Újabb cikkek elérhetők Stuart Eldentől

Újabb letölthető cikkek elérhetők Stuart Elden blogjáról! Lefebvre, Foucault, a "területiség" történelme, politikája, Irak.

Hurrá!

A felsőoktatási nyelv és a tekintély kapcsolatáról

‎"Minden úgy is történik, mintha a beszámolóknak és értékeléseknek (az intézmény ugyanis csak ezekkel az eszközökkel biztosítja az ellentétes irányú kommunikációt a diák és tanár között) az volna a rejtett funkciójuk, hogy megakadályozzák a tananyag megértésének, illetve majmoló ismételgetéssel álcázott félreértésének pontos lemérését. Ilyenformán az ex cathedra előadás és a hallgatói értekezés valójában éppen úgy funkcionális párt alkotnak, mint a tanári magánszám és a vizsgán végrehajtott egyéni hőstett, vagy a tanári fölényt bizonyító "tudálékos" beszédmód és a hallgatói értekezések bőbeszédűen üres frázisai. A dolgozatok ékesen szóló stílusa azért kelti a tanárban azt a homályos érzést, hogy előadását azért többé-kevésbé mégiscsak megértették, mert a dolgozatok olyan nyelvezetet, s ezzel a beszédmóddal olyan viszonyt alakítanak ki, amely kivált alkalmas arra, hogy a határozott állásfoglalásokat elkerülje, s ezáltal arra készteti a dolgozatot javító tanárt, hogy ő is olyan óvatosan ítéljen, mint a szerző." (p. 10)

"A diákok "tehetetlenségét" hirdető tanári ideológia tehát, amely valójában a nagyképű igényesség és a kiábrándult elnézés keveréke, a hagyományos pedagógiai munkára épített, és a tanár "csalhatatlanságát" biztosító iskolai intézmény logikáját fejezi ki." (p. 11)

 

"A tanár csak abban az esetben alakíthatna ki egy új nyelvet és új viszonyt a nyelvvel, ha elválasztaná a kommunikált tartalmat a kommunikáció módjától, amit viszont nem tud megtenni, mert e két mozzanatot ő maga szétválaszthatatlan egységben sajátította el és asszimilálta. Hasonlóképpen az oktató nem mérheti fel, hogy a diákok mennyire értették meg, amit mondott, mert ezzel romba döntené azt a fikciót, amely lehetővé teszi számára, hogy a legkisebb erőfeszítéssel tanítson, vagyis úgy, ahogyan őt is tanították. Ha pedig csakugyan elszánná magát, hogy levonja a kudarc valamennyi pedagógiai következményét, akkor saját diákjai is felsőoktatásba tévedt tanítót látnának benne. Ami pedig a diákot illeti, számára szükséges és elégséges feltétel, hogy annak a nyelvnek a használatára hagyatkozzon (például egy szemináriumi dolgozat megírásakor), amelyre egész képzése felkészítette. Ez esetben teljes védelmet és biztonságot élvez a tanárral szembeni távolságtartás révén, melyet a hamis általánosítások és "még-csak-nem-is-hamis" állítások óvatos megfogalmazása szerez meg számára." (p. 13)

Pierre Bourdieu (2008[1978]): Pedagógiai tekintély és nyelvi tekintély. In: A társadalmi egyenlőtlenségek újratermelődése. General Press, pp. 8-29.

Az akadémiai szféra válsága

Figyelemreméltó ez a beszámoló a Times Higher Education-ben. Terran Lane eredetileg informatikus docens volt az Új-Mexikói Egyetemen. Ma a Google-nek dolgozik. Miért történt ez szerinte így, mit említ problémaként a felsőoktatásban? Többek között az adminisztráció növekvő központosítását, a kutató tudósok csökkenő autonómiáját, az oktatás tömegtermeléssé és automatizálttá válását, a tudományos és az ipari fizetések közötti növekvő különbséget, valamint az értelmiségellenes és oktatásellenes hangok terjedését az USA-ban. 

