Julie Ren investigates the motivations and practices of making art spaces in Beijing and Berlin t... more Julie Ren investigates the motivations and practices of making art spaces in Beijing and Berlin to engage with comparative urbanism as a framework for doing research, beyond its significance as a critical intervention.
Across vastly different contexts, where universal theories of modernity or development seem increasingly misplaced, she innovatively explores the ways that art spaces employ creative capital to sustain themselves in a competitive urban landscape.
She shows how these art spaces are embedded within a politics of aspiration and demonstrates that aspiration is an important lens through which to understand the nature of, and possibilities for, urban change.
In 1915 Robert Park penned his seminal paper “The City: Suggestions for the investigation of huma... more In 1915 Robert Park penned his seminal paper “The City: Suggestions for the investigation of human behaviour in the city environment”. This essay provided an agenda for the Chicago School of Urban Sociology, which formed the basis of urban research for decades. Given that China’s urban centres now occupy the spotlight that once belonged to American cities, Park’s essay is a platform and point of departure for this volume, which gathers together reflections from a broad range of urban China specialists to consider Park’s (ir)relevance today – for cities in China, for questions about the social life of the city and for urban research more generally. Essential for a broad range of urban studies scholars, this book is an invaluable teaching resource and a useful tool for policy-makers and planners.
In various domains of social and political life, ‘crisis’ has become a ubiquitous taken-for-grant... more In various domains of social and political life, ‘crisis’ has become a ubiquitous taken-for-granted narrative. This ubiquity risks diminishing the political significance and meaning of the term and flattening the existing unequal geographies of crisis globally. This paper presents the theoretical framework of the Special Feature ‘Critical geographies of everyday crisis’ that aims to complicate existing understandings and redefine crisis as a condition of contemporary urban everyday life. By integrating critical scholarship on crisis and the everyday, these seemingly contradictory concepts are grounded in the contemporary experiences of pervasive crises globally. The collection of papers offers empirical insights from various socio-spatial contexts and domains of everyday life and puts in perspective interdependencies between crisis experiences. Everyday crisis challenges eventful ascriptions to crisis in order to better parse the distinct spatial and temporal characteristics and unequal power relations within contemporary crises. In doing so, everyday crisis also facilitates the reading of quieter registers of subjectivity, agency, and politics across different urban contexts and domains of everyday life.
Though knowledge about urban change is increasingly developed in partnership, knowledge productio... more Though knowledge about urban change is increasingly developed in partnership, knowledge production in teaching often remains entrenched in traditional roles of teaching and learning, research objects and subjects, and the attendant power asymmetries of these relations. Especially when working with partners historically the “subjects” of research rather than the authors of expertise, teaching can be a site to rework these relations. In this intervention, we reflect on an ongoing collaboration with undocumented immigrants in Zurich that aims to confront the function of epistemic authority through co-producing knowledge with students and undocumented immigrants in a classroom setting and consider the challenges of teaching projects to decolonize urban knowledge production.
Crises dominate current political debates. They shift the spaces of possibility for geographical ... more Crises dominate current political debates. They shift the spaces of possibility for geographical research practice and global theory formation. Our starting point in this forum is the diagnosis of a dual crisis: on the one hand, the epistemological crisis put forth in post-and decolonial scholarship and, on the other hand, the ubiquity of worldly crises-variously described as the pluri-crisis, polycrisis, or socio-ecological crisis. This pervasiveness poses new questions about how the entanglement of these diagnoses operates in the realm of geographical knowledge practice. Clearly, crisis phenomena have always conditioned the production of geographical knowledge. As crises restrict mobility or create precarious working conditions, they have not only shaped the everyday research life of many scholars worldwide, but also defined current knowledge (production) through the absence of certain scholars' voices at international conferences or in international publications. Having patterned global theory formation in this way, crises are firmly embedded in any knowledge canon. This forum discusses the transformation of urban geography in times of multiple crises. In our introductory reflections, we highlight some of the forum contributions' crosscutting insights, weave a common thread through this dialogue, and discuss obstacles to as well as critical resources necessary when rethinking and possibly changing practices of knowledge production.
Art events like biennials and large-scale exhibitions typically strive to address urgent, timely ... more Art events like biennials and large-scale exhibitions typically strive to address urgent, timely issues; curatorial approaches respond to various crises from the environment and war to Indigenous rights – notwithstanding the way existing exhibition structures often reproduce exploitative relations or other forms of everyday precarity. In our analysis of crisis, we eschew the concept of crisis as a disruptive event with a clear end for a framing of crisis as a condition. Especially for art events on the ‘periphery’, working under conditions of crisis is hardly new. We investigate the collective practices of three artist collectives, ruangrupa (Indonesia), Womanifesto (Thailand), and Atis Rezistans/Ghetto Biennale (Haiti). In practices like sharing resources, centring non-productivity and giving attention to nourishment and health, these collectives are reshaping art events from events that matter in terms of their pursuits of relevance towards events that care.
