UID:
almafu_9959674062102883
Format:
1 online resource (431 p.)
ISBN:
9781478012603
Content:
Following a decade of United States bombing campaigns that obliterated northern Vietnam, East Germany helped Vietnam rebuild in an act of socialist solidarity. In Building Socialism Christina Schwenkel examines the utopian visions of an expert group of Vietnamese and East German urban planners who sought to transform the devastated industrial town of Vinh into a model socialist city. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research in Vietnam and Germany with architects, engineers, construction workers, and tenants in Vinh’s mass housing complex, Schwenkel explores the material and affective dimensions of urban possibility, and the quick fall of Vinh’s new built environment into unplanned obsolescence. She analyzes the tensions between aspirational infrastructure and postwar uncertainty to show how design models and practices that circulated between the socialist North and the decolonizing South underwent significant modification to accommodate alternative cultural logics and ideas about urban futurity. By documenting the building of Vietnam’s first planned city and its aftermath of decay and repurposing, Schwenkel argues that underlying the ambivalent and often unpredictable responses to modernist architectural forms were anxieties about modernity and the future of socialism itself.
Note:
Frontmatter --
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CONTENTS --
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List of Figures, Plates, and Tables --
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Abbreviations --
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A Note on Translation and Transliteration --
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Acknowledgments --
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Introduction --
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1. Annihilation --
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Interlude. Urban Fragments 1 --
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2. Evacuation --
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Interlude. Urban Fragments 2 --
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3. Solidarity --
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4. Spirited Internationalism --
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Interlude. Urban Fragments 3 --
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5. Rational Planning --
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Interlude. Urban Fragments 4 --
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6. Utopian Housing --
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7. Indiscipline --
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8. Decay --
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9. Renovation --
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10. Revaluation --
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Conclusion. On the Future of Utopias Past --
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Notes --
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References --
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Index
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In English.
Language:
English
DOI:
10.1515/9781478012603
URL:
https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9781478012603
URL:
https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9781478012603
