History Of Urban Politics Research Articles

The household, the citizen and the city: towards a social history of urban politics in the late Middle Ages

ABSTRACT Histories of politics in the late medieval European town present a struggle between town oligarchs and town citizens. While the conclusions that historians draw differ, the stakes of politics are the same: exclusion, participation and representation in town government. Politics is the ‘public’ domain of officeholding, elections and voting, its actors exclusively male, its locations the council chamber, the craft guild, the workshop. Starting and ending with the evidence of a 1532 ‘insurrection of women’ in the English city of Norwich, this article seeks to reconceptualise town politics in the late Middle Ages. Its premise is that urban citizenship was a social and performative practice as much as a formal legal and political status. It argues that the relationship between home, household and family was fundamental to the lived experience of citizenship. The urban household was a complex source of political agency, where the official separation between citizen and non-citizen was difficult to sustain. The 1532 insurrection of women allows us to connect the politics of the household to the politics of the town hall and to write a social history of town politics, in which women were political actors.

Who decides? Urban councils and consensus in the late Middle Ages

ABSTRACT The prosaic records of town council meetings are an essential, if problematic, source for historians of late medieval European towns. They are a window on the concerns, fears and ambitions of urban authorities, yet they have proved especially intractable to historians interested in the social history of urban politics. They seem to present a monotonously harmonious picture of civic unity, social solidarity and political unanimity. Looking outside the town hall for evidence of the social divisions and political discord that characterized town life, urban historians have uncovered an unstable world of ‘contentious politics’, in which revolt was only one possible means of dissent. This article argues that historians should return to the town hall and to the council chamber, to reassess the value of town council minutes. Placing the rich, and still relatively little-used, civic archive of the English city of Norwich within a wider European context, it focuses on the meaning and significance of the records of non-attendance at council meetings. It locates official anxieties about non-attendance not within a narrowly legal or institutional framework, but within a contemporary culture of urban citizenship, which was performative and disputatious. The article identifies a form of ‘consensus politics’ that involved – indeed, promoted – conflict.

Governing by Analogy: Ideas and Institutions in Urban Political History

Governing by Analogy: Ideas and Institutions in Urban Political History

Introduction

Introduction

Democracy in Action?: NIMBY as Impediment to Equitable Affordable Housing Siting

Effective democracy requires participation. However, the history of urban politics, housing policy, and neighborhood revitalization has demonstrated that wealth and power often overshadow participation and community activism. Proponents of equity planning and advocacy planning in the USA have fought to include vulnerable, marginalized populations within planning decisions, yet there have been few examples of this in action. We apply Fainstein's principles of The Just City (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010) to investigate the extent to which local opposition affects affordable housing development. In doing so, we question the extent to which housing policy and planning in the USA successfully achieve the goals of equity and fairness, or whether not-in-my-backyard forces operating within (and beyond) “democratic” planning processes override those principles in siting decisions. Our results suggest that community opposition is a considerable barrier to the efficient siting of affordable housing, and propose changes to local planning and implementation strategies in order to minimize opposition and produce more equitable outcomes.

RETHINKING POLITICS IN THE COLONY: THEMÉTISOF SENEGAL AND URBAN POLITICS IN THE LATE NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY

ABSTRACTSenegal was unique in French West Africa for the nature and extent of electoral institutions that operated in its colonial towns. In the 1870s, Third Republic France elaborated on earlier short-lived policies by re-establishing local assemblies and a legislative seat for Senegal in Paris. Although histories of modern politics focus on Blaise Diagne's 1914 election to the French National Assembly, a local assembly called the General Council held greater power over economic and political matters affecting the colony between 1870 and 1920. This article reconsiders the history of urban politics in colonial Senegal by examining the ways that themétis(mixed race population) used the General Council as their field of engagement with French officials, sometimes facilitating the consolidation of French rule but at other times contesting colonial practice.

