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CFP RGS-IBG 2018: Is the present a “foreign country”?

26 Friday Jan 2018

Posted by Yimin in Academic, Events

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Geography, modernity, space, urban

Is the present a “foreign country”? Modernity and urban space in comparative perspective

RGS-IBG 2018 Annual Conference: Cardiff, UK, 28 to 31 August 2018

Organisers: Yimin Zhao (Department of Geography and Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science); Boya Guo (Graduate School of Design, Harvard University)

Discussants: TBC

 

The hegemony of modernity has been rooted in a teleological temporality for centuries, where a linear time is upheld, exhausting the possibilities of our living experience as well as our envisioning of the future (Sewell 1996). Postcolonial critiques of historicism have been inviting us to “provincialise Europe” and its universal history (Chakrabarty 2000), aiming to unlearn the taken-for-granted privileges of Eurocentric traditions and at the same time learn from the “historical others” (Scott 2012). This dialectical process of learning and unlearning questions the nature of modernity and requires us to conceive different ways to acknowledge co-existing multiplicities.

Space matters here because our re-imaginations of it might put forward a new perspective, through which we could “dislocate” modernity, recognise multiplicities, and drop such dichotomies as West/Non-West, modern/ traditional, and innovation/imitation (Massey 1999, Robinson 2006). But there are still challenges, empirically, to follow this call for spatialising the history of modernity with “ordinary cities.” For, the living experience and space (of the “historical others” in particular) are yet deeply inflected by the teleological temporality, which could be evidenced by Thames Town in Shanghai (Wu 2010), Norman Foster-facilitated utopian landscapes in Astana (Koch 2012), and the archaising reconstruction of the whole city in Datong, China (Zhou 2015), to name just a few.

Instead of labelling these stories as false/deviated/incomplete modernity, here we want to gather together critical interrogations of stories as such to advance our reflections on the present. After recognising these stories as symptoms of the hegemony of modernity, it is more critical to explore how the experiences of modernity are being shaped by local-historical conditions and politico-economic relations. Lowenthal (1985) once illustrates that “the past is a foreign country” since “they do things differently there.” We want to move a step further and interrogate if the present is a “foreign country” as well, where different conducts of “historical others” could be conceptualised as co-existing spatial differences rather than temporal sequences, and where the questioning of historical time could be contextualised in multiple and dynamic spatial practices.

The key question we want to put forward in this session is: how and how far has modernity been performed and enacted through diverse spatial practices in daily life, and how can we learn to be “modern” from the perspectives of “historical others”? All contributions related to the two keywords (modernity and urban space) are welcome; and we are especially looking forward to empirical illustrations on how to inhabit the hegemony of modernity spatially – and hence differently.

If you are interested in participating in this session, please send an abstract of 200-250 words to Yimin Zhao (y.zhao25@lse.ac.uk) and Boya Guo (bguo@gsd.harvard.edu) by 9 February 2018.

 

References

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2000. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial thought and historical difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Koch, Natalie. 2012. “Urban ‘utopias’: the Disney stigma and discourses of ‘false modernity’.” Environment and Planning A no. 44 (10):2445-2462.

Lowenthal, David. 1985. The past is a foreign country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Massey, Doreen. 1999. “Spaces of politics.” In Human geography today, edited by Doreen Massey, John Allen and Philip Sarre, 279-294. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Robinson, Jennifer. 2006. Ordinary cities: Between modernity and development. London and New York: Routledge.

Scott, David. 2012. “The Traditions of Historical Others.” Symposia on Gender, Race, and Philosophy no. 8 (1):1-8.

Sewell Jr, William H. 1996. “Three temporalities: Toward an eventful sociology” in The historic turn in the human sciences, edited by Terrence McDonald, 245-80. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

Wu, Fulong. 2010. “Gated and packaged suburbia: Packaging and branding Chinese suburban residential development.” Cities no. 27 (5):385-396.

Zhou, Hao. (Director). 2015. The Chinese mayor [Documentary Film]. London: BBC.

 

Space as method

22 Friday Sep 2017

Posted by Yimin in Academic, Publication

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ethnography, Geography, Greenbelt, method, space

My first “academic” article, one that reflects upon my own field experience in Beijing’s green belts, has recently been published in the City journal.

