid to the analysis of this relationship. With such a high proportion of the population inhabiting suburbs it is evident that we must address emerging regeneration and cultural issues within suburban areas. The view of suburbs as unsustainable and in need of attention in terms of policy and investment conflicts greatly with the socially embedded representation of suburbs and the ‘ideal home’ as a social and geographical location to aspire to. The idea of suburbs as a haven of family values, mass consumption and domesticity – and the materialization of this idea in the suburban home - has been historically produced and played out within the UK. In this paper I will explore the ways in which suburban pasts are mobilized in current debates about suburban regeneration. I will argue that interwar suburbs and suburban homes are central to understanding the contemporary city and for broadening current policy debates. Bringing the contemporary suburb and its historical discourse to the forefront of popular, strategic and academic debate is vital in the pursuit of the revitalisation of our suburbs, and of our towns and cities.
-6-
NEW RESEARCHERS’ FORUM 2
Urban History Group Conference, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Post-Colonial Identities: The Space of Bureaucracy in Urban Delhi Rohit Raj Mehndiratta (Davis Brody Bond LLP, USA) This paper investigates the way multiple identities were adopted and constructed to define the space of bureaucracy in Delhi after India gained independence from the British in 1947. The proposed conception of nationhood, as an abstract collective defined by a modern, liberal nation-state and a civil society inherently conflicted with the idea of caste and communities. Post-Colonial governance defined itself through colonial strategies that ruled by creating difference, reinforcing the idea of caste and community systems as a traditional and a pre-modern subject. However, unlike its colonial predecessors, the new Nation-State legitimated itself as a developmental agency that was neutral and equitable. At the same time, as a form of governance it continued as an extension of its colonial past. I argue that Post-Colonial Delhi’s expansion adapted itself to the strategic identity the New Nation-State sought. The urban space of the Colonial Metropolitan government was conserved, adopted and yet transformed to reflect the new Nation-State. I articulate my argument through the manner festivals and name-placing techniques re-marked the space of colonial power. Simultaneously, the development of predominantly bureaucratic spaces emphasized a ‘neutral’ urban condition set within colonial strategies of place-making. Here, I use the Master Plan of Delhi (1960) and developments (in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s) such as Rama Krishna Puram, a bureaucratic neighborhood in Delhi and Chanakya Puri, space of the new consulates in India to consolidate my argument. The Master Plan legitimated the colonial environment as it simultaneously laid down essential processes that defined the figure ground of the envisaged neutral condition. In doing so, the space of urban bureaucracy was a condition where pre-colonial memories were ruptured or historicized into a linear narrative of development and progress, a condition set within the memory of the Colonial State and the modern adaptation of a similar form of governance.
-7-
NEW RESEARCHERS’ FORUM 2
Urban History Group Conference, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Mapping ‘home’ as a site of (in)security Imogen Wallace, (Department of Geography, Queen Mary University of London) Since the events of September 11 2001, the concept of homeland security has been at the forefront of American political ideology and is increasingly entering into the British political lexicon. The conceptualisation of the nation as home is a fairly commonplace, historically charged and powerful spatial imaginary. Its utilisation within the United States is however, a recent phenomenon and one which has been subject to increasing academic critique. It is my intention within this paper to situate and map out these critiques, paying particular attention to their historical context or connections. The first strand of my paper shall examine broader arguments concerning the politics of home and ideas about home as a site of security and insecurity focusing on historically rooted and culturally specific notions of the home as a space of comfort. I then want to look at the way in which contemporary constructions of homeland in the US plays upon the intimate and exclusionary connections between the ‘domestic’ and the ‘foreign’ and the implications this has in terms of both the individual ‘home’ and the ‘nation as home’. I shall then turn to question the role of the domestic within political and media discourses concerning domestic security within the UK and, in particular, within cities in the UK. The paper considers the extent to which Britain is constructed as a homeland or a ‘haven’, and the ways in which particular scales of ‘home’ are similarly utilised through an ideological obsession with belonging, boundaries, citizenship and security. In doing so I intend to outline how these ideas relate to the city and to my research, which will examine the ways in which the different media constructions of Muslim communities, home and homeland intersect and impact upon individual experiences of Muslim families since the 7/7 bombings.
-8-
NEW RESEARCHERS’ FORUM 2
Urban History Group Conference, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Historic district conservation in china: Assessment and prospects Zhu Qian (Texas A & M University, USA) Economic reforms towards a market economy have significantly accelerated urbanization and modernization in urban China. The local state has played a principal role in conservation practice under China’s administrative and fiscal decentralization process and localization of urban planning encountering challenges of implementation. This study examines historic district conservation policies and practices in China, where urban conservation became a significant issue and pressing concern in the era of economic reform and modernization. In addition to illustrating the evolution of and approaches to historic district conservation, it reveals some of the key social and political problems due to the weakness of current stateled urban conservation practice. It concludes by proposing a collaborative approach to urban conservation among state and non-state actors, facilitated by changes to current institutional and funding frameworks capable of meeting the challenge of balancing conflicts between the conservation and redevelopment agendas. The case of Quanzhou, Fujiang Province is examined to show how the municipal government has conducted historic district conservation in the context of market economy conditions.
