Zapraszamy do składania propozycji zgłoszeń na sesję „Local urban community networks and peripheral modernisation in the modern times (ca. 1850-1939)”

Zapraszamy do składania propozycji zgłoszeń na sesję „Local urban community networks and peripheral modernisation in the modern times (ca. 1850–1939)” na cyklicznej konferencji European Association of Urban History pt. „City Networks in Europe and Beyond”, która się odbędzie w dniach 2–5 września 2026 r. w Barcelonie.

Organizatorami są: Aleksander Łupienko (IH PAN), Agata Łysakowska-Trzoss (IH PAN) oraz Kamil Śmiechowski (UŁ) oraz Międzynarodowe Centrum Kultury w Krakowie.

Termin zgłoszeń to już 22 października 2025 r. Organizatorzy przesunęli termin na 17 listopada 2025 r.

Opis:

In our session we would like to look more closely at the phenomenon of local urban communities of which towns and cities in Europe consisted since time immemorial, and their transformation during the times of modernity. Modernisation is a catchphrase that describes a wide array of changes taking place since eighteenth through twentieth centuries that permeated deeply the physical environment and mentality, as well as states and local groupings. Peripheral regions tended to adopt modernisation later than the centre, though both terms―periphery and centre―are debatable and far from clear. There were many European peripheries, but―to be sure―local centres were located also within the peripheral regions, beaming around with capital, know-how and ideas; the insular character of modernisation on the periphery is a widely accepted idea. The scholarship has produced multiple different ways of analysing the urban modernisation, our proposal is to look at it at the local scale, answering to the question of how it affected peripheral localness. We would like to follow the grassroots view of urban history that turns away from e.g. the bottom-up approach and invites instead to analyse horizontal ties between social groupings, that is―their networks. Communities gathered by means of symbols and ideas, much more than by brute force and social discipline. Instead of agreeing on the centrality of the category of nation during the ascending modernity, i.e. in the period of ca. 1850–1939, the session proposes to look at various non-mutually-excluding social groupings that formed urban society by building inner-city (sometimes also inter-city) networks that bound together different people and employed various ideas. This will give voice to people bound by their: 1) (still) pre-modern estate-based ties; 2) common religious creed; 3) professional belonging and corporations (artisans, officials, workers etc.); 4) belonging to the urban elites, which wielded power locally; 5) ethnicity and more broadly culture (including common language). We would like to look at the transformations within these community networks and the ways their leaders (or people unconsciously performing that role) and members addressed modernisation―while still struggling for local influence and power. Additionally, we invite papers that focus on new types of communities emerging in the urban environment, i.e. modern associations that gathered members in pursuit of certain goals and visions.

Strona internetowa: https://www.eauhbarcelona2026.eu/sessions/#session51