Abstract
The influence of world’s fairs today is hard to define—their cultural resistance, however, is evident. The viability of these erstwhile protagonists in the aesthetic dramatization of the modern narrative is surprising because one expects new representational formats to respond to the rather moderate story lines of late modernity. In previous ages the world’s fairs of modernity “were not just exhibitions of the world, but the ordering of the world itself as an endless exhibition” (Mitchell, 1989, p. 218). In light of that enormous impact, what representations of today’s world do contemporary world’s fairs provide?
I am often asked about the future of world fairs and whether they have become cultural dinosaurs. I do not have a crystal ball, but when I gaze into the Crystal Palace—and, just as important, gaze through it into the broader political and economic conditions that led particular individuals to build it—it is only the rash prophet who thinks world fairs have lost their influence.
R. W. Rydell (2006, p. 149)
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Acknowledgment
I am very grateful to the organizers, especially Heike Jöns, and members of the Heidelberg conference on “Geographies of Science” for the inspiring discussion of my paper and to the referees for their helpful comments.
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Färber, A. (2010). The Making of Geographies of Knowledge at World’s Fairs: Morocco at Expo 2000 in Hanover. In: Meusburger, P., Livingstone, D., Jöns, H. (eds) Geographies of Science. Knowledge and Space, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8611-2_9
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