Berlin

In 1994, the first cybercity was launched by the government of Amsterdam as an attempt to facilitate dialogue between its residents and politicians. Ten years later, the government of Berlin had founded an online auction house for "invisible" public land and was selling it off to private investors without public notification or consent. With the pressures of the BMW Guggenheim Lab, a traveling organization from NYC with temporary projects in Berlin and Mumbai that operated under the general goal of improving urban life, the city was ultimately forced to disclose all "hidden" locations to the public. The BMW Lab then launched a live-update virtual mapping of the city that only featured land either sold, up for grabs, or undergoing contract. What resulted was a remapping of the relationship between cyber and real urban space and a  production of new "real" space in the city through a digital democratization of once-private information.

In its ability for the Internet to democratize once-privatized information and make transparent certain forms of structural and social inequality, it doesn’t dissolve the concept of ownership: it complicates it. The question of the obligation to accept this “imported” digital knowledge versus the controversial right to tune out such a drastic remapping and its precarious relationship to the concept of the model citizen is a particularly relevant and still uncertain question. Working through the problem of "open access" information using the Maussian concept of the gift and a body of ethnographic research resulting from interviews conducted and gestures of public protest as observed in Berlin throughout the months of July to September, 2014, this article aims to provide some answers to, and ask more nuanced forms of the following questions: What does the digital city have to do with the concept of the model citizen? How do the protests surrounding the new "real world" space materialized by the digital mappings of urban space work to reveal the ways that different social groups in the city of Berlin understand the role of the government in dictating how this space should be used, and by whom? How do these ideals relate to the longstanding memory politics of the city? And finally: when does the democratization of such information from extrinsic or visiting parties serve as a public benefit and when is it a public burden?

In recent years, several studies have highlighted how gentrification strategies are imposed under the discursive umbrella of ‘social mixing’. However, most evidence is based on Anglo-Saxon experiences. This paper sets out to expand the geography of gentrification by looking at the representation of processes and policies of gentrification as put forward by key stakeholders in Nord-Neukölln (Berlin) and Indische Buurt (Amsterdam). It shows that in both contexts, stakeholders and policy documents engage with the concept of gentrification, rather than avoid it. Due to public-policy influence and local criticisms, this engagement differs between both cases. In Nord-Neukölln, the term is heavily contested and policy-makers attempt to refute accusations of gentrification, while in the Indische Buurt, the process is explicitly pursued as a positive policy instrument by policy-makers. Different representations within each case are shown to be influenced by the characteristics of in-moving and out-moving residents; the employed timeframe and the perceived influence of institutions on urban regeneration.

DOI: 10.1080/02673037.2014.979770

Der Aufsatz demonstriert die Sonderrolle West-Berlins an drei Prozessen exemplarisch auf dem Feld der Popgeschichte: Erstens der Ideologisierung aufgrund der herausgehobenen Frontstellung im Kalten Krieg (vor allem im Rundfunk), zweitens der Internationalisierung durch die Präsenz der drei Westalliierten in der Stadt sowie -- drittens -- einer subkulturellen Radikalisierung, die durch die Insellage West-Berlins und den Zustrom von "Totalverweigerern" begünstigt wurde. Indem der Text Landmarks und Topographien der Nacht katrographiert, entwirft er Teilbereiche einer "Popscape" West-Berlin, die es künftig -- auch vergleichend und transnational -- zu erforschen gelte.

HANDLIST OF MANUSCRIPTS IN THE CENTRE DE DOCUMENTATION ET DE RECHERCHES HISTORIQUES AHMED BABA, TIMBUKTU, Volume 3. Compiled by librarians of the Centre. Edited by ‘Abd Al‐Muhsin Al‐'Abbas. (Handlists of Islamic Manuscripts Series: X. African Collections — Mali.) London, Al‐Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation, 1997. 864 pp.HANDLIST OF MANUSCRIPTS IN THE NIGERIAN NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF KADUNA, Volume 2. Prepared by Baba Yunus Muhammad. Edited and annotated by John Hunwick. (Handlists of Islamic Manuscripts Series: IX. African Collections —Nigeria.) London, Al‐Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation, 1997. i + 352 pp.HANDLIST OF MANUSCRIPTS IN THE LIBRARIES OF SHAYKH SERIGNE MOR MBAYE CISSE, AL‐HAJJ MALICK SY & SHAYKH IBRAHIM NIASSE. Compiled and edited by Ousmane Kane. (Handlists of Islamic Manuscripts Series: VIII. African Collections — Senegal.) London, Al‐Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation, 1997. xi + 463 pp.THE MINGANA AND RELATED COLLECTIONS: A SURVEY OF ILLUSTRATED ARABIC, GREEK, EASTERN CHRISTIAN, PERSIAN AND TURKISH MANUSCRIPTS IN THE SELLY OAK COLLEGES, BIRMINGHAM. By Lucy‐Anne Hunt. Birmingham, The Mingana Collection, The Edward Cadbury Charitable Trust, 1997. 93 pp.INDEX ISLAMICUS ON CD‐ROM: A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PUBLICATIONS ON ISLAM AND THE MUSLIM WORLD SINCE 1906. Edited by G. J. Roper and C. H. Bleaney. East Grinstead, West Sussex, Bowker‐Saur, 1998. One CD‐ROM. £1995 + VAT.THE PALESTINE YEARBOOK OF INTERNATIONAL LAW. (Volume VIII, 1994/ 95). The Hague, Kluwer Law International, 1996. 561 pp., £154.00HISTORICAL DICTIONARY OF IRAN. By John H. Lorentz. (Asian Historical Dictionaries Series, No. 16.) London, The Scarecrow Press, 1995. 324 pp.

In his methodology as well as his political thought Benjamin remains faithful to the principle to proceed “always radically, never consistently”. Therefore, the greatest challenge for a contemporary city researcher inspired by Benjamin is to operationalise his materialist methodology. Benjamin’s anthropological materialism cannot be reached within the fixed limits of any discipline, but rather places itself “on the crossroads of magic and positivism” (Adorno); the dialectical image is not a tool of his methodology but its culminating point where positivism turns to magic. To reach this point, Benjamin conducts perceptive and
Striking Dialectical Sparks from the Stones of our Cities 18
Anthropology & Materialism, 1 | 2013
analytical experiments that can be treated as dialectical études, exercises in seeing. The paper examines some of these techniques, exploring their philosophical context and testing them on a contemporary example: the Ernst-Thälmann-Monument in Berlin.

25 años tras la Caída del Muro Europa, la UE, en su atasco hacia una mayor integración política, continúa sin traer al frente de su acervo comunitario un corpus jurídico garantista, homogeneizador y expansivo de derechos sociales. Esto es, universalizar en el conjunto de la UE la Justicia Social por medio de un proceso de continua convergencia. Por el contrario, el recién publicado Índice de Justicia Social en la UE -por las nadas sospechosas de radicalismo revolucionario London School of Economics y Fundación Bertelsmann- confirma que, lejos de superarse la división este y oeste, hay que volver la mirada hacia una fractura que se creía ya suturada: la del norte y el sur europeos.