Territorialities, Spaces, Geographies új tematikus szám elérhető

Az International Political Sociology folyóirat szabadon elérhetővé tette új tematikus számát Territorialities, Spaces, Geographies címmel, a szerzők között szerepel Nisha Shah, John Agnew, Neil Brenner, Stuart Elden és Nick Vaughan-Williams:

This special issue presents a selection of work at the interstices between international relations and geography. It is an invitation for intensifying debates in International Political Sociology on transformations of space and scales, the use of geographical methods and concepts, and the nature and limits of geographical thought in international and global relations.

‘The international is a spatial category and has been invested by variable geographies. The world of the international is flat; a two-dimensional world of relations between sovereign states claiming exclusive power over their territory and people. The international also persistently and often violently draws lines between itself and its outside: worlds of colonies, the uncivilised, transnational networks, and others. Recently, topographic categories are increasingly challenged by topological modes of enacting spatial relations and by analyses foregrounding the importance of temporal practices and narratives.

This special issue samples an international political sociology that deploys and critically engages territorial, spatial, geographical modes of thinking and politics. What are the limits and transformations of spatial practices in contemporary politics? How are territorialities, borders, and lines invested in methods of governing and conceptions of order? What is the impact of foregrounding temporality and mobility on spatial categorizing of the international? How are geopolitics and territoriality produced?

Table of contents

The Territorial Trap of the Territorial Trap: Global  Transformation and the Problem of the State’s Two Territories
Nisha Shah

Henri Lefebvre on State, Space, Territory
Neil Brenner and Stuart Elden

Know-where: Geographies of Knowledge of World Politics
John Agnew

Space, Boundaries, and the Problem of Order: A View from Systems Theory
Jan Helmig, Oliver Kessler

Borders, Territory, Law
Nick Vaughan-Williams

Rethinking Community: Translation Space as a Departure from  Political Community
Reiko Shindo

Education and the Formation of Geopolitical  Subjects
Martin Muller

Think Locally, Act Globally
Terrence Lyons and Peter Mandaville

"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.