Abstract
Reviewed by: Candela Hernandez, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina
The main concern of Samuel Merrill’s work is analysing the social production of memory, in the specific context of contemporary London’s and Berlin’s underground railway networks. The book is relevant given the renewed interest by academics in studying subterranean urban spaces. The approach is stimulated by both the increasing density of subterranean spaces in cities and the refunctionalization of their strictly assigned purpose.
Despite this reinvigorated attention, the author identifies an unexplored area in the study of underground railway networks that are in everyday use; framing them within studies of the production of socially shared memories. He also notes that there are no studies in this field which have been conducted in a comprehensive and sustained manner, or which have taken comparative approach over an extended chronological timeframe. This is the task which Merrill undertook and satisfactorily accomplished through using a diachronic approach and constructing a theoretical–methodological tool, which enabled him to conduct research in a systematic way.
The book begins with a substantial introduction stating the need for such a study, and then is divided into four sections with two chapters in each. In the first part, ‘Clearing Ground’ (chapters 1 and 2), the author presents the main theoretical approaches and describes the case studies used. In part II, ‘Cartographies and Toponymies’ (chapters 3 and 4), he addresses the origin of the memories encoded in the common cartographies and toponymies in each case study. Part III, ‘Memory Work and Memorials’ (chapters 5 and 6), deals with the relationship between memories, great events and the accessible public space. Part IV, ‘Ruins and Vestiges’ (chapters 7 and 8), focuses on the connection between memories and the network’s hidden places. Within these chapters, Merrill’s argument emerges from two main elements: his theoretical framework and his methodological construction.
The conceptual framework that Merrill elaborates on engages with dialogues in mobility studies and delivers results interesting to transport historians. By means of a detailed and critical revision of the ideas developed by transport and cultural historians and historical and cultural geographers, he highlights and strengthens understandings of the symbolic-cultural dimension of transport. In particular, his proposition is developed by the articulation of three main analytic categories: landscape, networked remembrance and buried memories.
Landscape implies an understanding of underground railway networks as spaces which are socially produced from the interpenetration of a set of physical, representational and experiential characteristics in urban contexts.
Networked remembrance refers to memories and acts of remembrance related to the subterranean world, which replicates its geography by contriving mnemonic structures comparable to the characteristics of the physical foundations which contribute to the production of networked social memories.
Buried memories means bringing into play the social memories linked to the construction of subterranean spaces and the ones lodged in the collective consciousness, a double connection between the memories produced from what takes place beneath the cities and what remains hidden in them.
Going in depth into the subterranean world at the same time as allowing the past to be evoked by the present, requires a set of ‘excavating’ techniques, which in this case constitute a complex and diverse methodological strategy. Merrill’s approach is interdisciplinary, combining a vast range of methods that are applied to multiple sites, which collectively aim to reveal and follow the spatial production of specific social memories.
The empirical basis of the work is systematic consultation of diverse archives. This is complimented by ethnographic methods applied to the everyday use of the transport networks analysed, together with a range of interviews with key individuals, like: archivists, artists, activists, executive directors of the lines, among others.
The work he carries out across and beneath London and Berlin seeks to contribute to the development of an approach to urban research that compares cities in different nations, so that the cases analysed act as counterparts to each other. In other words, the insights generated by approaching one help to provide insights about the other, and vice versa. The author thus ensures the case studies complement each other, rather setting them in opposition. He therefore seeks to emphasize the possibilities that this kind of comparative approach can have for enriching the development of research practices.
Meticulously and systematically examining in depth the cases chosen enables the author to collect and follow buried memories; to recognise their constituent mnemonic structures, processes and the actors which form the landscapes of the railways beneath London and Berlin, and how these things are found within the broader social discourses which exist in each city at surface level.
This work shows how empirical research can contribute to strengthening theories on the relations between infrastructure and landscape, by emphasising how transport networks are produced and reproduced in ways which are not confined to their exclusive use as a means of transport, since they are multi-dimensionally formed. This is true beyond the limitations present in the analysis of particular cases, and results can be generalised. Merrill’s work has the virtue of demonstrating the value of applying the cultural landscape and social memory approaches to the high-volume transport infrastructures which are found in the depths of the metropolis, whilst encouraging the development of a specific field of research which encourages the analysis of these phenomena.