-9-
NEW RESEARCHERS’ FORUM 2
Urban History Group Conference, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
City Preservation, Memory and Identity Lucy Hewitt (University of Leicester) To designate a place as a home is to ascribe meaning to a particular space, to establish an emotional bond of belonging, identification, familiarity. Such a bond both implies and demands a sense of permanence: we may change where we reside, but to speak of a place as home indicates that the bond we have with it endures despite the interruption of temporary distance. Constructing a home is, therefore, in part, a process of establishing a sense of continuity and solidity between people, place and the history they share. It is also, like the act of constructing an identity, a ‘process of othering’, 1 of distinguishing what constitutes our home by contrasting it with other spaces that do not hold that meaning. As social groups the powerful and primary relation with a homeland establishes the right to reside, to claim the history of a landscape and to establish and participate in social institutions. Where there has been conflict over the right to be at home in a particular place, especially where this involves the entitlement to describe an authentic historical connection with a place, the ramifications of this bond become both highly visible and difficult to negotiate. Examples from Germany and Israel, amongst other territories, will be used to illustrate the potential for exclusion. In this paper I will begin by exploring some of the connections between identity, memory and place which underpin the effort to construct a sense of home and belonging. Subsequently, I will examine some of the ways in which cities are landscapes constructed by particular groups through particular memory narratives which differentiate identity, delimit history and, in so doing, create or solidify a specific discourse of home and belonging. I will draw on the early stages of my research into the practices and objectives of city-based preservation organizations. City preservation trusts and civic societies, the earliest of which, in England, were founded in the first decades of the twentieth century, have grown rapidly in number since. Currently many state explicitly that their aims include increasing civic pride through promoting an awareness of the history and geography of the city, and by seeking to preserve features of particular historic and architectural importance. In so doing, such organizations are actively engaged in shaping the character of the urban landscape and the prioritising the visibility of certain aspects of a city’s history. How far the activity of city preservation might be understood as involved in the scripting of place, and the extent to which it thus establishes a selective sense of history are the key questions I will seek to address.
1 Trinh T. Minh-ha, ‘Other than myself/my other self’, eds. George Robertson, Melinda Marsh, Lisa Tucker, Jon Bird, Barry Curtis and Tim Putnam, Travellers’ Tales: Narratives of Home and Displacement, (London, 1994), p 18
- 10 -
NEW RESEARCHERS’ FORUM 2
Urban History Group Conference, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
ABSTRACTS OF PAPERS
- 11 -
Urban History Group Conference, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Recreating Nineteenth Century Sheffield: The Sheffield Urban Study Project Peter Blundell Jones (University of Sheffield) This paper is about the problems of spatial understanding and of the need for representation of the city in a way that allows it to be discussed and interpreted in some detail. The main vehicle is an ambitious study of Sheffield which attempted to reconstruct the state of its fabric as it stood in the year 1900, identifying growth patterns, building types and social uses. The work focused on a model at 1:500 scale built in sections covering squares on the ground of 200 metres by 200 metres. These artificially created tiles of city are small enough to set the individual building in the context of a couple of local streets, and to give an accurate view of the social identity of an area, yet by putting them all together one comes to understand the nature of the city as a whole. The study also showed the need to look at a city as an evolving entity in constant change, a palimpsest on which new lines are inscribed by every generation.
- 12 -
SESSION 1
Urban History Group Conference, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Urban space and cultural identity in Greek popular cinema (1950-1970): Aspects of an intimate relationship Angeliki Milonaki (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece) and Katerina Serafeim (Technological Institution of Western Macedonia, Greece) The first two decades after the war (1950-1970) were a critical period of upheaval and change in Greek urban space, which was undergoing transformation from its traditional orientation (50’s) and moving towards a modernized direction (60’s). The main characteristic of post-war Greece was its transition from a rural, under-developed society into a society undergoing rapid urbanisation and modernisation, characterised by dramatic ideological, economic and cultural change. The increasing migration of rural populations from provincial areas to urban centres had an immediate and catalytic effect on the framing of modern Greek cultural identity, which advanced in tandem with changes in urban space, following a similar transition from traditional to modernizing structures. This shift can be seen not only in the historical dimension of urban space, but also in its depiction in the Greek cinema of the period, which was the most popular form of mass communication during the years in question. It is fascinating to observe the parallel courses taken by urban space and cultural identity in the Greek films of the period, which highlight the impact of the ideological setting of the period. The analytical-interpretative pattern of tradition-modernization is so powerful that it pervades the majority of the films made at this time, offering an autonomous and interesting method for classifying domestic cinema along the underlying axis of urban space and its transformations. During the first post-war decade Greek cinema laid its emphasis on the public space of the city, and – particularly – on its traditional image. This is brought alive most vividly in the films representing a ‘public view’, which offered traditional representations of the city (the old quarters of the city, the traditional working class areas), expressing the dominant ideological and cultural polarity of tradition and innovation in modern Greek society. This was followed by a transitional period of withdrawal in the depiction of the city, seen in the passage from traditional to more modern lifestyles. In terms of space, this is manifested in gradual changes in the image of the city seen in those films located at this turning point in changing attitudes, in which what was until recently the dominant traditional identity of the city is now less prominent. At the same time private domestic space begins to make its appearance in films, indicating the shift in the cultural identity of urban space in more modernising directions. The following decade is marked by a change in the cultural identity of urban space as portrayed in films, reflecting the modernisation of Greek society and the introduction of new western culture models. The city is no longer used as the main setting for the drama; instead, emphasis shifts to the home – mainly depicted in the guise of a modern apartment. The new image of urban space in the films adopting a ‘private view’ is manifested in a downplaying of the importance of urban landscape in itself and the emergence of more modern versions of city life (nightlife, consumerism, modern traffic conditions, etc.). At the same time the modern apartment becomes the symbolic space par excellence for Greek cinema, promoting new models for the home and for the identity of the average Greek, who is gradually shedding the introversion and isolation of the traditional community and acquiring a more outward-looking and modernising profile.
