All That is Solid Melts into Air/ Marshall Berman/ 1982

Marshall Berman's book is a critique of postmodernism. He urges the readers to reconsider the history of modernity which will enrich our present and may even guide us into the future. In his introduction 'Modernity- yesterday, today, tomorrow' he briefly traces the different experiences of modernity in 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries and argues that our ancestors experience with modernity has been much richer.

He begins with this childhood home in Bronx that was demolished to build highway under the orders of Robert Moses. He writes that since highways symbolized modernity, the people opposing the construction (as they were loosing their homes from the demolition) were made to feel guilty, as if they were opposing modernity.

Modernity: Historical experience. Experience of men and women in modern environments.
Modernization: Social processes that bring a maelstrom (industrialization, scientific progress etc) into being, and keep it in a perpetual state of being. People being both subjects and objects on modernization.
Modernism: The visions and values that modernization brings, and gives people the power to be changed and change the world they live in modernism.

History of Modernity
1st Phase: 16th to 18th century : people don’t know what hit them. Beginning to grapple with new ideas.
2nd phase: French revolution – 1790 – end of 19th century – revolutionary ideas, upheavals in social and political lives. 

19th century: People can understand what it means to live in modernity. Ideas of modernism and modernization emerge. People are living in two worlds simultaneously.
3rd Phase: 20th century: expands to the entire world. Modernity breaks down society into fragments – people loose touch with their roots.

He critiques post-modernists as being too quick to reduce modernism into a closed monolith that is incapable of being shaped by modern men anymore. He critiques postmodernism as leading towards a nihilistic point of view, and sucking the optimism of modernism. He critiques Foucault and his postmodernist theories for behaving as if everything in the society is new, and modern man does not have any freedom in shaping his/her own world. Berman suggests that postmodernist ideas are "simply iterations of the constant intellectual evolution of modernity itself, that in seeking to destroy the modernist ideas that preceded them they have in fact become simply the newest destructive forces that are inherent in the modern cycle of destruction and rebirth."

Berman argues that by examining our contemporary society (Today) through the visions and lens of (Yesterday), 19th century modernists will encourage us to create the modernisms of 21st century (Tomorrow). He argues modernisms of the past can help us connect the world and brings together people who are going through the processes of modernization together.

He engages with Goethe's Faust, Marx's Communist Manifesto, Baudelaire's essays on modernity, and Dostoevsky's and Gogol's digresses about Crystal Palace to introduce the vitality and dynamism inherent in early modernist writers.

The End of Tradition, or the Tradition of Endings/ Nezar Alsayyad/ 2004

Alsayyad begins the essay by tracing the four threads of recent discourses on endings. The first is Daniel Bell's "The end of ideology". Bell argued that 19th century ideologies like Marxism were ending, and that a new utopia of social harmony cannot be brought about through ideological means. But this theory was proved false with the radicalism that arose in 1960's. The second is Fukuyama's 'End of history and the the last man' which argued that as western liberal democracy takes root and the sociocultural evolution of man will halt with liberal government becoming the final form of governing. But this was also wrong since liberal democracy has been constantly challenged by fundamentalism, radical movements, and authoritarianism. The third discourse was Ohmae's End of Nation state that argued that as the money that moves between nations are mostly private, there is no need for a nation-state involved. Fourth, Jacoby's 'End of Utopia' that argues with the wide spreading of free market capitalism there cannot be any radical changes and that utopia that brings about change is dead. Alsayyad argues that all these endings are a fallacy, and in the 21st century there exists real threats to liberal democracy, history, capitalism, and new ideologies still emerge.

On tradition: Alsayyad argues that tradition has to be seen as the process that creates contested subjectivities involved in producing/occupying spaces. First study of tradition in 1989: Tuan argued Tradition to be a constraint. Paul Oliver presented the concept of handing down traditions and Rapoport came up with a list of attributes to test the degree of trasitionality.

