Research project Pleasurescapes. Port cities’ transnational forces of integration
The project explores the ways in which public places of pleasure in European port cities have unfolded social of forces of integration in the past and thereby fostered traits of urbanity. Public places of entertainment are studied as "pleasurescapes" - fluid in size and character over tiume and space.
PLEASURESCAPES is a humanities-led and HERA-funded collaborative research project. It explores the ways in which public places of pleasure in European port cities have unfolded social forces of integration in the past and thereby fostered traits of urbanity. We explore how popular pleasure culture is key for social cohesion and what specifics port cities show in this regard.
Public places of entertainment in port cities mirror traits of urbanization decisively: They are transnational microcosms, representing conformity and rebellion at the same time. They are public zones of encounter and melting pot for divergent classes, cultures and religions.
We call these places “pleasurescapes” because they are fluid in size and character over time and space. They are socially constructed cultural landscapes of pleasure, not just built architecture.
In studying the past of port cities’ pleasurescapes, we gain insights into Europe’s cultural pluralism and its exchange of knowledge, material, technologies, and practices.
Project description
The project grounds on History, Urban Cultural Studies and Museum Studies and a diverse methodological set, including Actor-Network-Theory or Arts-Based-Research for instance.
The project studies the period dating from the late 1800s until the 1960s and are taking four cities into close empirical account: Hamburg (DE), Rotterdam (NL), Barcelona (ES) and Gothenburg (SE) (see more on the case study of Gothenburg below).
Despite their national singularities, these cities’ pleasurescapes show intriguing transnational convergence – why and how exactly is the subject of our research. As outputs, we are working on a travelling museum exhibition with accompanying booklet, a theatre production and academic open access articles. We document our material findings in an online database, of which parts are going to be published open access.
Project members
Members
All researchers on the project website
More about this project
Christina Reimann, Stockholm University, participates with a case study of the port town Gothenburg.
Public pleasure culture in the port city of Gothenburg, 1860-1930s
Between the 1860s and 1930s, the peripheral port town Gothenburg was catapulted into industrial modernity. Public pleasures functioned as vector of spatial transformation and urban self-understanding, and as crystalizing point for urban (counter-) narratives. In this context, Christina Reimann’s research is structured along three analytical angles and key questions:
- 1. Pleasure institutions and the (re)-making of inner city borders (1860-1923): How were borders, particularly those between “port districts” and the “city centre,” constructed, maintained and given meaning through institutions of pleasure, and how did these borders in turn shape the urban pleasure culture?
- Deviant pleasure practices as counter narratives (1880s-1920s): Deviant practices of pleasure by social and ethnic minorities are seen as counter-narratives to the contemporary modernity discourse dominated by disciplined popular pleasures and the liberal spirit of some bourgeois pleasures.
- Exoticizing and ‘folklig’ performances on Gothenburg’s scenes (1880s-1930s): The entanglement and tensions between “the exotic” and “the folksy” in public entertainment are investigated, tracing the transformation of their relationship in the context of the emerging industrial welfare city.