- 13 -
SESSION 1
Urban History Group Conference, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Migrant presence and belonging: The establishment of St David’s Church, Liverpool Mike Benbough-Jackson (Liverpool John Moores University) There are many forms in which migrants can express, maintain or indeed rekindle aspects of their ‘home’ in urban environments. These may be either consciously articulated or unintentional. Incomers have made their presence felt through accent, language, clothing and behaviour. These avenues warrant study and should not be overlooked as they can balance and complement other readings of migrant activity. More formal demonstrations of migrant presence – such as buildings, processions and societies – leave more records. As Richard Lewis and David Ward noted in their study of the Welsh on Teeside from 1840–1940, ‘the presence of Welsh chapels has been taken as the most tangible evidence of the existence of a distinct, self-sustaining Welsh community’. Whilst there is a risk that consideration of these conscious, well recorded, expressions of difference can distort perceptions of migrant experiences. For example, chapels can be taken as embracing all Welsh first generation incomers. Nonetheless, balanced assessments of the contemporary significance of institutions and the meanings attached to them can improve our understanding of migrant and host communities. By investigating acts and perceptions of migrant presence, we can, in the words of the population geographers P. White and P. Jackson ‘question the ideological construction of social categories and seek to uncover the material interests that such categorisations inevitably serve’. In this case, the social category of ‘the Welsh’ will be explored. Unlike most migrants, many of the Welsh on Merseyside were close to their place of origin. Yet they were unquestionably in a different cultural milieu where English was the dominant language. This paper takes an aspect of the history of the Welsh in Liverpool – the establishment of the church of St David’s in the late 1820s– and assesses how this palpable migrant presence came about and its implications for Welsh migrants: did it preserve, reconfigure or impose an idea of ‘home’. It is important to stress that the history of the Welsh on Merseyside has many facets as Welsh people from different areas, with varied denominational leanings, and possessing varying degrees of cultural and/or economic capital settled there. Published work on the Welsh in Liverpool has concentrated on nonconformists – the Calvinistic Methodists in particular. Although nineteenth-century Wales was predominantly nonconformist, a significant number of Welsh people were members of the Established Church. St David’s was the first church in England specifically dedicated to house a Welsh congregation. A study of this church will, therefore, contribute to our understanding of a hitherto unexamined section of the Liverpool Welsh. Church records and commentary about the establishment in the press present an opportunity to trace the nature of Welsh migration, expressions of difference and attempts to maintain difference in the nineteenth century.
- 14 -
SESSION 3A
Urban History Group Conference, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Coming to the great city: immigrant families and households in the growth of Madrid, a case study (Chamberí, 1860-1930) Rubén Pallol Trigueros (University of Madrid) In spite of its lack of an industrial transformation, the city of Madrid grew in a spectacular way between 1860 and the arrival of the Second Republic in 1931. Not only was the urban surface multiplied by three within these years, but also the population increased from about 300,000 to nearly 1 million registered in the 1930 census. As happened elsewhere in Europe, this growth was followed by the development of the infrastructures and of the welfare institutions which an increasingly large city demanded. A great part of the new inhabitants of Madrid were casual workers from the countryside who found difficulties integrating in a labour market still rooted in the old trade organisation and incapable of absorbing more workers. The descent into poverty was not only a risk but a constant threat to the families of the lower classes in a context of seasonable unemployment, low wages and increases in house rents and in the price of food. In the absence of an institutional network of welfare which could cope with the problems generated by the urban growth, these new inhabitants had to create their own networks of solidarity. Help from relatives and people from the same village of origin was indispensable in the arrival to the city as patterns of immigration can show. Immigrants from the same village tended to rent rooms in the same streets and neighbourhoods, sometimes in the same buildings. The proximity of these acquaintances provided a sensation of being at home for recent arrivals to the city. The paper will try to map these networks of solidarity created by immigrants in Madrid in their attempt to make the city their home. Analysing information contained in the census of one of the new neighbourhoods created by the urban enlargement of Madrid, Chamberí, I will recreate the patterns of immigration and its changes between 1860 and 1930. The information contained in the 1860, 1880, 1905 and 1930 census of this neighbourhood (whose population grew from 5000 to 130,000 within these years) has been incorporate in a database, which permits complex analysis based on methods from anthropology and from the microstoria.
