Preliminary Programme

Wed 12 April
    08.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Thu 13 April
    08.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Fri 14 April
    08.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Sat 15 April
    08.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00

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Wednesday 12 April 2023 16.30 - 18.30
O-4 URB01 Exploring Everyday Life and Experiences of Urban Space in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
E43
Network: Urban Chair: Christina Reimann
Organizer: Maja Hultman Discussant: Sophie Cooper
Agnes Fulemile, Balázs Balogh : Folk Fans and Rock Fans. Youth, Cultural Alternatives, Resilience, and Grassroots Resistance in Socialist Hungary
The paper highlights two poles of the community-organizing phenomena for young people that provided alternatives to ideologized, politicized mandatory youth activities and state-supported cultural life in the last two decades of the Kádár era in Hungary. Parallels are drawn between the grassroots subcultures of the folk revival movement and the ... (Show more)
The paper highlights two poles of the community-organizing phenomena for young people that provided alternatives to ideologized, politicized mandatory youth activities and state-supported cultural life in the last two decades of the Kádár era in Hungary. Parallels are drawn between the grassroots subcultures of the folk revival movement and the underground and semi-sanctioned rock scene of the 1970s and '80s. These circles of „resilience” and „resistance” played a vital role in the everyday life of young people in Hungary. Cultural policymakers tried to tame the deviant alterations and create a politically acceptable socialist pop culture variant of these musical trends. The topic is discussed in terms of the social and political context and identity questions of the period. (Show less)

Maja Hultman : Everyday Spaces of the Urban ‘Other’: GIS, Quantitative Sources, and Emotions
Technical developments, social reforms, economic possibilities, and growing populations increasingly pushed and pulled people across the globe in the nineteenth century. Crossing multiple national borders, in search for a new home, migrants moving to the same city oftentimes gathered together. Memories of urban districts, defined by inhabitants from ethnic or ... (Show more)
Technical developments, social reforms, economic possibilities, and growing populations increasingly pushed and pulled people across the globe in the nineteenth century. Crossing multiple national borders, in search for a new home, migrants moving to the same city oftentimes gathered together. Memories of urban districts, defined by inhabitants from ethnic or religious minorities, are still vibrant, such as Jewish East End in London, or Irish Hell’s Kitchen in New York. But explorations of emotional practices reveal a discrepancy between the image of urban, migrant districts, and the migrants’ everyday experiences of the same districts.
Using the district of Södermalm in Stockholm as a case study, this paper analyses the role of emotions in constructing the contemporary, and today’s prevailing, idea that poor, Orthodox, and Eastern European Jews belonged to the slum and industrial suburb. With help from GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and quantitative analysis of Jewish residences, I propose that the digital methodology reveals an everyday spatial framework that diverges from narratives of Jewish Södermalm found in newspaper articles, oral interviews, and private letters. It is in this gap, between spatial practice and spatial representation, that we can understand the power of emotions in producing and reproducing long-lasting and influential tropes about migrants and the urban districts they settled in. This paper’s exploration of the Jewish community in Stockholm’s residential patterns and internal communication reveals the spatial inscription of emotionally driven power relations in migration groups moving to new urban settings in the twentieth century, as well as the possibilities of quantitative sources and digital methodology in understanding emotional practices in urban space. (Show less)

Jacinta Mallon : Mass Observation and Experiences of Urban Home-loss in Second World War Britain
In Second World War British cities, the home came to be in flux like never before. Aerial warfare, as well as state policies such as property requisition, blurred the boundaries of the dwelling and unsettled the bond between citizens and the spaces they inhabited.
This changing relationship between Britons and ... (Show more)
In Second World War British cities, the home came to be in flux like never before. Aerial warfare, as well as state policies such as property requisition, blurred the boundaries of the dwelling and unsettled the bond between citizens and the spaces they inhabited.
This changing relationship between Britons and their homes was regularly noted and examined by the sociological organisation, Mass Observation. Established in 1937, and steeped in the documentary tradition of the 1920s and 1930s, this organisation was explicitly concerned with uncovering the everyday feelings of ‘ordinary’ people (Hubble, 2006). The Mass Observation archive is thus a rich resource for the historian trying to explore not only the emotional codes of wartime Britain, but also the ‘messy and complex’ ways in which citizens actually navigated these dictates in their day-to-day lives (Langhamer, 2016).
In this paper, I will consider Mass Observation’s attempts to chart the emotional responses of urban Britons to fluctuations in their domestic environments. With reference to the organisation’s social surveys, interviews, covert observation reports, and diary collections, I will particularly focus on research which examined feelings about the loss of dwelling places in cities. This material demonstrates that the shifting relationship between citizen and home was a flashpoint for the negotiation and subversion of emotional codes. Moreover, it reveals how feelings about home-loss were frequently connected to questions of policy, such as reconstruction and town planning. This paper therefore aims to show not only how the built environment shaped the emotional lives of urban citizens, but also how this process worked in reverse. (Show less)

Mara Marginean : Differentiation in the Making: Environmental Policies and Residential Segregation of Roma Industrial Workers in Late Socialist Romania
Even though the Romanian authorities became aware of industrialization programs' long-term environmentally destructive effects, the socialist regime minimized financial investment in ecological improvements. One consequence was that pollution continued to negatively affect the quality of life of people living near industrial areas. For example, Baia Mare, an industrial city with ... (Show more)
Even though the Romanian authorities became aware of industrialization programs' long-term environmentally destructive effects, the socialist regime minimized financial investment in ecological improvements. One consequence was that pollution continued to negatively affect the quality of life of people living near industrial areas. For example, Baia Mare, an industrial city with a long tradition of copper mining and non-ferrous metallurgy, soon became one of the most polluted zones in the country. Moreover, the city's most polluted areas were gradually inhabited by poor and unskilled workers, mostly Roma, in the 1970s, which questions the constitutive mechanisms of racialized poverty and the role of environmental conditions in the emergence of different forms of social inclusion or marginalization in socialist Romania. Based on archival research and oral interviews, my paper aims to analyze the everyday experiences of Roma in these environmentally stressed areas of the industrial city of Baia Mare during the late socialist period. It explores different strategies of inclusion and exclusion of Roma workers and what they tell us about industrialization and urban development strategies since the 1970s. It also examines the Roma population's different tactics to cope with the everyday challenges of living in an industrialized environment by exploring their living conditions and access to housing. (Show less)



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