Vol. 37, March 2022.
Have you published something new in Global Urban History?
We'd like our members to know. Contact Ayan Meer with details.
GUHP is a member-supported organization. To join or renew your membership, visit our Homepage. | Upcoming Events in GUHP's "Dream Conversations in Urban History"
| | Conversation on "Theory Of, For, and by Urban Historians":
"Urban Theory
from the Global South"
| | | Join us on Thursday April 7, 2022, 3PM UCT for a
ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION
AbdouMaliq Simone, Urban Institute Sheffield, Moderator
Wangui Kimari, University of Cape Town
Prince Guma, British Institute in East Africa, Nairobi
Anwesha Ghosh, National Law School of India University Bengaluru
Rafael Soares Gonçalves, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio)
Some Questions Include:
- How does urban theory look differently when viewed from the perspective of the “Global South”?
- What is southern urbanism and how does it challenge or reframe the way that we define cities as an analytical concept?
- What implications does southern urbanism have for technocratic regulation and practice, both in the Global South and beyond?
- How / what differentiates the Global South as a place / concept from earlier debates about the 3rd World & Developing World? Is there something unique / specific when put in an urban frame?
- How do debates about the (urban) Global South (dis)empower the places and people they are ostensibly about? Who can and should write about the (urban) Global South? (We see this question as connecting to some of your recent work on marginality and blackness as a methodological and conceptual tool.)
- Urban historians tend to import theory from the social sciences. What specifically can urban historians working on the Global South bring to the production of urban theory more generally?
| | To participate, please register here. A Zoom invite will be sent to you during the week before the event. | | Also, remember!
There are two more Seminars scheduled in the series on "Empires and (Dis)Contents" in March.
You will receive a zoom link. | | |
- Friday, 11 March, 12:30-14:00 UTC: Eva Schalbroeck (Utrecht University): Belgian Catholic Missionaries and Aural Critique of the Colonial City
- Friday, 18 March, 12:30-14:00 UTC: Heba Ahmed (Jawaharlal Nehru University): The Discontents of Writing the City: British Colonial Texts and the ‘History’ of Calcutta
|  | | Rio de Janeiro in the Global Meat Market, 1850-1930
by Maria-Aparecida Lopes
(Routledge, 2021)
This book examines the meat provision system of Rio de Janeiro from the 1850s to the 1930s. Until the 1920s, Rio was Brazil’s economic hub, main industrial city, and prime consumer market. Meat consumption was an indicator of living standards and a matter of public concern. The work unveils that in the second half of the nineteenth century, the city was well supplied with red meat. Initially, dwellers relied mostly on salted meat; then, in the latter decades of the 1800s, two sets of changes upgraded fresh meat deliveries. First, ranching expansion and transportation innovation in Brazil guaranteed a continuous flow of cattle to Rio. Second, the municipal centralization of meat processing and distribution made its provision regular and predictable. By the early 20th century, fresh meat replaced salted meat in the urban marketplace. This study examines these developments in light of national and global developments in the livestock and meat industries. [more] | | | | The Margins of Late Medieval Londo, 1430-1540
by Charlotte Berry
(University of London Press, 2022)
The Margins of Late Medieval London is a powerful study of medieval London’s urban fringe. Seeking to unpack the complexity of urban life in the medieval age, this volume offers a detailed and novel approach to understanding London beyond its institutional structures. Using a combination of experimental digital, quantitative and qualitative methodologies, the volume casts new light on urban life at the level of the neighbourhood and considers the differences in economy, society and sociability which existed in different areas of a vibrant premodern city. It focuses on the dynamism and mobility that shaped city life, integrating the experiences of London’s poor and migrant communities and how they found their place within urban life. It describes how people found themselves marginalized in the city, and the strategies they would employ to mitigate that precarious position. [more] | | | | "Overpromising technocracy's potential: the American-Yugoslav project, urban planning, and Cold War cultural diplomacy"
byTracy Neumann
Journal of Planning History, Winter 2022
From the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, the Ford Foundation funded an urban planning exchange between American academics and Yugoslav urban planners as something of a test case in transferring American planning technology to the socialist world. The American-Yugoslav Project was one of several international urban development projects the Ford Foundation pursued at mid-century as part of its Cold War-era cultural diplomacy efforts. The technology transfer at the center of the American-Yugoslav Project was a contributing factor to the Foundation’s retreat from international urban development and provides a case study in how one-size-fits-all development models falter when challenged by real-world conditions.
[Access the article here] | | | | Cities and News: Interview with Lila Caimari
To mark the publication of new contributions to our Cambridge Elements in Global Urban History series, we will feature interviews with authors and share short excerpts from their work. Here, series co-editor Michael Goebel interviews Lila Caimari, the author of our third Element, Cities and News (2022). Lila Caimari is is a full-time Researcher at Conicet in Buenos Aires. She has published extensively on the history of urban crime, the police, and the prison experience in Argentina. She is also the author of numerous articles and book chapters about the social and cultural history of modern Argentina. Her latest book, La vida en el archivo (2017), is a collection of writings about the practice of historical research. She currently works on the history of news and news circuits in South America. [Access the article here]
| | | Maps of Paris, from the 16th century onwards
Bibliothèque Nationale de France
| Related Networks and Events
| | Patchwork Cities
“Writing the Social History of Port Cities: Comparative Approaches to Urban History in the Global South” -- Upcoming Workshop, Berlin, July 7-8
Port cities in the Global South witnessed rapid growth and became bridgeheads of uneven globalization during the era of steam. The advent of industrial capitalism left their mark on cityscapes and dramatically altered the socio-urban fabric in places as far apart as Durban and Buenos Aires. The Patchwork Cities group see this workshop as an opportunity for scholars working on port cities in different regions of the world to come together and discuss the implications of doing comparative urban social history. [more]
| | | | Southern African Historical Society
Biennial Conference, 28-30 June 2022: "Expanding Margins: New and Lingering Questions, and Debates on Southern African Histories"
The 28th Biennial Conference of the Southern African Historical Society (SAHS) is being hosted at the University of Fort Hare (UFH)’s East London campus. The SAHS invites contributions from professional historians, postgraduate students and related specialists such as archaeologists, heritage practitioners, archivists, museum curators, and documentary film-makers. The SAHS 2022 Conference organisers endeavour to encompass and reflect the broad diversity of the discipline in the region and consequently wish that the participants at the conference encapsulate a broad range of topics. [more] | | | |