- 15 -
SESSION 3A
Urban History Group Conference, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
"The Small City within the Metropolis: Neighborhood Identity and Reactions to Urban Renewal in Rio de Janeiro from the 1960s to Present" Mark Kehren (Loras College, USA) When Rio de Janeiro lost its status as the federal district and capital of Brazil in 1960, there were numerous politicians, planners, architects, technocrats, artists, and residents profoundly determined to modernize, reform, and develop Guanabara’s urban infrastructure in order maintain Rio’s position as the “true” capital of Brazil. During its short tenure as the citystate of Guanabara (1960-75), Rio de Janeiro experienced its most intense period of growth in population and urban development. The various measures of investment, resources, and effort devoted to modernizing and reforming the city-state were unprecedented and also contributed to transformations in the city’s space physically, culturally, and socially. This paper examines the way that certain communities, particularly the neighborhood of Catumbi, reacted to these urban renewal plans beginning in the early 1960s. Throughout the twentieth century, Catumbi was the main destination for Italian and Portuguese immigrants to Rio de Janeiro, as well as the home turf for the largest gypsy community in the city. This vibrant socio-cultural composition of the neighborhood was also enhanced by ethnically and racially diverse migrants from other regions of Brazil who opted to settle in Catumbi. Primarily lower middle class, the residents of Catumbi thought of their neighborhood as a “small city within the metropolis” as witnessed through the Italian and Portuguese style of their homes (rather than apartments), shops and commerce, and socio-cultural clubs and activities. Their idea of home and community directly conflicted with the massive urban renewal agenda of the 1960s and 1970s which centered on the automobile and subsequent construction of expressways, tunnels, high-rise apartment complexes and office towers. Due to its location on the fringe of Rio’s Central Business District, Catumbi was consistently targeted by planning officials and technocrats as an ideal site for urban renewal. This eventually caused uproar, massive protest, mobilization, and major displacement for the neighborhood’s residents over a span of decades. Based on numerous primary sources such as planning documents, neighborhood association documents and newspapers, and interviews, this paper will examine the ways that Catumbi’s residents envisioned and constructed ideas regarding the city, home, and neighborhood character during the height of urban renewal schemes in Rio de Janeiro during the second half of the twentieth century.
Keywords: Neighborhood Identity; Urban Renewal; Immigration/Migration; 20th Century International and Comparative Planning History
- 16 -
SESSION 3A
Urban History Group Conference, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The skyscraper settlement: home and residence at Christodora House, New York City Alison Blunt (Queen Mary, University of London) This paper develops a house biography of Christodora House, New York City, to investigate the relationships between the built form of a settlement house and new forms of residence within it. Settlement houses were founded from the 1880s as centres of neighbourhood welfare and social work, and housed resident workers to live in the poorest parts of cities. Founded in 1897, Christodora House occupied a purpose-built ‘skyscraper’ on Tompkins Square from 1928 to 1948. This building not only provided new and modern accommodation for settlement work, but also incorporated new forms of housing. This paper considers the ways in which the building itself – as both ‘house’ and ‘skyscraper’ – was not only shaped by, but also recast, embodied practices of settlement, inhabitation and domestic life. As a ‘skyscraper’ built for settlement work, Christodora House represented a new, but ultimately unsuccessful, form of dwelling in the city.
- 17 -
SESSION 3B
Urban History Group Conference, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Finding a home in a flat: contrasting attitudes to living in flats, London and New York, 1870-1910 Dr Richard Dennis, (University College London) This paper compares the attitudes and experiences of architects William H. White and James T. Knowles who, at different stages in their careers in Victorian London, variously advocated and condemned flat-living, and designed and lived in blocks of middle-class mansion flats. Particular attention is paid to their views on the ‘homeliness’ of flats, especially by comparison with, on the one hand, fictional accounts by contemporary novelists including George Gissing, who also had several years’ experience of making his home in a purposebuilt flat, and, on the other, publicity materials produced by companies and agents managing flats, that purport to show how flats functioned in practice. As a counterpoint to the discourse in London, W.D. Howells’ discussion of the ‘Xenophon’ apartment building in his coming-to-New York novel, /A Hazard of New Fortunes/ (1890) elides the themes of ‘coming home’ and ‘finding a home’ in the New York equivalent of a London mansion flat. Like Gissing, Howells drew heavily on his own experience of flat-living; unlike Gissing, he continued to make his home in a succession of flats, perhaps indicating both transatlantic and class differences in attitudes to apartment life at the end of the nineteenth century.
- 18 -
SESSION 3B
Urban History Group Conference, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Story of a house: Piazzale Lugano 22 John Foot (University College London) This film, based on oral history interviews, documentary research and participant observation, looks at the history of Milan through the story of a working class apartment block. Memories of change and discourses relating to the past are linked to the neighbourhood through interviews, photographs, super8 and archive film and maps. A fresco of lost worlds emerges - the courtyard, the rural past, the Visconti villa, childhood which are linked to deep social and cultural change (the factory and the working class). The film also analyses the changes to specific places in the neighbourhood - factories which have become office blocks, universities, shops or simply rubble. The film looks to understand and relate the difficult relationship of Milan with its recent past, and builds on the analysis in John Foot's book Milan since the Miracle. City, Culture and Identity (Berg, 2001) published in Italian as Milano dopo il miracolo. Biografia di una citta (Feltrinelli, 2003). For film chapters and further information on the project see the website: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/place-and-memory/milan/bovisafilm.htm
- 19 -
AFTER DINNER LECTURE
Urban History Group Conference, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Managing appearances for the nineteenth-century city: health and beauty products in the middle-class home. Tim Davies (University of Leicester) Urban growth in Britain reached an unprecedented level during the early decades of the nineteenth century. The prospect of employment acted as a magnet, encouraging increasing numbers to establish homes in the city. Whilst the large majority of unskilled labourers often had to cohabit with other families, middle-class suburbanisation created havens of privacy and organisation. Life in such homes was regulated: household chores were meticulously managed, budgets were carefully calculated and guests were cordially received. However, middle-class society did not withdraw from public interaction. Far from it, such families were stalwarts of subscription libraries, musical and operatic concerts and association life. The middle-class home, therefore, was a ‘dressing room’ in which to prepare for life ‘on the stage’ of the city. In suburban homes ladies powdered, plucked and painted their appearances into shape, whilst men dyed and elegantly dressed their hair. Exploring the claims made and promises pledged by such products offers an insight into the way in which the Victorian middle classes wished to be perceived in public. Based on analysis of the language used to promote health and beauty products, this paper, therefore, presents a new perspective on the division between the private and public sphere. Rather than representing merely an arcane aspect of Victorian of life, nineteenth-century health and beauty products represent an extension of the privacy of the middle-class home: a strategy of keeping up appearances.