Building a Complex and Emancipatory Unity: Documenting Decolonial Feminist Interventions within the Occupy Movement

Building a Complex and Emancipatory Unity: Documenting Decolonial Feminist Interventions withinthe Occupy Movement Molly Talcottand Dana Collins During week six of the Occupy Wall Street encampment in New York City's Zuccotti Park, Angela Davis spoke to the Occupiers with enthusiasm in a much-circulated video. Her speech was narrated through the "people's mic" (where people repeat the speaker's words verbatim and in unison), and she issued a vital challenge to the young movement: "We have come together as the 99 percent. There are major responsibilities linked to your decision to assemble here in community. So, how can we be together? How can we be together in a unity that is not simplistic and oppressive? How can we be together in a unity that is complex and emancipatory?"1 It is this enormous yet promising challenge—the building of a complex, emancipatory unity among diverse collectives of activ ists— that has intrigued us as witnesses to the growth of the Occupy movements that sprang up in the United States in 2011 and that continue to exist, expand, and morph. As we discuss below, the ethos of masculinized resistance that is often present within such spaces, along with the very language of "occupying" used by the movement, are troubling from a transnational antiracist feminist perspective. However, we feel that it is vital to carefully peer into these spaces with a feminist curiosity that searches for openings, listens for the difficult dialogues, and glimpses the feminist and decolonial perfor mances of resistance occurring from within. FeministStudies38, no. 2 (Summer 2012). © 2012 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 485 486 Molly Talcottand Dana Collins Through our photographic analysis of the Occupy Los Angeles (OLA) movement, we ask: How are women, in particular, challeng ing the masculine, racialized, and imperial/nationalistic logics that continue to operate within some Occupy spaces? Are they contributing to the building of this complex and emancipatory unity from within the movement of the 99 percent?2 If so, how? And which women? Photographs do not capture an external or stagnant real ity; rather, as Wendy Cheng has argued in her photographic explo ration of urban political history of Los Angeles, photography is a part of a method of social storytelling, requiring the photogra pher to be a social actor among the urban spaces she seeks to repre sent.3 The photos and analytical reflections shared here arise out of our own participation in OLA—we frequently attended the OLA encampments, taught and participated in workshops at the on-site People's Collective University, and were in the encampment the night of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) raid on Novem ber 30, 2011. Dana has used photography to document OLA as well as regional labor and racial justice protests that have adopted the language and ethos of the 99 percent following the formation of OLA.4 These photographs emerge out of the performative social rela tions of political protest; they reflect interactions between a white woman photographer and the women who agree to be photo graphed.5 I (Dana) photographed widely; however, I am most inter ested as a feminist visual sociologist in how women shaped Occupy protest space, particularly given the critiques of the masculiniza tion of the movement. Social positioning shapes the very production of these photographs, as women express openness to being repre sented by a politicized woman photographer (Dana) whose visual sociological method encourages women to choosehow they will pose with their signs for the photograph. While the smiles of the women in the following photos might at first seem to relay a romanticized resistance, we interpret their posing as a forceful expression of their politicized display of bodies, signs, and presence. Our analysis below therefore combines our photographic work at OLA, our participant observation, our assessment of Occupy images and discourses as they have circulated on the Internet, and our commitment to deco lonial/antiracist feminist social transformation. Molly Talcottand Dana Collins 487 We feature imagery that represents, from our specific OLA refer ence point, reoccurring patterns that we recognize. Other settings may have different outcomes and dynamics, but we begin from the OLA context as a way to pose questions relevant to the...

