Cultural capitalism, conscious capitalism: "First tragedy, then farce" (24 Nov 2009)

Second World Urbanity: Between Capitalist and Communist Utopias

Call for Papers

June 21-23, 2013

Location: The Centre for the History and Culture of East Central Europe, Leipzig, Germany

In 1967 the architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable published a long piece in the New York Times on Soviet advances in urban planning and construction. Surprisingly for the Cold War era, the author openly praised the Soviets for creating a country-wide system of mass production of standardised prefabricated cheap housing, ‘an architectural sputnik’ in her own words. She claimed with great enthusiasm, ‘In size, scope and boldness, in spite of crudities, failure and sometimes ludicrous imperfections it is a singularly important undertaking of the 20th century.’ Moreover, she noted, ‘the latest product is acceptable as architecture.’ Describing new residential neighborhoods mushrooming all across the Soviet Union, she wrote: ‘There is no scale, no variety, no surprise. It is monotony with light, air, sun, and greenery in season, and on sum, that effect is no worse and sometimes a good deal better than a lot of construction on the outskirts of large American cities.’ Admitting all the flaws of current Soviet construction she urged her readers to pay closer attention to this ‘special brand of modern architecture [that] is reshaping the Soviet World.’

Second World Urbanity: Between Capitalist and Communist Utopias seeks to investigate the history of the radical reshaping of the Soviet World (in our words – the Second World), that Ada Louise Huxtable reported on in the late 1960s. This project aims to bring together scholarly contributions on the various endeavors in the Second World to conceive, build, and inhabit a socialist cityscape that was an alternative to the segregated spaces of capitalist cities and the atomized world of suburbia. Imagining and designing urban space were undeniably powerful instruments of forging socialist modernity. Second World Urbanity pays close attention to the tensions between global challenges and locally driven agendas that made architects, planners, and ordinary dwellers alter socialist modernity according to more particular interests. What were the visions and meanings that architects and urban planners sought to communicate through their work? What pre-existing styles did they draw on, reject, and appropriate, and was there a Second World postmodernism? To what degree was the socialist cityscape a product of negotiation between its dwellers and its designers? Where did other local players–such as major industries and local party bosses–fit in such negotiations over the design and construction of the socialist city?

As a venue for opening a conversation about the new approaches to urbanity and planning, this project goes beyond the geographic boundaries of the Eastern Bloc and seeks transnational, comparative, and global approaches to the study of the socialist city. We propose to think of socialist urban planning from Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union to China and Cuba as a distinct and multifaceted division of global urban planning trends. Just as the geographic scope is broad so, too, is our chronological reach, which will span the early post-World War II period through the collapse of state socialism and beyond to the present day. Was there a common denominator to the variety of projects and planning efforts implemented from Cuba to China, from the Urals to Belgrade? Was it socialist in form and national in content as the common formula of Socialist Realism suggested? Or was it modern in form and undefined in content, to paraphrase the formula Kevin Plath and Benjamin Nathans recently coined for describing the nature of late-Soviet culture? In exploring such questions, what do we – urban historians and historians of architecture – have new to say on the history of the Second World? What are the new research questions that our subfield has generated in recent years?

The present stage in our project is a conference that will be hosted at the The Center for the History and Culture of East Central Europe, in Leipzig, Germany, June 21-23, 2013. Paper proposals are solicited for this conference and an edited volume of selected papers on a wide range of topics from (but not limited to) the history of professional networks and institutional organization, monumental projects, mass housing schemes, transfers of technologies and styles, the organization of public and private spaces, the political engagement of urban planning professionals, the treatment of gender, ethnic, and class differences in the socialist cityscape, the role of the state, the ideological premises of urban schemes and visionary projects, everyday life, urban residents’ (mis)uses of planned urban spaces. Papers from all disciplines in the social sciences and humanities will be considered.

Critical information:

Please send paper proposals (a 300-500 word abstract and a 1-page cv) to swurbanity[at]gmail[dot]com by February 1, 2013. Paper proposals will be reviewed by the project’s organizers and program committee. We will announce the papers that have been accepted on March 1, 2013.

If your paper is accepted for the conference, the deadline for submitting your paper will be May 20, 2013. Papers should be no longer than 5,000 words including footnotes or endnotes. Papers will be distributed to conference participants ahead of the conference via our project’s blog.

The project is presently soliciting funds to cover some of the transportation and/or housing costs of participants. We will know whether such funds are available only in Spring 2013. Therefore, interested participants should plan for covering costs through their home institutions. The conference will not have a conference fee.

