5, Urban Cultures

Question 1

What is Modernity?

Answer 1

Changing society – new economic, political and cultural life emerging

Expansion of capitalism
Celebration of the “new”
Political and individual freedom and self-expression

Pace of change accelerates
New technologies and communication networks
Increased flow of ideas, peoples and goods/resources

Attempt to order and cleanse cities

Question 2

How did Paris enter into modernity?

Answer 2

19th century city population expanding
Increase in jobs, especially in factories
Gas lights on the streets – opens city for night life
New sewers for cleanliness

Question 3

Who was Baron Georges-Eugine Haussmann?

Answer 3

Architect of Paris’ modernisation - creating radical change
New roads/boulevards to increase circulation
New parks
Introduce better infrastructure to deal with more densely populated city

Question 4

What backlash was there to modernisation?

Answer 4

Paris Commune, 1871 – radical socialists and democrats revolution over modernisation changes - crushed
Increased prostitution caused by modernisation created idea of cities being unclean

Question 5

When and how did consumerist society and culture emerge?

Answer 5

19th and 20th century
Mass consumption of goods
Consumer choice targeted by marketing and publicity
The department store
Individual and social identities (partly) based on consumption – rich able to buy more expensive stuff

Question 6

What was degeneration and what did it look like?

Answer 6

Benedict-Augustin Morel developed theory of degeneration
French per capita highest rates of alcohol consumption in Europe
Increasing numbers of insane asylums and increased suicide rates – Nye (1982)

Question 7

Solutions to degeneration

Answer 7

Self-control
No alcohol
Go to parks and countryside to regenerate
Forms of treatment such as electric shock therapy
Sports