Cultural TimeSpaces of an Atlantic Metropolis: São Paulo (Brazil), 1867-1930

• Applicant: Dr. Sebastian Dorsch
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2010 to 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 160662287

The central goal of the project, equally in the second funding period, consists in the investigation of the radically changing perceptions and conceptions of time and space in São Paulo in the time between 1867 and 1930. A result of the previous work was the additional focus on investigations on spatial and temporal practices as well as the production and the producers of space and time. With this amplification methodologically I succeed in gaining shared starting points with the actors regarding the investigation of phenomena of space and time on the one the hand and on the other hand in encountering the common a priori-prioritizing of one of both categories. Thus, at the same time the subjects of experience and the actors of conceptualization can be taken into account.An approximately 300-page monograph will be produced in this second phase as a final report of the whole project. Results of the previous studies such as those of the second phase will be included in this book. To this end the previous three case studies will be amended by newly collected respectively yet to be collected material. As the previous studies could show, different actors established close connections between specific spatialities and temporalities. The experience of the paulista space, especially the orientation towards the American hinterland, was being connected with the experience of a specific progressiveness and future orientation. The study on neurasthenia as well as the one on historiography show this nexus. The yankee-study and the within examined perception of the paulista life illustrated that travelers from various Atlantic regions affiliated São Paulo with a specific temporality that they associated with the space São Paulo.During the period of investigation the actors also connected the conceptualization of a specific spatio-temporality with the experiences of São Paulo. The concept of the Yankee City bound this spatio-temporality quasi chronotopically together but also revealed that it was instrumentalized as a distinction opposite to the rival and the old center Rio de Janeiro as well as opposite to the hinterland. Hence the hypotheses of the initial application could be verified partially. At the same time these ascertainments raise further questions whose reply to will be central for the conclusion of the project. Previously, the circle of actors was limited: the historians all descended from the literate and educated upper class, the doctor of the neurasthenia-study likewise. With the readers' letters and the descriptions of the patients further circles of people are added, but so far these circles were little comprehensive and derived mainly from the developing middle class. Admittedly, the travelers of the yankee-study also described the daily life of the many. These descriptions are to be complemented by further references from and about the many. Accordingly, the previous results require differentiation.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants