Session details
Organizer(s)
Deborah Simonton (University of Southers Denmark/University off Turku), Gudrun Andersson (University of Uppsala) and Jon Stobart (Manchester Metropolitan University)
Keywords
Space, Walking, Identity
Abstract
Space is a constructed concept and through labelling and habitus plays an important part in urban identity. Central to habitus are gender and power. The relationship between space, and therefore towns, and identity was reflexive and reflected social organisaton. Once bounded and shaped it was no longer neutral but gendered by the varieties of social interactions taking place between inhabitants, incomers and people passing through, and by the structures and ideological conceptions of gender, work, places, civic identity and point in time. They were spaces of social action so that the use and organisation of space both constructs and is constructed by social relations. Nat Alcock argued ‘the street geometrically defined by urban planning is transformed into a space by walkers.’ Simply walking the city, moving about it on daily activities, is a performance of belonging, which is built up and grows out of everyday practices, in which daily activities in the city are part of a process of appropriation and territorialisation. Personal familiarity with the city through everyday movement contributes to a sense of neighbourhood, civic identity and/or personal loyalty to the city. Ultimately, ‘space and place’ are central to understanding the cultural dynamics of towns. The kinds of spaces that developed, the places that people could and did use and the people who constructed them are all significant. Papers focus on how movement was gendered; how spaces were expropriated and contested by different groups; what barriers or opportunities existed to open up or close down movement in towns; the interaction between real and virtual movement (e.g. that imagined in guidebooks), or the rhythms and cycles of movement (daily, weekly, annual), and the links between urban and rural movement. Various kinds of movement/spatial practice are addressed, such as politics, disorder, prostitution, crime, sociability, shopping, work, business or trade--legal or illegal.
Papers
Crossing Boundaries: Work, Spatial Mobility and Social Interaction in the late 18th Century
Author(s)
Caroline Lindroth (University of Uppsala)
Keywords
Gender, Work, Town
Abstract
By analysing people’s movements and networks in relation to their work, this paper discusses social interaction and spatial mobility in a mining community in 18th Century Sweden. It argues that men and women crossed cultural and physical boundaries on a regular basis in their daily working activities, thus contrasting the norms of separation that characterized the legislation of this town.
Spaces and Places of Electoral Politics in the Late Georgian Town: The Hustings
Author(s)
Elaine Chalus (University of Liverpool)
Keywords
Elections, Space, Perfomance
Abstract
During contested elections, Georgian towns became political arenas — sites of socio-political activity and performance — criss-crossed by candidates, their friends and their political agents in the search for votes. Doorways, balconies, streets, scaffoldings, marketplaces, and squares were turned into political spaces as contending candidates sought to impress voters through displays, speeches and actions. Committee rooms were established and became strategic nodes of political movement. Taverns were hired and proclaimed their allegiances, attracting and catering to prospective supporters, sometimes for months at a time. Shops and homes were targeted, as canvassers sought out voters and their families, coaxing and coercing them for support, dispensing douceurs for plumpers and threats for stubborn refusals. All of this effort and energy climaxed in the centrality of the election itself, with polling limited after 1785 to fifteen days. And, at the centre of the poll, was the immersive, participatory, political space of the hustings. Historians such as Jon Lawrence, John Brewer and James Vernon have focused on the importance of the hustings as a performative, even carnivalesque, space, where electoral rituals were enacted and where candidates were forced to interact directly with an irreverent, noisy, sometimes aggressive public. This paper draws upon speeches and reports from the hustings in late Georgian elections to explore the hustings as a temporary but uniquely valuable political performance space: a symbiotic space that involved candidates, voters and non-voters alike, and a space where the participatory theatricality of Georgian elections reached its apogee. It argues that the while the affective daily speechifying of the candidates sought, of course, to secure votes, it also served a wider purpose. It generated an ongoing dialogue among the candidates that involved voters directly, providing the latter with much fuller understandings of candidates’ characters and opinions, and fostered a sense of inclusivity and political belonging (temporary though it may have been). Moreover, the open, public nature of the hustings, with its ceremonial trappings, reinforced this and underlined the importance of voting and of the electoral process itself.
Moving Around: Intra Urban Migration in Swedish Eighteenth Century Towns
Author(s)
Dag Lindström (Uppsala University, Dpt of History)
Keywords
Intraurban Migration, Residence, Early Modern
Abstract
The place of residence is an essential dimension of urban space, urban identity and social organization. This paper focuses on urban residence in terms of mobility. There are many different dimensions of people moving around in towns. There were daily, weekly, seasonal and even more long-term movements. Some movements represent recurrent cycles while other movements were part of life course trajectories. Different movements furthermore relate to various dimensions of urban life: work, support, social gatherings, retail activities, religion, social manifestations etc. In early modern towns, some people frequently shifted their place of residence. Other stayed for decades in the same dwelling. This kind of intra urban migration has not often been in focus for analyses of urban social organization or for analyses of urban space, especially not for early modern towns. It is well known that servants often stayed only for a short time in the same house. But they were not the only ones frequently moving around shifting their place of residence. Analyses of urban social topography tend to produce structural and static understandings of social organization. However, what we observe as a given social topography is in fact shaped by lots of individual movements. These movements should be analyzed in order to better understand urban social organization, social mobility, and urban space. There are reasons also to believe that there was a dynamic relation between the built urban environment and the patterns of intra urban migration, and that these movements also contributed to shaping urban space. There are also reasons to believe that there were certain migration hubs in the towns, areas or houses where people often resided for more limited time periods. Based on information from Swedish eighteenth century towns, this paper will present temporal, social, and spatial analyses of intra urban migration, and discuss its impact on social organization and life chances, and its dynamic relation to urban space.