"(A) taxonomy on the forces that are making it increasingly unpleasant to be an academic in the US right now. I pointed to the difficulty of making a tangible, positive difference in the world; struggles with workload and life balance; increasing centralisation of power into university administrations and decrease in autonomy for professors; a strained funding climate that is trapping academics between dwindling federal funding and intensifying university pressure-to-be-funded; specialisation, narrowness of vision and risk aversion within academic disciplines; poor incentive structures; moves towards the mass production and automation of education; salary disparities between the academy and industry; and the rise of anti-intellectualism and anti-education sentiment in the US. It turned into not just a dissection of dissatisfactions with the system, but a cry of loss for a beautiful institution that I have loved and outrage at the forces that are eroding it."

Közmunkára ítélve?

Ez egy érdekes cikk.

"A közmunka napjainkban már nem egy szociális eszköz arra, hogy a tartósan munka nélkül maradt emberek munkaszocializációját segítse. Eredeti feladata – hogy szociális és mentális támogatással és tanácsadással átmenetet képezzen az álláskeresés és a piaci munkahelyek között – háttérbe szorult. Ehelyett, a mai rendszer a jelenlegi kormány stratégiájába illeszkedő, a szegénységben élő emberek növekvő tömegeit bűnbaknak beállító és őket büntető politika egyik csúcspontját képviseli." 

–Vojtonovszki Bálint (közösségszervező, Magyar Szegénységellenes Hálózat, a Város Mindenkié csoport aktivistája)

Családi házak Zhuzhou városában

Nézzétek meg ezt a rövid bejegyzést. Kína, nagyvárosi zsúfoltság... pláza tetejére kertes családi házakat építeni: leleményesen új megoldások vagy új társadalmi különbségek? Le Corbusier perverz kritikája? :) Meg ezek az értelmetlen európai-cum-amerikai mintájú családi házak. Kicsit olyan, mint egy modell (emelt "stadion?") a mamutpaneles közönségnek.

Városi mobilitás konferencia Londonban

MOBILE URBANISMS

A two-day conference and open discussion
Dates: 29-30 November 2012

Location: King's College London

This year’s UGRG Conference will focus on the mobile, circulatory and fluid characteristics of cities and urbanisation. The conference seeks to explore how urban spaces and places are produced, reproduced and contested by travelling policies, investment, architectural forms, aesthetic cultures and social norms. It will consider the range of flows, networks, modes and practices of people migrating and moving between and within cities. And it will compare and contrast different ways of theorising and representing cities that respond to dynamic entanglements of territorial yet relational objects, actors, technologies and imaginations.

We are seeking contributions from a wide array of urban research around a variety of geographical and historical contexts. We hope the informal and supportive forum of the Conference will encourage discussion, debate, learning and collaboration on these themes.

Guiding topics include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Historical perspectives on the mobility of ideas, policies, plans and materials involved in city-making.
• Innovative ways of mapping, representing and comparing urban movement across different spaces and temporalities.
• The role of mobility in reinforcing gender and health inequalities.
• How modes of moving around the city challenge understandings of urban public spaces and relate to performances of citizenship.
• How circulation and mobility systems produce or undermine socio-spatial urban relations, including processes of state-led gentrification.
• The roles of stoppages and slow-downs in new political mobilizations. 
• The modalities in which different paces, speeds and rhythms of mobility constitute and recompose urban spaces.
• How developers, consultants and policy-makers respond to and facilitate economic opportunities created by urban circulation and movement.
• The spatialisation of different forms of urban mobility in relation to financial instruments and contracts.
• The networks, routes and infrastructures through which urban models, materials, technologies and ideas are exported/imported, travel and are translated.

Papers and suggestions for the conference are welcomed from researchers at any stage of their careers. We are also planning a session of 4 minute presentations if you would like a quick opportunity to introduce and share some of your research interests with the conference. We also welcome any suggestions for innovative presentation approaches involving moving around KCL and Central London.

The deadline for 200 word abstracts for full paper presentations is Friday 21 September 2012 to be submitted here: http://tinyurl.com/csbcse5

Registration deadline is 5pm, Friday 26 October 2012. Please register using the online form here: http://tinyurl.com/cocbxpq. Register as early as possible - places are limited.

The conference fees will be £75 waged, £35 student/unwaged.