This paper has plenty of meanings for me. It is the very first chapter that was finished all through my thesis. I can still remember the readings I did for this paper, and the drafts I wrote and then scratched – all happened at the moment when the deadline of my thesis was approaching yet I was still in the middle of nowhere. It was also a revised version of the paper that won the third place in the student paper competition of China Geography Specialty Group at this year’s (2017) AAG Annual Meeting.

But most importantly, it shows the reflections I had after doing two spells of fieldwork by myself. Its starting point is a puzzle I had when in the field and its concluding remarks are at best an invitation for further discussions and debates on how to do fieldwork on the urban frontier with our bodily space-time. These works should be further developed, and I hope this paper could contribute some empirical observations that have not been registered in the literature before.

Below is the abstract of this paper, and the full access can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13604813.2017.1353342. Please feel free to contact me at y.zhao25#lse.ac.uk (replace # by @); all comments and suggestions are warmly welcome.

 

Abstract

Great urban transformations are diffusing across the global South, removing the original landscape of urban margins to make of them a new urban frontier. These processes raise questions of both validity and legitimacy for ethnographic practice, requiring critical reflection on both spatiality and method in fieldwork at the urban margins. This paper draws on fieldwork experience in Beijing’s green belts, which could also be labelled the city’s urban margin or frontier, to reflect on the space-time of encounter in the field. I aim to demonstrate how space foregrounds not only our bodily experiences but also ethnographic investigations of the daily life, and hence becomes a method. Beijing’s green belts symbolise a historical–geographical conjuncture (a moment) emerging in its urban metamorphosis. Traditional endeavours (immanent in various spatial metaphors) to identify field sites as reified entities are invalidated over the course of the space-time encounter, requiring a relational spatial ontology to register such dynamics. The use in fieldwork of DiDi Hitch, a mobile app for taxi-hailing and hitchhiking, reveals the spatiotemporal construction of self–other relations needing recognition via the dialectics of the encounter. In this relational framework, an encounter is never a priori but a negotiation of a here and now between different trajectories and stories as individuals are thrown together in socially constructed space and time.

 

Keywords

urban ethnography, spatial ontology, spatial metaphors, the dialectics of the encounter, DiDi Hitch, Beijing

 

AAG 2017: China as Methods

25 Friday Nov 2016

Posted by Yimin in Academic, Events

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conference, Geography, space

Paper sessions in 2017 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers (Boston, MA, 5-9 April 2017)

 

Organisers

Yimin Zhao (The London School of Economics and Political Science); Yueming Zhang (University of Birmingham); Yang Yang (University of Colorado – Boulder)

Sponsorship

Asian Geography Specialty Group, China Specialty Group, Cultural Geography Specialty Group, Urban Geography Specialty Group

Session introduction

In 1989, Mizoguchi Yuzo published China as Method and called for reversing Eurocentric theory and epistemological framework (Mizoguchi 2011 [1989]). For Mizoguchi, the end of conceiving China “should be the ‘study of China’ that transcends China” (cf. Chen 2010, 252). In other words, China is a method when understanding the world is the purpose – and in this multiplied “world”, as Chen Kuan-Hsing reminds us (ibid., 253), both China and Europe are elements. It is here that we can see some affinities between Mizoguchi’s position and recently rising comparative urbanism to study the world of cities (Robinson, 2006).

Mizoguchi’s proposition has methodological significances for it helps replace the vertical principle of history (which is teleological and dominated by Eurocentric theories) by a horizontal view of space-time where different elements are juxtaposed. Seeing in this way, claims of universalisation should be questioned, and investigations on the dynamic space-time are urgently needed. Some endeavours can be witnessed in the literature, such as Wang Hui’s (2011) discussion on “trans-systemic society” and “trans-societal system,” yet more efforts are required to rethink how and to what extent China can be a method to understand the world. This critical reflection on seeing China as a methodology approach can be potentially productive in geographical inquiries on/in/related to China.

In this session, we aim at continuing the proposition put forward by Mizoguchi almost three decades ago and focus on how the “study of China” may yield methodological and/or epistemological implications for not only studying China but also geographical inquiries in general. “China” is more than a field site, especially in the contemporary world where “the spectre of global China” (Lee, 2014) can be seen everywhere. Hence, we invite theoretical and empirical contributions that concern methodological and epistemological implications of the “study of China,” with “China” being broadly defined as the starting point and hopefully transcended at the end.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

  • What do China and the study of China mean in nowadays geographical research?
  • How can China be studied more than a subject, but as an entity, relation, process, nexus…?
  • What and how are theories used in and/or built from the study of China? What are the theoretical potentials and challenges in the study of China?
  • What kind of implications can be drawn from studies in/on China for broader concerns in fieldwork methods?
  • Where and how to locate China in comparative studies?

