Table Of ContentEVERYDAY LIVES IN THE
GLOBAL CITY
Based on ethnographic research in London, this study investigates globalization as
a feature of everyday life. Rejecting simplifying notions of globalization as a macro-
economic force, it provides a grounded picture of various ways in which people’s
biographical trajectories are tied up with the global cultural economy. While recent
debates in the social sciences started to investigate the link between globalization
and biography in general, this study more specifically stresses the catalytic function
of the global city environment.
The idea of ‘milieu’ has always linked people to their surroundings. The main
argument developed throughout the book is that the gloablization of their lives
is experienced by people as the ‘extension’ of their milieux, both spatially and
symbolically. This book shows that within a global cultural economy people’s
milieux can potentially span the world. Grounded in life histories and local history,
it develops a concept of milieu that emphasizes the symbolisms of belonging against
the primacy of place.
Jörg Dürrschmidt is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of the West of
England.
EVERYDAY LIVES
IN THE
GLOBAL CITY
The Delinking of Locale and Milieu
Jörg Dürrschmidt
London and New York
First published 2000
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2001.
© 2000 Jörg Dürrschmidt
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
Durrschmidt, Jorg, 1964–
Everyday lives in the global city : the delinking of locale and milieu / Jorg Durrschmidt.
p. cm.
1. Sociology, Urban—England—London. 2. City and town life—England—London.
3. London (England)—Social conditions. I. Title.
HN398.L5 D87 2000
307.76′09421—dc21
00–030821
ISBN 1–841–42011–5 (hbk)
ISBN 0-203-18427-0 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-18454-8 (Glassbook Format)
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction 1
1 The (global) city as a pars pro toto of (global) society? 4
The legacy of Socrates 4
Metropolis and modern civilization 5
Urbanization versus globalization? 8
The global city and its microglobalized hinterland 12
2 Towards a phenomenology of globalization 16
A phenomenology of everyday life 16
A phenomenology of extended milieux 18
Re-locating the concept 22
3 Eight London biographies – lives in the globalized
world city 25
Sarah Penhaligan – the ‘mobile cosmopolitan’ 27
Ulla Anderson – the ‘settled cosmopolitan’ 28
Harold Ford – the ‘global business man’ 30
Nicos Calacuri – the ‘local entrepreneur’ 32
Herbert Reading – the ‘retired local’ 34
Ira Braithwaite – the ‘metropolitan’ 35
Barbara van der Velde – the ‘expatriate’ 37
Rolf Grauer – the ‘reluctant explorer’ 39
v
C O N T E N T S
4 The uprooting of milieux 42
External uprooting – coming out 43
Internal uprooting – leaving the estate 48
Disrupting the local milieu 54
5 The delinking of locale and milieu 60
Mobile and generalized milieux 61
The extended milieu – between ‘here’ and ‘there’ 68
The convergence of ‘here’ and ‘there’ 74
‘Home’ as a significant place 77
Environments of like-mindedness – St Anne and St Agnes Church 81
6 Streatham – the reluctant suburb: the metropolis
expands 91
Streatham – the would-be West End of South London 93
Streatham High Road – early links between Streatham and London 98
Dr Johnson’s Streatham – early stratification of local and extended
milieux 101
The metropolis absorbs Streatham 106
Struggle for local identity – the disruption of a local milieu 108
7 Extended milieu and ‘soft city’ – generating
symbolic space 115
‘Soft city’ and ‘concept city’ 116
Symbolic space and the concept of the city 117
The ‘soft city’ as extended milieu 123
Milieu and metropolitan variety 127
8 The globalized world city and its ‘cosmion’ 132
The globalized cosmion 132
Moving in sociospheres – the ‘unknown others’ 140
A city of ‘neighbours’? 153
The ‘distant’ neighbour 157
Neighbourhood community turned socioscape 161
vi
C O N T E N T S
Conclusion – the end of the world city? 172
Notes 175
Bibliography 178
Index 183
vii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing is by definition a rather lonesome process. However, there are many people
who, in various ways, have helped me in producing this book. Not all can be
mentioned here. I would like to thank Richard Grathoff and Rüdiger Korff, at
Bielefeld University, for their initial inspiration concerning the Phenomenology of
Global Cities. Many thanks to Ruth and Ron Englund for providing a ‘home from
home’ during my field work in London, as well as for the shared enthusiasm for
Crystal Palace FC. Intellectually I have greatly benefited from my attachment to the
‘Globalization Research Cluster’ at the Roehampton Institute, London, during
various periods of field work. I would like to thank everyone there for many
good discussions and the intellectually stimulating atmosphere. I am particularly
indebted to Martin Albrow, currently at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington,
for his intellectual enthusiasm and persistent encouragement throughout this book
project. Many thanks to Neil Washbourne, now at Leeds Metropolitan University,
for engaging discussions on microglobalization, and the many days spent just chatting
and wandering around London’s second hand book shops. Amongst my colleagues
at the University of the West of England I would want to acknowledge the influence
of Pete Jowers with his scepticism towards all big paradigms, as well as the pleasure
I gained from teaching and researching around issues of global transformation with
Bill Hill and Graham Taylor. For effective and patient guidance through the editorial
and technical side of this book project, I would like to thank Caroline Wintersgill,
Mari Shullaw and James McNally, as well as the Keystroke team. Finally, I would
like to thank Sue, who was a good companion during the good and not so good times
involved in writing this book. But most importantly, thanks to those individuals who
agreed to talk to me for hours about their lives, London, and the wider world. I hope
their voices can still be heard in this book.
viii
INTRODUCTION
This book could well be introduced as yet another ‘thick description’ of everyday
life in London, the world city. However, the book does not aim to provide a
comprehensive picture of metropolitan life. Instead, it provides a descriptive analysis
of how people who live in the global city are participating, to different degrees and
in various ways, in the emerging global cultural economy. The main concern pursued
throughout the book is to observe how this involvement affects people’s milieux.
That is, the familiar spatial and social environment in which they maintain their daily
routines. In this respect it shall then be argued that these milieux ‘extend’ not only
beyond immediate local surroundings, but beyond the metropolis as such, thereby
in turn transforming the very make up of London’s everyday life.
The adventure of this book then is to investigate the intersection of two
complementary processes: the microglobalization of the world city’s everyday life,
and the globalization of the biographies that are participating in it. To achieve this,
the book links narrative accounts of London’s everyday life with the contemporary
debates on globalization and individualization.
While the biographies of eight Londoners will provide ‘prisms’ through which
globalization processes in London’s everyday life are being reflected, London itself
will be described as a ‘base’ from which these biographies (have to) engage with
global society, both in and beyond the global city.
I regard this book as a first step towards a phenomenology of globalization. While
the contemporary debate still predominantly perceives of globalization as a macro
problem of economics, finance, politics, and culture, my argument describes and
analyses globalization processes as a lived problem in the world of everyday life. Or
more precisely, everyday life in a global city. Again, while most of the debate on
global or world cities is concerned with their status as key nodes of a global cultural
economy, this book looks at London as an intersection of globalized life worlds.
‘Everyday Lives’ in the title refers to the phenomenological perspective pursued in
this book. It attempts to reveal some of the everydayness of globalization within the
milieux of people based in London, but by no means claims to take in the entire
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