Please see http://urban-geography.org.uk/events/2012-annual-conference for further information. And contact Geoff DeVerteuil (G.P.DeVerteuil[at]soton[dot]ac[dot]uk) or Andrew Harris (andrew[at]harris@ucl[dot]ac[dot]uk) if you have any questions. 

Megarendezvények: az Environment and Planning D folyóirat új virtuális száma ingyenesen elérhető

Véget ért a 2012-es olimpia, a londoni eseményről, annak kritikájáról, a biztonsági válságról, a rendezvény győzteseiről és veszteseiről, a politikai (háttér)érdekeltségekről, a globalizált nacionalizmusról, az utólag multikultivá varázsolt munkásosztály-narratívába öltöztetett nyitóünnepségről stb. intenzív cikkezés folyt mind a sajtóban, mind tudományos körökben. Az Environment and Planning D: Society and Space folyóirat ezúttal (még júliusban) egy újabb ingyenesen elérhető virtuális számmal jelentkezett az olimpiákról és a sport "megarendezvényekről" általában.

Olympics 2012 – Megaevents virtual issue

This very topical virtual theme draws papers from the Environment and Planning series of journals, including Society and Space. It begins with a newly written editorial by Francisco Klauser. The papers are open access.

Editorial: Sport megaevents and the city

Francisco R Klauser

The impact of the World Student Games on Sheffield

P Foley

The professionalisation of urban cultural policies in France: the case of festivals

E Négrier

Civic boosterism in the politics of local economic development — ‘institutional positions’ and ‘strategic orientations’ in the consumption of hallmark events 

M Boyle

The World Cup and the national Thing on Commercial Drive, Vancouver 

Paul Kingsbury

Vancouver’s promise of the world’s first sustainable Olympic Games 

Meg Holden, Julia MacKenzie, Robert VanWynsberghe

Splintering spheres of security: Peter Sloterdijk and the contemporary fortress city

Francisco R Klauser

Development plans versus conservation: explanation of emergent conflicts and state political handling 

Evangelia Apostolopoulou, John D Pantis

International urban festivals as a catalyst for governance capacity building 

Paul Benneworth, Hugh Dauncey

State dirigisme in megaprojects: governing the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi

Martin Müller

Commentaries

Pre-Olympic and post-Olympic Barcelona, a ‘model’ for urban regeneration today?
Maria-Dolors Garcia-Ramon, Abel Albet

"Urban Marginality and the State" (Párizs, College de France) konferencia előadásai videón elérhetők

Júniusban volt egy konferencia "Urban Marginality and the State" (a városi kirekesztés és az állam) címmel Párizsban, a College de France-ban. A videókat közzétették az interneten (sőt YouTube-on). Az előadók között van a témában neves Loïc Wacquant, illetve a magyar viszonyokról beszél Ladányi János. A programfüzet és az előadások absztraktjai megtekinthetők itt (utóbbiak a bejegyzésben is szerepelnek alul).

Videos of the Urban Marginality and the State conference

 

Opening keynote by Loïc Wacquant

Ethnographies of urban marginality

• Javier Auyero - The state of the poor

• Kate Swanson - From the streets of Guayaquil to the streets of New York: the ironies of "zero tolerance" policing in the Americas

• Franck Poupeau - All along the (reflexive) watchtower: from "global ethnography" to multi-level analysis

Urban marginality in comparative and historical perspective

• Eduardo Marques - Latin American metropolises in comparative and historical perspective

• Fulong Wu - Marginalization in urban China: the role of the state

Urban marginality, welfare regimes and penal policies

• Sonia Arbaci- (Ethnic) residential segregation in European cities: are welfare regimes making a difference?

• Robert Fairbanks - The Illinois prisoner re-entry imperative: reform or redistribution?