 

Paper Session I

Chair: Yueming Zhang (University of Birmingham, UK)

Discussant: Jennifer Robinson (University College London, UK)

(Extra)ordinary Beijing: On urban ontologies and artistic practice

  • Julie Ren (London School of Economics and Political Science, UK)
  • Murray Mckenzie (University College London, UK)

Space as a method: Field sites and encounters in Beijing’s green belts

  • Yimin Zhao (London School of Economics and Political Science, UK)

Provincialising the West, de-parochialising China: Some reflections from China’s urban centres and ethnic peripheries

  • Junxi Qian (University of Hong Kong, HK)

China in the African imaginary and the problems of solidarity

  • Xiaoran Hu (Queen Mary University of London, UK)

Paper Session II

Chair: Yimin Zhao (London School of Economics and Political Science, UK)

Discussant: Max D. Woodworth (Ohio State University, US)

From Xinjiang to Addis Ababa: Encountering China at its “periphery” and “frontier”

  • Ding Fei (University of Minnesota, US)

Displaying connections between Chinese and global Muslim communities through fashions in transnational urban space in the Hui Quarter in Xi’an

  • Yang Yang (University of Colorado – Boulder, US)

Of “other” people: The exotic landscape of Chinese diasporas (and its rejection) in Boston

  • Jing Luo (Tsinghua University, China)

Not “China as Methods” but “Chinese dialectics” as a methodology: The tongbian approach

  • Wing-shing Tang (Hong Kong Baptist University, HK)

 

References

Chen, K.-H., 2010. Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Lee, C. K., 2014. The spectre of global China. New Left Review (89):29-65.

Mizoguchi, Y., 2011 [1989]. China as Method [Zuowei fangfade zhongguo]. Beijing: SDX Joint Publishing Company.

Robinson, J., 2006. Ordinary cities: Between modernity and development. Routledge.

Wang, H., 2011. Trans-systemic Society and Regional Perspective in Chinese Studies. boundary 2, 38(1):165-201.

RGS-IBG AC 2016: Sessions to go

30 Tuesday Aug 2016

Posted by Yimin in Academic, Events

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conference, Geography, London

 

This year’s RGS-IBG Annual Conference is going to start tomorrow in London. Below is a list of sessions that I want to hear more details during this three-day event. Welcome to join us if you are in London and are interested in any session listed below.

And by the way, I will give a short presentation in paper session No.339 (Friday 02 September 2016, 14:40 – 16:20). The abstract can be found here. I look forward to seeing you then and hearing any comment you would like to give.

 

Chair’s plenary lectures

The Ghost in the Nexus: Global Poverty and the Dilemmas of Development

Ananya Roy (University of California Los Angeles, USA)

Thursday 1 September 2016, 13.10, RGS-IBG Ondaatje Theatre

In this talk, I situate “nexus thinking” in the present conjuncture of sustainable development and in the long history of development as a global project. In doing so, I pay attention to the disciplines and professions that are being mobilized to solve urgent human problems, specifically that of poverty. Framed as scientific solutions towards a better world, such frameworks of action are also replete with distinctive aspirations and affects. Foregrounding the figure of the millennial – college students and young professionals enrolled in the global university and enlisted in the work of poverty action – I examine the potentialities and limits of the will to make poverty history, and thereby of nexus thinking.

Discussants: Jennifer Robinson (University College London, UK); Parvati Raghuram (The Open University, UK)

 

Plenaries, panels, workshops

Wednesday (31 August)

  • Area are sponsoring a panel on Ethics in/of geographical research, chaired by Peter Kraftl. Panellists: Sarah Marie Hall (The University of Manchester, UK); James Cheshire (University College London, UK); Anson Mackay (University College London, UK); Stephen Tooth (Aberystwyth University, UK); Jen Dickinson (University of Leicester, UK); and Andy Nobes (INASP/Author Aid, UK). Wednesday, 14.40; room: RGS-IBG Education Centre. This will be followed by a tea and cake reception.
  • The Antipode lecture, Recomposing Urban Collective Life: On Operations and the Inoperable, will be given by AbdouMaliq Simone (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen, Germany). Wednesday, 16.50; room: RGS-IBG Ondaatje Theatre. This will be followed by a reception.

