The Material City

Bodies, Minds, and the In-Between

By: Alan Blum

Write A Review

eText | 3 April 2023

At a Glance

Format
PDF

eText

$159.50

or 4 interest-free payments of $39.88 with

Instant online reading in your Booktopia eTextbook Library *

Why choose an eTextbook?

Instant Access *

Purchase and read your book immediately

Read Aloud

Listen and follow along as Bookshelf reads to you

Study Tools

Built-in study tools like highlights and more

* eTextbooks are not downloadable to your eReader or an app and can be accessed via web browsers only. You must be connected to the internet and have no technical issues with your device or browser that could prevent the eTextbook from operating.

Redirecting examinations of the culture of the city away from its customs, art, and amenities to focus on the mental life of modern society, Alan Blum explores the methods cities and their subjects use to find meaning in the context of urban life, in particular the city's relationships to social change and what has traditionally been identified as justice. The Material City pictures the city as a landscape of diverse clashes over beliefs, a site that exhibits interpretive collisions over globalization, gentrification, innovation, preservation, market value, popular culture, crowds, consumption, urban governance, and different strategies for healing the democratic city's ever-present conflicts over these concerns. Each chapter uses a problem of urban life to observe and analyze assumptions and values that are typically taken for granted and unspoken, using elements of the philosophy of Plato as well as the work of modern thinkers such as Georg Simmel, Gertrude Stein, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Virginia Woolf, Hannah Arendt, and Jacques Lacan. The Material City translates contested views of everyday life and its management into a deeper reflection on urbanity as a system of desire. The historical and the contemporary metropolis alike are shown to be sites where the enigma of mortality - and its relation to pleasure, comedy, and fate - plays out.