On built environment: How built traditional environments have to studies in response to changes in society? Glassie and Rapoport say architecture is material culture/cultural landscape and they reflect the norms of the society. Abu Lughod argues for breaking down of dichotomies and suggests the use of 'traditioning' as a verb in opposition of tradition as a noun (process over product). She argues that traditional environments should not be seen as endangered environments. Following this argument Alsayyad argues that deterritorialization of identity through globalization happens in 4 phases, Insular phase (indigenous vernacular) colonial (hybrid architecture) independent nation building (modernization), and globalization (settlements homogenized, and people are ethnically aware).

Alsayyad asks, if the end of tradition as an object of enquiry suggests an end of tradition as an objective reality? Answering his question negatively, he says the new modes of enquiry into tradition only suggests that tradition as a concept we have know thus far is ending, and not the end of tradition itself.

The book is divided into 3 parts:

Part 1 examines the dialectic nature of tradition and modernity. The three essays present new ways of looking at tradition through the lens of modernity.

Jane Jacobs: Tradition is (not) modern - Tradition and modernity are codependent but mutually exclusive. Tradition is imagined by modernity. Globalization has not killed tradition but rather reshaped it. Aboriginals in Australia hired architects to insert aboriginal identity into contemporary architecture of touristic buildings. Traditional authority was channeled through modes of modernity.
Ananya Roy: Nostalgias of the Modern: End of tradition is end of traditional ways of thinking. Consumption of tradition is production of tradition.
Dwelling: Authenticity- Recovering authenticity by creating nostalgia. (Crystal palace, Eifel Tower)
Performing: making explicit acts of consuming tradition. (Algiers)

Part 2: examines traditions as a process of invention. The three essays examine how traditions are "manufactured, packaged and deployed". An invented landscape inherently depeds upon succesful deployment of invented traditions. Since invented traditions are often messy and are competitive in what traditions they are excluding invented landscapes are usually a failure.

Part 3 examines tradition as a representation of a regime. It shows how tradition is programmed, policed, and deployed in hegemonic struggles that create both built environemnts and citizen subjects through its reworking of tradition.  Essays include Mia Fuller's examination of standardized farmhouses enforced by Italian fascist regimes to ensure that people thought of national identity before regional identity, and Dufang Lu's example of breaking and rebuilding city walls in China as a symbolic entity.

"What has ended is not tradition itself, but the idea of tradition as a harbinger of authenticity, and as a container of specific cultural meaning, as a place-based, temporally situated concept; as a static authoritative legacy; as a heritage owned by certain groups of people."

"Tradition is no longer found only in ‘real’ places; it lives on in the most fake of all places, where

it is reborn everyday in the social practice of those who inhabit what used to be the

space of fakery."

Behind the postcolonial/ Abidin Kusno/2000

School of thought: Postcolonial Critique

Others scholars mentioned: Spiro Kostof 'motivation of sequence'; Ben Anderson 'spectre of comparisons'; Anthony King 'colonial modernity'; Paul Rabinow 'social modernity'; Said 'social mission'; Partha Chatterjee 'material and spiritual realms'

Kusno address broad themes in postcolonial architetcure using specific historical examples from Indonesia. He begins the book by laying out the politics of the built environment in postcolonial Indonesia. While the old-order Sukarno's government favored a modern architectural style for newly independent Indonesia, and built a national mosque' symbolizing the narrative of progress, the new-order Suharto's regime favored going back to classical javanese architecture as a symbol of national identity. Several mosques were built across the archipelago in traditional javanese style trying to substitute one national style in place of several indigenous architectural styles. With Kusno argues architectural to be a produce of social and political forces, and as a way of rewriting history. He questions, where Indonesian architecture is rooted, and when should the beginning be placed? He argues architecture and urbanism is not only a lens to understand political and cultural formations of a postcolonial nation, but they are the tools themselves that shape particular social, cultural, and political formations. He uses the theoretical frameworks of Anthony King, Paul Rabinow, and Said to argue that architecture in Indonesia can only be grasped through a serious analysis of political cultures of regimes in power, and the continuing presence of colonialism in today's postcolonial society.