Thursday (1 September)

  • Author meets critics: Fiona McConnell – Rehearsing the State: The Political Practices of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile (RGS-IBG Book Series, Wiley-Blackwell). Thursday, 09.00; room: RGS-IBG Drayson Room.
  • The Progress in Human Geography lecture, Trust – in Geography, will be given by Charles Withers (The University of Edinburgh, UK). Thursday, 11.10; room: RGS-IBG Ondaatje Theatre.
  • Colleagues of John Urry (1946-2016) have organised a Remembrance and Book Launch in celebration of his work. Thursday, 16.50; room: RGS-IBG Council Room. This will be followed by a reception.
  • Authors meet critics: Planetary gentrification by Loretta Lees , Hyun Bang Shin and Ernesto López-Morales (Polity). Thursday, 16.50; room: RGS-IBG Ondaatje Theatre. To be followed by a drinks reception, sponsored by Urban Studies.

Friday (2 September)

  • The Social and Cultural Geography lecture, Beyond policing the migrant crisis: Geographical contributions, will be given by Parvati Raghuram (The Open University, UK). Friday, 09.00.
  • Colleagues and former students of Doreen Massey have organised a celebration of her life and work, including screening a montage made up from contributions from people who met her and worked with her in all spheres of her life. Friday, 16.50; room: RGS-IBG Ondaatje Theatre.

 

Paper sessions on Wednesday (31 August)

No.16 The London nexus – metropolitan elites in the 21st century, new perspectives on Britain’s south-eastern skew

Timetable: Wednesday 31 August 2016, Session 1 (09:00 – 10:40) || Skempton Building, Lecture Theatre 164, Imperial College London || Abstracts: http://conference.rgs.org/AC2016/16

No.24 Geography and Decolonization, c.1945-c.1980 (1)

Timetable: Wednesday 31 August 2016, Session 1 (09:00 – 10:40) || Room 5, Skempton Building, Imperial College London || Abstracts: http://conference.rgs.org/AC2016/24

No.29 Post-phenomenological Geographies: methods and styles of researching and writing the human (1): Subjects

Timetable: Wednesday 31 August 2016, Session 1 (09:00 – 10:40) || Royal School of Mines, Room G.05 || Abstracts: http://conference.rgs.org/AC2016/29

No.56 Geography and Decolonization, c.1945-c.1980 (2)

Timetable: Wednesday 31 August 2016, Session 2 (11:10 – 12:50) || Room 5, Sherfield Building || Abstracts: http://conference.rgs.org/AC2016/56

No.61 State, Territory, Urbanism: Exploring the Nexus Between Government and Infrastructure (2)

Timetable: Wednesday 31 August 2016, Session 2 (11:10 – 12:50) || Room 10, Sherfield Building || Abstracts: http://conference.rgs.org/AC2016/61

No.69 Affect and the Geographies of Power

Timetable: Wednesday 31 August 2016, Session 3 (14:40 – 16:20) || RGS-IBG Ondaatje Theatre || Panel discussion: http://conference.rgs.org/AC2016/69

No.84 Nexus Thinking in Gentrification Studies (2)

Timetable: Wednesday 31 August 2016, Session 3 (14:40 – 16:20) || Skempton Building, Lecture Theatre 164 || Abstracts: http://conference.rgs.org/AC2016/84

No.98 Forging politicised solidarities in, against and beyond the European crisis (1): Articulating local solidarities

Timetable: Wednesday 31 August 2016, Session 3 (14:40 – 16:20) || Royal School of Mines, Room G.05 || Abstracts: http://conference.rgs.org/AC2016/98

No.102 Set in motion: walking the history of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) c.1830-2016

Timetable: Wednesday 31 August 2016, Session 3 (14:40 – 16:20) || Offsite (field tour): http://conference.rgs.org/AC2016/102

No.118 Nexus Thinking in Gentrification Studies (3)

Timetable: Wednesday 31 August 2016, Session 4 (16:50 – 18:30) || Skempton Building, Lecture Theatre 164 || Abstracts: http://conference.rgs.org/AC2016/118

