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Dear Colleagues,
apologies for the self-promotion but I feel that my newly published monograph may be of interest to some of you.
A flyer with more information is attached.
Gisa
Berlin, Alexanderplatz: Transforming Place in a Unified Germany
Gisa Weszkalnys
(June 2010, London and New York: Berghahn Books, ISBN 978-1-84545-723-5 Hb)
http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title.php?rowtag=WeszkalnysBerlin
A benchmark study in the changing field of urban anthropology, Berlin, Alexanderplatz is an ethnographic examination of the rapid transformation of the unified Berlin. Through a captivating account of the controversy around this symbolic pub- lic square in East Berlin, the book raises acute questions about expertise, citizenship, government and belonging. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the city administration bureaus, developers’ offices, citizen groups and in Alexanderplatz itself, the author advances a richly innovative analysis of the multiplicity of place. She reveals how Alexanderplatz is assembled through the encounters between planners, citizen activists, social workers, artists and ordinary Berliners, in processes of popular participation and personal narratives, in plans, timetables, documents and files, and in the distribution of pipes, tram tracks and street lights. Alexanderplatz emerges as a socialist spatial exemplar, a ‘future’ under construction, an object of grievance, and a vision of robust public space. This book is both a critical contribution to the anthropology of contemporary modernity and a radical intervention in current cross-disciplinary debates on the city.
“...presents multiple perspectives with a clear focus, enabling the reader to apprehend a complex, consequential, and always transforming site as the nexus of multiple views, values, experiences, and hopes. Smart, deeply researched, interpretively sophisticated without being overburdened by theory, this is a real contribution to an anthropology of urban sites and life.” - Don Brenneis, University of California, Santa Cruz
Dr Gisa Weszkalnys
Lecturer in Social Anthropology
Department of Sociology & Philosophy
Amory Building, Room 321
University of Exeter
Exeter EX4 4RJ
Phone: +44 (0)1392 723288
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