Urban history of the medieval Low Countries: research trends and new perspectives (2000–10)

The historiography of medieval cities in the Low Countries has long been influenced by the legacy of Henri Pirenne (1862–1935) and his pupils. The Belgian historian and his followers used new (positivist) methods to study history, such as critical source analysis and teaching in seminars, which had a great impact on contemporary scholars in Belgium and elsewhere. Furthermore, Pirenne's selection of original research topics drastically changed the study of medieval history on the Continent. Influenced by research trends in France and Germany, Pirenne did ground-breaking new research, for instance, in the field of urban history. His publications on the origins of towns, on the ‘early democracies’ in the Low Countries, and on the socio-economic background of urban growth and decline inspired many colleagues and his students. His research on particular topics in the field of urban history has, until the present day, been a fruitful starting point for many Ph.D. students. Three of these topics constitute the subject of this review article: first, the origins of towns; secondly, the social history of urban politics and thirdly, the economy and finances of cities. This review of recent Ph.D. theses on the urban history of the Low Countries will demonstrate the importance of Pirenne's legacy, paying close attention to the valuable refinements that have been made to his findings in the last decade. Moreover, the actual research trends and the fresh perspectives of young scholars on the Low Countries’ history can be of great use for scholars of the history of cities in other regions in late medieval Europe.

Trolley Wars: Streetcar Workers on the Line by Scott Molloy

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 255 Building the Workingman’s Paradise: The Design ofAmerican Company Towns (London and New York: Verso, 1995) and numerous articles dealing with company towns, industrial housing, and labor relations. Trolley Wars: Streetcar Workers on theLine. By Scott Molloy. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996. Pp. xvii+238, illustra­ tions, notes, index. $36.50 (cloth). The advent of electric streetcars in the 1890s was a technological advancement that radically altered the urban experience. Indeed, electrification of street railways not only reshaped the urban land­ scape, transporting more patrons for greater distances at increased speeds, it also fostered new work patterns for streetcar workers and social problems for the local polity. Ideological and economic con­ flicts over the purpose and nature of the street railway business pit­ ted streetcar workers, politicos, small business owners, and other citi­ zens against huge transit concerns. As a result, numerous intense, often violent streetcar strikes occurred in many American cities at the turn of the century. In this respect, Scott Molloy’s case study of the development of public transit in Rhode Island, Trolley Wars, is aptly named. He contends that the development of public transpor­ tation was nothing less than a prolonged struggle for ultimate con­ trol of city streets and city government, fought in courts, at the ballot box, in local councils and state legislatures, and in the streets them­ selves. In many ways, Molloy relates a classic story of labor history. Horsecar street railway service commenced in Providence on Wash­ ington’s birthday in 1865. For the first two decades of service, labor relations between the locally owned Union Railroad Company (URC) and its workers were mutually respectful and financially re­ warding for both parties. Much like early craftworkers, streetcar driv­ ers and conductors performed their duties within a flexible set of work rules and developed personal relationships with their custom­ ers, who were often friends and neighbors. But the political and so­ cial culture of transit radically changed in the 1890s when electric trolleys replaced horsepowered cars and a large transit monopoly from another state gained control of the URC. Streetcar work be­ came highly regimented and a two-tier wage system was imposed which favored veteran drivers. Moreover, the tremendous increase in the scale of Rhode Island’s street railway system depersonalized service, causing great public animosity while labor relations deterio­ rated. Finally, members of the fledgling Division 200 of the Amal­ gamated Association of Street Railway Employees of America called a strike inJune 1902. Despite widespread support from the citizenry ofProvidence and Pawtucket, as well as the latter city’s reform mayor John J. Fitzgerald, the strikers lost the battle. Conservative political 256 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE forces won the war, and control of public transit in Rhode Island remained the prerogative of the URC. This book is largely a study of Rhode Island’s labor and urban political history, but those who are interested in the social ramifica­ tions of technology will also find it a useful work. The specifics of instituting electric streetcars, their technological profiles, and ac­ companying infrastructural changes are not addressed; instead, elec­ trification is investigated as a political and social issue. Molloy does not break new ground in this area, but he does provide additional evidence to support the work of Sam BassWarner and KennethJackson . In particular, his chapter titled “The Trolley Habit” is a suc­ cinct, extremely thoughtful discussion regarding the effect of elec­ tric street railways upon the urbanization process in Rhode Island. It details the flurry of land speculation and swift suburban develop­ ment that coincided with the expansion of streetcar service, and the tremendous changes in the nature of streetcar work caused by tech­ nological advancement. Perhaps most informative is his understand­ ing of the development of heightened public expectations of and animosity toward transit interests during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the impact of these social perceptions upon the poli­ tics of transit. Trolley Wars is an insightful and clearly written volume. While it is not pathbreaking in scope, Molloy’s exhaustive research provides ample evidence to support his claim that the development of urban mass transportation in Rhode...

