Berlin, Alexanderplatz : : Transforming Place in a Unified Germany / / Gisa Weszkalnys.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Berghahn Books Complete eBook-Package 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Weszkalnys, Gisa,
• Place / Publishing House: New York; , Oxford : : Berghahn Books, , [2010]; ©2010
• Year of Publication: 2010
• Language: English
• Series: Space and Place ; 1
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (226 p.)

A benchmark study in the changing field of urban anthropology, Berlin, Alexanderplatz is an ethnographic examination of the rapid transformation of the unified Berlin. Through a captivating account of the controversy around this symbolic public square in East Berlin, the book raises acute questions about expertise, citizenship, government and belonging. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the city administration bureaus, developers’ offices, citizen groups and in Alexanderplatz itself, the author advances a richly innovative analysis of the multiplicity of place. She reveals how Alexanderplatz is assembled through the encounters between planners, citizen activists, social workers, artists and ordinary Berliners, in processes of popular participation and personal narratives, in plans, timetables, documents and files, and in the distribution of pipes, tram tracks and street lights. Alexanderplatz emerges as a socialist spatial exemplar, a ‘future’ under construction, an object of grievance, and a vision of robust public space. This book is both a critical contribution to the anthropology of contemporary modernity and a radical intervention in current cross-disciplinary debates on the city.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- List of Figures -- Acknowledgements -- Glossary -- I Introduction -- II Constructing a Future Berlin -- III The Disintegration of a Socialist Exemplar -- IV Promising Plans -- V The Object of Grievance -- VI A Robust Square -- VII Whose Alexanderplatz? -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index