The book divided in three parts examines the architecture, urban spaces, and transnational architectural and political cultures of Indonesia. The primary themes of the book are: colonial origins of contemporary Indonesian architecture, the violent genology of the New Order, and the hybrid modernities that protest the New Order culture.

Part 1: Dutch architects who designed 'Indies architecture' were raised in the colony, and went to Netherland to obtain education. Returning as architects they believed in the colonial mission of modernizing subjects as a 'social mission'. This architecture provided a grammar for postcolonial arhcitects to imagine a national identity. Through the case of Dutch architects working in the Indies, Kusno tries to break away from the narrative of domination (colonizer/colonized binary), and "develop a way to understand the complexity and ambiguity which often formed colonial relation without undermining the importance of power relations."

Part 2:

Part 3: Contemporary protests after New Order:
Kusno argues that the creation of Self and Other as Said argues is occuring even after colonialism ended. Modern elites modernizing elites construct categories of “others”in urban spaces. "These “others” were not meant to be modernized. Instead, they were created for the self-formation of the “modern” elites. This formation of “internal” other follows the logic of colonial “civilizing mission” which in its attempt to modernize the colony still maintained a distance or a gap necessary for hierarchal identification." (Kusno interview)

1. Examines the role of architecture and urbanism in formation of collective subjectives in postcolonial Indonesia
2. It is a political history of Indonesian architecture, by studying the colonial origins of postcolonial architecture not only for the past, but to understand it in present and future
3. It transcends the criticism of modernist architecture as colonial and presents an understanding of how it can be nation-specific.
4. Studying the nexus of power that is located outside the east-west paradigm and understanding the different types of modernities.

The Invention of Tradition/ Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger/ 1983

Introduction: 
Hobsbawm in his introduction 'Inventing Traditions' makes the claim that traditions that often seem ancient and well established might in reality be created/invented in a more recent dateable time period. He defines 'Invented traditions' to mean "a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behavior by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past." (p.1). He introduces an idea of a 'historic past' -- where traditions are invented to establish a continuity with a suitable historic past, but they are factitious.  In a constantly changing modern world, invented traditions attempt to structure some parts of social life and to create a semblance to an unchanging past.

Tradition, he argues, has to be differentiated from 'custom'. While the object and characteristic of traditions is to be unchanging and invariant, 'custom' cannot afford to be invariant, because life even in traditional societies is constantly changing. Customs, therefore, "gives any desired change the sanction of precedent and social continuity" (p.2). A decline of custom inevitably changes tradition.
Second, he writes, social practices which have to be repeated frequently are often formalized into a set of conventions or practices for the sake of convenience and efficiency. These set of practices, he argues, are not 'invented traditions' since their function is technical and not ideological. He identifies three overlapping types of invented traditions formed post industrial revolution - one, that is used to establish social cohesion or membership to real/imagined groups, second, establishing or legitimization social institutions and third, those which were instituted for value systems and inculcation of beliefs. But argues that the first type is what primarily qualifies as invented traditions.
He identifies two major differences in invented and age-old traditional practices: Old ones were strong, specific, and social binders. Latter ones are unspecified and vague to reflect nature of the values. Second, even though a lot of new traditions have been invented they only fill a small part of the vacuum created by the loss of 'real' traditions by secularization.

Why is the study of invented traditions important: 1)they are both symptoms and evidences of the changes occurring in the society. They in fact point to breaks in continuity.  2) they showcase human relationship to the past, and how they want the past to be preserved and remembered. Especially in case of nationalism, symbol of nation-state, national languages etc. constructing historic continuities is crucial to the formation of social cohesion.

