Cityscapes: Cultural Readings in the Material and Symbolic City

ISBN-13: 9780333929353 / Angielski / Miękka / 2005 / 192 str.

Ben Highmore

Opis

The modern city has many dimensions, both physical and imaginative. This book offers an innovative approach to exploring its complexity by focusing on the varied and often conflicting rhythms of urban life. Spanning the nineteenth and twentieth century, it draws on cultural texts as varied as Edgar Allan Poe's London, Parisian department stores, colonial and anti-colonial Algiers, the North American cities of recent detective fiction, and the virtual city of The Matrix. The resulting text is original in conception, vivid in its analysis and insight, and highly accessible to students.

Spis treści

Preface and Acknowledgements.- Introduction Methodology I: Culture, Cities and Legibility.- Street Scenes Circulation, Crowds, and Modernizing London.- City of Attractions Commodities, Shopping, and Consumer Choreography.- Colonial Spacing Control and Conflict in the Colonial and Neo-Colonial City.- Urban Noir Mobility and Movement in Detective Fiction.- Networks Communication, Information, and The Matrix.- Conclusion Methodology II: Rhythm-analysis and Urban Culture.

O autorze

BEN HIGHMORE is Senior Lecturer in the School of Cultural and Media Studies at the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK. He is the author of Everyday Life and Cultural Theory: An Introduction (Routledge 2002) and editor of The Everyday Life Reader (Routledge, 2002).

Blurb

The city is the most distinctive product of modernity, but it is also its most unruly. How do we approach a culture that is both physical and imaginary, that has moulded concrete and asphalt as well as movies and novels? Cityscapes provides an innovative approach to the modern city. By arguing that the most distinctive aspect of urban life is the varied, and often conflicting, rhythms of the city, this book sets out to find ways of registering the dynamic complexity of the city. Using a range of cultural forms Cityscapes spans the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, finding vivid examples of urban movements in Edgar Allan Poe's London, in Parisian departments stores, in colonial and anti-colonial Algiers, in the North American cities of recent detective fiction, and in the virtual city of The Matrix.