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By "intelligentsia" I mean areas where large number of both academic and non-academic intellectuals like writers live - obviously any college town like Ann Arbor, Madison, Ithaca etc. is going to have a lot of professors. I'll start with Canada. Toronto and Montreal are the leading intellectual centers of English and French Canada, respectively - I don't think other cities have "intelligentsia" in any significant numbers.
In Toronto, the main area for intellectuals in Toronto is The Annex, which is just north of the University of Toronto. It is home to many professors at U of T and many of the country's leading writers and academics live there today. Margaret Atwood lives in the Annex, as did Jane Jacobs, who saw it as an ideal urban neighborhood.
The Annex was built up between the 1880s and early 1900s. For a time it was the city's most elite area, but it went into decline in the 1930s. The neighborhood was (re-)gentrifed in the 1960s with the expansion of the university. The Annex is known for its tree-lined residential streets and also has a commercial district with many of the city's restaurants, a documentary cinema and has many bars and cheap eats catering to the students. It represents a transition zone between the city's bustling downtown and the affluent residential districts to the north and is convenient for transit (has 4 subway stations).
It is also known for the Annex style house which is a sort of Queen Anne style and Richardson Romanesque hybrid.
In Montreal, Outremont is known as the main concentration of the Quebec intelligentsia. I'll post some other pics later.
In New York, I think of the Upper West Side and Park Slope, and in London it's traditionally been Hampstead and Primrose Hill, but I'll leave those cities and others around the world to others.
Fair point. Intelligentsia, at least in Europe, is a broader term that traditionally meant the highly educated, but with the great expansion of university educations since the 1960s it's fallen out of use because they're now such a large social group.
The late sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset defined intellectuals as "all those who create, distribute and apply culture, that is, the symbolic world of man, including art, science and religion. Within this group there are two main levels: the hard core or creators of culture - scholars, artists, philosophers, authors, some editors and some journalists; and the distributors - performers in the various arts, most teachers, most reporters. A peripheral group is composed of those who apply culture as part of their jobs - professionals like physicians and lawyers. Lipset included the first two categories in his definition.
Fair point. Intelligentsia, at least in Europe, is a broader term that traditionally meant the highly educated, but with the great expansion of university educations since the 1960s it's fallen out of use because they're now such a large social group.
Define "highly educated" please, because I am afraid that you are talking yet again about "intellectuals," not "intelligentsia."
( Hint - there are only two countries that I know of, where the word "intelligentsia" had more or less the same meaning were Germany and Russia - at least I know that this terminology has been used in both countries.)
The term intelligentsia is not really used here. We use sivistyneistö for people who are highly educated, interested in culture and influential, they can be bankers, lawyers or scientists as well. Älymystö on the other hand are theoretical academics who influence opinions and politics.
"When Europeans speak of the intelligentsia, they mean all three categories." - Lipset, Political Man, p. 333
Intellectuals is a much narrower term and never meant just the highly educated. I should have used it instead of "intelligentsia."
That was my point.
"Intelligentsia" is more Old Europe thing (continental Europe at that) and it's not too connected to Anglo-Saxon world.
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