America on Record: A History of Recorded Sound by Andre Millard

256 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE forces won the war, and control of public transit in Rhode Island remained the prerogative of the URC. This book is largely a study of Rhode Island’s labor and urban political history, but those who are interested in the social ramifica­ tions of technology will also find it a useful work. The specifics of instituting electric streetcars, their technological profiles, and ac­ companying infrastructural changes are not addressed; instead, elec­ trification is investigated as a political and social issue. Molloy does not break new ground in this area, but he does provide additional evidence to support the work of Sam BassWarner and KennethJackson . In particular, his chapter titled “The Trolley Habit” is a suc­ cinct, extremely thoughtful discussion regarding the effect of elec­ tric street railways upon the urbanization process in Rhode Island. It details the flurry of land speculation and swift suburban develop­ ment that coincided with the expansion of streetcar service, and the tremendous changes in the nature of streetcar work caused by tech­ nological advancement. Perhaps most informative is his understand­ ing of the development of heightened public expectations of and animosity toward transit interests during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the impact of these social perceptions upon the poli­ tics of transit. Trolley Wars is an insightful and clearly written volume. While it is not pathbreaking in scope, Molloy’s exhaustive research provides ample evidence to support his claim that the development of urban mass transportation in Rhode Island was indeed a continual battle for control of a city’s thoroughfares. Molloy is certainly sympathetic to the streetcar workers he investigates and, in a few instances, his perception of their actions appears to be a bit rosy. And it was dis­ tressing to see Kenneth Jackson cited in the text and index as “Henryjackson.” But these are quibbles about a solid historical vol­ ume. This book adds to our knowledge of streetcar workers, as well as our understanding ofthe politics and social effects ofpublic trans­ portation development in America. Michael O. Smith Mr. Smith is a doctoral candidate in urban history at the University of Michigan and reference archivist at the Walter Reuther Library, Wayne State University. His dissertation is a comparative study of urban development in Hamilton, Ontario, and Toledo, Ohio, 1890-1920. America on Record: A History ofRecorded Sound. By Andre Millard. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Pp. ix+413; illustrations, figures, notes, bibliography, index. $59.95 (hardcover); $17.95 (paper). Andre Millard’s America on Record offers a comprehensive survey of the recorded music industry in America, from its earliest days in TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 257 the workshop of Thomas Edison to the rise of the international me­ dia conglomerates who produce the music that we consume today. The comprehensiveness of Millard’s account constitutes both its strength and its weakness. Over the course of360 pages, the reader is introduced to the tech­ nological innovations of the late 19th century that made the record­ ing of sound possible; the development of industrial production of phonographs and records; the competition among large corpora­ tions; the innovations of sound film and radio and their relationship to the phonograph industry; the postwar achievement of “high fi­ delity” and its supersession by digital sound recording, and much more. Music styles—from jazz to swing to rock and rap—are con­ nected to technological and industrial developments, and transfor­ mations in media—from cylinder to disc to cassette to CD—are simi­ larly connected to corporate and consumer imperatives. By covering the industry from its origins to the present day, and by making connections to the larger context ofsociety and culture in America, Millard provides valuable information not found in other histories, such as Oliver Read and Walter Welch’s From, Tin Foil to Stereo: Evolution of the Phonograph (Indianapolis: Howard W. Sams, 1959) and Roland Gelatt’s The Fabulous Phonograph, 1877-1977 (New York: Macmillan, 1977). But in this effort to provide “a con­ cise narrative which covers the significant events and explains the relationship” between sound recording technology and its “cultural effects” (p. vii), it is the quest for coverage rather than curiosity...