No.128 Operations of capital: Studying the nexus of land, housing, and finance across the North-South divide

Timetable: Wednesday 31 August 2016, Session 4 (16:50 – 18:30) || Sherfield Building, Room 7 || Abstracts: http://conference.rgs.org/AC2016/128

No.132 Forging politicised solidarities in, against and beyond the European crisis (2): Towards trans-local solidarities

Timetable: Wednesday 31 August 2016, Session 4 (16:50 – 18:30) || Royal School of Mines, Room G.05 || Abstracts: http://conference.rgs.org/AC2016/132

 

Paper sessions on Thursday (1 September)

No.181 Contested urban green spaces in the ‘austerity city’: Re-politicising the environment and commoning public spaces? (1): Funding and Management

Timetable: Thursday 01 September 2016, Session 2 (11:10 – 12:50) || Skempton Building, Room 064b || Abstracts: http://conference.rgs.org/AC2016/181

No.215 Contested urban green spaces in the ‘austerity city’: Re-politicising the environment and commoning public spaces? (2): Planning and Governance

Timetable: Thursday 01 September 2016, Session 3 (14:40 – 16:20) || Skempton Building, Room 064b || Abstracts: http://conference.rgs.org/AC2016/215

No.217 The City-Hinterland Nexus in Global Context: The dynamics of rural-urban connections in different global contexts (1)

Timetable: Thursday 01 September 2016, Session 3 (14:40 – 16:20) || Skempton Building, Lecture Theatre 164 || Abstracts: http://conference.rgs.org/AC2016/217

No.234 Deaf spaces of Victorian London – a walking tour

Timetable: Thursday 01 September 2016, Session 3 (14:40 – 16:20) || Offsite (field tour): http://conference.rgs.org/AC2016/234

 

Paper sessions on Friday (2 September)

No.271 Geographies of Anti-colonialism (1): Theorising Anti-colonialisms

Timetable: Friday 02 September 2016, Session 1 (09:00 – 10:40) || Sir Alexander Fleming Building, Lecture Theatre G34 || Abstracts: http://conference.rgs.org/AC2016/271

No.281 Beyond Borders and Nations: Transnational Geographies from Syria to Europe (1): Transnational Geographies of solidarity and resistance

Timetable: Friday 02 September 2016, Session 1 (09:00 – 10:40) || Skempton Building, Room 165 || Abstracts: http://conference.rgs.org/AC2016/281

No.301 Geographies of Anti-colonialism (2): Histories of Anti-colonialism

Timetable: Friday 02 September 2016, Session 2 (11:10 – 12:50) || Sir Alexander Fleming Building, Lecture Theatre G34 || Abstracts: http://conference.rgs.org/AC2016/301

No.311 Beyond Borders and Nations: Transnational Geographies from Syria to Europe (2): Transnational Geographies of segregation

Timetable: Friday 02 September 2016, Session 2 (11:10 – 12:50) || Skempton Building, Room 165 || Abstracts: http://conference.rgs.org/AC2016/311

No.339 Narrating Displacements: A Radical Way to Rethink Urban Theories and Politics

Timetable: Friday 02 September 2016, Session 3 (14:40 – 16:20) || Skempton Building, Room 163 || Abstracts: http://conference.rgs.org/AC2016/339

No.374 Rethinking Life at the Margins: The Assemblage of Contexts, Subjects and Politics

Timetable: Friday 02 September 2016, Session 4 (16:50 – 18:30) || Sherfield Building, Room 7 || Abstracts: http://conference.rgs.org/AC2016/374

 

Closing drinks reception

Friday 18:45-20:00; RGS-IBG Ondaatje Theatre

 

RGS-IBG AC 2016: Narrating Displacements

06 Wednesday Jul 2016

Posted by Yimin in Academic, Events, London

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conference, displacement, Geography

Narrating Displacements: A Radical Way to Rethink Urban Theories and Politics

RGS-IBG Annual Conference, August 30 to September 2, London, UK

Convenors

Hyun Bang Shin (The London School of Economics and Political Science, UK)
Yimin Zhao (The London School of Economics and Political Science, UK)
Mara Nogueira (The London School of Economics and Political Science, UK)

Session abstract

We have been witnessing the rise of urban expansion, gentrification, mega-events and many other political economic events in urban space; all of them have direct impacts on the daily life of local residents through large- or small-scale displacements. Displacement hence becomes a term that has been widely used for critical urban theories in analysing contemporary urban change, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world. When people use this word in the literature, however, relatively few attentions are paid to mechanisms through which place-based understandings and discourses of displacement are enabling/ bounding the historical-geographical conjuncture of domination and resistance.

