Urban Ethnic Clusters in the Global South During the Age of Steam

Technological change, imperial expansion, and the spread of capitalism during this period fueled both the world’s increasing interconnectedness and the rapid growth of port cities. The rise of the steam engine in shipping accelerated trade and migration from the 1870s, engraving global inequalities into the urban space of multi-ethnic commodity entrepôts of the Global South—a deliberately loose category gesturing to the project’s turn away from the North Atlantic focus of much of urban history.

Contrary to an older literature that equated globalization with the erosion of difference, the project asks how the era’s intensifying cross-continental networks related to dissimilarities in urban space, considering cities as encapsulations of the knot-like nature of long-distance connections. Drawing on social-science methods developed to study segregation in North American cities, the project redirects scholarly attention to port cities of the Global South as bridgeheads of uneven globalization and laboratories for the negotiation of ethnicity. With its empirical and historical emphasis on ethnic clustering in such cities, the project adds historical depth to discussions concerning the relationship between globalization and a particular form of inequality.

News

• Public Lecture by Professor Carl H. Nightingale
  On Thursday, July 7th at 18:15, Prof Carl H. Nightingale from the State University of New York at Buffalo will be delivering a keynote lecture on behalf of the workshop “Writing the Social History of Port Cities” hosted… Read more: Public Lecture by Professor Carl H. Nightingale
• Workshop Poster and Programme
  As our first workshop approaches we are happy to share the poster and programme and look forward to seeing everyone in July.
• Upcoming Workshop
  The Patchwork Cities team is delighted to announce that it will be hosting a workshop in Berlin, July 7 and 8, entitled: “Writing the Social History of Port Cities: Comparative Approaches to Urban History in the Global South.”… Read more: Upcoming Workshop
• Podcast
  What does the metaphorical title really mean? Patchwork Cities: Urban Ethnic Clusters in the Global South During the Age of Steam, conjures more questions of migration, cities and the history of segregation than a passion for steam engines.… Read more: Podcast

Funding

SNSF (2020-2024)