Chapter 2: The Invention of Tradition: The Highland Tradition of Scotland / Hugh Trevor-Roper
Trevor-Roper examines Scotland's national symbols (such as kilt, bagpipe, highland myth, wearing of different patterned Kilt to be representative of different clans etc.) and argues that they are not symbols of antiquity but rather modern inventions, that were developed in reaction to Scotland's Union with England. The highlands were always culturally connected to Ireland than to Scotland. They were isolated clans from Scottish lowlands, and their gaelic language was also considered to be closer to Irish. But after Scotland's union with England, the Scottish crown banned the usage of cultural Highland symbols like kilts, and popularized English in schools, in an attempt to unify the state and anglicize it. After the ban was lifted, Scottish gentry and Highlanders started wearing kilt, not only to preserve their identity but also to ease transition. Trevor- Roper argues that the Kilt as we know it today was invented by a Englishman in 18th century, and Sottish nationalists eventually claimed it as a symbol of their Celtic ancestors.

Chapter 4: The British Monarchy and Invention of Tradition/ David Cannadine
This chapter examines the pageantry and ceremonial practices associated with the British Monarchy. He argues that most ceremonial rituals associated with the royal family and the crown was established in 20th century, not only to bolster a shaky monarchy but also to foster a sense of national identity and belonging. He identifies the beginning of certain traditions, like the king's funeral in Westminister Abbey, the jubilee functions of the monarch's survival in office, investiture ceremony etc. Cannadine discusses the role of television media (BBC) in promoting of of this invented traditions, by commenting that it has enhanced the "fairytale splendor" of the royal families by bringing them to people's living rooms.

Chapter 5: Construction of Ritual idiom in Victorian India/ Bernard S Cohen
At the beginning of Raj, the first governor general travelled across North India carrying the message of the Crown and held "durbars" for Indian princes, British and Indian officials. At these "durbars" Indian prices were bestowed with titles such as Nawab, Rai Bahadur etc. These "durbars" Cohen argues became an invented tradition. The durbars were modeled upon those held by Mughal and Hindu kings where people were offered gold coins, clothes, keepsakes, and sometimes even elephants, horses etc. While in the Indian culture these gifts were reflective of a relationship forged b/w the emperor and his subject, the British mistook them to be bribery/ tributes. Gradually, Indian prices were ranked in terms of their allegiance to the British empire, their land holding etc. and at the British durbars Indian prices had to wear a certain attire, stand at a certain position, and would be greeted a certain way based on their rank and title.

Architectural Theory in an Expanded Field/ Grieg Crylser / 2001

School of Thought: Postmodernist

Text: Review of Architectural Theory

Other Scholars mentioned: Tschumi (postmodern), Levi Strauss (Structuralism), Husserl (phenomenology, essentialism), Manfred Tafuri (neo-marxist), Slaughter and Rhoades (Academic Capitalism)

Crysler's introduction to the Sage Handbook of Architectural Theory begins with an overview of the state of architectural theory in contemporary academia and practice.

Crysler begins the essay with a textual tour of Bernard Tschumi's Parc De La Villette (PDLV), which he won in a competition organized by French government in 1982. PDLV is picked an example to illustrate theory in design for its notoriety in "self-consciously animating theory". PDLV is an architectural manifestation of Tschumi's critique against foundational principles of architectural modernism -- that function, structure, finance should play a determinate role in architecture. PDLV stands as a collaboration of architecture with literature theory and philosophy (through Tschumi working with Eisenman and Derrida). PDLV came into limelight for bringing postmodernist and post structuralist theories into architectural design. Crysler, however argues that, PDLV should not be seen as ushering theory in design, but rather it arrived at a time when the time was ripe and was accepted into the architectural cannon , and gave rise to 'auto-generative' theory based design projects where conventional agencies of user, client, architect was scrambled. Despite the critiques PDLV got from replacing functionalism with extreme formalism, Crysler argues that it still encapsulates the hope and ambiguity of post structuralist theory and reminds us of the ways architecture renewed itself by interacting with other disciplines.