The Routledge Handbook of Comparative Global Urban Studies, 2023
Conventional forms of site selection, the process of justifying comparative sites as somehow comm... more Conventional forms of site selection, the process of justifying comparative sites as somehow commensurate, are loaded with issues from the outset. This chapter argues that the issues around site selection for comparative research is not simply about what places are compared but rather how places are compared. Building a theoretical case, as a case of something, takes a different starting point than building comparative research based on locations. By differentiating a theoretical case from site selection and outlining what kind of theory is possible, this is one approach and contribution to the project of a more global urban theory. The sequence of establishing a theoretical case in order to select sites helps to resolve the question of starting points for comparative research. Comparative research across difference also highlights the methodological limitations of the “lone scholar” and underscores the significance of collaboration for a kind of research.
sub\urban. zeitschrift für kritische stadtforschung, 2023
Dieser Artikel untersucht das Verhältnis zwischen räumlichem Eingeschlossensein und dystopischem ... more Dieser Artikel untersucht das Verhältnis zwischen räumlichem Eingeschlossensein und dystopischem Alltag in fiktionalen Filmen. Unser empirischer Ausgangspunkt ist die Darstellung des Eingeschlossenseins in den Filmen Parasite (2019) und Dogtooth (2009). Beide Filme erzählen mit düsterem Humor verflochtene Geschichten über Erfahrungen des Einschlusses in sozialen Hierarchien (Parasite) und patriarchalischen Strukturen (Dogtooth) sowie über den unmöglichen Versuch, aus diesen Ordnungen auszubrechen. Wir lesen diese Erfahrungen als langweilige Dystopien, also als Dystopien, die in den Alltag eingeschrieben sind und eine grausame Realität normalisieren. Wir nutzen die fiktionalen Erzählungen von Dogtooth und Parasite für eine kulturgeographische Analyse, die das Eingeschlossensein neben seinen räumlichen und materiellen Bedingungen als eine affektive Atmosphäre (Anderson 2014) versteht. Aufbauend auf der zunehmenden Stadtforschung über Affekte und Emotionen vermittelt dieser Zugang, wie das Eingeschlossensein sich als alltägliche, dystopische Erfahrung normalisiert. Wir argumentieren, dass eine Analyse affektiver Atmosphären die unsichtbar gewordenen Gewalterfahrungen des Eingeschlossenseins greifbar machen kann.
The approaches proffered by Teo et al. in 'Theorizing with urban China' are constructive ways for... more The approaches proffered by Teo et al. in 'Theorizing with urban China' are constructive ways forward that also provoke a number of questions about the qualitative distinctions between generalizing and universalizing when it comes to theory. While supportive of the gestures to think with elsewhere, to generate theory for the mid-range and to work with researchers who are embedded in the contexts of study, some specifications are desired: If not everywhere, then which specific elsewheres are relevant? How big is the middle of mid-range theorization? How deeply embedded should collaborators be?
The temporality of books runs counter to many changes in academic employment and publishing. Book... more The temporality of books runs counter to many changes in academic employment and publishing. Books are not only another metric of output, they convey a unique substantive authority as well. In the footsteps of a "radical openness" that embraces humility, ambiguity and the courage to go beyond the safety of established schools of thought, the journal is launching the book review forums as an exploratory space. The intention with forums is to provide more careful attention to books with frameworks and concepts not yet found recurrent in Urban Geography, or maybe also urban geography. The new submission guidelines include two suggested forum formats: book forums consisting of a single book with multiple reviews and topic forums consisting of a single topic in which multiple books are discussed. With forums, the hope is to supplant more utilitarian assessments of books with a space for generative debates.
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2022
The concept of the future, its prognostications and its applications increasingly shapes present ... more The concept of the future, its prognostications and its applications increasingly shapes present social worlds. From government policy to architectural design, from preemptive everyday practices to interventionist counter-cultural projects, imaginations of the future take concrete form and enjoy a powerful purpose. In this intervention we ask: How is the future invented, planned, renounced and researched? Specifically, how do we analyse the entanglement of temporal and spatial logics against the enveloping imperative of 'future as crisis'? What is the role of methodology, collaboration and engagement in shaping debates about the future, and how do we research different futures as well as different positionalities within the future? Rather than taking a prescriptive approach, we consider future epistemologies as well as concrete future practices and the ways in which multiple notions of futurity might overlap. Additionally, we consider the standpoint from which different futures are imagined or renounced, and the ways in which entanglements of past, present and future might reflect a struggle on different social fields. Finally, we complicate some of the distinctions that researchers draw between the practices of imagining, planning and producing future scenarios as exclusionary, and modes of navigating and shaping futures that are embedded in everyday lives.
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2022
Critiques of the parochialism of urban theory have resulted in appeals for more global urban stud... more Critiques of the parochialism of urban theory have resulted in appeals for more global urban studies. Yet, the fruitful responses to postcolonial work frequently remain sequestered, reflecting the persistence of Eurocentrism as a burden shouldered largely by the so-called "South". This paper aims to shift the work implied by critiques of Eurocentrism-from the labor of translation to the chore of representation-to those whom Eurocentrism serves. We argue that recognizing the ways academics are always already complicit in Eurocentrism by working within the academy is an important starting point. Can the functions of complicity also serve to redistribute the burdens of redress and allow cultivating new possibilities to respond? To understand the functions of complicity, we take inspiration from the historical position of Switzerland on "the margins" of colonialism. Scrutinizing the history of a formally non-colonizing country reveals multiple forms of taking part in, benefitting from and assisting in colonial efforts. Applying these learnings to institutional and epistemological possibilities of working with complicity in the academy, we interrogate the potentials and limits of these functions to address the reproduction of Eurocentrism.
