City and Nation ― Rethinking Place and Identity

This compendium offers a textured historical and compara- tive examination of the significance of locality or "place," and the role of urban representations and spatial practices in defining national identities. Drawing upon a wide range of disciplines-from literature to architecture and planning, sociology, and history -these essays problematize the dynamic between the local and the national, the cultural and the material, revealing the complex interplay of social forces by which place is constituted and contributes to the social construction of national identity in Asia, Latin America, and the United States. These essays explore the dialogue between past and present, local and national identities in the making of "modern" places. Contributions range from an assessment of historical discourses on the relationship between modernity and heritage in turn-of-the-century Suzhou to the social construction of San Antonio's Market Square as a contested presencing of the city's Mexican past. Case studies of the socio-spatial restructuring of Penang and Jakarta show how place-making from above by modernizing states is articulated with a claims-making politics of class and ethnic difference from below. An examination of nineteenth-century Central America reveals a case of local grassroots formation not only of national identity but national institutions. Finally, a close examination of Latin American literature at the end of the nineteenth century reveals the importance of a fantastic reversal of Balzac's dystopian vision of Parisian cosmopolitanism in defining the place of Latin America and the possibilities of importing urban modernity. Michael Peter Smith is professor of community studies at the University of California at Davis and a faculty associate of the Center for California Studies at the University of California at Berkeley. An urban social theorist, he has published numerous books on cities, globalization, and transnationalism, including The City and Social Theory; The Capitalist City; City, State and Market; Transnationalism from Below; and, most recently, Transnational Urbanism: Locating Globalization. Thomas Bender is professor of history and director of the Project on Cities and Urban Knowledge and the International Center for Advanced Studies at New York University. His books include Toward an Urban Vision; Community and Social Change in America; New York Intellect; and (with Carl Schorske) Budapest and New York. He is editor of the forthcoming book Rethinking American History in a Global Age.