Cities and cultural exchange
Team leaders :
Professor Donatella Calabi (Italy)
Dr. Stephen Christensen (Denmark)
Besides examining the circulation of cultural goods, it is fundamental to focus on the engines of transmission both between and within states. From the late Middle Ages the European city has an intimate involvement in the process of transfer ; indeed, one might talk of an urbanization of European culture taking place from the 15th to the 18th century. Across the continent, cities and towns became the principal bazaars for a great deal of the cultural mixing and exchange occurring from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, with centres like Venice, Amsterdam, and Vienna, trading not only in European but also non-European ideas, goods, and practices. Cities were also exposition centres for cultural activity, exhibiting models of change, whether in architecture (e.g., Madrids Plaza Mayor or Paris Place Royale for 17th-century western Europe), learning (the 17th-century scientific academies), or dress. Towns concentrated numerous agencies of cultural transmission, both ecclesiastical and governmental. They were corporate entities, governed through an intensive surveillance, expressed in such forms as sumptuary legislation or by bans on weapons within their boundaries. European cities created new forms of public space, especially the city square, whose polyvalent uses require pluridisciplinary exploration (archaeology, architecture, literature, folklore). Cities encouraged their residents to develop a private sphere, which often became a distinction for urban elites. In multiple ways, cities have an intimate involvement in the process of transfer of cultural goods.
However, cities are more than just arenas of cultural exchange. They are the seed-bed of cultural innovation. They create new attitudes to time (including the past) and space. They generate new forms of leisure and entertainment. They influence the growth of more gender-defined cultural activities. They are largely responsible for the great advance of new-style voluntary activities in the 17th and 18th centuries - which are invented out of earlier forms of academies and confraternities and spread rapidly in Britain and to a lesser extent elsewhere in Europe (e.g., Masonic lodges, mutual aid societies, literary, scientific, improvement political and book societies). Cities help to manufacture cultural pluralism.
Linked with this, cities develop their own cultural industries which export their wares across Europe and beyond. Most important was the development of the information industry (books, newspapers, magazines, prints). They also have important luxury production (art, ceramics, furniture) and growing leisure industries (commercial music and the theatre, cafés, pleasure gardens). They are also significant in distribution as well as production, with the expansion of shops and shopping (by the 18th century Italian nobles were coming to Paris to buy luxury goods in the smart shops). In all theses many ways cities provide the key interface between cultural change and exchange and the economic, political and social development of late medieval and early modern Europe.
Why are cities so important in this process ? First because of the quickening place of urbanization, notably from the 16th century, fueled by expanding economies, the influx of landowners into towns, and the rise of the state - exemplified by the growth of state capitals, eclipsing the old commercial metropolitan centres. Secondly, growth led to important social changes in cities : the rise of new social groups ; the influx of the immigrants and minorities (one might also argue that urban culture was the creation of a system of values of and for migrants) ; the development by city elites faced with these challenges of new ideas for communal solidarity and control. Thirdly the development of communications between cities (through transport, media and trade) ; not just international links but links between metropolitan cities and provincial centres : so what is fashionable in London or Paris one year, is new in Edinburgh and Toulouse two years later and a country (or colonial) town three or four years after that.
By looking at cities and culture we can explore other key relationships. First, between town and countryside : how far does rural culture invade the city, how far is there a growing polarity by 1700, or a colonization of the countryside ? Secondly, regional differences within Europe : between north and south, but also between east and west ; between the changing relations of core and periphery ; between Catholic and Protestant areas. Thirdly, between different types of cities : one should distinguish between regions with entirely urban culture (e.g., northern Italy or Flanders) and regions where urban culture formed only one element within a more complex framework. Fourthly, between state and institutional culture and commercial culture. Finally, the crucial relationship between cultural change and cultural resistance - social, ethnic, regional, local (big cities may propose cultural change, country towns dispose it).
The importance of this sub-theme has recently attracted growing research, often with an explicitly comparative motif. The last few years have also seen the creation of important networks of European urban historians, which help to sustain the proposed colloquia and disseminate its findings.
The team will organize four colloquia on the following themes :
European cities as centres of cultural innovation, including new concepts of time and space, and new forms of voluntarism.
Urban culture and the urban economy, including cultural industries, cultural entrepreneurs, and the commercialization of cultural activity.
Urban culture and urban society, including culture and urban identity and civic formation.
Cities and cultural differentiation, including town and countryside, the metropolis and provincial centres, towns and regionality.
The approach in all four colloquia will be comparative and interdisciplinary, mobilizing the expertise and approaches of social, cultural, political, economic and urban historians, as well as geographers, scholars of architecture and urban planning, and specialists in art and literature. Like other sections of the programme, team members will deploy a wide range of sources for analysis, including archival and printed materials, quantitative and computerized data (especially for colloquium 3), artifacts, painting and other visual images, evidences from preserved buildings and literary evidence.
Several sub-themes intersect with other sections of the programme ; for example, new forms of voluntarism (theme 1) and civic formation (theme 3) will be of major interest to the team working on religion and cultural identities. We hope that the Religion and Cities teams can organize linked colloquia to connect discussion. Similarly, the Cities team intersect with parts of the Information and Communication team (e.g., sociabilities) and with Man and Material Culture (e.g., style markets).
