Reviews / Journal of Historical Geography 37 (2011) 244e262 249

phases in development and, to an extent, this is the path followed;but there is also an attempt to mark the continuities. Thus, forexample, early modern towns are seen as occupying a differentworld from their medieval predecessors, especially in terms ofculture and governance; yet they also shared many commonfeatures, not least their enduring links to the countryside anddependence on regular influx of new migrants to sustain growthand nurture economic vitality. Equally conventional is the sub-division of each section into chapters covering urban trends,economy, social life, culture and landscape, and governance. Thisapproach helps to ensure comprehensive and comparable coverageof the three time periods, but can tend to downplay the impact ofspecific influences at particular times. For instance, we read little oftown planning, the impact of growing overseas empires on Euro-pean cities, or urban protest e all of which are key themes innineteenth- and twentieth-century urbanism, as Lees and Lees,Cities and the Making of Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2007)demonstrate.

Whilst there are, perhaps inevitably, some gaps, Clarkundoubtedly succeeds in presenting a coherent yet nuancednarrative of the fortunes and impact of European towns and cities.He eschews oversimplifying the diversity of experiences andprocesses, but at the same time avoids becoming so concerned withdifference that the picture fragments into incoherent localism. Thisbalancing act is evident in some of the central themes of the book.Demographic growth was central to the urban experience acrossEurope, but Clark reminds us that nowhere was this growth unin-terrupted. Especially before the nineteenth century, individualtowns were susceptible to a wide range of exogenous influencesthat could bring crisis (wars, famine, plague, fires, etc) and urbangrowth as a whole waxed and waned. Indeed, it is easy to forgetthat townspeople have formed the majority in many Europeancountries only since the Second World War. Throughout themillennium and a half covered by this book, much of this pop-ulation growth was fed by migration from the countryside. Thesemigrants brought vitality as well as numbers to the town andunderlined the importance of external links. Despite their walls,market tolls, distinct governance, and so on, towns have never beenisolated from the wider world. At one scale, they drew suppliesfrom their hinterlands and, in turn, supplied goods and services; atanother, they were linked into wider systems of trade and industry.All the while, urban authorities were engaged in an increasinglycomplex relationship with the nation state: power gradually shif-ted to the latter, but, Clark argues, this provided opportunities forsome places in the form regional administration or, more selec-tively, hosting the infrastructure of the state. Towns also related toone another, both in the form of competition and co-operation e

the latter a key component of the growing specialisation of functionwhich characterised towns in the nineteenth century. Ultimately,competition is seen as favouring larger towns which have grown todominate the urban system of most European countries: the smallmarket town, in contrast, has slipped to the very margins of urbanstatus.

In presenting these arguments, Clark writes clearly andauthoritatively, with no references in the text. The reader whowishes to know more is instead directed to a wide-rangingbibliography which is structured e like the book e by period andtheme. The scope of the book makes this approach understand-able, but it is frustrating to the reader who might want to pursueone of the numerous detailed case studies which pepper the textand, in many ways, bring life to what might otherwise be a rathersterile, if extremely informative series of generalisations. Indeed,this linking of the particular and the general is one of the greatstrengths of the book. Anecdotes of urban life form springboardsfrom which the analysis is launched, but they also ground it in the

daily lives of townspeople. And, after all, towns and cities aremade up of people.

Jon StobartUniversity of Northampton, UK

doi:10.1016/j.jhg.2011.02.014

Paula Lupkin,Manhood Factories: YMCA Architecture and the Makingof Modern Urban Culture. Minneapolis, University of MinnesotaPress, 2010, xxiv þ 240, US$27.50 paperback, $82.50 hardcover.

