The sociologist Chombart de Lauwe and the aerial photograph as an ethnographic window dominate Jeanne Haffner's very French The View from Above. Emphasizing the vue d'ensemble, Haffner offers an effective antidote to a romanticized view from below, while leading us to new insights into Lefebvre, Ledrut, and the socio-spatial dialectic.
Edward Soja, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Urban Planning, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs
Like all the very best histories, Jeanne Haffner's The View from Above brings unprecedented insights to bear on the here and now. By showing how the perspective of aerial photography became absolutely central to ideas of nationalism, ethnography, human geography, architecture, and urban planning in the second half of the twentieth century, Haffner excavates the crucial genealogies of our own societies, in which technologies like GPS, Google Maps, and Google Earth have come to mediate every aspect of contemporary life.
Stephen Graham, Professor of Cities and Society, Newcastle University
The View from Above is a compelling genealogy of the emergence and evolution of the concept of 'social space.' Jeanne Haffner offers a fascinating—and ironic—story of how a mode of seeing most recently used to critique state power had its origins in the power of the state itself. With careful attention to the personal biographies of major figures in French social science and urban planning, this tightly focused and well-argued account casts social space and the many figures who participated in its elaboration in a new and original light.
Jennifer S. Light, Professor of Communication Studies, History, and Sociology, and Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University
Haffner elegantly elaborates on how the interpretation of the aerial view shifted from encapsulating 'the humanistic, Enlightenment-inspired promise of global unity through technology' to symbolizing for Lefebvre and the French New Left colonialism 'the 'spectacle' of capitalist consumerism, and the repressiveness of state-controlled urban planning' (109). She argues in her nuanced, rich, and elegantly written history that the distinction so often made between ''top-down' urban planning and its 'bottom-up' critique' simplifies a more complex story—a story that can best be unraveled by an interdisciplinary approach. By offering such an interdisciplinary history, this book complements not only the literature on visual culture, the history of science, and French architectural, urban, and planning history, but also the work on individual thinkers such as Henri Lefebvre, and it will therefore prove valuable reading for scholars in all these fields.
Journal of Modern History