• Susan Parnell - The key elements to constructing an urban welfare agenda in the Global South

Marginal zones and the state

• Tom Slater - "Welfare ghettos"? The neighbourhood effects basis of punitive welfare reforms in the UK

• Janos Ladanyi - Urban and rural ghettos in Hungary

Opening keynote by Loïc Wacquant

University of California, Berkeley and Centre européen de sociologie et de science politique, Paris

To grasp the form and dynamics of urban marginality in the advanced societies, we must revoke the conventional conception of the state as an “ambulance” that rushes to the scene of social problems or a “service counter” that delivers nostrums downstream, after inequality and insecurity have set in. Instead, we must construe it as a stratifying and classifying agency that acts upstream to determine the incidence, persistence, intensity, and the social and spatial distributions of poverty by setting the basic parameters of symbolic space, social space and physical space and by anchoring the structural homologies between them. I mate insights from Pierre Bourdieu and Gösta Esping-Andersen to sketch the ways in which the neoliberal Leviathan has both produced and managed dispossession and dishonor in the neighborhoods of relegation of the United States and Western Europe over the past three decades by the simultaneous rolling out of restrictive social policy and expansive penal policy.

Ethnographies of urban marginality
Javier Auyero - The state of the poor

University of Texas at Austin

Based on 30 months of ethnographic fieldwork in a violence-ridden, low-income district located in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires, this article examines the state’s presence at the urban margins and its relationships to widespread depacification of poor people’s daily life. Contrary to descriptions of destitute urban areas in the Americas as either governance voids deserted by the state or militarized spaces firmly controlled by the state's iron fist, this article argues that law enforcement in Buenos Aires' high-poverty zones is intermittent, selective, and contradictory. By putting the state's fractured presence at the urban margins under the ethnographic microscope, the article reveals its key role in the perpetuation of the
violence it is presumed to prevent. 

 

Kate Swanson - From the streets of Guayaquil to the streets of New York: the ironies of "zero tolerance" policing in the Americas

San Diego State University

Over the last fifteen years, indigenous Kisapincha from Andean Ecuador have used rural-to-urban migration as a key strategy for overcoming diminishing agricultural returns and to meet rising cash demands. Migrating to beg and sell on the streets of the nation’s largest cities has enabled impoverished community members to pay for their children’s educations and to improve their material conditions. Yet, as growing poverty pushed increasing numbers into the urban informal sector, cities in Ecuador responded by importing punitive neoliberal urban policies (such as “zero tolerance” policing from New York City) to cleanse and sanitize the streets of informal workers, beggars, street children, and other urban undesirables. In this paper, I argue that these policies are highly problematic. For one, in nations with deeply entrenched racial and social inequalities, they produce a particularly punitive city. Secondly, in response to increasingly harsh urban policies, young Kisapincha have chosen to engage in a much more dangerous strategy in order to get ahead: undocumented transnational migration to New York City. Quite ironically then, the very same policies originally devised to cleanse the streets of New York City may have unwittingly resulted in pushing undocumented, indigenous Ecuadorian migrants to New York City. 

 

Franck Poupeau - All along the (reflexive) watchtower: from "global ethnography" to multi-level analysis

Cultures et Sociétés Urbaines (CNRS, UMR 7217)

This presentation is an attempt to present an “epistemic reflexivity” upon the fieldwork I realized in Bolivia from 2006 to 2010, where I studied inequalities of access to water in urban contexts. I will expose the difficulties of investigating in marginalized and peripheral parts of the city of El Alto: the ambivalence of my own position led me to abandon provisionally the ethnographical approach to for a plurality of methods: cartography, statistics and questionnaires. My project of “global ethnography” finally turned into the elaboration of a multi-level model integrating not only different scales (local, national, international, etc.) but also an original conception of their articulation in the production of “global”.

Urban marginality in comparative and historical perspective 

Eduardo Marques - Latin American metropolises in comparative and historical perspective

University of Sao Paolo

Latin American cities represent a broad field for comparative studies. Traditionally, however, the region was the subject matter for ample 'universalizing comparisons' which used Latin American metropolises to exemplify broad processes or structures such as in development theory, dependence theory or in Marxism. But is there really something we should call the "Latin American city" in the sense of a universalizing comparison? The development of comparisons which depart from a deep analysis of the particularities of each city and at the same time contribute to broader theoretical dialogues depends on the full consideration of the similarities and differences present in the region. This paper aims at contributing to this task by discussing the heterogeneities of Latin American metropolises. On one hand, the exercise involves discussing differences in their historical formation processes – mainly two different colonial projects occupying several geographical contexts, marked by diverse ethnic presences, distinct state structures and policies, as well as quite heterogeneous economic activities. On the other, the parallels include historical key processes – in independence, during economic modernization in the 1930s, in the emergence of authoritarian regimes since the 1930s and in the return to democracy after 1980. These processes led to similarly high levels of urbanization and large agglomerations, which house unequal and informal urban labor markets. Urban spaces are marked by urban and housing precarity, low levels of public service provision and intense segregation. Recently, these spaces have been transformed by intense demographic changes, by heterogeneous religious and associated fields and by the dissemination of urban violence.