In yet another variation on a theme park, the contemporary art biennial establishes host cities a... more In yet another variation on a theme park, the contemporary art biennial establishes host cities as cultural destinations. The qualities of these events, their various exclusivities, esoteric referentialities, and circulating stars reflect a form of "pure imageability" (p. xiv) (Sorkin, M. [1992]. Introduction: Variations on a theme park. In M. Sorkin (Ed.), Variations on a theme park: The new American city and the end of public space (pp. xi-xv). Hill and Wang.). Reducing art events to their functions for city branding, marketing, or as a tourist attraction is hardly satisfying as a qualitative analysis reveals their various (sometimes conflicting) intentions. Inspired by Sorkin's writing about public space, this paper considers one of these aims: the engagement of various publics. Bringing in school groups and indigenous rights activists through outreach programs and curation reflects attempts to make biennials more accessible and inclusive. The struggles to expand their publics, however, also reveal entrenched forms of exclusion. Despite political, economic or health crises art biennials persist. Their resilience reinscribes segregated urban lives, a reminder that follies are not necessarily fragile.
An expanded set of sites, a more differentiated set of references and linguistic diversification ... more An expanded set of sites, a more differentiated set of references and linguistic diversification have been discussed as needed changes in urban studies. The critiques of the limitations of urban studies, in terms of both the scholarship and the scholars, offer important and concrete responses to expanding the scope of the field. Yet this tremendous special issue on 'Comparative Methods for Global Urban Studies' with 10 papers cutting across a range of sites and topics is decidedly not only about empirical variation; this is an important distinction worth drawing more attention to. The creativity expressed in these papers comes at an auspicious time in urban studies where new routes for doing urban theory are needed to move past debates about singular versus plural epistemologies of the urban. As a kind of research that demands more translation, exchange and collaboration, perhaps comparative urban research as a mode of theory-building can help to humble the chest-pounding, posturing, privilege of thinking and speaking the language of theory. The theoretical ambitions of these very different papers show how urban theory need not only be about better understanding urbanisation within the epistemological confines of late capitalism. Rather than reifying a shared grammar of urbanisation as a necessity to understand each other, they may entice scholars everywhere to develop a broader vocabulary and perhaps even learn another language.
The transformation of Chinese cities has engendered new forms of spatialized urban inequality. Re... more The transformation of Chinese cities has engendered new forms of spatialized urban inequality. Research on these processes of segregation has captured the attention of urban researchers, generating a large and varied body of work. Yet its influence on urban theory remains constrained, reflecting the concern with the parochialism of urban theory. A review of segregation research on Chinese cities presents several intertwined findings: Chinese cities are framed in terms of their difference, mostly in contrast to Euro-American cities. This framing renders findings intelligible for an audience familiar with Chicago, but perhaps not Shenzhen. In translating the findings, the research often resorts to a methodological nationalism, which contextualizes Chinese cities in terms of their "Chinese-ness," a reductionist heuristic that elides the diversity of these cities and construes residential segregation as incommensurate with the experience of cities elsewhere. The effect of this is to limit the potential of this research to contribute to a "more global urban studies," by inscribing a kind of exceptionalism into Chinese cities.
There has been a proliferation of contemporary art biennials in the past 20 years, especially in ... more There has been a proliferation of contemporary art biennials in the past 20 years, especially in cities outside of North America and Europe. What biennials represent to their host cities and what is represented at these events reveal a great deal about the significance of this proliferation. The biennial platform entails formalistic notions of representation with regards to place branding or the selection of artists as emissaries of countries where they were been born, reside, or to which they have some kind of affinity. This notion of representation is obscured considering the instability of center and periphery, artists' biographies, practices, and references. In contradistinction to the colonial world fair, the biennial thwarts the notion or possibility of "authentic" representation. The analysis incorporates works shown at the 2018 biennials in Dakar and Taipei, interviews with artists, curators, and stakeholders, and materials collected during fieldwork in both cities.
Blame, violence, gendered work & eviscerating geographies of knowledge production render Paul Siu... more Blame, violence, gendered work & eviscerating geographies of knowledge production render Paul Siu’s devastating ethnography prescient for understanding the hate against Asians today, depicting a painful portrait of marginalization that reveals solidarities both possible & necessary.
In "Urban Studies" R. Dilworth (ed.) Oxford Bibliographies. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020
largely defined by key scholarship in the humanities, postcolonial urbanism translates these conc... more largely defined by key scholarship in the humanities, postcolonial urbanism translates these concepts and questions for urban space, urban research and urban theory. The analysis of power, representation, and identity is transmuted for a spatial analysis of urbanization, urban development, and urban life. This is particularly evident in the postcolonial scholarship on urban planning and architecture, which situates the built environment within a contextual postcoloniality or applies a postcolonial lens to analyzing the cultures of planning or architecture. Moreover, the critiques of discipline that postcolonial theory espouses are also adopted in postcolonial urbanism in the watershed of scholarship on issues around knowledge production in urban studies. These have spurred debates around the parochialism of urban theory, the nature of theory, and the comparative approaches that could possibly enrich theoretical developments. In parallel to these epistemological debates is a rich scholarship with a long tradition in area studies that continue to delve into the question of alternative urbanisms, seeing the postcolonial world as determined category of shared experience, which may help generate various forms of "Southern" urbanisms. The key question here is whether postcolonial urbanism serves more as a theoretical intervention into the way that urban theory is generated, or an empirical intervention into the sites and concerns of urban theory. The scholarship shows that these positions are not easily extricated from one another. Out of this lively debate has emerged an outpouring of influential conceptual developments particularly in theorizing urban everyday life around topics like informality, periphery, grey space, waste, and utopia. Anthologies and Readers in Postcolonial Thought A number of anthologies and readers are available to provide an overview of postcolonial studies, which span an array of disciplines. Although many key figures in the field come from comparative literature, the theoretical development of this area builds on work by scholars with very different aims, issues, and institutional or geographic homes. Anthologies may therefore prove particularly useful to get an overview, not only of the key scholarship but also to understand how the concept of "postcolonial" stretches when discussing such disparate topics as nationalism or embodiment. This breadth is most evident in Nayar 2015 and Ashcroft, et al. 2006, impressive in its volume and as an introduction to a variety of topics. Castle 2001 is valuable for selecting slightly lesser known texts by key authors, and Teverson and Upstone 2011 is noteworthy for its focus on postcolonial space. While there is some overlap in the key texts included in some of these anthologies, it is worth noting that several anthologies such as Huggan 2013 and Prakash 1994 have also compiled original chapters by key scholars.
