The Condition of Postmodernity 13 - autonomous learning

78 The passage from modernity to postmodernityPostmodernism in the city 79Plate 1.15 The signs of rehabilitation and gentrification often assume almostexactly the same serial monotony as the modernism they were supposed toreplace: rehabilitation in Baltimore is everywhere signalled by the standardcoach lamp hanging outside the house.deliberately to conceal, through the realms of culture and taste, thereal basis of economic distinctions. Since 'the most successful ideologicaleffects are those which have no words, and ask no more thancomplicitous silence,' the production of symbolic capital serves ideologicalfunctions because the mechanisms through which it contributesPlate 1.16 Baltimore's Gallery at Harbor Place is typical of the innumerableinterior shopping malls that have been constructed since around 1970.'to the reproduction of the established order and the perpetuation ofdomination remain hidden.'It is instructive to put Krier's search for symbolic richness in thecontext of Bourdieu's theses. The search to communicate social distinctionsthrough the acquisition of all manner of symbols of statushas long been a central facet of urban life. Simmel produced somebrilliant analyses of this phenomenon at the turn of the century, anda whole series of researchers (such as Firey in 1945 and Jager in