 

Catharina Thörn - “The Gaza Strip of Gothenburg”: advanced marginality and the politics of neoliberal engineering

Gothenburg University
In this paper I argue that Gothenburg, the second largest city in Sweden, has responded to the economic crisis in the 1970-80s through a class remake of the city that not only displace working class housing from its central parts but also privileges and normalizes whiteness. Through an analysis of a particular case of displacement I will reveal how this politics can be understood as a specific form of neoliberal urban development in Gothenburg – a hybrid of Social democracy and neoliberalism that ends up in a neoliberal engineering. The case of Kvillebäcken (partly former industrial land) shows how an area formerly defined as remote (even though spatially central) became of economic interest during the remake of the central city. By an imaginary redrawing of the city map that changed the boundaries for what is defined as 'the central city', the local economic elite decided to exploit and invest in this area. I will also argue that there are strong (post)colonial dimensions in this – the city center expands over the river into an area mainly used by immigrant groups, but which in official discourse is constructed in the terms of “an unexploited area”. This discursive strategy also involved territorial stigmatization as it, in order to legitimize its demolition, was officially defined ”the Gaza strip of Gothenburg” - a dangerous, no-go area. Through a close cooperation between the municipal authorities and private investors (as well as lawyers and police) a takeover of the area was possible and the former users of the land who had invested money, resources and time was displaced. Even though it was former industrial land it was by no means empty. Instead it was an area with mosques, immigrant associations and small businesses - functioning as the most central meeting point for people from the poor suburbs. Even though the area is still under construction it is branded as a window for sustainable urban development and the imagined new inhabitants of Kvillebäcken are portrayed as the opposite of the former ones – white, middleclass, environmentally conscious, healthy, proper - and as pioneers/saviors of this former wasteland. In conclusion I will develop my arguments on neoliberal engineering in relation to advanced marginality in Gothenburg.

Fulong Wu - Marginalization in urban China: the role of the state

University College London

This paper analyses the process of marginalization in China since it embarked on market-oriented reform. We argue that the pattern of marginalization is built upon the preconfigured social structure and its inequality under state socialism, namely outside the core industrialized and organized state workplaces was a vast peripheral rural area where the peasants had limited access to state welfare. This pattern of social inequality has been ‘urbanized’ through fast rural to urban migration. We examine the role of the state in defining the ‘right to the city’ in urban China. So, along with globalizing Chinese cities and turning them into the world workshop, the peripheral rural population becomes the mainstream workers. But their rights are seriously constrained. Therefore, the marginal status of Chinese urban poor is not due to their withdrawal from economic activities. But rather the marginalization process is caused by their boarder claim for citizenship constrained by growth-oriented local governments that favour capital and land-driven urban development. Finally the paper discusses the manifestation of marginality in space, namely the lack of affordable rental housing in accessible and industrialized urban area and the emergence of socalled ‘urban villages’ as informal settlements. In these places, the provision of public services is minimum, and private governance by villagers is the norm. Moreover, state-led urban renewal and village demolition have led to the disappearance of affordable rental housing, which pushed rural migrants into further peripheral areas.

 

Urban marginality, welfare regimes and penal policies 

Sonia Arbaci- (Ethnic) residential segregation in European cities: are welfare regimes making a difference?

