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Vancouver Past: Essays on Social History : Vancouver Centennial Issue of Bc Studies
Focusing on Vancouver's social history, the essays written for this special edition of BC Studies treat hitherto neglected areas of the city's past and bring new insights into how its residents lived and worked. Receiving particular attention is the socio-economic and residential structure of Vancouver with one author arguing that the city's economy created an urban working class which was at once more complex and politically more conservative than that of the highly polarized communities on Vancouver Island and in the Interior.
327 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 1986
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July 15, 2009
The growth of Vancouver offers a glimpse into the similarities and particularities of cities. One of the things that makes Vancouver interesting is that urbanism impded class consciousness given the diversity of the working classes, both skilled and unskilled. These different types of workers, despite holding different interests, came together in settling the area. The authors in this collection describe the ways in which people came together to help each other make additions to their homes, or to relocate their homes altogether.
But urbanity can also in many ways have the opposite effect: bringing people together in dense settings can also facilitate mobilization. What was different in Vancouver that led to the suppression of class consciousness? That is not clearly explored. The author who makes the point about political consciousness simply points out that living together with multitudes of people led to the lessening of tensions but does not recognize that this same factor can also exacerbate class, ethnic, cultural tensions.
At other times, the racism against Asians is also downplayed in quick statements like exclusion of Asians from residential neighborhoods in fact reduced racial tensions through outright removal! A lack of "harsh residential segregation, despite an overall spatial division of the city by class". Racism, exclusion, and class differences, are treated as non-issues.
Other essays emphasize the city's liberal expense on healthcare and clean water meant low death rates in British Columbia. However, this is not true for all areas of Vancouver. Migrant populations continued to live in squalor in segregated quarters while working class homeowners' neighborhoods proved to be serviced in much more effective ways.
While historians in this collection acknowledge these problems, they don't explore them in any kind of detail. It is not clear if that is the result of the way in which historians work, or if there is something lacking in these accounts.
But urbanity can also in many ways have the opposite effect: bringing people together in dense settings can also facilitate mobilization. What was different in Vancouver that led to the suppression of class consciousness? That is not clearly explored. The author who makes the point about political consciousness simply points out that living together with multitudes of people led to the lessening of tensions but does not recognize that this same factor can also exacerbate class, ethnic, cultural tensions.
At other times, the racism against Asians is also downplayed in quick statements like exclusion of Asians from residential neighborhoods in fact reduced racial tensions through outright removal! A lack of "harsh residential segregation, despite an overall spatial division of the city by class". Racism, exclusion, and class differences, are treated as non-issues.
Other essays emphasize the city's liberal expense on healthcare and clean water meant low death rates in British Columbia. However, this is not true for all areas of Vancouver. Migrant populations continued to live in squalor in segregated quarters while working class homeowners' neighborhoods proved to be serviced in much more effective ways.
While historians in this collection acknowledge these problems, they don't explore them in any kind of detail. It is not clear if that is the result of the way in which historians work, or if there is something lacking in these accounts.
Displaying 1 of 1 review