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A barefoot childhood: so what? Imagining slums and reading neighbourhoods

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2011

Alan Mayne
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Abstract

Starting with Englander's denial (Urban History, 21, 2 (1994)), that ‘slums are … real only in words, … rather than being rooted in the material conditions of everyday life’, the article draws a distinction between historical analyses of slums, which entail an examination of words, signs and symbols, and analyses of inner-city neighbourhoods which have been overshadowed by slumland representations. It is claimed that this latter task entails a nuanced materialist historicism, attuned to the surviving material and oral culture of actual neighbourhoods, in place of Englander's faith in an older style of historical materialism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , December 1995 , pp. 380 - 389
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

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