Taking its name from Theodore Roosevelt’s description of theirbuildings as ‘manhood factories,’ Paula Lupkin’s book focuses on theYoung Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) and its massive buildingprogramme in the United States between the Civil War and GreatDepression. This excellent piece of scholarship is part of the Univer-sity of Minnesota’s recent Architecture, Landscape, and AmericanCulture Series that importantly focuses on the role of architecture andthe built landscape in shaping understandings and experiences ofsociety, culture, and politics over time. Though the YMCA began inBritain in 1844, Lupkin focuses on how the Association (or ‘The Y’)quickly became part of American ‘mainstreet’ culture in the mid tolate nineteenth century. The construction of specific YMCA buildingsdirectly facilitated the Association’s aims as a mission-led pro-gramme that would provide leisure facilities and meeting places of‘practical Christianity’ for young white-collar men; a ‘home awayfrom home’ environment ‘intended to mass-produce properlysocialized, practically educated and morally upright men for themodern age’ (p. xvi). Lupkin’s beautifully produced publicationdetails the particular architectural styles and designs of the YMCAand how thesewere infusedwith certainmoral agendas, conceptionsof masculinity and urban anxieties. Furthermore, she illustrates howthese buildings also contributed to an emerging modern urbanculture in America as part of wider economic and social changesduring the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

In her approach Lupkin traces the histories and moral geogra-phies of YMCA architecture through not only a detailed analysis ofthe buildings themselves and their cultural representations, butalso examines fundraising missions and biographies of individualarchitects and YMCA leaders. This ‘bigger-picture’ of architecturalhistory, and Lupkin’s focus on ‘the process of making space andmeaning, rather than the final product’ (p. xxiii), makes this anengaging study and ultimately of interest to geographers and otherscholars concerned with the production and consumption of space.Lupkin cleverly illustrates her argument with various images andephemera: posters, advertisements, documentary photographs,postcards and illustrations. This rich empirical detail, based onarchival research at the Kautz Family YMCA Archives and a numberof other collections, is further enhanced through utilising modernGIS and visual imagery technology, for example, to map YMCApostcard exchange (plate 5) and ‘ghosting’ simulations of YMCAbuildings and rooms to highlight examples of the panoptic gazeupon members (p. 61).

The book follows a chronological and thematic structurethrough five chapters and an epilogue, highlighting at each stagecase-studies of particular YMCA buildings and how they embodiedthe ideals and mission of the YMCA. Chapter one introduces theorganisation, its leaders, and the emergence of an institutionalevangelical culture ‘designed not only to shape the character andspirituality of individual young men, but to shape big business’(p. 21). These initial ambitions were realised in the landmark YMCAbuilding in New York opened in 1869, which Lupkin takes as the

Reviews / Journal of Historical Geography 37 (2011) 244e262250

focus of chapter two. Here, she argues that the YMCA fused religionand leisure in built form and that the introduction of the New Yorkbuilding ‘acknowledged the blurring of boundaries e conceptual,geographical and architectural e between morality and commerce’(p. 71). The success of this building prompted efforts to constructYMCA buildings across the United States, and in chapter three,Lupkin examines this unifying vision and the ‘small town’ expan-sion of the Association. In chapter four, Lupkin traces the shifts overtime in attitudes regarding ‘appropriate’ activities and environ-ments for young men as the YMCA became increasingly ‘secular’ econverting assembly halls and parlours to gymnasia and billiardrooms. Chapter five shifts the focus somewhat, with a directcomparison between YMCA building projects in Greensboro, NorthCarolina and Tientsin, China in the early twentieth century. Lupkinuses these two examples to illustrate the architectural andbureaucratic tensions in the design and construction of YMCAbuildings that led to the establishment of a formalised in-houseBuilding Bureau of the YMCA to avoid a reliance on great (thoughexpensive and aesthetically driven) American architects. Thesearchitectural politics are interesting; however the reader is leftseeking more details about the international elements of the YMCAbuilding programme and the global imaginary and extent of itsevangelical mission. There are also other gaps that leave the readerwanting more, including the ‘other’ users and manifestations of theYMCA the author mentions, including the Young Women’s Chris-tian Association and the YMCA’s separate buildings for AfricanAmericans and Native Americans.

Overall, Lupkin provides a thoughtfully constructed argumentand successfully examines the themes of ‘muscular Christianity’(p. xix), leisure-time, morality, and middle-class urban culture inAmerica at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning oftwentieth century. This clearly written and well-researched bookpositions the YMCA firmly within the cultural and architecturalhistory of the United States. This publication would be a valuableresource to geographers, social scientists and historians, as well asothers interested in ideas on youth, masculinity, religion, class, andurban culture. It also provides a clear example of how an emergingliterature on the geographies of architecture could benefit from thetype of detailed historical examination and empirical rigour Lupkindemonstrates throughout this book.