A large chunk of the essay discusses the interaction of architecture with scholars from other disciplines, which not only gave fodder to the intellectual agency of architecture but also helped by providing "practical alternatives for how architecture might conduct itself in the new world". As these discourses took shape, established theories of architecture, both ancient theories that worked with aesthetic formalism, proportions and composition, and the modern theories of neo-rationalism were questioned. In the wake of post-structuralist theories, architecture's engagement was marxism was found to be "too normative and cheerless" (4).

End of Theories: Manfredo Tafuri's neo-marxist critique of modern architecture's alliance with capitalism ushered in the 'end of theories' period where the influence of market economy and flows of capital on architecture was constantly critiqued by post structuralists. Architectural theories interactions with a wider field, Crysler argues, helped the practice of architecture by injecting theories and intellectual possibilities into buildings which would otherwise be dictated by economy. .

Institutional Context: Crysler begins by noting that the prominent medium for the dissemination of architectural theory and its intermixing with other disciplines is the print medium through journals, anthologies, monographs etc. He also notes that the primary language of communication is English, and the best known  academic institutions  are located in the anglo-saxon cultural sphere.
Crysler also notes that even as scholars (in the handbook) originally come from different places in the world, they were all educated in the US or UK, and are presently situated in the western institutions. Given this, he asks provoking questions about the geographic expansion of architectural academic world. He asks, does geographic expansion signify an intellectual diversification, does the academy support knowledges created outside of established centers, does the academy support a new commodified global format of production and consumption of knowledge.
Crysler observes that teachers of architecture have been clearly divided into two categories -- those who teach architectural history and theory, and those who teach design. He notes that these two categories rarely overlap, thus depriving the students to engage with critical theory in studios, and vice versa.

 Kate Nesbitt’s Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture: An Anthology of Architectural Theory 1965–1995  that was published in 1996,  Rethinking Architecture  edited by Neil Leach that came out in 1997, and Architecture Theory since 1968 , edited by K. Michael Hays, appeared a year later,

Twentieth Century Reform Movements in India/ Kenneth Jones/

Kenneth Jones begins with an overview of the socio-political climate of 20^th century India, and identifies three crucial modifications that affected the way socio-political movements functioned, succeeded, or failed.  Later, he identifies five socio-religious movement that began in 19^th century and extended into the 20^th century: Ramakrishna Mission and Math, The Radhasoami Satsang, Arya Samaj, Ahmadiyas, Swaminarayan Guru of Kerala

First, the secular nationalism introduced by Indian National Congress that came in waves of Gandhian movements. Second, is a contrasting communalism and severe religious conflicts that arose as a counter-design to nationalist peak. The third major modification in Indian society was th allocation of sepereate electorates to muslim population. The census (as Anderson has theorized) defined religious communities, counted them, and presented them as social and economic units. He identifies this constitutional reform as the factor that stimulated and reinforced a new form of political institution. These led to the formation of the first ‘religio-political’ groups in India. Muslim league was founded on the basis of Muslim nationalism, and expressed a concept of Pakistan. Hindu Mahasabha was formed under the leadership Savarkar and expounded a Hindu nationalism opposing secular nationalism of INC. Similarly, Sikhs too moved towards their own religious nationalism. Jones argues that while in 19^th century most new ideas and symbols would turn into some form religion, in the 20^th century, the ideologies that travelled from the west.

Ramakrishna Math and Mission:

-Expanded across India and to the US after Vivekanada’s death.

- Managed by Swami Brahmananada and the trustee board of Belur Math

- Often the mission carried out local initiatives without involvement from the central board. But the activities of mission and math often overlapped.

- Spread to US cities through Vedanta society – but the role here was different since there was no social service involved – only teaching of Vedanta doctrines.

Rethinking the Nation/ Abidin Kusno/ 2012

Kusno's chapter discusses the "implications of nationalism for architecture by reflecting historically on how architecture  participates in the construction of and contestation over national identities and historical memories" (214). He studies the interaction of architecture with nationalism and the forces of capitalism, colonialism and modernity acting on architecture.

