Berlin Alexanderplatz

<p> A benchmark study in the changing field of urban anthropology <i>Berlin Alexanderplatz</i> is an ethnographic examination of the rapid transformation of the unified Berlin. Through a captivating account of the controversy around this symbolic public square in East Berlin the book raises acute questions about expertise citizenship government and belonging. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the city administration bureaus developers' offices citizen groups and in Alexanderplatz itself the author advances a richly innovative analysis of the multiplicity of place. She reveals how Alexanderplatz is assembled through the encounters between planners citizen activists social workers artists and ordinary Berliners in processes of popular participation and personal narratives in plans timetables documents and files and in the distribution of pipes tram tracks and street lights. Alexanderplatz emerges as a socialist spatial exemplar a 'future' under construction an object of grievance and a vision of robust public space. This book is both a critical contribution to the anthropology of contemporary modernity and a radical intervention in current cross-disciplinary debates on the city.</p>