Narrating the City Histories, Space and the Everyday [Hardcover]

In recent decades, the insight that narration shapes our perception of reality has inspired and influenced the most innovative historical accounts. Focusing on new research, this volume explores the history of non-elite populations in cities from Caracas to Vienna, and Paris to Belgrade. Narration is central to the theme of each contribution, whether as a means of description, a methodological approach, or basic story telling. This book brings together research that both asks classical socio-historical questions and takes narration seriously, engaging with novels, films, local history accounts, petitions to municipal authorities, and interviews with alternative cinema activists.

This is an extremely solid and well-informed collection that brings together pertinent and timely case studies that all shed light on the interconnections between the everyday and urban narratives. The scope is expansive and interdisciplinary, and the framework is explained well and in detail.?????Markus Reisenleitner, York University

List of Figures
Acknowledgments

Introduction:Space, Narration, and the Everyday
Wladimir Fischer-Nebmaier

PART I: NARRATIVES AND IMAGES OF THE CITY

Chapter 1.The Case of Ossification: Contemporary Narratives about Everyday Life in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Lviv
Andriy Zayarnyuk

Chapter 2.The Masas Odysseys through Bourgeois Caracas: The Testimony of Novels, 1920s-1970s
Arturo Almandoz

Chapter 3.Re-imagining Nieuwland: Narrative Mapping and the Mental Geography of Urban Space in a Dutch Multi-Ethnic Neighborhood
Leeke Reinders

PART II: CLAIMING URBAN SPAClS°