Kusno's chapter has four main objectives:
1.To see architecture plainly as a state's ideological artifact to exercise its power, Kusno argues, limits the ways architecture can be perceived. Instead, he aims to distinguish  between conflated terms of nation and state, to conceive architecture as national narratives or practices.
2. He argues postcolonial nationalism is not an enemy of modern liberalism. It should not be associated with fascism or totalitarianism.
3. To understand the influence of globalization on mega architectural projects across the globe -- he argues these mega projects get incorporated within existing order of capitalism rather than interrogating it like early independent projects.
4.Due to neo-liberalism governmental power now reached deeper into everyday communities, and even these everyday communities have acquired tactics of insurgency

The second part of the essay, surveys the literature on the relationship of architecture and nationalism that have largely seen architecture as a vehicle of the state to exhibit power.
Anthony King, Diane Ghirado, Gwen Wright, Barbara Lane -- impact of western imperialism on nationalism and architecture
Nezar Alsayyad, James Holston, Lawrence Vale -- nationalism and architecture in postcolonial perspective.
In this section he asks two important questions: How does architecture challenge the dominant power of the national regime and help in imagining a nation? And second, how does architecture allow one to imagine a limited sovereign?

In the third part, Kusno uses Vale and Ksiazek's work on capitols and governments to argue that "architecture is never autonomous". he writes as this ideological framework has been well established,  he wants to focus on how architecture is politicized and used by a national regime to legitimize national sentiments. Here, he wants to clarify the difference between nation and nation-state. He suggests using the terms, people-nation and state-apparatus instead.

The fourth section heavily draws from Anderson's 'Imagined Communities'. Kusno writes that the crucial issue in Anderson's argument is not the employment of idealized national culture to imagine communities, but rather how these are represented and experienced. Kusno suggests architecture is also a medium of representation along with maps, museums, census, newspaper, novel etc. Architecture, Kusno writes, is a "technology of power". Architecture can both narrate the themes of nation as idealized by a particular power group, or it can challenge a regulatory regime of a nation state.

Anderson identifies two ways of  how nation was imagined historically: one was through a horizontal comradeship and second was the official nationalism sanctioned by the nation-state. But in Anderson;s formulation, the nation was always conceived through horizontal comradeship. Thus there is a dialectic relationship between a nation and state which invites one to think the role of architecture in not only supporting state power, but challenging it or even transforming the state through the formation of a new national imagination. To demonstrate this he uses the example of The Institute of Technology at Bandung.

The fifth section is a discussion of how histories of colonialism have influenced architecture. In this he identifies two ways in which architecture has been as a form of dominance: One, middling modernism (free from influence of the local). Second, techno-cosmopolitism (using local for inspiration). He argues, territorial power of the west set up boundaries of the colony and and produced symbolic mapping of national space. 

The Institute of Technology at Bandung was a dutch colonial design which brought together disparate elements from various island of the Indonesian archipelago to form a syncretic architectural style called the "indies architecture". This style, Kusno argues, inadvertently gave the colonized a platform to imagine a new nation, with all its different cultures coming together. However, post independence in Sukarno's time, Indies architecture was forgotten and a modern international style was embraced. But when Suharto's regime came in, Indonesian architects went to Indies architecture which was a combination of various architectural styles of the archipelago to oppose Suharto's choice of using javanese architecture as national symbol. Thus, Kusno argues, architecture became a tool for insurgency, and did not remain a vehicle to exercise state's power.

The next sections delve into the relationship between regionalism and nationalism in the west, and in the colonized world. The US adopted international style as "inherits of western civilization". Kusno argued, the leaders of the newly independent world Nehru, Sukarno, Mao Zedong etc. embraced modern architecture for their newly independent cities like Brasilia, Jakarata, Vhandigarh to rise above regionalism and vernacular inspirations, and to provide the people an architecture to imagine themselves as a part of a pan-regional community. He argues these leaders performed insurgency by showcasing modernist architecture as national symbol. But now, modern architecture has been forgotten as the place for utopian visions of nation and has been replaced by market economy.