- 20 -
SESSION 4A
Urban History Group Conference, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
"A certain distance"? intimacies, atmospheres and thresholds in the middle-class home in England, 1850-1910” Jane Hamlett (University of Manchester) When vicar’s daughter Winifred Peck remembered her late nineteenth-century childhood, she recalled that the way in which her home was organized “invested a parent with the mystery and enchantment of a certain distance.” The nineteenth-century middle-class home was a unique domestic space: its distinctive organization had a profound impact on the formation of social identities and family relationships. A typical middle-class home had a drawing room, dining room, marital bedroom, nursery and servants’ quarters. The creation of these spaces helped form relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children and masters and servants. The use and arrangement of domestic goods were an essential part of nineteenth-century everyday life that played a key part in the creation of social identities and relations between individuals. Social historians have viewed nineteenth-century domestic space as a separate domestic sphere, and have argued that it became increasingly segregated and private. This paper argues that rather than fostering increasing privacy, the middle-class home was designed to create a complex system of relationships. The home could be a private space, but often it created relations both intimate and distant. It brought family members together, but also kept them apart. This paper will examine the structure of the home, showing the role of atmospheres and thresholds in the creation of social relations. Changes in probate regulation during the nineteenth century mean that few inventories survive from this period. However, after a nationwide search of local record offices, I have assembled a small sample of inventories and printed sale catalogues: the first survey of its kind for the nineteenth-century home. The survey focuses on both rural and urban homes in the south and north east of England. While inventories reveal the spatial structure and occupancy, personal testimonies provide insight into the way in which these spaces were used and understood. The paper will draw on a quantitative and qualitative survey of eighty published autobiographical accounts and thirty two manuscript diaries. Occupation, locality and level of wealth all made a difference to how ‘home’ was experienced. Rural and urban experiences were distinctive: solitude was far more possible in the rambling gentry manor than in the tightly packed terraced house. Each home was individual: but a distinctive pattern of middle-class living emerges overall, through the practice of using a drawing room and a dining room. Social practice was highly varied within the middle classes. This paper will reveal the breadth of difference within this broad group, showing how gender, geography, occupation and religious difference fashioned distinctive domestic interiors.
- 21 -
SESSION 4A
Urban History Group Conference, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The ‘new middle class’ in Bombay and changing conceptions of the idea of ‘home’ and the ‘city’ Romil Sheth (University of Michigan) The ‘new middle class’ constitutes a rapidly growing demographic feature that is concentrated primarily in the major urban centers of India. While this category may be a questionable entity, within the Indian context there is a general acceptance that the ‘new middle class’ is a result of economic policies of liberalization and its subsequent effects from the late 1980s. Leela Fernandes argues that it is “this shift from the early tenets of the Gandhian and Nehruvian visions of India to the current culture of consumption that marks the discursive boundaries of the image of the new middle class in the context of liberalization in India. That is the ‘newness’ of the middle class involves an ideologicaldiscursive projection rather than a shift in the composition or social basis of India’s middle class” (Fernandes, 2000). Advertising, media, information technology, telecommunications and outsourcing all shape the identities, aspirations, needs and desires of this populace. Fernandes states “Advertising and media images have contributed to the creation of an image of a ‘new’ middle class, one that has left behind its dependence of austerity and state protection and has embraced an open India that is at ease with broader processes of globalization.” (Fernandes, 2000). The creation of new wealth and the increased exposure through media and travel has led to an “appetite for ‘global’ culture, and the pursuit of ‘western’ lifestyles, possessions and values” (Mawdsley, 2004). This has been a significant defining feature of the new middle class who also “represent and promote these broad cultural shifts in what constitutes the ‘good life’, or ‘desirable change.” (Mawdsley, 2004). While a growing body of literature on the emergence of the ‘new middle class’ and its implications exists, these studies largely examine its impacts on cultural, social, political and economic scenarios with scant attention to its relationship with urban form. My research explores this uncharted territory and questions whether the rise of this ‘new middle class’ is altering the evolution of the Indian city by examining the relationship between the ‘home’ and the public realm. Focusing on the post-liberalization period in India my paper will analyze a range of residential typologies in Mumbai that embody significantly different yet equally valid visions of ‘the good life’ for the city’s ‘new middle class.’ By focusing on changes in traditional notions of domesticity, delineation of thresholds and the relationship between the public and private realm, my paper will demonstrate that the appropriations and constructions of and by the ‘new middle class’ are radically altering the conception and form of the emerging built environment in Mumbai.