Julie Ren investigates the motivations and practices of making art spaces in Beijing and Berlin t... more Julie Ren investigates the motivations and practices of making art spaces in Beijing and Berlin to engage with comparative urbanism as a framework for doing research, beyond its significance as a critical intervention.
Across vastly different contexts, where universal theories of modernity or development seem increasingly misplaced, she innovatively explores the ways that art spaces employ creative capital to sustain themselves in a competitive urban landscape.
She shows how these art spaces are embedded within a politics of aspiration and demonstrates that aspiration is an important lens through which to understand the nature of, and possibilities for, urban change.
In 1915 Robert Park penned his seminal paper “The City: Suggestions for the investigation of huma... more In 1915 Robert Park penned his seminal paper “The City: Suggestions for the investigation of human behaviour in the city environment”. This essay provided an agenda for the Chicago School of Urban Sociology, which formed the basis of urban research for decades. Given that China’s urban centres now occupy the spotlight that once belonged to American cities, Park’s essay is a platform and point of departure for this volume, which gathers together reflections from a broad range of urban China specialists to consider Park’s (ir)relevance today – for cities in China, for questions about the social life of the city and for urban research more generally. Essential for a broad range of urban studies scholars, this book is an invaluable teaching resource and a useful tool for policy-makers and planners.
In various domains of social and political life, ‘crisis’ has become a ubiquitous taken-for-grant... more In various domains of social and political life, ‘crisis’ has become a ubiquitous taken-for-granted narrative. This ubiquity risks diminishing the political significance and meaning of the term and flattening the existing unequal geographies of crisis globally. This paper presents the theoretical framework of the Special Feature ‘Critical geographies of everyday crisis’ that aims to complicate existing understandings and redefine crisis as a condition of contemporary urban everyday life. By integrating critical scholarship on crisis and the everyday, these seemingly contradictory concepts are grounded in the contemporary experiences of pervasive crises globally. The collection of papers offers empirical insights from various socio-spatial contexts and domains of everyday life and puts in perspective interdependencies between crisis experiences. Everyday crisis challenges eventful ascriptions to crisis in order to better parse the distinct spatial and temporal characteristics and unequal power relations within contemporary crises. In doing so, everyday crisis also facilitates the reading of quieter registers of subjectivity, agency, and politics across different urban contexts and domains of everyday life.
Though knowledge about urban change is increasingly developed in partnership, knowledge productio... more Though knowledge about urban change is increasingly developed in partnership, knowledge production in teaching often remains entrenched in traditional roles of teaching and learning, research objects and subjects, and the attendant power asymmetries of these relations. Especially when working with partners historically the “subjects” of research rather than the authors of expertise, teaching can be a site to rework these relations. In this intervention, we reflect on an ongoing collaboration with undocumented immigrants in Zurich that aims to confront the function of epistemic authority through co-producing knowledge with students and undocumented immigrants in a classroom setting and consider the challenges of teaching projects to decolonize urban knowledge production.
Crises dominate current political debates. They shift the spaces of possibility for geographical ... more Crises dominate current political debates. They shift the spaces of possibility for geographical research practice and global theory formation. Our starting point in this forum is the diagnosis of a dual crisis: on the one hand, the epistemological crisis put forth in post-and decolonial scholarship and, on the other hand, the ubiquity of worldly crises-variously described as the pluri-crisis, polycrisis, or socio-ecological crisis. This pervasiveness poses new questions about how the entanglement of these diagnoses operates in the realm of geographical knowledge practice. Clearly, crisis phenomena have always conditioned the production of geographical knowledge. As crises restrict mobility or create precarious working conditions, they have not only shaped the everyday research life of many scholars worldwide, but also defined current knowledge (production) through the absence of certain scholars' voices at international conferences or in international publications. Having patterned global theory formation in this way, crises are firmly embedded in any knowledge canon. This forum discusses the transformation of urban geography in times of multiple crises. In our introductory reflections, we highlight some of the forum contributions' crosscutting insights, weave a common thread through this dialogue, and discuss obstacles to as well as critical resources necessary when rethinking and possibly changing practices of knowledge production.
Art events like biennials and large-scale exhibitions typically strive to address urgent, timely ... more Art events like biennials and large-scale exhibitions typically strive to address urgent, timely issues; curatorial approaches respond to various crises from the environment and war to Indigenous rights – notwithstanding the way existing exhibition structures often reproduce exploitative relations or other forms of everyday precarity. In our analysis of crisis, we eschew the concept of crisis as a disruptive event with a clear end for a framing of crisis as a condition. Especially for art events on the ‘periphery’, working under conditions of crisis is hardly new. We investigate the collective practices of three artist collectives, ruangrupa (Indonesia), Womanifesto (Thailand), and Atis Rezistans/Ghetto Biennale (Haiti). In practices like sharing resources, centring non-productivity and giving attention to nourishment and health, these collectives are reshaping art events from events that matter in terms of their pursuits of relevance towards events that care.