Recasting Urban Political History: Gender, the Public, the Household, and Political Participation in Boston and San Francisco during the Progressive Era

Thanks to recent innovations in theories and methods of political history, an enormous task lies before those wishing to approach the social-scientific goal recently desribed as “total political history.” Research and theorizing on the subjects of political culture, the autonomy of the state, language and discourse, the public sphere, and the importance of gender to political life promise to displace a long-standing interest among political historians in locating the social groups that presumably composed the “base” of historical regime and policy formation. The understanding of past politics as the epiphenomenal superstructure to an ontologically primary base of past society has been radically revised by scholarship presenting evidence of the relative autonomy of the state and of cultural structures within which both society and politics operate (Kousser 1982,1990; Skocpol 1985; McDonald 1986; Tropea 1989; Hunt 1986; Reddy 1987; Palmer 1990).

Recasting Urban Political History: Gender, the Public, the Household, and Political Participation in Boston and San Francisco during the Progressive Era

Recasting Urban Political History: Gender, the Public, the Household, and Political Participation in Boston and San Francisco during the Progressive Era

Bringing the Bosses Back in: The Irish Political Machines and Urban Policy Making

Recently historians have ventured a multifaceted critique of boss rule, suggesting that the very existence of the political machine has been exaggerated, that machines did not materially affect patterns of political mobilization, had only a limited role in the making of public policy, and (contrary to pluralist theory) did little to improve the welfare of the ethnic working class. For these revisionists the boss was really a bit player in the era when he allegedly held center stage. As Terrence McDonald argued the case in the last installment of this annual, “ethnicity, patronage, and the machine” represent unduly narrow ways of viewing urban political development. According to Jon Teaford and David Thelan, urban political history needs to replace the party boss and his ethnic clientele with interest groups—business, labor, taxpayers, and consumers of municipal services—and their impact on local policies concerning economic development, taxation, and service delivery. In their view, the study of public policy making must take precedence over the allocation of party patronage.

The history of urban fiscal politics in America, 1830-1930: what was supposed to be versus what was and the difference it makes

Across the social sciences in America analysts routinely employ the so-called “functional“ model of the urban political machine in their explanations of the development of American urban government. They do so, however, with little knowledge of the intellectual history of this model or the actual history of American urban politics. This essay reviews the development and spread of the functional model through the social sciences and argues that it is an historical construct developed in the nineteen fifties by analysts who were admittedly more interested in creating a “usable past” for liberal political economy than in understanding urban political history. Having done this the essay then reviews recent work by urban historians and sociologists which have put the propositions of this model to the test in its ideological, political, and fiscal contexts for the years from 1830-1930. This work reveals that the image of the “all-powerful” political machines is demonstrably false. On this basis the essay argues...

Machine Politics in America, 1870-1945

Machine Politics in America, 1870-1945 Efforts are underway to reform the historical study of the urban political machine. Once considered the key to much of the history of urban rule, the analysis of machine politics began to wear thin by the early 1970s, trapped within a framework that chronicled the duels between bosses and reformers. By the start of the I98os the study of machine politics was in serious trouble; historians who had grown tired of the standard bromides of the boss-reformer scenario vigorously pressed for a fresh approach to the history of urban politics. Miller took a modest step in this direction by discarding the boss-reformer dichotomy but retaining the concept of machine politics as the basis for a broad periodization of urban political organization. Teaford allowed that studies showing a keener sense of variations in boss power might be fruitful, but, like Dorsett and Thelen before him, complained of the bossreformer framework, coming close to advocating that machine politics be abandoned as a cornerstone of the analysis of the urban polity. His call to rewrite the history of urban politics along new lines was further evidence, if any was needed, that impatience with bosses and reformers was fast becoming impatience with machine politics itself.1 What makes the wisdom of throwing out the phenomenon with the framework arguable is that the deficiencies of past ac-