Group blog
We analyse the gendering of urban space in the early modern city. It is widely held that between 1600 and 1850, women gradually withdrew from the public sphere of the street and moved to the private sphere of the home. This powerful narrative, linked to theories of modernisation, has created a conceptual stranglehold that sees public space as exclusively male and private space as entirely female, thereby obscuring the actual workings of gender in pre-industrial urban societies.
Our project offers a pioneering approach to the study of gendered urban space. It enables for the first time to move beyond the public/private dichotomy and analyse women’s access to pre-industrial streets in full. Through an analysis of the ‘ownership’ of streets, both formally by authorities and informally through daily use, we uncover how urban space was gendered in the run up to the nineteenth century.
New Book on Amsterdam Street Life
28 September 2023
On October 6, Bob Pierik’s book on the life in Amsterdam’s streets will see the light. Based on his PhD dissertation, the book recounts the everyday experiences of Amsterdammers...
New Book on Early Modern Streets.
7 February 2023
For the first time, Early Modern Streets unites the diverse strands of scholarship on urban streets between circa 1450 and 1800 and tackles key questions on how early modern urban...
Staying in One's Own Lane: A Pattern of Residential Marriage Mobility
10 November 2022
By Judith KraamwinkelOn 6 September 1737, Stijntje Koops married Hellebartus van der Schemp, both of whom were living on Kattenburg at the time.[1] Stijntje married five times in total...
New articles on gender, vehicles and privacy
12 September 2022
Two new articles by Bob are out now! In the first of these, “Coaches, Sleighs, and Speed in the Street: “Vehicularization” in Early Modern Amsterdam,” in the Journal of Urban...