The Routledge Handbook of Comparative Global Urban Studies, 2023
Conventional forms of site selection, the process of justifying comparative sites as somehow comm... more Conventional forms of site selection, the process of justifying comparative sites as somehow commensurate, are loaded with issues from the outset. This chapter argues that the issues around site selection for comparative research is not simply about what places are compared but rather how places are compared. Building a theoretical case, as a case of something, takes a different starting point than building comparative research based on locations. By differentiating a theoretical case from site selection and outlining what kind of theory is possible, this is one approach and contribution to the project of a more global urban theory. The sequence of establishing a theoretical case in order to select sites helps to resolve the question of starting points for comparative research. Comparative research across difference also highlights the methodological limitations of the “lone scholar” and underscores the significance of collaboration for a kind of research.
sub\urban. zeitschrift für kritische stadtforschung, 2023
Dieser Artikel untersucht das Verhältnis zwischen räumlichem Eingeschlossensein und dystopischem ... more Dieser Artikel untersucht das Verhältnis zwischen räumlichem Eingeschlossensein und dystopischem Alltag in fiktionalen Filmen. Unser empirischer Ausgangspunkt ist die Darstellung des Eingeschlossenseins in den Filmen Parasite (2019) und Dogtooth (2009). Beide Filme erzählen mit düsterem Humor verflochtene Geschichten über Erfahrungen des Einschlusses in sozialen Hierarchien (Parasite) und patriarchalischen Strukturen (Dogtooth) sowie über den unmöglichen Versuch, aus diesen Ordnungen auszubrechen. Wir lesen diese Erfahrungen als langweilige Dystopien, also als Dystopien, die in den Alltag eingeschrieben sind und eine grausame Realität normalisieren. Wir nutzen die fiktionalen Erzählungen von Dogtooth und Parasite für eine kulturgeographische Analyse, die das Eingeschlossensein neben seinen räumlichen und materiellen Bedingungen als eine affektive Atmosphäre (Anderson 2014) versteht. Aufbauend auf der zunehmenden Stadtforschung über Affekte und Emotionen vermittelt dieser Zugang, wie das Eingeschlossensein sich als alltägliche, dystopische Erfahrung normalisiert. Wir argumentieren, dass eine Analyse affektiver Atmosphären die unsichtbar gewordenen Gewalterfahrungen des Eingeschlossenseins greifbar machen kann.
The approaches proffered by Teo et al. in 'Theorizing with urban China' are constructive ways for... more The approaches proffered by Teo et al. in 'Theorizing with urban China' are constructive ways forward that also provoke a number of questions about the qualitative distinctions between generalizing and universalizing when it comes to theory. While supportive of the gestures to think with elsewhere, to generate theory for the mid-range and to work with researchers who are embedded in the contexts of study, some specifications are desired: If not everywhere, then which specific elsewheres are relevant? How big is the middle of mid-range theorization? How deeply embedded should collaborators be?
The temporality of books runs counter to many changes in academic employment and publishing. Book... more The temporality of books runs counter to many changes in academic employment and publishing. Books are not only another metric of output, they convey a unique substantive authority as well. In the footsteps of a "radical openness" that embraces humility, ambiguity and the courage to go beyond the safety of established schools of thought, the journal is launching the book review forums as an exploratory space. The intention with forums is to provide more careful attention to books with frameworks and concepts not yet found recurrent in Urban Geography, or maybe also urban geography. The new submission guidelines include two suggested forum formats: book forums consisting of a single book with multiple reviews and topic forums consisting of a single topic in which multiple books are discussed. With forums, the hope is to supplant more utilitarian assessments of books with a space for generative debates.
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2022
The concept of the future, its prognostications and its applications increasingly shapes present ... more The concept of the future, its prognostications and its applications increasingly shapes present social worlds. From government policy to architectural design, from preemptive everyday practices to interventionist counter-cultural projects, imaginations of the future take concrete form and enjoy a powerful purpose. In this intervention we ask: How is the future invented, planned, renounced and researched? Specifically, how do we analyse the entanglement of temporal and spatial logics against the enveloping imperative of 'future as crisis'? What is the role of methodology, collaboration and engagement in shaping debates about the future, and how do we research different futures as well as different positionalities within the future? Rather than taking a prescriptive approach, we consider future epistemologies as well as concrete future practices and the ways in which multiple notions of futurity might overlap. Additionally, we consider the standpoint from which different futures are imagined or renounced, and the ways in which entanglements of past, present and future might reflect a struggle on different social fields. Finally, we complicate some of the distinctions that researchers draw between the practices of imagining, planning and producing future scenarios as exclusionary, and modes of navigating and shaping futures that are embedded in everyday lives.
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2022
Critiques of the parochialism of urban theory have resulted in appeals for more global urban stud... more Critiques of the parochialism of urban theory have resulted in appeals for more global urban studies. Yet, the fruitful responses to postcolonial work frequently remain sequestered, reflecting the persistence of Eurocentrism as a burden shouldered largely by the so-called "South". This paper aims to shift the work implied by critiques of Eurocentrism-from the labor of translation to the chore of representation-to those whom Eurocentrism serves. We argue that recognizing the ways academics are always already complicit in Eurocentrism by working within the academy is an important starting point. Can the functions of complicity also serve to redistribute the burdens of redress and allow cultivating new possibilities to respond? To understand the functions of complicity, we take inspiration from the historical position of Switzerland on "the margins" of colonialism. Scrutinizing the history of a formally non-colonizing country reveals multiple forms of taking part in, benefitting from and assisting in colonial efforts. Applying these learnings to institutional and epistemological possibilities of working with complicity in the academy, we interrogate the potentials and limits of these functions to address the reproduction of Eurocentrism.