University College London

This paper examines the relationship between welfare regimes and (ethnic) residential segregation across 16 Western European countries until the mid-1990s, including for the first time Southern Europe. It investigates the ways in which the diverse housing systems, embodied in wider welfare regimes, shape and reflect different principles of stratification. Consequently, it reveals the different ways in which the resulting mechanisms of differentiation crucially influence the scale and nature of patterns of ethnic residential segregation, particularly among low-income and vulnerable groups. Spatial and social dimensions of segregation are disentangled in each welfare/housing regime (four ideal-typical clusters - social-democratic, corporatist, liberal, and familiarist), as are their roots in the state-market relationship and entrenched distributive arrangements. The emphasis on welfare regimes, as an ideal-typical analytical tool, has proven instrumental in building an overarching comparative framework to explore the large diversity of patterns across European cities. It shows that the redistributive arrangements embedded in the housing system and land supply are making the difference. In each welfare cluster, the combination between tenure policies (unitary/dualist systems) and modes of housing provision (promotion, production, land supply), whilst reflecting different principles of stratification, shape different and distinctive mechanisms of social and spatial differentiation, thus of segregation. This study contributes to further expansion of the current European debate on production of inequality, bearing on the renewed focus on the state-market nexus also in segregation studies. It opens further investigative lines towards planning realms, hardly regarded in segregation studies, reinforcing the importance of land in the social and spatial division of urban societies.

Robert Fairbanks - The Illinois prisoner re-entry imperative: reform or redistribution?

University of Chicago  

The State of Illinois incarcerates more than 49,000 inmates annually, and 36,000 are released each year. Two-thirds (roughly 25,000 annually) of this number return to just five zip codes located on the West and South sides of Chicago, where black male unemployment exceeds 45% even before ex felons return home. This paper explores selective state measures by which policy and practitioner elites have responded to the re-entry imperative in an era of unprecedented fiscal austerity. From George Bush’s 2008 Second Chance Act, to The 2009 Illinois Crime Reduction Act, to numerous municipal policy and practice initiatives at the Cook County (Chicago) Jail, the reentry question operates across multiple scales. The paper maps the historical roots and contemporary expansion of the re-entry imperative, in part by tracing the convergence of disparate ideological positions and the formation of novel political coalitions among policy elites. A central component of the Illinois re-entry initiative is the Sheridan Correctional Center, a medium security prison housing 1700 inmates that is devoted entirely to substance abuse treatment. Opened in 2004, Sheridan has been designed and planned with an eye toward the pathways and channels to successful community reintegration in urban contexts, both in terms of neighborhoods and social service delivery systems. Using Sheridan as a site of ethnographic analysis, I explore the ways in which drug and alcohol recovery and intensive monitoring of sobriety on parole works as an ancillary modality of poverty management to resolve the prison crisis and to reinvent welfare regimes in the 21st century.

Susan Parnell - The key elements to constructing an urban welfare agenda in the Global South

University of Cape Town  

The paper is structured in three parts designed to explore the shifting terrain of city scale poverty, redistribution and welfare in the rapidly evolving global urban landscape. To start, I review the imperative of having a pubic policy emphasis on urban poverty, welfare and redistribution that takes cognisance of local histories institutions, resources and social, economic and political realities. Recognising the paucity of critical engagement with city scale debates on welfare and redistribution (especially relative to the fairly well developed analysis of urban poverty), the second part of the paper makes a case for engaging welfare at the city scale, especially in the Global South where public policy debate is embryonic. The final and most substantial section of the paper sets out an argument that welfare and redistribution would gain from a more nuanced and reflective assessment in which the state may be one of many welfare actors. If grounded in the experiences of cities of the South new urban public policy formulations would of necessity consider contexts where fragile welfare regimes are under threat, but contexts where the city is a site of increased and innovative welfare provision.

Marginal zones and the state

Tom Slater - "Welfare ghettos"? The neighbourhood effects basis of punitive welfare reforms in the UK

