Naor Ben-Yehoyada: We are here today to discuss region formation and region making in the Mediterranean with Michael Herzfeld and Hashim Sarkis. Michael Herzfeld is the Ernest E. Monrad Professor of the Social Sciences in the Department...
moreNaor Ben-Yehoyada: We are here today to discuss region formation and region making in the Mediterranean with Michael Herzfeld and Hashim Sarkis. Michael Herzfeld is the Ernest E. Monrad Professor of the Social Sciences in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University. Hashim Sarkis is the Aga Khan Professor of Landscape Architecture and Urbanism in Muslim Societies at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Thank you both for joining us today.
As the theoretical framework of this issue of New Geographies argues, in architecture and urbanistic literatures on the Mediterranean, cities are taken as emblems of ancient and medieval cross-sea connections, of early modern capitalism, and of modern cosmopolitanism. Cities like Naples, Thessaloniki, Izmir, Alexandria, and Tunis are often contrasted on the one hand to Atlantic cities, and on the other hand to the Mediterranean hinterlands. Recently this image of Mediterranean cities has been questioned. Some argue that the boundaries between cities and their hinterlands are exaggerated. Others claim that Mediterranean hinterlands have actually been as connected to the worlds beyond their national boundaries as to their urban centers, if not more so.
These developments in urbanistic scholarship on the Mediterranean raise several questions that may shed light not only on these cities but also on their relationships to the wider Mediterranean as well as the rest of the world. The Mediterranean is sometimes examined as an emblem or model for global interactions and connections. Yet most historians agree that the Mediterranean world, however defined, died with the advent of modernity. How do megacities like Istanbul serve in the articulation of these tensions? What is the role of tourists, heritage projects, migration, and cultural politics in the ways in which such tensions unfold?
This issue’s thematic exploration frames this inquiry more generally: “What are the elements in the formula that determine Mediterranean regional formations? And how are they spatially manifested?” If the Mediterranean is not made of “cities and the routes between them,” if cosmopolitan urban centers are not the main building blocks in this regional puzzle, what spatial-social constructions are?
Finally, the relationship of urban form and transnational constellations may help us distinguish also between region making and region formation—the former drawing our attention to projects and the latter to processes. Prima facie, anthropologists seem to reside safely on the “process” side of the fence, whereas urban planners seem to focus on the “project” side. But anthropologists and other social scientists have celebrated projects of “making,” and scholars of the built environment have paid attention to the processes through which projects interact. How do you combine these approaches in your studies, and how does your work on the Mediterranean shape your approaches?
Michael Herzfeld: I find the question very disturbing, because that question presupposes a reification of the Mediterranean. It presupposes everything that I’ve argued against in the last thirty years and more, inasmuch as it seems to suggest that there is something that is identifiable as the Mediterranean other than a geographical fact. I would wonder what the purpose of this perspective is. Certainly the idea that the Mediterranean has, as a general region, included a lot of areas where cities have interacted with hinterlands, have drawn very heavily on the populations of those hinterlands, but also have emphasized the distinction between city and country holds true. But it’s also true for many other parts of the world. As for the idea that it’s a place where people now are beginning to construct cities that are specifically Mediterranean—perhaps because those who claim this have in mind a particular kind of climate—there again, what I fear is the domination of a set of stereotypes over individual planning and over the understanding of cultural processes. And this is particularly worrying, because Southern European countries and Middle Eastern countries, in very different ways, are now homes to new forms of violence. It would be easy for someone to say, “Ah, yes, this is typically Mediterranean behavior.” Then we would be back to square one. All the stereotypes that were common in the 1960s and actually animated much of the anthropological and sociological thinking about the area, would move to a different plane, with the result that instead of focusing on the play of honor and shame in the villages we would be talking about the play of violence and refuge, or something of that sort, in the cities. So I worry about this kind of formulation. I think it would be much more useful to ask the question: Why is the idea of the Mediterranean so important to people who are looking at processes that have taken place in the area over a very long period of time?” If we approach the matter in that way, I think the answer will be clear and it will serve as an admonition to those who want to plan the future of the countries that sit around the rim of the Mediterranean Sea.
Hashim Sarkis: Let me start by situating the discourse on the Mediterranean within architecture and urbanism in relation to what I understand to be its reception, rejection, and criticism, in history and anthropology. I know I might be conflating two discourses that differ in their understanding and construction of the Mediterranean. However, I did see them conflated last year in the history/anthropology conference you organized.
At the conference, I felt that we were at one level way behind you in our understanding of the Mediterranean as a region, and at another level way ahead of you. Let me start with where I felt we were behind. As much as our discourse has come to dismiss the issue of contextualism or regional expression in the last twenty years, we haven’t yet critically assessed where we go from there. Because of the phenomena of globalization, the increasing mobility of architectural practices, and the waning interest in the expression of locality, we have lost interest in the past regionalist discourse, but we have not questioned it. We continue to operate with models that assume that architecture is indelibly bound to its region, even if we do not want to talk about it. We haven’t asked the question: If architecture is in crisis in relation to the context, and this context is not going to go away, how are we going to be dealing with it? We understand region to be given rather than something that we are actively involved in constructing, which I saw both anthropology and historiography elaborate as a deep problematic at the conference last year.
However, I feel we are ahead of you because we are beginning to look at the Mediterranean differently, not with new eyes but because of the radical transformations that are happening in that region and that we as architects and urbanists have to deal with as projects. Irrespective of whether we define it, draw a line around it, to be corresponding to one of the lines of the different existing definitions or not, we are seeing radical transformations in the region, and we try to map and define them in different terms. And yet we keep resorting to our stereotypes because we haven’t yet questioned them in the manner that you have. So we look at the littoral, at the coastal development of many of these cities, which have completely eradicated any sense of the Mediterranean port-city type, and yet we still seek to confirm this type in some implicit manner. So at the level of what constitutes the Mediterranean city, we are confronted with examples that are fantastically transforming it, if there ever was such an “it.” We are still holding on to some grounding in a particular conception of the Mediterranean city, its history, and its evolution; evolution is very important for us in thinking about cities. We do not like cataclysmic shifts and breaks.