In yet another variation on a theme park, the contemporary art biennial establishes host cities a... more In yet another variation on a theme park, the contemporary art biennial establishes host cities as cultural destinations. The qualities of these events, their various exclusivities, esoteric referentialities, and circulating stars reflect a form of "pure imageability" (p. xiv) (Sorkin, M. [1992]. Introduction: Variations on a theme park. In M. Sorkin (Ed.), Variations on a theme park: The new American city and the end of public space (pp. xi-xv). Hill and Wang.). Reducing art events to their functions for city branding, marketing, or as a tourist attraction is hardly satisfying as a qualitative analysis reveals their various (sometimes conflicting) intentions. Inspired by Sorkin's writing about public space, this paper considers one of these aims: the engagement of various publics. Bringing in school groups and indigenous rights activists through outreach programs and curation reflects attempts to make biennials more accessible and inclusive. The struggles to expand their publics, however, also reveal entrenched forms of exclusion. Despite political, economic or health crises art biennials persist. Their resilience reinscribes segregated urban lives, a reminder that follies are not necessarily fragile.
An expanded set of sites, a more differentiated set of references and linguistic diversification ... more An expanded set of sites, a more differentiated set of references and linguistic diversification have been discussed as needed changes in urban studies. The critiques of the limitations of urban studies, in terms of both the scholarship and the scholars, offer important and concrete responses to expanding the scope of the field. Yet this tremendous special issue on 'Comparative Methods for Global Urban Studies' with 10 papers cutting across a range of sites and topics is decidedly not only about empirical variation; this is an important distinction worth drawing more attention to. The creativity expressed in these papers comes at an auspicious time in urban studies where new routes for doing urban theory are needed to move past debates about singular versus plural epistemologies of the urban. As a kind of research that demands more translation, exchange and collaboration, perhaps comparative urban research as a mode of theory-building can help to humble the chest-pounding, posturing, privilege of thinking and speaking the language of theory. The theoretical ambitions of these very different papers show how urban theory need not only be about better understanding urbanisation within the epistemological confines of late capitalism. Rather than reifying a shared grammar of urbanisation as a necessity to understand each other, they may entice scholars everywhere to develop a broader vocabulary and perhaps even learn another language.
The transformation of Chinese cities has engendered new forms of spatialized urban inequality. Re... more The transformation of Chinese cities has engendered new forms of spatialized urban inequality. Research on these processes of segregation has captured the attention of urban researchers, generating a large and varied body of work. Yet its influence on urban theory remains constrained, reflecting the concern with the parochialism of urban theory. A review of segregation research on Chinese cities presents several intertwined findings: Chinese cities are framed in terms of their difference, mostly in contrast to Euro-American cities. This framing renders findings intelligible for an audience familiar with Chicago, but perhaps not Shenzhen. In translating the findings, the research often resorts to a methodological nationalism, which contextualizes Chinese cities in terms of their "Chinese-ness," a reductionist heuristic that elides the diversity of these cities and construes residential segregation as incommensurate with the experience of cities elsewhere. The effect of this is to limit the potential of this research to contribute to a "more global urban studies," by inscribing a kind of exceptionalism into Chinese cities.
There has been a proliferation of contemporary art biennials in the past 20 years, especially in ... more There has been a proliferation of contemporary art biennials in the past 20 years, especially in cities outside of North America and Europe. What biennials represent to their host cities and what is represented at these events reveal a great deal about the significance of this proliferation. The biennial platform entails formalistic notions of representation with regards to place branding or the selection of artists as emissaries of countries where they were been born, reside, or to which they have some kind of affinity. This notion of representation is obscured considering the instability of center and periphery, artists' biographies, practices, and references. In contradistinction to the colonial world fair, the biennial thwarts the notion or possibility of "authentic" representation. The analysis incorporates works shown at the 2018 biennials in Dakar and Taipei, interviews with artists, curators, and stakeholders, and materials collected during fieldwork in both cities.
Blame, violence, gendered work & eviscerating geographies of knowledge production render Paul Siu... more Blame, violence, gendered work & eviscerating geographies of knowledge production render Paul Siu’s devastating ethnography prescient for understanding the hate against Asians today, depicting a painful portrait of marginalization that reveals solidarities both possible & necessary.
