Research Area Economic and Social History

5th ECONOMIC HISTORY SYMPOSIUM, November 3-4 2011

 

Conference in World History:
The Role and Function of the Global City

Joint Conference of the Partner Universities of New Orleans and Innsbruck
(as well as 5th Economic History Symposium of the Research Area “Economic and Social History” at the Faculty of Economics and Statistics at Innsbruck University)

Venue: University of Innsbruck, Mainbuilding, New Orleans Hall (Christoph-Probst-Platz, 1st floor)

 

Content

The phenomenon of globalization is changing our world. The global process of growing together leads to the creation of a new cosmopolitan culture. Within that process of mutual influence, the importance of cities is everything but declining. They are meeting places, communication nodes and sites of exchange as well as locations, where global processes become particularly visible and influential.

“Global cities” are and always have been both – produced by globalization and producers of globalization. They play an important role in shaping a global economy, culture and society, but they are also shaped by it. And they are places, where countervailing forces match, where local reactions to globalization become especially visible. Consequently, also adverse effects of globalization and backlashes to it are particularly apparent there.
 
The conference seeks to discuss the role of the city in the long-run process of a truly “global” globalization. It aims at describing the city as a place where globalization takes place much more pronounced than anywhere else: as economic exchange, migration, communication, technological development and political conflict, as cultures clashing and amalgamating, and also as a violent process. In order to achieve that goal the conference seeks to stimulate fruitful discussions about the global city as a door to the world, open for the good and bad in it, as a multifaceted information interface, and as a focal point of globalization in various forms. Besides theoretical contributions of the phenomenon and contemporary analysis of today’s “global city” (or cities), contributions from a global history perspective are invited particularly, including those focussing on cities of much more historical than contemporary importance and those following a comparative perspective, while a particular limitation with respect to subject, epoch or region is not intended.

Programme

 

November 3, 2011

 

09.00-10.30
Opening Session
(Chair: Andreas Exenberger) 

Opening Remarks:
Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c.mult Tilman Märk, (managing) Rector of the University of Innsbruck
Dr. Margaret Davidson, Director of the American Corner at the University of Innsbruck
Prof. Dr. Günter Bischof, Director of the Center Austria at the University of New Orleans
Ass.-Prof. Dr. Andreas Exenberger, Scientific Coordinator of the Conference

Keynote:
Franz Mathis (Innsbruck): No Industrialization without Urbanization. The Role of Cities in Modern Economic Development

* Coffee Break *

11.00-12.30
Session 1: FOUNDATIONS OF GLOBAL CITY
(Chair: Andreas Exenberger) 

Jim Mokhiber (New Orleans): Locating and Teaching Cities in the "New" World History: Perspectives from the U.S. after the Fall of "Western Civilization"
Robert Musil (Vienna): Vienna - A Gateway between East and West: Internationalization along Historic Pathways 

* Lunch Break *

 14.00-15.30
Session 2: VIEWS FROM HISTORY
(Chair: Ulrich Pallua) 

Brigitte Truschnegg (Innsbruck): Ancient Cities: Global Cities or Centers of the World? One Phenomenon - Two Perspectives
Malte Fuhrmann (Istanbul): When the Conquering Sultan Appears in the Metro and Byzantium Sabotages the Railway Station: Istanbul’s Pasts and their Roles in the Present

* Coffee Break *

16.00-17.30
Session 3: 19TH CENTURY PERSPECTIVES
(Chair: Christina Antenhofer) 

 Erik Gilbert (Arkansas State): Zanzibar: Imperialism and a Nineteenth Century Indian Ocean Boom Town
Katja Schmidtpott (Marburg): The Globalization of Labour in East Asia: The Japanese Treaty Port of Yokohama and Its Chinese Community

***

19.30-21.00
BOOK PRESENTATION: "GLOBAL AUSTRIA"
(Chair: Günter Bischof) 

Presentation of "Global Austria", Vol. XX of Contemporary Austrian Studies, and Celebration of the 20th Anniversary of the Journal

Different Venue: Claudiana (Herzog-Friedrich-Strasse 3, 2nd floor, Innsbruck "Altstadt")

At the panel: Birgit Holzner (publisher), Eric Frey, Andreas Exenberger, Alexander Smith (contributors)

Buffet

***

November 4, 2011

09.00-10.00
Session 4: CITY HISTORY
(Chair: Philipp Strobl)

 Robert Dupont (New Orleans): New Orleans as a Global City: Contemporary Assessment and Past Glory

* Coffee Break *

10.30-12.00
Session 5: GRADUATE FORUM
(Chair: Philipp Strobl)

Andreas Dibiasi (Innsbruck): The Reach of the Continental Blockade: The Case of Toulouse
Beate Löffler (Dresden): Designing a Global City: Tokyo
Manfred Kohler (Bruxelles): The Role of Cities in the European Union and in a Globalized World

* Lunch Break *

  

13.30-15.00
Session 6: CONTEMPORARY GLOBAL CITY
(Chair: Günter Bischof)

Mathilde Leduc-Grimaldi (Tervuren): Tide of Times in the Post-Colonial Era: Tourists, Venetians and Street Vendors in the Doge City
Tobias Töpfer (Innsbruck): São Paulo: big, bigger, global? The Development of a Megacity in the Global South

* Coffee Break *

  

15.30-17.00
Closing Session: CONCLUDING ROUND TABLE TALK
(Chair: Günter Bischof) 

At the panel: Malte Fuhrmann, Franz Mathis, Jim Mokhiber, Katja Schmidtpott

*

17.00 End of Conference

 

For further information contact Andreas Exenberger (andreas.exenberger@uibk.ac.at).