Discourses of displacement are diverse geographically; they are also narrated and deployed by different subjects from distinct perspectives in displacement processes. Expressions like “chaiqian” (demolition and relocation), “qianyi” (relocation), “qiangpo qianyi” (forced relocation) are used in China to express actions through which the state institutions and businesses operate. In South Korea, “cheolgeo” (demolition), “gangje cheolgeo” (forced demolition) or “yiju” (relocation) are more frequently utilised by those subject to displacement. Elsewhere in Latin America, for example in Brazil, “despejo” (eviction) “desalojamento forçado” (forced eviction) and “expulsão” (expulsion) are common concepts deployed by those suffering displacement threats and their allies. On the other hand, the actors promoting displacement prefer to deploy milder terms such as “desocupação” (evacuation) or “realocação” (reallocation).

The use of these particular expressions shifts the focus towards the final act of displacement; even though in reality people would experience (the feeling of) displacement long before actual demolition, eviction or relocation. Moreover, discussions about belonging and the sense of place show how displacement may occur even in the absence of such events. In this regard, abrupt changes to space might cause people to feel “out of place” even though they remain in the same location. To narrate the experience of displacement focusing only on the final acts has serious negative implications for formulating effective strategies that allow pre-emptive earlier contestations to resist and counteract displacement pressure. Furthermore, how displacement is actually narrated in a given local context is not trivial, for conceptualising displacement is itself political.

This session invites papers to reflect on narratives and discourses mobilised around displacement in a diverse range of social, political, economic and cultural settings by attending specifically to the tensions emerging from conceptualisation of displacement by different subjects in daily practices. The aim is to collaboratively reveal the role of displacement discourses in constructing the historical-geographical conjuncture of domination/ resistance, and to uncover power relations/ mechanisms and state effects produced within this conjuncture. Suggestive topics include:

  • Place-based understanding (especially outside the Western context) of displacement and its socio-spatial effects;
  • Conceptualising displacement by different subjects;
  • The role of space in enabling or bounding people’s conceptualisation of displacement, or in affecting their reflections on the gaps between different conceptualisations;
  • The state manoeuver and tactics in promoting displacement with legitimised (sometimes hegemonic) ideology;
  • The effects of different narratives in reshaping understandings of displacement and in opening up possibilities for resistances.

Abstracts of presentations – Session 1

Chair: Hyun Bang Shin
Time: Friday 02 September 2016, 14:40 - 16:20
Venue: TBC

Antagonistic Space and Subjects in Beijing’s Greenbelt

Yimin Zhao (The London School of Economics and Political Science, UK)

In the mainstream literature of contentious politics, space is frequently assumed as a container or a bounded entity. This view has been gradually altered by political geographers, who attend more to the constitutive role of space in understanding socio-political changes. Yet what has been under-examined in the literature is how and to what extent individuals become both spatial objects and political subjects simultaneously in the rise and fall of social movements. This research, drawing on the observation of contingent construction (and decaying) of collective actions in Beijing’s Greenbelt, aims to demonstrate that space and subjects of resistances are mutually constitutive of each other. The paper will illustrate that this mutual constitution needs to be identified by focusing on residues of the hegemonic logic underlying the rise of spatial antagonism. In Beijing’s Greenbelt, the local state’s urbanisation project not only transforms the territorial structure of the rural-urban continuum and the political economy within this structure but also shapes the way villagers view their land, houses and (property) rights. Following transformations of their lifeworld, villagers’ bodies and subjectivities are remade to the extent that their consciousness, identities and discourses are all affected and redefined by the local state’s hegemonic logic. For example, money, rather than the sense of place, becomes the predominant evaluation principle in the displacement process, deployed by both local state and villagers themselves. These impacts altogether make their resistances to displacement possible, but at the same time make these actions contingent and render difficult, if not impossible, the call for wider and stronger resistance alliances for “the right to the city”.