Sarah MillsAberystwyth University, UK

doi:10.1016/j.jhg.2011.02.017

Jamie Linton, What is Water? The History of a Modern Abstraction.Vancouver, University of British Columbia Press, 2010, xviii þ 333pages, US$85 hardcover.

In What is water? Jamie Linton provides an impressive contri-bution to the already extensive literatures on the social construc-tion of nature in general and that of water in particular. The work inboth areas is vast and in many ways well trodden. Still, Lintonmanages to offer an impressive account of the history of howmodern water has been made and remade in a series of shiftingconceptualizations. This is an important book for students of watermanagement in any discipline as well as for students concernedabout the relationships between nature and society.

Persons interested in the book should look to its subtitle tounderstand its focus. Linton is particularly concerned with theabstraction of ‘modern water’, defined as the static and universallyconsistent compound H2O ‘not complicated by ecological, cultural

or social factors’ (p. 8). Linton is not simply looking to expose thesocio-cultural hybridity of water but also to bring forward theconsequences of this abstraction. For Linton the global water crisisand the inability to find solutions are direct consequences ofwater’s modern production as a static, uniform, chemicalcompound. He argues that society projects a universalized crisis byvirtue of its failure to see the social nature (and thus diversity) ofwater.

Linton divides his arguments into three major parts. The firstsection of the book provides the theoretical entry into the topic. Hefocuses on ‘relational dialectics’, drawing extensively on the workof geographers David Harvey and Eric Swyngedouw. He is con-cerned with how ideas about things become the ‘nature’ of thingsand how such ‘nature’ may again be cognitively transformed.Relational dialectics argues that things become in relation to otherthings; howwe conceive of water will be related to how other ideashave become stabilized and reformed. Integrating Latour’s conceptof hybridity, Swyngedouw argues that the mutual creation of thesocial and the natural is simultaneous and is reflective of politicsand power. Linton’s addition is to argue against any foundationalpremises (i.e., materialism) in the processes by which nature andhistory are produced. Rather, he ‘take[s] the process itself asfoundational and avoid[s] the need to look behind or below it tofind a particular driving or determining force’ (p. 41).

Having established a framework for historicizing ‘modernwater’, Linton goes on to provide that history in section two of thebook and then to critique its consequences in section three. Thehistory provided in section two spans six chapters. The final three,however, are by far the most interesting and pertinent to thearguments that Linton is ultimately making. It is when Lintonprovides his own history of the hydrological cycle e what he callsthe ‘Hortonian hydrological cycle’e in chapter six that things reallyget interesting. He situates Robert E. Horton’s work in the precar-ious position of hydrology as a quasi-science in the United States inthe mid-twentieth century. Horton’s production of the simplifiedimage of the hydrological cycle helped to give hydrology the statusof a distinct science, rather than simply a tool of civil engineering. Inpractice, however, developments in hydrology continued to followthe demands of engineering. The difficulty of masking the socialcharacter of hydrological science would dissipate over time, asHorton’s workwas forgotten. Instead of attributing the hydrologicalcycle to Horton’s approximations, increasingly scientists cited workdone in antiquity and in the renaissance (p. 145). Moreover, whatgave Horton’s hydrological cycle (if not his name) such longevityand power was precisely its reductionism rather than its accurateexplanation of ‘nature’ (p. 143).

In the final two chapters of section two, Linton examines howthe abstraction of ‘modern water’ that he has just historicized hasbeen employed in terms of state engagement inwater management(chapter seven) and the construction of ‘global water’ (chaptereight). Many readers are perhaps familiar with the work of theconservation movement in the USA, which sought to maximizewater resource development. What Linton adds is the premise thatthe production of water and the state were mutual: ‘the state-.materialized modern water, while modern water helped buildthe state in a kind of reciprocal ratcheting process that contributedto making America the foremost economic and military power inthe latter part of the century’ (p. 161). The culmination of thishistory of modern water is the production of the concept of ‘globalwater’. The ultimate result, Linton argues, of abstracting water fromits social ties is the ‘actual quantification of the world’s water’(p. 163). While the mathematics to do so had long been available togeographers and hydrologists, the concept of global water emergedfromwork to internationalize the science of hydrology and growingconcerns with water scarcity.