Program committee: Andres Kurg, Brigitte Le Normand, Daria Bocharnikova, Kimberly Elman Zarecor, Marie Alice L’Heureux, Steven Harris, Vladimir Kulic

A 2010-es Haiti földrengés kritikai geográfus szemmel

Találtam egy városföldrajzzal foglalkozó kutatót, Kurt Iveson-t az ausztráliai Sydney Egyetemről, aki a 2010 január 12-én bekövetkezett, katasztrofális hatású Haiti-i földrengés oktatásához gyűjtött anyagokat. Elsősorban kritikai geográfusként szeretne ezekről beszélni, és szerintem egy igen hasznos kis gyűjteményt hozott össze egy meglehetősen fontos és baromi érdekes témáról. Érdemes lenne vele foglalkozni!

Nekem elsősorban a Mulling - Werner - Peake cikk tetszik, mert a rasszizmus és a humanitáriusság összefonódását elemzi. Ez egyébként egy régóta népszerű szempont a posztkolonialista megközelítéseknél, amely azt elemzi, hogy a média a helyi népesség erőtlenségének, a "feketék" nyomorgó helyzetének (önerőből való cselekvésre képtelenség), deviáns és bűnöző habitusának (a katasztrófa veszélyeit növelő, a katonai megszállást sürgető tényező) reprezentációit keringteti, egyszóval egy olyan diskurzust alakítanak ki, amely a modernizációs, fejlesztéselvű, humanitárius beavatkozást, és ezáltal végső soron a terület igazgatásának, logisztikai megszervezésének teljes átvételét legitimálja a nagyhatalmak, így az USA számára. Egyfajta "rasszista humanitáriusság" alakul ki, amely végső soron a helyiek hatalmának és tulajdonaiknak megfosztásához vezet. A beruházók között komoly versengés alakul ki a lokális irányítás megszerzésére és az újjáépítések lebonyolítására, tehát a tőkeberuházások és a felhalmozás érdekében egy olyan kapitalista terjeszkedés bontakozik ki, amely éppen az efféle katasztrófák okozta zavarodottságot használja ki. Ám nemcsak az anyagi bevételek motivációja számít, hanem annak a politikai és gazdasági hatalomnak a kiterjesztése is, amely a nyugati civilizáció normáit fenyegető "szegény", "fekete" testek létrehozása révén a helyiek emberi mivoltától való megfosztásán alapul. Na ez biopolitika a javából. Nem arról van szó, hogy a segítségnyújtás szükségességét ássuk alá az efféle kritikával (amely morális kötelesség, és az említett reprezentációk a segítségadás elősegítésének eszközei is egyben), hanem hogy próbáljuk jobban megérteni, kritikus szemmel vizslatni a beavatkozás visszásságait és káros következményeit, amely a háttérben éppen a helyiek önrendelkezésének rovására mehet.

forrás: Tampa Bay Times

Ambraseys, N. and Bilham, R. (2011) “Corruption Kills”, Nature, 469: pp. 153-155

Dobbins, J. (2010) “Skip the Graft”, RAND Corporation, available here

Dupuy, A. (2010) “Beyond the Earthquake: A Wake-Up Call for Haiti”, available here

Farmer, P (2003) The Uses of Haiti, Common Ground Press and (2011) Haiti: After the Earthquake

Hallward, P. (2010) “Haiti 2010: Exploiting Disaster”, available here

Hallward, P. (2010) “Our role in Haiti’s plight”, The Guardian, 13 January, available here

Kennard, M. (2012) “Haiti and the Shock Doctrine”, available here

Klein, N. (2010) “Haiti: A creditor, not a debtor”, available here

Mullings, B. et al (2010) “Fear and Loathing in Haiti: Race and the Politics of Humanitarian Disposession”, ACME: An international E-journal for critical geographies, 9(3): 282-300, available here

Sheller, M. (2012) “The islanding effect: postdisaster mobility systems and humanitarian logistics in Haiti”, in Cultural Geographies, available via on-line first function (access Cultural Geographies via Library catalogue)

Sontag, D. (2012) “Earthquake relief where Haiti wasn’t broken”, New York Times, July 5, available here

World Bank and United Nations (2010) Natural Hazards, Unnatural Disasters, available here

Valamint az alábbi források is igen hasznosak:

Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian Action Haiti Learning and Accountability Portal

Centre for Economic and Policy Research Haiti Relief and Reconstruction Watch

UN Development Program Human Development Reports

UN Office, Special Envoy for Haiti

Valamint a Democracy Now és a The Nation is sokat írt a USA Haiti-politikájáról kiszivárogtatott Wikileaks anyagokról.

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.

Subscribe here!

CIDADE: http://http//www.ongcidade.org/site.php

PLED: http://www.centrocultural.coop/pled.html