Urban Research & Practice

ISSN: 1753-5069 (Print) 1753-5077 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rurp20

Becoming places: urbanism/architecture/

identity/power, by Kim Dovey, London, Routledge,
2009, 204 pp., £25.99, ISBN 978-0-415-41637-5
(paperback), £95.00, ISBN 978-0-415-41636-8
(hardback)

Paul Benneworth

To cite this article: Paul Benneworth (2011) Becoming places: urbanism/architecture/identity/

power, by Kim Dovey, London, Routledge, 2009, 204 pp., £25.99, ISBN 978-0-415-41637-5
(paperback), £95.00, ISBN 978-0-415-41636-8 (hardback), Urban Research & Practice, 4:1,
95-97, DOI: 10.1080/17535069.2011.550753

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17535069.2011.550753

Published online: 16 Mar 2011.

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 Urban Research & Practice 95

terms. To conclude, I would also like to add that it would have been interesting to read
somewhat more about South–South exchanges, a topic that, in my opinion, still receives
too little attention in the planning field.

Anne Lorène Vernay

Values and Technology Department, Faculty of Technology Policy and Management,
Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
a.b.h.vernay@tudelft.nl
© 2011, Anne Lorène Vernay

Becoming places: urbanism/architecture/identity/power, by Kim Dovey, London,

Routledge, 2009, 204 pp., £25.99, ISBN 978-0-415-41637-5 (paperback), £95.00, ISBN
978-0-415-41636-8 (hardback)

In Jörg Knieling and Frank Othengrafen’s excellent book of 2009 about planning cultures in
Europe, there is a fascinating chapter by Friedhelm Fischer (‘How German Is It? An Essay
in Epistemological Eclecticism’ in J. Knieling and F. Othengrafen (eds.) Planning cul-
tures in Europe: decoding cultural phenomena in urban and regional planning, Farnham:
Ashgate, pp. 65–94), in which he explains that not all theories are trying to do the same
things, particularly in spatial disciplines where one is trying to understand a grey area
of how humans interact with and shape their wider environment. Some theories try to
establish the ‘general laws of motion of the universe’, whereas other theories are more
concerned with trying to establish where similarities lie between different empirical situ-
ations. He describes these two kinds of theory as saxonic and teutonic intellectual styles
(sic), in reference to the academic cultures where these approaches hold sway. A third class
of theory is what he calls ‘gallic’ theories, which do not try to explain but rather try to chal-
lenge a reader’s preconceptions by highlighting an interesting and previously undervalued
dimension of the topic.
These different intellectual styles, even when they are studying the same topic, have
very different approaches to argumentation and even to the rules of evidence that apply
to the academic endeavour. In the gallic style, the structures used in social sciences as a
form of explanation are not believed to exist, but they are metaphors that help a scientist to
better understand the world. If gallic ‘theories’ are applied within an alternative intellectual
style – a saxon or a teutonic – then they appear ridiculous. Extending the structuralist exam-
ple, a saxon would reject structures for being over-elaborate and never visible, whereas a
teutonic would reject them for failing to be analytically robust and usable to make concrete
predictions. But to the gallic theoriser, these features are irrelevant failing to understand
the deep structures through which societies reproduce and are regulated means failing to
produce anything more than a superficial understanding of those societies.
These tensions have generally led to a failure between these different intellectual styles
to communicate and develop joint academic dialogues. But this is enormously disap-
pointing because there is clearly a huge advantage to be produced for the field of urban
scholarship, given that cities are hugely complex entities and clearly so different. Different
starting points and intellectual styles, representing different degrees of comparability and
abstraction, can only help in understanding this complexity. But any project that tries to
bring the stylised facts of what Fischer calls saxonic, teutonic and gallic intellectual styles
96 Book reviews

in urban research runs into the problem of incommunicability in dialogues between these
communities.
Fischer argues for what he calls ‘epistemological eclecticism’ as necessary to under-
stand how complex spatial configurations emerge. I would venture the observation that
the whole meta-project of epistemological eclecticism, precisely bringing across differ-
ent intellectual styles, lacks an inspiring set of examples that could set out how this new
approach to urban studies might work. For me, the strength of Kim Dovey’s book is that he
provides precisely that an inspiring example of what is possible in which epistemological
eclecticism is fairly applied. He offers a good example of how work within different intel-
lectual styles in urban studies can be brought together and which, if they do not answer all
the questions, at least leaves us with more interesting questions after reading the text.
Becoming places: urbanism/architecture/identity/power takes as its starting point try-
ing to understand what makes places the way they are and, in particular, how influences
more or less remote from a particular place leave their trace and imprint in spatial config-
urations. There are two theoretical threads running through the book that structure a set of
empirical case studies that illustrate the more general point. The first is Deleuzian theory of
place as an assemblage of artefacts whose meaning is also influenced by the way different
artefacts are combined. Artefacts each carry meanings imbued in them in other places and
mediated into these in networks whose topology influences the extent to which those mean-
ings shape their impact on the place. The second is Bourdieu’s theory of habitus, which is
used to explore how spatial form interacts with human behaviour through the accumulation
and circulation of various forms of capital including social and spatial capital. As the book
itself states it, its aim is to ‘analyse the sense of place as socio-spatial assemblage and as
embodied habitus’ (back cover).
So far, so gallic. But where the book then takes a turn back to the saxonic tradition, and
what for me is the most interesting feature of the book, is that the remainder of the book
is profoundly and rigorously empirical. Through seven extremely detailed and empirically
rich chapters, Bovey, together with a number of co-authors, takes a grand tour through
a series of interesting spaces that serve to point out some of the interesting connections
between apparently high divergent situations. The way the chapters are written, with nar-
rative binding primary evidence in the form of maps, photos and graphs, triangulates these
places for the reader. The overall effect makes it feel as if the reader is undertaking a real
urban study visit led by a skilful and enthusiastic guide.
These chapters cover situations as empirically different as a Rem Koolhaas house
in France, a judicial Court complex in Melbourne, a symbolic park with the National
Monument in Jakarta and slum streets in Bangkok. But what brings them together is the
way that it helps to clarify – or at least make alluring – this assemblage-habitus model. In
this sense, the book is a perfect blend of the saxonic and the gallic. If one were to simply say
that there are a number of variables, including network connectivity, that can explain these
different places, that would be fundamentally unappealing. Likewise, to simply develop a
theoretical argument illustrated with a number of superficial examples would fail to add
empirical value to the theory.
But this is a shortcoming which the book clearly avoids. It is the rarest thing among
academic books: Dovey makes a brave theoretical journey in a way that provides sufficient
hooks for the avowed empiricist (or at least realist) to have sympathy with and to learn
from watching a primarily theoretical journey unfold along the pages. The book is a daring
blend of these saxonic and gallic traditions, and for a reader prepared to show a degree
of sympathy, this is also an extremely valuable collection. Dovey asks in the course of
the book a number of pressing questions facing urban studies today, including whether
 Urban Research & Practice 97

architecture can liberate, what gives neighbourhoods ‘character’ and how do monuments
shape public identity. And if he is not able to directly answer these questions in the course
of his text, the reader is left feeling satisfied by an inspiration that through a more eclectic
yet rigorous methodology, our discipline will eventually better understand the essence of
what makes cities tick.

Paul Benneworth
Center for Higher Education Policy Studies, University of Twente,
Enschede, the Netherlands
p.benneworth@utwente.nl
© 2011, Paul Benneworth