Book review by Sergei Basik of The Political Life of Urban Streetscapes: Naming, Politics, and Place, edited by Reuben Rose-Redwood, Derek Alderman and Maoz Azaryahu

Basik, Sergei

English

Canadian Journal of Urban Research

Canadian Journal of Urban Research / Revue canadienne de recherche urbaineCJUR summer 28:1 201986Canadian Journal of Urban Research, Summer 2019, Volume 28, Issue 1, pages 86-87.Copyright © 2019 by the Institute of Urban Studies.All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.ISSN: 2371-0292 BOOK REVIEWReuben Rose-Redwood, Derek Alderman and Maoz Azaryahu (eds).Th e Political Life of Urban Streetscapes: Naming, Politics, and PlaceNew York, NY: Routledge, 2017.ISBN: 9781472475091Th e Political Life of Urban Streetscapes: Naming, Politics, and Place, edited by Reuben Rose-Redwood, Derek Alderman, and Maoz Azaryahu, is a valuable collection of empirical essays written by the authors with a considerable expertise in various fi elds of social sciences. Th roughout, it refl ects the historical development, theoretical expansion, and contemporary condition of critical urban place names studies. As an emerging subfi eld of cultural geography, critical toponymy explores new areas of spatial relationships between power, society, and landscape. Th is collection highlights the role, functions, and magnitude of the urban place naming practices as the symbolic spatial strategies of political power adopted by the governing authorities in diff erent parts of the world. A wide repertoire of themes presented in the volume is focused on distinct aspects of the politics of street naming. Namely, the contested toponymic legacy of colonialism and post-colonialism, the toponymic dimension of nationalism, the urban place names metamorphoses during the transition from socialist to post-socialist socio-economic model, the toponymic politics of commemoration related to the questions of social justice, and the place naming practices as a source of symbolic capital for the privileged social groups would exemplify these themes.  Th e introduction starts with the historical retrospective of the critical toponymic scholarship. Th e editors specify that this fi eld of study has arisen since 1980 as a result of a critical shift from the traditional toponomastics focused on linguistic approaches and encyclopedic toponymic classifi cations toward the critical analysis of the spatial politics of place naming and socio-political processes involved in creation, transformation, and revision of toponyms. Noteworthy, the introduction emphasizes three theoretical approaches that have a direct impact on critical place names studies: a semiotic prospective on commemorative urban toponyms as the symbolic elements of a city-text; an urban toponymic system as a cultural arena of confl icts and resistance that involved privileged and historically marginalized social groups; the role of the toponyms in everyday life of the urban residents and the production of the urban streetscape as performative space. Th e following sixteen book charters consist of various case studies which analyze the urban place names systems in diff erent geographical regions and chronological periods through the prism of the underlined theoretical approaches and themes. Th is collection gathers some classic works published at the dawn of critical CJUR summer 28:1 2019 87Book Reviewtoponymy in the 1990s and revised by their authors (K. Palonen, B. Yeoh, M. Azaryahu). Additionally, several previously published papers have been included in this collection concurrently with some unpublished works which ultimately forms a comprehensive, diverse, and vibrant assortment of urban toponymy scholarship in one volume. Th e editors conclude the book with their personal refl ections on contemporary challenges and future prospective of critical urban toponymy. Th ere are also two small details that would not aff ect the quality of this rich collection, but are worth our attention. Interestingly, the objects of the analysis in the majority of works in this volume are the names of the streets. Probably, it might have been helpful to expand the scope of research and include the names of buildings, bridges and other elements of infrastructure, public transit stations, airports, stores, and businesses as the empirical material.  Such “onomastic intervention” into the critical toponymy might have revealed some new contexts, relationships, and correlations between the dynamic urban toponymic landscapes and political power. One more point is related to the Chapter 11 and the concept of the “politics of toponymic continuity” precisely outlined and elaborated by the authors (D. Light and C. Young) on the examples of Romania and other post-socialist states. Actually, in case of Minsk, Belarus, a signifi cant number of Soviet era toponyms is connected to the World War II. In fact, it has strong references to the emotional trauma of the Belarusian people during the war were the nation lost up to one third of the population. Th us, this segment of urban place names refl ects not only past and current political agendas of the authorities (p.187). Correspondingly, it refl ects specifi c “emotional relationships” (p. 199) between the general public and toponyms based on the historical emotional trauma, creating favorable environment for the “toponymic continuity”. Undoubtedly, this volume is a remarkable and benefi cial contribution to a growing body of work in the vigorous fi eld of critical toponymy. Th e book should be of relevance to cultural, historical and urban geographers as well as urban historians, linguists interested in socio-onomastics, and other social scientists. Equivalently, it would be an excellent addition to the reading list of cultural geography and urban geography courses. Sergei BasikSchool of Liberal StudiesConestoga College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning

The Political Life of Urban Streetscapes: Naming, Politics, and Place

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The Political Life of Urban Streetscapes: Naming, Politics, and Place

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Canadian Journal of Urban Research