London and the East End as Spectacles of Urban Tourism

Abstract

The article analyzes London's East End as a spectacle of urban tourism. It traces the changing perception of urban explorers and international travel writers from the end of the nineteenth century into the interwar period. Exploring the East End became a cultural practice in the metropolitan city that brought cultures into contact and negotiated their boundaries, generating an engagement with and a rethinking of difference and modernity. At times, surveying the East End challenged individuals' identities and their understanding of social and ethnic differences. The different Jewish visions of the East End reflected and partook within this larger process that came to challenge, but also to reformulate the representation of the slums. Moreover, the vitality of the East End permitted Jewish city strollers to inscribe a vital Jewish presence onto the fabric of European cultures. The engagement of these local and international Jewish travelers with the immigrant quarters marked an appeal to transnational geographies of belonging.