Imperial visions of healthcare: Public health infrastructure and the shaping of the urban environment in England, 1920-1955

这项研究将批判性地考察公共卫生和帝国主义的话语如何在1920-1955年间交叉塑造英国的城市空间。现有的关于公共健康、建筑环境和大英帝国之间联系的学术研究主要集中在两次世界大战期间，以及在帝国和工业衰落的时期，现代主义建筑在创造“健康的新景观”中的作用(Darling，2007)。这些分析往往基于著名的现代主义建筑，如佩克汉姆健康中心和芬斯伯里健康中心(Darling，2007；Gruffudd，2001；Overy，2007)，而放弃了对这些年帝国主义公共卫生话语如何塑造和重新谈判英格兰城市空间的更广泛的考虑。虽然战后时期的学者已经讨论了来自前殖民地的移民如何被认为威胁到英国的道德和城市结构(Betts，2020；Bivins，2015；Waters，1997)，但这项工作可以通过研究大众出版物中战后重建期间前殖民移民生活空间的视觉表现来扩展。我将以大卫·吉尔伯特和菲利克斯·德雷弗的观点为基础，即理解帝国主义文化对城市景观的影响迫使学者们解决城市空间的“建筑的、壮观的、代表性的和生活的”维度(吉尔伯特和德雷弗，1998)。我将通过探索公共卫生在多大程度上成为一种工具，在20世纪上半叶表达更多的国内、内向的帝国愿景，来提供通过这些空间形式描绘帝国主义的新视角。我的论文将需要持续思考摄影在通过仁慈的家长式公共卫生提供将帝国情感和意识形态自然化方面所发挥的作用。历史悠久的英格兰专题通讯社(TPA)收藏以及图片邮报和插图伦敦新闻档案将被用作框架这次探索的关键来源。

The research will critically examine how discourses of public health and imperialism intersected to shape urban space in England between 1920-1955. Existing scholarship on the links between public health, the built environment and the British empire has focused predominantly on the interwar period and the role of modernist architecture in creating "a new landscape of health" (Darling, 2007) at a time of imperial and industrial decline. These analyses tend to rest on well-known modernist buildings such as the Peckham Health Centre and Finsbury Health Centre (Darling, 2007; Gruffudd, 2001; Overy, 2007), forgoing a wider consideration of how imperialist public health discourse shaped and renegotiated urbanspace in England in these years. While scholars of the post-war period have addressed how migration from former colonies was assumed to threaten the moral and urban fabric of Britain (Betts, 2020; Bivins, 2015; Waters, 1997), this work could be extended by examining visual representations of the lived spaces of ex-colonial migrants in popular publications during post-war reconstruction. I will build on David Gilbert and Felix Driver's contention that understanding the influence of cultures of imperialism on the urban landscape forces scholars to address the "architectural, spectacular, representational and lived" dimensions of urban spaces (Gilbert and Driver, 1998). I will offer fresh perspectives on the figuring of imperialism through these spatial forms by exploring the extent to which public health became a vehicle for the expression of a more domestic, inward-looking vision of empire in the first half of the twentieth century. My thesis will entail sustained consideration of therole played by photography in naturalising imperial sentiments and ideologies through the benevolent paternalism of public health provision. Historic England's Topical Press Agency (TPA) collections and the Picture Post and Illustrated London News archives will be used askey sources to frame this exploration.