- 22 -
SESSION 4A
Urban History Group Conference, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Shopping for Citizenship: The Housewife, the Suburb, and the City Charlie Wildman (University of Manchester) Manchester Corporation embarked on an expansive programme of civic pride during the interwar period, including slum clearance and suburbanisation, investment in municipal water, gas and electricity works and in public transport. Their investment reshaped the way in which their inhabitants used the city and participation in and use of the new civic amenities became an essential foundation to local citizenship. Building on the existing work of Judy Giles to show that women’s citizenship was defined by the Corporation through being a responsible housewife in a suburban house where she would consume Corporation gas, electricity and water and use public transport to do the weekly shopping in the city centre. We can see that the new municipal suburbs, particularly Wythenshawe, were never built with shops because the Corporation intended that the city centre should become a shared municipal space. Within the context of universal suffrage, women’s participation in urban politics was fashioned through their participation in certain acts of consumption. In this way, they transcended the public-private boundaries through consuming in ways advocated by the Corporation. In particular, the paper will examine the gas and electricity showrooms that were an important part of Manchester’s expensive Town Hall Extension, completed in 1938 and described as Manchester’s “Civic Centre” by the Corporation. Through the showrooms we can understand how the Corporation wished the city and the home to meet in such a way that shaped a domestic form of female citizenship.
- 23 -
SESSION 4B
Urban History Group Conference, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Pockets of resistance: anti -war women in Manchester 1914-1918 Alison Ronan (Manchester Metropolitan University) This paper explores the way in which women activists in the city of Manchester who were opposed to the war either from political or religious conviction, were supported and sustained through a shared sense of a political or religious ‘community’ or through supportive alliances at a local neighbourhood level. The relationship between the place of home, the sense of ‘being at home’, belief and activism will be examined. This paper argues that there were known ‘congenial’ sites for women’s activism in Manchester: ‘congenial’ in the actual sense of local places to meet and virtual in the sense that there were opportunities in the city and the suburbs for women to meet like-minded women. Primary sources suggest that local city centre cafes were important and legitimate places for women to meet and the use of these by individuals and groups can be mapped though both oral and written testimony. I argue also that the notion of ‘home’ within a city context incorporates within it a sense of where marginalised women might have felt ‘at home’. For instance the Clarion Café in Market Street in central Manchester was both congenial and politically sympathetic for the anti war movement. It is possible though a series of contemporary photographs to explore the interior of the Café revealing the contemporary influences of socialism, the arts and crafts movement and the Clarion movement itself; furthermore there are oral references to home decoration and furnishings which reflected women’s contemporary political/social beliefs. The paper suggests a there was a complex interconnectedness between women activists based on family connections, political and religious belief and, importantly, through where they lived – their neighbourhood. There is evidence that a number of women activists lived in the experimental Burnage Garden Village (built 1907) and that there were links between women activists across the suburbs of Manchester. Relationships between neighbours can be occasionally traced through an exploration of local membership of various organisations like the Women’s Labour League (WLL), the Independent Labour Party (ILP) or the Women’s International League (WIL). These relationships often grounded in pre war suffrage and social reformist campaigns, sustained local women in their opposition to a popular war.
- 24 -
SESSION 4B
Urban History Group Conference, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Gender, domestic space and the Left: socialists and the politics of the home in the early decades of the twentieth century. Karen Hunt (Keele University) Socialism goes straight to the home, to the heart of the world, in its cry for freedom. Free the home, let the woman be no longer in political subjection, and free the worker, it says; bring light into all the dark homes of the earth so that each one like a torch may spread the light throughout all the world, and by that light we shall then see wisely and clearly how to bring about the social changes we so ardently desire. ( I.O. Ford, Women and Socialism, 1906) Isabella Ford was unusual in making such an explicit claim for the centrality of the home to the politics of Socialism. In so doing she not only linked public politics to the private world of the home but also suggested that without politics entering and transforming the home the emancipation of women as well as the working class was not possible. This paper explores an aspect of women’s relationship with a particular urban space, that of the domestic home. The focus is the extent to which domestic space provided a site for socialist women to make a politics which directly connected with women’s everyday experience in a way that the mainstream masculinist political agenda did not. The context for this discussion is the distinctive way in which socialist women approached housing as an issue in the years surrounding the First World War. The paper situates, and considers the effect of, the way in which housing was reconfigured from being seen as a social problem into a much more personal issue about ‘the home’ and women’s control over the design and planning of their own domestic space. I want to explore the extent to which socialist women were able to use the control and consumption of domestic space as a gateway to the experience of ordinary women and in so doing create a socialist politics through such an everyday issue as rent or housework. Why did many socialists find it so difficult to engage with ‘the home’, either in its everyday material sense or as part of the imagined socialist future? Could a politics of the home provide the focus for socialist women to reconfigure the political agenda more generally, to attract women to active citizenship and specifically to socialist or Labour politics?