In "Urban Studies" R. Dilworth (ed.) Oxford Bibliographies. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020
largely defined by key scholarship in the humanities, postcolonial urbanism translates these conc... more largely defined by key scholarship in the humanities, postcolonial urbanism translates these concepts and questions for urban space, urban research and urban theory. The analysis of power, representation, and identity is transmuted for a spatial analysis of urbanization, urban development, and urban life. This is particularly evident in the postcolonial scholarship on urban planning and architecture, which situates the built environment within a contextual postcoloniality or applies a postcolonial lens to analyzing the cultures of planning or architecture. Moreover, the critiques of discipline that postcolonial theory espouses are also adopted in postcolonial urbanism in the watershed of scholarship on issues around knowledge production in urban studies. These have spurred debates around the parochialism of urban theory, the nature of theory, and the comparative approaches that could possibly enrich theoretical developments. In parallel to these epistemological debates is a rich scholarship with a long tradition in area studies that continue to delve into the question of alternative urbanisms, seeing the postcolonial world as determined category of shared experience, which may help generate various forms of "Southern" urbanisms. The key question here is whether postcolonial urbanism serves more as a theoretical intervention into the way that urban theory is generated, or an empirical intervention into the sites and concerns of urban theory. The scholarship shows that these positions are not easily extricated from one another. Out of this lively debate has emerged an outpouring of influential conceptual developments particularly in theorizing urban everyday life around topics like informality, periphery, grey space, waste, and utopia. Anthologies and Readers in Postcolonial Thought A number of anthologies and readers are available to provide an overview of postcolonial studies, which span an array of disciplines. Although many key figures in the field come from comparative literature, the theoretical development of this area builds on work by scholars with very different aims, issues, and institutional or geographic homes. Anthologies may therefore prove particularly useful to get an overview, not only of the key scholarship but also to understand how the concept of "postcolonial" stretches when discussing such disparate topics as nationalism or embodiment. This breadth is most evident in Nayar 2015 and Ashcroft, et al. 2006, impressive in its volume and as an introduction to a variety of topics. Castle 2001 is valuable for selecting slightly lesser known texts by key authors, and Teverson and Upstone 2011 is noteworthy for its focus on postcolonial space. While there is some overlap in the key texts included in some of these anthologies, it is worth noting that several anthologies such as Huggan 2013 and Prakash 1994 have also compiled original chapters by key scholars.
This article develops the concept of proximity as socio-spatial distance by looking at the tempor... more This article develops the concept of proximity as socio-spatial distance by looking at the temporally and spatially condensed events of contemporary art exhibition openings. The article begins by examining some developments in proximity research, the limitations of theorizing the importance of proximity as mere physical nearness, arguing that potentiality renders proximity meaningful. After introducing the art event, we offer a three-pronged approach to proximity by showing the imperatives for being-there, the conditional indeterminacy of potentiality and the politics of proximity. In contrast to much recent research, it is argued that the significance of events is not reducible to evaluated outcomes. Two ethnographic vignettes show the imperatives, indeterminacies and politics in action. We conclude by showing how this conceptualization of proximity has analytic purchase beyond the empirical realm of contemporary art.
In the wake of global lockdowns that have ruptured travel and gatherings, events seem to be makin... more In the wake of global lockdowns that have ruptured travel and gatherings, events seem to be making a comeback. From concerts and sporting competitions to festivals and conventions – and even academic conferences – there seems to be a normalization of the event. What are some of the lingering effects from the pandemic, and how do they shape event planning, attendance or impact their hosts? Moreover, ongoing crises pose a number of differentiated issues. Crises related to climate change demand a recalibration of the costs of events, and the ethics of meeting in-person. Some event rights holders such as the International Olympic Committee or FIFA have been claiming to adapt to these changes, while some smaller organisations are trying to catch up on the declared policy level through the introduction of new measures and ways of hosting events. Political crises have variously impacted the travel possibilities of certain passport holders, creating newly uneven geographies of mobility and uneven geographies of invitations - as evidenced with the production of national pavilions at fora like the Venice Biennale or the choice of host for the Eurovision Song Contest. Moreover, everyday crises that are faced unevenly by certain sectors of workers and areas of the world (for whom the costs and restrictions related to events are hardly new) highlight events as inherently exclusive and at times exploitative pursuits. Indeed, the distribution of concerns and impacts of the crisis are, and have always been, uneven, and we are particularly interested in how this relates to events.
This SGM Panel invites research papers addressing these issues and related questions such as: to what extent do events create insular environments, removed from broader societal unrest? Are they bubbles of exclusivity or do they reflect changing attitudes towards travel, for instance in the adaptations of hybrid formats or online platforms? How do these adaptations affect ecosystems built around events in cities that were developed with in-person events in mind? Are they trying to learn the lessons from the previous crises? Who are the event participants, attendees and audiences and what does their constancy or change reflect about the nature of events? We explicitly encourage contributions from research conducted since 2020, investigating event geographies at different scales, in a range of geographical sites, and employing different creative or digital methods.
Panel 9: Everyday crisis, beyond the eventful
The pervasive nature of ongoing, perpetual crises... more Panel 9: Everyday crisis, beyond the eventful
The pervasive nature of ongoing, perpetual crises seems to convert it from an event with a clear end towards a definitive condition of urban life. Distinctions between crisis and a broader sense of uncertainty are becoming increasingly blurred. The distribution of actually existing geographies of crisis complicates the dichotomous portrayal of extraordinary crisis as an event triggering action in some places and ordinary crisis that must be coped with in other places. Instead, inaction reigns, and the ubiquity of precarious life facilitates new epistemological possibilities by bringing distant/different cities into relational dialogue (Massey, 2011). With "everyday crisis" we aim to compile perspectives on the experience of this condition. Beyond the emerging scholarship on survivalism (See e.g., Tsing, 2015; Barker, 2020), we invite papers that address the question of how this condition is experienced, and explore what the inaction buries within it. For instance, how can coping be framed in terms of avoidance, disconnection, distanciation, anesthetization (Bissell, 2021), stuckedness (Hage, 2009) or diminishing expectations (Battacharyya, 2015)? What is the implication of these detachments for understanding the broader consequences of everyday crisis on crisis-shaped subjectivities (Berlant, 2011) or collective lives (Bhan et al., 2020)? How could these seemingly passive framings of coping that entail non-heroic, banal or less visible forms of agency facilitate a different reading of resistance? How is time segmented and punctuated, and how does the irregularity of events, these intermittent disruptions, shape experiences of temporality (i.e., presentness, ongoiness)? How do these experiences of temporality in turn shape feelings of crisis or crisis atmospheres? We welcome papers addressing any of these questions and hope to bring into dialogue a range of approaches: ethnographic, conceptual/theoretical, affective/psychoanalytic and creative/visual.