Disciplining Street Life in Hong Kong: Narratives of Displacement and Urban Resistance

Maurizio Marinelli (University of Sussex, UK)

This paper investigates the mega-project of transforming the physical and socio-economic structures of retailing and dwelling in colonial-global Hong Kong. The selected focus is on the progressive annihilation of street markets to create space for ultra-modern, luxury high-rise buildings. Street markets play a crucial role in the policies of urban regeneration, heritage, place making, healthy eating, sustainability, environmental impact, social and community cohesion (Watson, 2005; Stillerman 2006; Shepherd, 2009). Based on the premise that street hawking and street markets are historically part of a wider socio-economic, political, and cultural system, this paper will concentrate on the stories of survival, resistance and metamorphosis of the ‘vital living past’ of Graham Street Market in Hong Kong’s Central District. This 150 years old market, a remarkable example of ‘living heritage’, is currently under threat due to neo-liberal logic of redevelopment and gentrification of colonial-global Hong Kong: in 2007 the Urban Renewal Authority announced its plan to destroy the vibrant market (which was declared ‘a slum’), and replace it with four brand new, sleek, luxury high-rise office buildings, hotels and shopping malls. The paper analyses the role of concerned civil society organisations (such as ‘Savethemarket’) vis-à-vis Government authorities, urban planners and developers in the battle against domicide: the destruction of home which also implies the destruction of memory (Porteous, Smith, 2001). The analysis of this historical market will shed light on the entanglement between the condition of precarity of the street hawkers and the complex socio-economic and political mechanisms which are leading to the annihilation of this ‘living heritage’.

Who has the right to remain in place?

Mara Nogueira (The London School of Economics and Political Science, UK)

How far can we stretch the concept of displacement? This paper discusses this question drawing on qualitative data collected during five months of fieldwork in the city of Belo Horizonte/Brazil regarding three cases of “displacement” connected to the World Cup. The first one concerns an informal settlement, evicted to give room for an urban mobility project. The second focuses on a group of informal workers displaced for the modernization of the local stadium. The third case discusses the struggle of a neighbourhood association to stop the construction of a hotel in their residential street. I argue that only the first case is rightfully considered a “displacement” case, in the sense that the State recognizes the right of the occupiers to be reallocated. I further discuss how the past historic struggle of the social movements for the right to dwell has engendered both legislation that acknowledges their rights and institutions that manage the process, guaranteeing some minimum rights. On the other hand, in the case of the stadium workers, their claims for the right to reallocation are based on weaker assumptions that are not covered by appropriate legislation and, therefore, not recognized by the State. In their struggle for the recognition of their rights, the workers have employed many strategies and alliances that are described in the paper. Finally, the paper raises the question of how appropriate is the use of the concept of displacement to categorize the processes unfolding in the third case. The neighbourhood association wants to keep their residential neighbourhood from changing. I argue that, although they’ve deployed a series of arguments (legal and political) to stop the hotel construction, what motivates their struggle is the desire to remain in place. However, the search for a place within the urban is a conflictive process. Who has the right to remain in place and who doesn’t? Is every claim against displacement equal through the lens of social justice? Does the concept of displacement become a-political once you stretch it too far?

Understanding multiple voices within the resistance movement of the Occupations of Izidora in Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Luciana Maciel Bizzotto (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil)

Urban occupations stand out as a strategy to fight for the urban re-appropriation in the current political resistance scenario in Brazilian metropolis. What has been observed is the multiplication of horizontal occupations of empty or abandoned lands, with the support of social movements organized against the eviction of thousands of families that make up the current housing deficit in the country. This form of resistance comprises a series of discourses, considering the different actors that are activated by it. To illustrate this point, I present the case of the resistance movement of the Occupations of Izidora, located in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais. The network of supporters that formed the resistance process of these urban occupations – #ResisteIzidora movement – is inserted in a context of strengthening social mobilization in the city and has helped to prevent the eviction of about 8,000 families that now resist to a project that fits in strategic planning’s logic. Based on the methodology of Mapping Controversies, data were compiled through interviews, newspaper reports, blogs and Facebook pages, which were analyzed by the various discourses made by the actors of the resistance network settled – social movements, residents, universities, public institutions and others. The study has shown how even within a resistance movement, in which different actors fight jointly to the non-eviction of the occupations, they do, however, adopt different speeches, ultimately attributing the resistance process itself different meanings.

