Dear Recipient,

We are organising a specialist session (90 minutes, 5 papers) in the Seventh International Conference on Urban History in Athens - Piraeus, Greece 27-30 October 2004. If you are interested in submitting a paper (15 minutes), please contact us as soon as possible (no later than on Tuesday 30 September 2003). The session synopsis is the following one:

Cultural Styles of Provincial Towns in the 18th century: the influence of the Metropolis

The aim of the session is to compare cultural styles and identities of 18th- century metropolitan and provincial urban elites. The session consists of papers on examples from different European countries. There are always power structures and hierarchies controlling and dominating people and shaping their identities. It is important to define and analyse the content of and reasons for the social inclusion and feelings of loyalty in an urban context. What must people have in common in order to have common identity? And what must urban elite people have in common in order to form a notion of belonging, that is, to form a special group?

Was there cultural unification or growing regional and local identity, or were they parallel processes? What were the provincial impacts of the diffusion of metropolitan ways of life, intellectual impulses and fashions: acceptance or resistance? Were the smalltown elites a part of metropolitan culture or did they have their "roots in regional soil"? How did the contemporary discussions reflect the myths of metropolis and provincialism; or how did the moral discourse deal with the different urban lifestyles? What part did arts and literature have as transmitters of metropolitan and provincial values and attitudes? Was there a connection between cultural styles and political mobility?

With best regards,
Mr. Markku Kekäläinen (markku.kekalainen@helsinki.fi)
Mr. Jouko Nurmiainen (jouko.nurmiainen@helsinki.fi),
both from the Department of History, University of Helsinki, Finland