“Science and the city” has become a
trending topic in recent historiography, both in history of science, technology
and medicine (STM) as well as in Urban Studies. So far there has been a strong
focus on the metropolis and their multifaceted scientific culture. Yet what
about “peripheral cities” in Eastern and Southern Europe? Are they only smaller
copies of London, Paris and Berlin? What is to be gained from studying the
scientific culture of “non-metropolitan” cities? So far these cities have been
described as being on the receiving end. Knowledge in STM, blue prints for
scientific institutions, urban models and other practices were created and
tested in the metropolis and then passed on. This postulates a transfer from
the center to the periphery and hence a clear epistemological hierarchy.
The double workshop, organised in Germany
by the Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe
(Germany) and in Spain by the Institució Milà i Fontanals (CSIC), and the Universitat
Autònoma de Barcelona, would like to question this assumption. Our
methodological point of departure is that cities in Southern and Eastern Europe
(our specific geographic focus) were part of an “inter-urban matrix” (N. Wood).
Through the daily press, but also through other channels such as scholarly
networks and professional contacts people were quite conscious of what was
happening elsewhere in Europe. There are virtually no studies on the
connections between peripheral cities, the exchange of knowledge and expertise
and the formation of networks and collaborations. This workshop intends to open
new perspectives on the exchanges in the areas of science, technology, medicine
and urban planning between “urban peripheries” such as Athens, Barcelona,
Budapest, Lemberg, Lisbon or Tallinn? In what follows we sketch three possible
research agendas:
Nationalism
As highly multiethnic and multireligious
contact and cultural transfer zones, the East European and Southern Borderlands
are located on the peripheries of the Empires, between Germany and
Austria-Hungary, Russia, Great Britain and the Ottomans. In these borderlands,
the imposing of homogenizing structures by the Empires before World War I and
the emerging local nationalisms generated a dynamic in the urbanization and
modernization processes. This workshop will focus on the assumed specificities
of the urbanization in the South and East of Europe which is characterised by
different forms and modes of knowledge transfer.
Comparing modernities
The inhabitants of allegedly “peripheral”
of “backward” cities felt that they had to “catch up” with London and Paris (or
less frequently with Berlin and Vienna). This “yearning for metropolitanism”
(J. Morrell) was both a rhetorical exercise and a practical struggle. Many of
these “peripheral” cities tried to present themselves as “progressive”, that is
to say as promoting science, technology, medicine (hygiene) and rational city
planning. Yet the meaning of modernity was highly context-dependent and
historically contingent. The challenge of the comparative research agenda of
the workshop lies in teasing out the differences between these modernities.
“Best practices”
Peripheral – or emerging – cities
understood that the experience of similar cities was much more helpful in
solving their concrete problems than much of the metropolitan model. Therefore
this workshop will try to reconstruct the mechanisms and strategies behind of
choosing certain “best practices”, i.e. urban models that serve smaller cities.
Therefore special attention might be paid to fields such as urban planning,
sewage systems and infrastructure of supply, which played a crucial role in the
modernisation of many “peripheral” cities in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries. This search for practical models will thus help to elucidate the
networks between these urban spaces.
This workshop will try and unveil the
directions and channels through which knowledge was created and disseminated in
these interurban networks. Conferences, research trips, lectures, private
visits and correspondence would have to be investigated. The aim would be to
render these transnational communities visible again, not least by bringing
their practices and networks back to a tangible space: the city. To enable a
thorough discussion we plan a double workshop (ca. one and half days long).
Precirculated papers will be presented at the first workshop and revised
versions of these papers at the second workshop. In the end we plan to publish
these papers as a book a special issue of a journal. The first workshop will
take place on 26-27 September 2016 at the Institució Milà i Fontanals in
Barcelona (Spain), the second part at the Herder Institute in Marburg (Germany)
in March 2017. The organisers will cover travel and accommodation costs of the
invited speakers.
Please submit your proposal of ca. 250
words and a short CV as well as contact details by February 15, 2016 to:
forum@herder-institut.de
ORGANISERS
Heidi Hein-Kircher/Eszter
Gantner: Herder Institute for Historical Research on
East Central Europe – Institute of the Leibniz Association
Oliver Hochadel: Institució Milà i Fontanals – Consejo
Superior de Investigaciones Científi cas
Agustí Nieto-Galan: Centre d’Història de la Ciència (Cehic), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
VENUE/DATE
26-27 September 2016 • Institució Milà i
Fontanals, Barcelona, Spain (first part)
March 2017 • Herder Institute or Historical
Research on East Central Europe, Marburg, Germany (second part)