A Sociable Office: Claiming Urban Space in Nineteenth-Century Sweden
Author(s)
Gudrun Andersson (Dep. of History, Uppsala University)
Keywords
Urban Space, Gender, Sweden
Abstract
Sitting at his desk at night, summarizing the events of the day, Swedish councilman and merchant Anders Adolph Kihlberg carefully laid out his movements. In his diary, he wrote where and with whom he had breakfast, morning coffee, lunch, afternoon refreshments and dinner. He also entered information on where he conducted his work, whether it had to do with his office in the town magistrate, his business or minor agricultural work in order to provide for the household. By reading the diary of Kihlberg (covering a period from 1808 to 1820), it is possible to follow his ‘traversing the town’ of Arboga. By using urban space, for different purposes, he claimed his right to access it. This paper will map his movements within the town, establishing different cycles (daily, weekly, annual) and activity patterns. But claiming urban space was also a matter of gender and power. By analysing whom Kilhberg actually engaged with, a gendered mapping of the town will emerge. Of course he socialised with both men and women, but to what extent did the space allow a gendered mix? How did the gendered spaces relate to the general town structure, especially the socio-economically strong areas? The choice of a smaller town in a country in the periphery of Europe is deliberate. It will contribute to a broader knowledge on if and how the use of urban space differed between countries.
Thomas Shotter Boys' "Original Views of London as it is:" London as Real Space and Perceived Space
Author(s)
Kemille Moore (University of North Carolina Wilmington)
Keywords
Thomas Shotter Boys, Views of London, Lithographs
Abstract
When Thomas Shotter Boys and Charles Hullmandel published Picturesque Architecture in Paris, Ghent, Antwerp, Rouen, etc in 1839 they presented one of the first portfolios illustrated with color lithographs. This portfolio was followed by "Original Views of London as it is" in 1842, which contains 26 hand-colored lithographed plates. The 26 plates in Boys’ portfolio depict London places in 1842, but not spaces “as it is.” Boys depicts streets, open spaces and notable buildings with a more secondary incursion of human figures, strategically placed within the scenes. These figures serve the three-fold purpose of providing scale for the buildings, adding interest, and to increase the sense of movement and liveliness within the space. As depictions of urban settings the plates in Views of London, depart from the picturesque tradition, though they clearly are influenced by that aesthetic. The images demonstrate interest in artistic imagination over topographical accuracy. While the spaces and buildings depicted by Boys existed in 1843, an individual moving through the actual places would have a very different experience than a person taking a virtual tour through the corresponding images. The 1843 London census counted 1, 945,000 people, who moved through London’s densely populated streets by foot or horse drawn vehicles. In addition to the animal waste produced by this transportation system, the construction of the vast sewer projects had not yet begun. The real spaces often included mud and filth, commerce, workers, and construction sites. Yet viewers of the lithographs are invited to move through clean and, while sometimes busy, often uncrowded spaces. "Views of London", was marketed to upper and upper middle class audiences who were familiar with the spaces depicted. This audience experienced the lithographs and the real space reflexively, repeatedly having different experiences of each as a result of moving through the other. This presentation explores Views of London as it is as an innovative early example of how the interaction of actual places and artistic images of those places plays an important role in how individuals identify an actual place and themselves as a part of that space.
Pathways, Performances and Footsteps: Conceptualising Movement through the City
Author(s)
Jon Stobart (Manchester Metropolitan University)
Keywords
Time-geography, Performance, Spatiality
Abstract
There are numerous ways of conceptualising the movement of individuals through the city and the relationship that this movement had with myriad urban spaces, both physical and mental. In this paper, I want to pull together strands discussed in other contributions and draw on the diaries of Sir Roger Newdigate – which record in a pithy, punctuated manner his day-to-day activities in eighteenth-century London – to illustrate three approaches.The first is Hagerstrand’s notion of time-geography or, as Alan Pred put it, the ‘choreography of existence’ in which Newdigate’s movements could be pictorialized as a series of diagrams showing paths, nodes and bundles. The second is to view Newdigate’s perambulations as a public performance on an stage that comprised London’s streets and buildings, with action shaped by space and, in turn, perhaps shaping the identity of the actor. Third is de Certeau’s suggestion that the city is made through these actions. Here, Newdigate’s footsteps along the street gave ‘shape to spaces’, weaving places together and constructing the city as a lived experience. My purpose is not to privilege one approach over the other, but rather to complicate our view of movement and the city.