Abstracts of presentations – Session 2

Chair: Yimin Zhao
Time: Friday 02 September 2016, 16:50 - 18:30
Venue: TBC

The Revanchist Politics of Benevolent Disaster-Induced Evictions Across Metro Manila: Pasig City in the Post-Ketsana Moment

Maria Khristine Alvarez (University of the Philippines, The Philippines)

In this paper, I examine the discourse of disaster-induced evictions in Metro Manila using Pasig City as case study. I draw on critical discourse analysis of interviews and policy documents to discuss the peculiar portrayal of ‘danger zone’ evictions as both apolitical and political, and reflect on the political expediency of this particular configuration, to point to a nascent mode of enunciating and enforcing evictions. I demonstrate how portraying slum evictions as logical interventions and as “technical”, “neutral”, and “apolitical” acts of governance (Ferguson, 1994) de-problematizes the common wisdom of disaster risk management and depoliticizes ‘expert’ opinion in order to diminish the hostility at the heart of evictions. I argue that the deployment of benevolence, which materializes as performance of concern for safety, is instrumental in facilitating outward flows of unwanted bodies. Yet, I show that this benevolence is betrayed by the insistence on contested vulnerabilities and the persistence of eviction orders, by the harassment to self-demolish and ‘voluntarily relocate’ to off-city resettlement sites, and by stories of relocation that dispute the peddled promise of a safe future. I conclude that mobilizing the discourse of ‘apolitical’ yet ‘benevolent’ evictions conceals the revanchist politics of Metro Manila’s disaster resiliency program.

Gusur and Rusunawa: Rebuild Indonesia Cities from the Scratch

Syarifah Aini Dalimunthe (Indonesia Institute of Sciences, Indonesia)

Jakarta current inhabitant is 19 million and 5 million of them are occupied and clogged waterways. This has created flood, then frequently resulting in severe socioeconomic damage. City administrator is now looking for options to reduce the risk. Current city administration terms and operating procedures to reduce the risk are gusur (violent eviction) and rusunawa (low-cost apartment). By December 2015, the city administration conducted gusur program to 12,000 families occupying riverbanks in a single slum neighborhood namely Kampung Pulo in order to speed up its river normalization program. The victim of gusur is set to be relocated to the nearby rusunawa expected to be able to accommodate 4,500 families. While the rest has to survive on their own such as rented a house nearby or send their children back to hometown. Despite the housing backlog, the city administration pledged not to stop the gusur project. The term gusur is now a formula spread among city administration across Indonesia. Gusur claimed to change Indonesian cities to meet global standard, ensure public order, remove squatter settlement or clear land for infrastructure projects. However, the government has used excessive force to conduct gusur across Indonesia cities and failed to provide alternative housing or other assistance to the displaced. It has created discourses which emphasize the right of the poor in the city and their right to make a viable living.

(Re)location, Resistance and Memory: Narratives of displacement amongst earthquake relocatees in Christchurch, New Zealand

Simon Dickinson (University of Exeter, UK)

Forced relocation as a result of government initiative and intervention has received significant attention. Much of this work has focused on the entrepreneurial politics of market-orientated development (Wu, 2014) and discourses surrounding the deconcentration of the urban poor by way of clearing-the-way policy (Goetz, 2003). Yet, disasters, and the subsequent relocation of affected populations during ‘recovery’, has received less attention – presumably because the pre-text of chaos and ‘public safety’ seemingly obscures the need to examine how particular power relations/mechanisms play out under the context of ’emergency’. With this in mind, this paper develops an account of resistance and place-making amongst forced relocatees after the Christchurch earthquakes of 2010-11. Relocation was prompted following a government decision to compulsorily acquire property based on damage and future risk – the criteria for which have never been published. Arguing that local coverage has shaped discourses that speak of romanticised, homogenous forms of ‘pushing back’, I draw attention to the ephemeral and interminable acts of resistance that may not otherwise be observed during relocation. Pointing towards these alternative narratives, the paper highlights the various (and often illicit) ways in which movers sought to maintain connections with their earthquake-damaged community/property. Given the contentious process by which relocation was dictated, these acts of resistance derive from a complex interplay between exhibiting agency in ‘place-making’ and the perceived capacity to subtly undermine the power mechanisms at play in the post-quake environment. I contend that these acts have a distinct temporality and speak to motifs of absence, presence and memory.

Discussant

Hyun Bang Shin (The London School of Economics and Political Science, UK)

 

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