Claiming the City: Politics, Faith, and the Power of Place in St. Paul

by Mary Lethert Wingerd

Overview

Are Minneapolis and St. Paul "Twin Cities" in proximity only? How can two cities, spoken of so often in one breath, differ so greatly in their histories and characteristics? Claiming the City traces the contours of St. Paul's "civic identity" to show how personal identities and political structures of power are fundamentally informed by the social geography of place. St. Paul proves a particularly fruitful site for such analysis because it has developed along a divergent path from that of Minneapolis, its sister city just across the Mississippi river.

While Minneapolis in the last part of the nineteenth century bore the stamp of Scandinavians, Protestants, and Republican Yankee progressives, St. Paul emerged as an Irish, Catholic, Democratic stronghold. Increasingly overshadowed by the economic might of Minneapolis, out of necessity St. Paul evolved complex alliances among business, labor, and the Catholic Church that cut across class and ethnic lines—a culture of compromise that sharply contrasted with Minneapolis' more strident labor politics.

Mary Lethert Wingerd brings together the voices of citizens and workers and the power dynamics of civic leaders including James J. Hill and Archbishop John Ireland. She crafts a portrait of St. Paul remarkable for its specificity as well as its relevance to broader interpretations of place-based culture and politics.

Wingerd's rich and lively history of St. Paul is a clear demonstration that place—the lived experience and memory located in a specific spatial context—is a constitutive element of all other aspects of identity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801439360
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	08/21/2001
Series:	Cushwa Center Studies of Catholicism in Twentieth-Century America
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.06(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Mary Lethert Wingerd is Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Macalester College.

What People are Saying About This

Richard Fox

A new Catholic history and an old urban history come together beautifully in Mary Wingerd's scintillating study of St. Paul, Minnesota. This richly textured book is a capital addition to our knowledge of locality and culture, of place and politics, of the secular intertwined with the religious. Claiming the City is required reading for students of modern America.

Patricial Hampl

This is an important book not only for its valuable reading of local history but also because of the intellectual foundation that sustains it. Wingerd believes in—and embodies powerfullyThe importance of local history not as a limited exercise in local edification but as an essential aspect of cultural history.... This first book launches a wonderful writer as well as an exemplary historian.

David M. Emmons

All politics, it has been said, is local. Well, so is all history, and in this brilliantly conceived and perfectly executed book Mary Wingerd has given that important truth the attention it deserves. St. Paul, in Wingerd's words, 'delivered the goods' (both material and non), and St. Paulites negotiated their worlds on the basis of the civic identity their city gave them. There is a lesson in that that no historian of American labor or American cities can ignore.

Joseph A. McCartin

Claiming the City is both an engrossing account of the making of St. Paul, told from the perspectives of community leaders and common folk alike, and a thought-provoking meditation on change, persistence, and the power of place in American culture. Synthesizing the perspectives of labor, urban, and religious history, Mary Lethert Wingerd has given us a book of astonishing wisdom and sensitivity: a pathbreaking community study.

George Latimer

I've been looking for this book without knowing it since I got here in 1962... From the standpoint of really understanding people of St. Paul moving together in associations, mediating solutions between classes, I don't think there is anything like this book.

Bruce Nelson

An important book that bridges the fields of labor, ethnic, religious, and urban history.... Wingerd tell this...story with consummate skill.... Claiming the City will endure as an impressive study of the dynamics of ethnic identity as well as an elaboration of class and an evocation of peace.

Bill Silag

Mary Lethert Wingerd's history of St. Paul, Minnesota, in the period 1838-1934 focuses on the interplay of sociological categories such as ethnicity, religion, and class in the formation of local culture over time.... Claiming the City shows how fruitful the place-based approach can be....Wingerd reveals the extraordinary skill of St. Paul's nineteenth- and early twentieth-century civic leaders in maintaining a balance among various ethnic, religious, and class interests.

Editorial Reviews

Claiming the City offers a complex and subtle account of how culture and power interacted with locality to generate St. Paul Minnesota's characteristic identity and distinguish it from its purported twin, Minneapolis. Historian Mary Lethert Wingerd shows how the geographical and social boundaries of place provide a context for actions, and, when understood reflexively by residents, direct action as well. In St. Paul, a tradition developed of solving problems internally, relying on a civic compact that acknowledged the contributions of a diverse population and that shared rewards in a relatively egalitarian manner.

Krista E. Paulsenn Journal of Sociology

Offers a compelling case for including place and religion as key categories for understanding political developments.

Choice

Claiming the City offers a complex and subtle account of how culture and power interacted with locality to generate St. Paul Minnesota's characteristic identity and distinguish it from its purported twin, Minneapolis. Historian Mary Lethert Wingerd shows how the geographical and social boundaries of place provide a context for actions, and, when understood reflexively by residents, direct action as well. In St. Paul, a tradition developed of solving problems internally, relying on a civic compact that acknowledged the contributions of a diverse population and that shared rewards in a relatively egalitarian manner.

--Krista E. Paulsen, University of North Florida "American Journal of Sociology"

Offers a compelling case for including place and religion as key categories for understanding political developments.

-- "Choice"

From the Publisher

Claiming the City offers a complex and subtle account of how culture and power interacted with locality to generate St. Paul Minnesota's characteristic identity and distinguish it from its purported twin, Minneapolis. Historian Mary Lethert Wingerd shows how the geographical and social boundaries of place provide a context for actions, and, when understood reflexively by residents, direct action as well. In St. Paul, a tradition developed of solving problems internally, relying on a civic compact that acknowledged the contributions of a diverse population and that shared rewards in a relatively egalitarian manner.

American Journal of Sociology - Krista E. Paulsen