The concept of the future, its prognostications and applications, shapes present social worlds. S... more The concept of the future, its prognostications and applications, shapes present social worlds. Sketches and imaginaries of different futures drive cultural processes and social change. Inspired by the " hopeful futures " subtheme of the RC21 2019 conference, this panel seeks to interrogate the dynamics of futurity and future-making. From government policy to activists' counter cultural interventions, architectural design, or sustainable technology development, imaginations of the future manifest in practices and take concrete form in cities and beyond. For example, Ghertner's study of slum clearance in Delhi underlines the ruling aesthetics of an imagined future and its impacts on urban dispossession today (2015). As the repercussions of the future become ever more apparent, futurity itself demands further attention. In this panel session on " Un/Doing Future " we ask: How is the future invented, researched, and renounced? Which anticipatory practices and aspirational politics are at play in shaping urban life? What are the imaginative epistemologies at work in ethnographic research and what role does ethnography play in processes of un/doing the future? For this panel, we are seeking researchers who employ a variety of methods to study these questions, evaluate different future routes, and interrogate their consequences for our present. To submit, please email an abstract (max 300 words) and clearly state the title of the paper, research questions, theoretical contribution and connection to the panel theme. Author details about institutional affiliation must also be included. The subject of the email should include Panel Number and Name (Un/Doing Future: Anticipatory Practices, Aspirational Politics P34). Email your submission to both conveners julie.ren@hu-berlin.de and silvy.chakkalakal@hu-berlin.de and cc: rc21delhi@gmail.com at the latest by 20 January 2019. Please see the https://rc21delhi2019.com/ for further details about the selection process.
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Books by Julie Ren
Across vastly different contexts, where universal theories of modernity or development seem increasingly misplaced, she innovatively explores the ways that art spaces employ creative capital to sustain themselves in a competitive urban landscape.
She shows how these art spaces are embedded within a politics of aspiration and demonstrates that aspiration is an important lens through which to understand the nature of, and possibilities for, urban change.
Papers by Julie Ren
Across vastly different contexts, where universal theories of modernity or development seem increasingly misplaced, she innovatively explores the ways that art spaces employ creative capital to sustain themselves in a competitive urban landscape.
She shows how these art spaces are embedded within a politics of aspiration and demonstrates that aspiration is an important lens through which to understand the nature of, and possibilities for, urban change.
This SGM Panel invites research papers addressing these issues and related questions such as: to what extent do events create insular environments, removed from broader societal unrest? Are they bubbles of exclusivity or do they reflect changing attitudes towards travel, for instance in the adaptations of hybrid formats or online platforms? How do these adaptations affect ecosystems built around events in cities that were developed with in-person events in mind? Are they trying to learn the lessons from the previous crises? Who are the event participants, attendees and audiences and what does their constancy or change reflect about the nature of events? We explicitly encourage contributions from research conducted since 2020, investigating event geographies at different scales, in a range of geographical sites, and employing different creative or digital methods.
Abstracts submission: Please send your abstract of max 300 words to both David Gogishvili david.gogishvili@unil.ch and Julie Ren julie.ren@uzh.ch AND submit it through the SGM platform at https://geoscience-meeting.ch/sgm2023/abstracts/abstract-submission-form/
The pervasive nature of ongoing, perpetual crises seems to convert it from an event with a clear end towards a definitive condition of urban life. Distinctions between crisis and a broader sense of uncertainty are becoming increasingly blurred. The distribution of actually existing geographies of crisis complicates the dichotomous portrayal of extraordinary crisis as an event triggering action in some places and ordinary crisis that must be coped with in other places. Instead, inaction reigns, and the ubiquity of precarious life facilitates new epistemological possibilities by bringing distant/different cities into relational dialogue (Massey, 2011). With "everyday crisis" we aim to compile perspectives on the experience of this condition. Beyond the emerging scholarship on survivalism (See e.g., Tsing, 2015; Barker, 2020), we invite papers that address the question of how this condition is experienced, and explore what the inaction buries within it. For instance, how can coping be framed in terms of avoidance, disconnection, distanciation, anesthetization (Bissell, 2021), stuckedness (Hage, 2009) or diminishing expectations (Battacharyya, 2015)? What is the implication of these detachments for understanding the broader consequences of everyday crisis on crisis-shaped subjectivities (Berlant, 2011) or collective lives (Bhan et al., 2020)? How could these seemingly passive framings of coping that entail non-heroic, banal or less visible forms of agency facilitate a different reading of resistance? How is time segmented and punctuated, and how does the irregularity of events, these intermittent disruptions, shape experiences of temporality (i.e., presentness, ongoiness)? How do these experiences of temporality in turn shape feelings of crisis or crisis atmospheres? We welcome papers addressing any of these questions and hope to bring into dialogue a range of approaches: ethnographic, conceptual/theoretical, affective/psychoanalytic and creative/visual.