University of Edinburgh, UK
The “cottage industry” (Sampson et al, 2002) of neighbourhood effects research stems from an understanding of society that adheres to one overarching assumption, that “where you live affects your life chances”. The striking simplicity of this line of thinking in a complex world has led to the emergence of analytic hegemony in urban studies: neighbourhoods matter and shape the fate of their residents, therefore, urban policies must be geared towards poor neighbourhoods, seen as incubators of social dysfunction. This is now the dominant paradigm amongst policy elites, mainstream urban scholars, journalists, and think tank researchers. In this paper I assess the political implications of neighbourhood effects arguments by tracing the current punitive welfare reforms taking place in the UK back to the emergence of the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) think tank, founded in 2004 by current Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan-Smith following his short visit to a deeply stigmatised district of Glasgow in 2002. Despite wide-ranging social scientific evidence challenging the punitive welfare reforms heavily influenced by the CSJ, a familiar litany of placebased social pathologies (family breakdown, worklessness, idleness, anti-social behaviour, personal responsibility, teenage pregnancies, out-of-wedlock childbirth, welfare dependency) is relentlessly invoked by conservative politicians in a deliberate activation of the neighbourhood effects thesis. A “broken society”, the catch-all government ‘explanation’ for the English urban riots of 2011, is seen by political elites as a creation of the welfare state; correspondingly, “mending our broken society” has become the justification for massive welfare retraction and retrenchment, with serious consequences for people living at the bottom of the class structure in neighbourhoods of relegation.

Janos Ladanyi - Urban and rural ghettos in Hungary

Corvinus University of Budapest

The pattern of ethnic ghettoization in Hungarian cities is in rapid change. The ethnic ghettoes of the cities near to jobs are fragmented and replaced by a higher number of scattered but more homogeneous ethnic ghettoes. Many Roma and non-Roma people in long-term poverty are pushed out these cities. As a result parts of or entire villages are ghettoized in increasing numbers, in fact, region-sized areas of the country have become ghettoized. The spatial segregation of the poorest and most excluded parts of the population cannot be analyzed in the context of conventional geographical inequalities within Budapest or conventional differences between urban and rural areas any more. These structural advantages and disadvantages can only be discussed in the context of Hungary’s entire social and settlement system.

Web-based course on Participatory Democracy, Urban Management and Crisis Capitalism

Call for applications: Web-based course on Participatory Democracy, Urban Management and Crisis Capitalism | TNI

The Transnational Institute (TNI), in cooperation with the Brazilian research centre CIDADE and the Latin American Programme for Distance Education in Social Sciences (PLED) is offering a web-based course on Participatory Democracy, Urban Management and Crisis Capitalism. The course will begin on 10 September 2012 and will comprise a series of twelve weekly sessions.

We welcome applications from members of civil society organisations, social activists, government officials, and university students. The course will be hosted by the PLED virtual campus. The course involves a programme of lectures, guided readings, online forum discussions and individual assignments. For registration click here. The deadline for application is 31 August 2012. More information is available on request from: PLED’s Academic Secretariat: academica-pled[at]cculturalcoop.[dot]org[dot]ar

Rationale of the course

In the context of the global crisis, the traditional institutions of representative democracy show clear signs of growing inefficiency in the management of the capitalist system. On the other hand, new political spaces and technological innovations for participatory democracy are emerging around the world. At the same time, the processes of citizens’ participation that had flourished in the nineties – and which had been originally supported by progressive forces as local alternatives to the policy of dismantling social programmes fostered by the neoliberals – are at a crossroads. In particular, this is the case of Brazilian-born participatory budgeting, which had reached regional and global recognition as a proposal emblematic of the creative potential of participatory democracy. In this context, a huge gap between rhetoric and practice is increasingly evident in many processes of participatory democracy, as the popular sectors do not always have access to the conditions required to expand their organizational capacities, strategic intelligence and capabilities for social pressure.

The current capitalist crisis shows that modern societies have reached a turning point, with real need for a change of direction both in economics and politics. In response to the new reality, there is a tendency among some social movements to develop what have been called integral actions, meaning a recombination of citizen-driven initiatives in diverse spaces: within and outside state institutions, at local, national, regional and global levels, involving different layers of government, all of which involves the creation of networks that go beyond the traditional and separate spaces of popular representation (unions, community organizations, student groups, etc..).

In the light of the new social reality, the course aims to promote a critical evaluation of the new experiences of participatory democracy and progressive public policy, integrating three perspectives of analysis:

1. a critique of the administrative monopoly of participation exerted by local governments (at the municipal, provincial or state level);
2. a critique of the existing contradiction between popular-democratic projects and the so-called new public management (NPM, in its many variants), which still prevails in the state apparatus in the new millennium;
3. a critique of the reduction in participatory democracy to a subaltern expression of representative democracy, freezing the evolution of the democratic state as a single and unquestionable entity.