- 25 -
SESSION 4B
Urban History Group Conference, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Home thoughts from abroad: how migration shaped Australia’s domestic traditions Graeme Davison (Monash University, Australia) Few words in the lexicon of colonialism resound more deeply than the word ‘home’. Home, often spelt with a capital H, denoted the lands from which the settlers had come. ‘Almost everybody in this land calls great Britain home’ noted James Backhouse in 1839. But the word also suggested the deep attachment of most migrants to domestic ideals they had brought with them. ‘They call houses homes in Australia’, an observant visitor noted in 1937. This paper examines the ways in which memories, both positive and negative, of domestic life in England, Scotland and Ireland shaped the practice of home-making in Australia’s cities in the nineteenth century, and offers suggestions on how those ideals were modified by more recent migrations from Europe and Asia. Drawing on letters, diaries and oral sources, it identifies the origins of Australia’s famous attachment to suburban life in impulses generated within the home societies of Europe.
- 26 -
SESSION 4C
Urban History Group Conference, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Living with the outdoors: landscapes on the walls in a ‘big’ city Tiina Peil (Tallinn University, Estonia) This paper focuses on the process of bringing the countryside into the urban home in Estonia today by examining the paintings and interior design of contemporary homes in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. In this case, for understanding the contemporary, an historical perspective is necessary and thus the changes and trends of the 20th century are examined. The paper is part of recently launched research on contemporary landscape creation across binary borders centring on that of the city and country and creating a home. Estonians have historically been ‘the people of the land’; urbanisation is a relatively late phenomenon. Only in the early 20th century did larger groups of Estonians moved into town and by the 1930s an urban identity had developed. This process was interrupted by the Soviet occupation and extensive re-organisation of the city that included immigration from the Soviet Union and both forced and voluntary out-migration of former city dwellers. Tallinn being a medium-size city (c. 400, 000 inhabitants) today represents the large urban centre that in popular discourse is frequently argued to be an alien environment for ‘true’ Estonians who inhabit the countryside and are the keepers of ‘traditional’ values. Domesticating this environment through interior design and creating a personal little haven is examined primarily through interior design magazines (the prize-winners of an annually held ‘beautiful home’ competition) and a survey of homes in different parts of Tallinn. Preliminary results indicate that although a new (young) and trend-conscious urban culture is emerging, favoured paintings and decorations still reflect rural roots and landscapes. A second trend is the expansion of the suburbia where a new ‘middle’ way of life and homes are developed on former fields that are interpreted as ‘natural’.
- 27 -
SESSION 4C
Urban History Group Conference, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Declaration of the Immigrant Identity: Anatolian Carpet on the Facade Olgu Caliskan (Middle East Technical University, Turkey) and Ceren Katipoglu (Caliskan (Middle East Technical University) Ankara, the capital of Turkey, has experienced a new phase of immigration within the last fifteen years. The general characteristic of this immigration is quite similar to that of other large cities in Turkey. While the main actors of the process were poorer families from the rural periphery after the 1950s, the immigrant occupational profile has transformed into a prosperous middle class, which adapted to the housing market after a period of time. Today, a new wave of immigration is integrating into the existing social structure of the city. This time, middle-class relatively ‘urban’ people from surrounding towns are the main actors. The change in the process became visible with its own visual tastes in evolving urban aesthetics. Today, with the aid of contractors, landowners and small builders, a new face of urban facades created a kind of orientalist urban image in districts where those immigrant families were concentrated. Anatolian carpet patterns at the facades of the apartments of the families are the signifier of identity of the immigrants, which were brought from their hometowns and emerged in a modern capital. The aim of the paper is to discuss the socio-spatial dynamics of the quoted urban condition with reference to the issue of immigrant identity in the contexts of ‘home’ and ‘hometown’.
- 28 -
SESSION 4C
Urban History Group Conference, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Geographies of Georgian Scientific culture: natural philosophy and the home Paul Elliot (University of Nottingham) Scientific culture was, of course, one of the defining characteristics of the British enlightenment permeating many aspects of eighteenth-century society yet the domestic spaces of natural philosophy have received relatively little attention compared to public arenas despite the central importance of intimate familial relations to the Georgians. Inspired by recent work in cultural and historical geography, the history of science and urban history, particularly the spatial turn in social and cultural theory, this paper presents a study of the geographies of English scientific culture in the home. Fostered by the desire for scientific education and the acquisition of polite knowledge, some aspects of natural philosophy gained particular associations with the domestic sphere such as geography, botany, astronomy, meteorology and electricity. Electricians such as Priestley exploited the availability of everyday objects such as glass tubes, wool and the intimate use of the body as an instrument for experimental and demonstration purposes whilst meteorology was experienced as a domestic-centred activity. Ornamental barometers and thermometers adorned walls providing opportunities for constant empirical observation melded into the routines of domestic life and participation in enlightenment scholarly progress. This is also evident in the importance placed upon scientific education for children, purchase and positioning of scientific instruments, popularity of tutors, publications of textbooks and other introductory works to be enjoyed in the private and semi-private spaces of the Georgian home. Scientific instruments were obtained for private education and as ornaments, toys and symbolic objects with special significance to particular social groups in the context of the domestic sphere, including Anglican clergy (many of whom took up electricity), women and dissenters. For women, the wonders of science offered the opportunity, mentally, symbolically and sometimes physically to reach beyond the confines of the domestic sphere to the natural world and even the cosmos and experimental demonstrations specially adapted for females at home were devised. For dissenters, scientific education was inspired by the utilitarian Protestant ideals, the requirements of natural theology and desire for edification and enjoyment. Certain areas within homes were also meeting places for lectures, informal literary and scientific groups and more formal associations and provided a comfortable, cheap and more private alterative to renting or buying rooms in public houses and other locations. In turn, aspects of domestic culture shaped the way that such associations were conducted in other more public places. This confirms that distinctions between perceptions and experiences of public and private spheres in Georgian society should not be exaggerated. The middling sort Georgian home was both private and public place used by servants and traders as well as family members and visiting relatives, helping to explain why domestic culture mediated between the public and private spheres of Georgian natural philosophy. Finally, perceptions and experience of domestic life help to shape perceptions and interpretations of space in Georgian natural philosophy as analogously the constitution, monarchy and state were often idealised as a family. Idealisations of the household economy provided a model for the economy of nature whilst the vast spaces of the cosmos were experienced domestic life through journeys of the mind, telescopes, celestial globes and the clockwork mechanism of the orrery.
