Urban culture and ethnic representation: Berlin and Moscow as emerging world cities?

From a comparative and ethnographic perspective the project sets out to examine two urban cultures in the process of becoming a world city. Ethnic representation is considered one indicator of a world city and will be examined on the level of symbolic and cultural identity policy of each city on the one hand, and that of everyday practice which determines life in and the picture of the city on the other.
Cultural and symbolic politics of identity are central to the analysis of discourse in each city. Our focus is the discursive images that are being created to convey certain messages and which place each city in its respective national, European and global context. On the one hand, the cities represent themselves as competing world cities while on the other they function as laboratories of society. In this context they fill their national and supranational role with different content respectively. Using the term "world city" (Hall 1966, Friedmann 1995) the study is placed within the framework of the discussion about global world cities in the post-modern economic space, incl. so-called "global cities" (Sassen 1991, Castells 1999).
Apart from the official level of urban policy and public discourse we will move to two other levels of observation. In order to find answers to the questions of status, form and everyday practice of ethnic representation within urban culture we want to examine the cultural practice of self-representation of social or cultural groups and the everyday practice which includes ethnic self-images and images of others. The second perspective refers to professional representatives of ethnic interests such as associations, cultural or religious institutions. Ethnically determined music scenes and markets, among others, form part of the third perspective.
These places and practices are structuring the horizons of perception of the urban population, or rather, the (everyday-) practices produced in these places play their part in forming the city and its picture. Focussing on the perspective of ethnic representation opens up a possibility to compare and juxtapose two possible paths towards a world city in what at first glance appear to be vastly different developments in Berlin and Moscow. It also allows for detailing their similarities and thus for a description of everyday life of an urban culture in a world city. By analysing discourse and practice with the help of specific examples this study is supposed to contribute not only to the literature of urban anthropology but can also be a contribution to the discourse of urban development.