Contents of the course

The course is structured around 12 modules, with special emphasis on the sources of popular power and public policies in the areas of urban planning and management, housing, environment and civic security.

1. Theoretical sources of participatory democracy. Description and critical analysis of the different visions of participatory democracy visible in contemporary political and academic debates and their relation to the proposals for 'state reform'.

2. Why the World Bank supports participatory budgeting? An interpretation of the ostensible change in World Bank guidelines for action since the late nineties up to date, from the 'participatory strategies for poverty reduction' to the subsequent adoption of participatory budgeting as a tool for monitoring and controlling the contents and impacts of local and regional budgets.

3. From popular sovereignty to the exclusion of citizens’ participation. Discussion of an observed institutional shift in the last two decades, focusing on the outsourcing of public policy responsibilities to local communities and the private sector.

4. Public Space: a critique of the concepts of exclusion and segregation. An analytical reconstruction of the theoretical path of urban studies vis-à-vis the new processes of social and spatial segregation.

5. The collapse of urban planning in the big cities. A critical analysis of the dismantling of governmental urban planning and the predatory nature of life in large cities, with reference to the subordination of urban development to the interests of real estate capital.

6. The management of the commons, participatory democracy and capitalism. Discussion of environmental alternatives centred around citizens’ participation, considering the conflict between multiple social subjects in the urban space and the precariousness of the institutional process.

7. Urban violence, social movements and citizens’ security. A critical analysis of the sense of insecurity and fear among citizens, based on recent theoretical developments contributed by progressive criminologists.

8. Crisis of capitalism and inflection of the neoliberal project. A discussion of the structural limits of the global growth strategy based on the expansion of financial capital, the current crises, and possible alternatives to U.S. hegemony.

9. Capital-led direct democracy. A critique of the reduction of institutional politics to the mere parliamentary ratification of projects driven by the interests of large private corporations, as exemplified in the planning of mega-sporting events (e.g. the Olympics and FIFA World Football Cup in Brazil).

10. Social housing and mega-projects. An in-depth analysis of housing policies in the framework of the global capitalist crisis and the expansion of capital-led democracy in large metropolitan areas.

11. Progressive alternative to the 'new urban governance' approach. An appraisal of initiatives and experiences of workers and users engagement in managing and improving public services.

12. The emergence of a new paradigm in urban policy. Analysis of the new social, political and economic leading to the emergence and development of ‘integral social movements' and their significance in political practice and public policy.

Languages

The course will be implemented simultaneously in Spanish and English.

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Seminar: Research with older and disabled people

Opportunities, challenges & tensions: linking the ageing and disability rights agendas

Research with older and disabled people

Thursday 27^th September 2012

A good evidence base is critical to the development of successful policy and practice. This seminar will focus on differing research techniques and interpreting research for policy agendas/knowledge exchange with older and disabled people.

Keynote speakers include:

• Dr Felicity Callard, Centre for Medical Humanities, Durham University;
• Dr Ian Sydney, Senior Researcher, Age UK, Lancashire;
• Dr Susan Venn, Co-Director, Centre for Research on Ageing and Gender, Surrey University;
• Prof. Nick Watson, Chair of Disability Studies, School of Social and Political Sciences, Glasgow University.

Facilitated by some of the key thinkers, policy-makers and activists in this field, this seminar aims to open up opportunities for original and innovative debate on key issues for policy and practice in the UK. It is anticipated that these debates will also have wider resonance for the developed world.

Attendance is free but places are limited if you are attending in person.  Places are available if you wish to view the seminar via webcam.  Participants are expected to cover their own travel and accommodation costs.  A limited number of small travel bursaries are available (a maximum of £55.00) for postgraduate research students and unwaged. To apply, applicants should indicate their desire to be considered for a bursary on their Expression of Interest form

Registration and Contact Details

If you would like to come to this seminar or would like to attend virtually through Adobe Connect please fill out the ‘Expression of Interest’ form available at:

http://www.lancs.ac.uk/shm/research/seminars/esrc-seminar.php