- 29 -
SESSION 5
Urban History Group Conference, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“A Room of Great Happiness and Love": The Functions and Meaning of the British Working-Class Kitchen. Lucy Faire (University of Leicester) The parlour has generated a great deal of interest because it puzzled contemporary middleclass commentators and was evidently highly significant to the working-class household. The significance of the parlour varied according to age and possibly gender. Thus having a parlour was more important to adults than children and often (though not always) important to women more than men. Kitchens (or living rooms as they were often termed) have featured in historiography to a lesser extent. This is possibly because kitchens are less interesting on a symbolic level, but it may have also been because middle-class contemporaries were less likely to have access to the kitchen: one of the uses of the parlour was for it to act as a buffer zone between the outside world and the family’s main living space. But the kitchen/living room was far more central to family life: it was a room the family could not do without. It was the place where a whole variety of activities took place on an intense basis. However, this intensity was affected by house size, family size and other factors such as time rhythms and seasonality. This paper will consider the role of the kitchen in British working class homes from the 1890s to the 1950s. It will look at the language used to describe this room by its inhabitants, what uses it was given, its significance within family life and how this significance varied for different family members. It will also examine how these uses and meanings of the kitchen were affected by factors of geography and of location (rural versus urban), change over time, and the social demographics of the people using the room (age, gender). Finally it will ask whether class (in an economic and cultural sense) was more important in determining the role of the kitchen than the environment in which the home was situated. While the parlour has often (erroneously) been viewed as a classic example of ‘trickle down’, do the uses given to kitchens today suggest a classic case of ‘trickle up’? Does the ‘farm kitchen’ which features in today’s aspirational house magazines come from an urban tradition as much as a rural one?
- 30 -
SESSION 5
Urban History Group Conference, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Water-use, the home and the politics of the urban water consumer in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain Frank Trentmann (Birkbeck College, University of London) and Vanessa Taylor (Birkbeck College, University of London) This paper will explore the relationship between public conflicts over water and changing domestic practices of water use in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Water in this period has been examined from the point of view of public health, urban provision and organised consumer action (Hamlin, 1998; Hassan, 1998; Millward, 2000; Trentmann and Taylor, 2006). But these public arenas developed in relation to changing practices in the home. Sociologists have studied the social construction of forms of domestic consumption and routine practices (Shove, 2003; Gronow and Warde, 2001). This paper will explore the historical dynamics of the relationship between socially constructed water-use practices and the formation of a public identity: the water consumer. With the introduction of constant water supply, water closets and baths came expanded perceptions of needs and domestic comfort and debates about the rights and responsibilities of this new consumer-citizen. The politically self-conscious water consumer emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century, amid debates over water quality, quantity and price and the critique of private provision. Mobilised originally by water ratepayers, by the end of the century the category increasingly included urban water users of all classes. Assertions of rights in relation to water were linked both to perceptions of basic needs and to discourses about civilised living rooted in specific forms of water use. Access to sufficient, clean domestic water at a fair price was at the centre of a civilising mission to increase social equity and cohesion. The paper will consider too, therefore, the implications of the regional and social differences in the spread of domestic water technologies that continued into the post-war period. Extensive rural water shortages in the early 1930s, for example, highlighted the exclusion of the rural population from both piped supply and ‘civilised’, urban standards of living; into the 1950s, too, large sections of the urban population were still without fixed baths. Debates over the expansion of piped water supply and sanitation shed light on the uneven process by which certain forms of domestic practices and social identity have become dominant. This paper offers an historical perspective on the relationship between the domestic sphere and a public identity that is still at the centre of debate today. The paper is part of the ESRC-AHRC funded project Liquid Politics (Cultures of Consumption Research Programme), which will report on the relationship between changing patterns of water use and the formation of political water consumers in modern Britain. References Gronow, J. and Warde, A. (eds.), Ordinary Consumption (New York, 2001). Hamlin, C., Public Health and Social Justice in the Age of Chadwick (Cambridge, 1998). Hassan, J., A History of Water in Modern England and Wales (Manchester/New York, 1998). Millward, R., ‘The political economy of urban utilities’, in M. Daunton (ed.), The Cambridge Urban History of Britain: Vol. III 1840-1950 (Cambridge, 2000). Shove, E., Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience: The Social Organization of Normality (Oxford/New York, 2003). Trentmann, F. and Taylor, V., ‘From user to consumer: water politics in nineteenth-century London’, in F. Trentmann (ed.), The Making of the Consumer (Oxford/New York, 2006).
- 31 -
SESSION 5