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."
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