Dagenais, Michèle, Irene Maver, and Pierre-Yves Saunier
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Document generated on 09/25/2021 12:17 a.m. Urban History Review Revue d'histoire urbaine Dagenais, Michèle, Irene Maver, and Pierre-Yves Saunier. Municipal Services and Employees in the Modern City: New Historic Approaches. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2003. Pp. xii, 238. US$84.95 (hardcover) Caroline Andrew Volume 33, Number 1, Fall 2004 URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1015682ar DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1015682ar See table of contents Publisher(s) Urban History Review / Revue d'histoire urbaine ISSN 0703-0428 (print) 1918-5138 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this review Andrew, C. (2004). Review of [Dagenais, Michèle, Irene Maver, and Pierre-Yves Saunier. Municipal Services and Employees in the Modern City: New Historic Approaches. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2003. Pp. xii, 238. US$84.95 (hardcover)]. Urban History Review / Revue d'histoire urbaine, 33(1), 60–61. https://doi.org/10.7202/1015682ar All Rights Reserved © Urban History Review / Revue d'histoire urbaine, 2004 This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/ This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ Book Reviews / Comptes rendus While such an analysis would have required some different Dagenais, Michèle, Irene Maver, and Pîerre-Yves Saunier. research questions, Rudin occasionally does not consider Municipal Services and Employees in the Modern City: New more fully what his evidence does show. In 1878, 1898, and Historic Approaches. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, again in the spring of 1908, Rudin demonstrates how various 2003. Pp. xii, 238. US$84.95 (hardcover). stakeholders within Quebec City used the memorialization of This is an important book. Not only do we learn a great deal Laval and Champlain to affirm, extend, and even transcend a about the ways in which services have been delivered at the number of community boundaries central to the everyday lives municipal level and all the complexities about who delivers of Quebeckers. Even when the intent was to reach out to people them, we also gain valuable insights into issues of professionali- from outside of Quebec City, the intent was to (re)connect zation and its links to expertise, training, unionization, bureauc• these others to the city and what the city had historically meant ratization, management theories and practices, creation of new for French-Canadian identity. In the case of the tercentenary, knowledge and new methods of acquiring knowledge, and the when this message was of little interest to Earl Grey's organiza• impact of industrialization and urbanization on urban public tion, Armand Lavergne told the House of Commons that "we services. From this we gain a fresh perspective on the crucial must remember that we are now in 1908; that Quebec was role played by municipal governments at the turn of the century founded in 1608 and that we are not celebrating the second in the development of the new knowledges of the 20th century: centenary of the battle on the Plains of Abraham, but the third engineering and the social sciences. And finally, the material in centenary of the founding of the city of Quebec." Rudin pro• the book brings strong support to those who find the literature vides this quotation by remarking that Lavergne "was no doubt on "rescaling" an important perspective for understanding the speaking for many Quebecers" when he said this (173). processes by which societies decide who does what, where, What Rudin's evidence also suggests is that there were two and why. In looking at municipal services and municipal em• different notions of community at work in Quebec City during ployees across Europe, and North and South America, the con• 1908. For the monument of Laval, there was—as was the case tributors provide rich material for examining the interrelations with Laval's body in 1878 and Champlain's monument in 1898— of local and central levels of the state and of local and central an intense effort by organizers to create horizontal bonds of levels of voluntary and professional associations and the ways community that sought to address various sub-communities in which state and non-state actors maximize their interests (ethnic, religious, class, and gender) within the city. Even when through scalar strategies. It is always useful to be reminded there were hierarchies, such as in the case of the 1898 celebra• of the multiplicity, and the complexity, of strategies that have tions, there were also efforts to reach across boundaries of dif• been used. Industrialization and urbanization were transform• ference to create a larger and more inclusive civic community. ing cities all across Europe and the Americas in the late 19th This was not the case for the tercentenary, where the specific century, and the collection of detailed case studies brought elements of Quebec City were of little or no interest to organ• together in this book illustrate the rich variety of strategies used izers who sought instead to talk about the imagined community to develop municipal services, policy transfers from one city to of Canada as a nation-state. The tercentary did not speak to the another, "jumping scale" to use the resources of different levels citizens of Quebec City directly, and the bonds of community of political action or to avoid barriers or opposition at some it celebrated were, despite their efforts to be inclusive (British, particular level, multi-level governance in combining state and French, Aboriginal) undeniably vertical, with a triumphant Anglo- civil society strategies for change. Canadian nation at the top and all others equally below. A recurring theme in the book is the link between the new Rudin seems to understand the role of neo-imperialism, but his scientific methods of the early 20th century, key municipal of• overriding concern with "French-Candians," which he explic• ficials, and innovative public services. This emerges around the itly defines (236n7) as referring to all of Quebec, rather than key role of engineers in Italian cities in the chapters by Filippo "French-Canadians in Quebec City," sometimes hinders the De Pieri on Turin and by Roberto Ferretti on Italy-wide trends analysis and relegates the city to the role of stage for another, in local government. Michèle Dagenais' chapter on municipal seemingly larger and thus more important, history. Place, how• management in Montreal in the 1930s emphasizes the impor• ever, matters more than this, and urban historians in particular tance of new management techniques (reforms to financial will lament its relative unimportance here. But for those scholars and personnel systems) introduced by new and more profes• of the city interested in the politics of commemoration, and the sionalized bureaucrats whose expertise came more from formal production of commemorative space, there is much in this book training than from municipal experience. Another version of this to absorb and to consider. theme comes out in the chapter on American fire departments by Amy Greenberg, in which she argues that the change from John C. Walsh volunteer to professional fire departments had more to do with Department of History the ideology of professionalism (along with the introduction of Carleton University steam engines and the role of fire insurance companies) than the traditionally accepted interpretations of an inevitable reac• tion to urbanization and/or as a means to control unruly volun- 60 Urban History Review / Revue d'histoire urbaine Vol. XXXIH, No. 1 (Fall 2004 automne) Book Reviews / Comptes rendus teer firefighters. In the case of Sâo Paulo, Cristina Mehrtens municipal potential for innovative policy-making. Zimmermann's describes the links among municipal officials, new survey argument is that, in this period, it was the municipal govern• techniques for understanding the local population, and the de• ments and not the national government that were the innovators, velopment of the social sciences in Brazil. These developments and the reason was the proximity of municipalities to local civil involved the municipal structures and services, the universities society. The participation of trade unions in municipal policy• and programs that trained the new municipal officials, and the making created a variety of policies across German cities, and professional associations that built expertise and strengthened this policy innovation moved the policy agenda from programs the position of the relevant professional groups. In the Sâo around poverty to programs related to employment and unem• Paulo case, many of the key figures were foreign intellectuals ployment. The link between proximity, the participation of civil living in Sâo Paulo who brought their international experience to society, and policy innovation is a lesson that should be picked bear. The importance of international contacts also comes up up by all those interested in good urban policy, be they at the in the chapter by Irene Maver on Glasgow, but here it is delega• municipal, provincial, or federal level. tions from Glasgow that visited not only London, but also Paris, The book is a delight to read. The detailed case studies give Brussels, Amsterdam, and a variety of German cities. Her chap• an intricate sense of the ways in which personalities, structures, ter is full of examples of what the Glaswegians learned—from and contexts interrelate in the development and mobilization Paris, the ability "to reinforce the aesthetic qualities of urban of professional competence, scientific research, and politi• design by means of sanitary control" (192), from the Belgian cal commitment to produce the services of modem cities.