Middletown Urbanities. Ethnographic Urban Study in Wels and Hildesheim.

The goal of the present research project is to ethnographically study two middletowns in Austria and Germany from the perspective of European Ethnology (Volkskunde), focusing on the daily life and pursuits of the people who live in these two middletowns. Based on the premise of a middletown urbanity that manifests itself in specific middletown everyday practices and modes of experience, which are distinct from other (large and small) urban worlds of experience, the aim will be to determine a middletown typology of the cities in question by means of comparative analysis. One case study each in Wels and Hildesheim will provide essential insights into what defines daily life for the variety of people who live in these cities and what it means to them. How is the idea of "middletown" shaped in the minds and activities of the population? As the project progresses middletowns will be investigated generally as phenomenon and a unique form of urbanity. Middletown studies continue to be a desideratum in interdisciplinary urban studies which have traditionally concentrated almost exclusively on large cities and metropolises while comparing them only to lifestyles in small towns and rural areas. This paucity of research stands in stark contrast to social reality. A large segment of humanity - especially in Europe - lives in cities of medium size which are becoming increasingly significant in respect to their unique political and societal potential. The present research project aims to close this gap while contributing to a scientific cultural debate on a concept of urbanity that joins together different dimensions of urban lifestyles - historical, socially structured, spatial and cultural - and everyday worlds. The project will entail micro analytic case studies of two middletowns based on intensive fieldwork. The cities were chosen not only for reasons of subject matter (most contrastive cases - middletowns and middletown life can exhibit very different forms) but from applying both the dictates of the discipline and the perspective of an Anthropology at Home. The cities under ethnographical investigation are the former industrial city of Wels in Upper Austria (Austria) with a population of approximately 60,000 and the cultural and university city of Hildesheim with a population of approximately 100,000 in Lower Saxony in Germany, taking into consideration that it is essential to rigorously contextualize these cities in their respective countries and regions in the analysis of their middletown urbanity. Both studies have the same research design and will be conducted simultaneously. First the specificity, the local discourse, and the representation of the respective city will be surveyed; then dimensions of respective middletown lives and daily urban routines seen from the perspective and practice of the populace will be ethnographically examined; finally the question of middletown typology will be addressed by means of an exemplary urban crucial case - a venue, a theme, a field of activity or an event. The project will be devoted to an often neglected reality of European life as viewed from the perspective of an ethnography that is anchored in a cultural understanding of daily routines and practices. The object is to broaden urban studies with a systematic examination of (exemplary) middletowns and middletown urbanities and at the same time to critically appraise and supplement the conventional categorization of cities. As results of the case studies are drawn together in comparative reviews the understanding of urbanity will have acquired new dimensions and gained valuable incentives for further research.

The aim of this research project is the ethnographic study of two so-called medium-sized cities, concretely the cities Hildesheim in Niedersachsen (Germany) and Wels in Upper Austria (Austria). The project thus builds on efforts towards a pluralization of the urban demanded by recent research in the social sciences and cultural studies, and it also gives an exemplary insight into urban life in two neglected cities. Medium-sized city is first and foremost an administrative category defined mostly in terms of numbers. In contrast, cultural studies suggest a conception of the category medium-sized city in terms of its life world and praxeology, i.e. in its production. European Ethnologists contribute to this their special expertise in exploring social routines and the dynamics of negotiation as well as the experience of urban life in different milieus together with their symbolic attribution. Based on this, we have inquired concretely into the ways in which residents and experts classify their place of work and residence, the categories they use in doing so as well as the ways in which these categories shape life in the examined cities. Thus, rather than aiming for a fixation of the category medium- sized city through connecting characteristics of urban life, we were more interested in ways people negotiate the size, the reach and the symbolic position of a place in different social fields. They do so by classifying and evaluating places in relation to other spaces, since cities, with positions such as larger and smaller often being connected to issues of better or worse, as well as urban life itself are values and attributions that are constantly being negotiated by society. In months of ethnographic research, we have examined practices of establishing size in different social fields, based on various themes such as urban marketing, biographic narration of places and spaces, radii and patterns of movement and nightly clubbing. These fields make evident the various references and evaluation of city size. For example, the urban marketing associations of Wels and Hildesheim were obviously oriented towards large cities and only seldom utilized images and terms that would suggest an alternative. Biographical accounts however reveal a broad spectrum of references and evaluation: many of the young residents perceived the city as boring and limited, working residents with children on the other hand emphasize the practicality and safeness of life in a city with large and proximate green space. The issue of urban movement showed similarly varied results: residents oriented towards clarity of structure cherished the usual small talk when walking through urban space, whereas others, often the younger residents, experienced instead a social tightness and wished for a more exciting life in larger cities. In nightly clubbing, we finally examined a central sphere of activity of urban attempts to enhance the attractivity of metropolises, and this demonstrates clearly how especially the younger residents perceived the examined cities as deficient. Spatial hierarchies and urban positions are constantly produced and firmly established institutionally, and according to the findings of this research project they are asserted, defended or ignored and consequently socially contested. In everyday urban life, this demonstrates the respective negotiation of ideas of the good life in the city as well as the symbolic and material hierarchy between cities.