Housing Justice in Unequal Cities | Antipode in Barcelona

Antipode’s 8th Institute for the Geographies of Justice will be held in Barcelona next summer. The week-long event will focus on struggles around housing justice in cooperation with local movements (including La Hidra Cooperativa) and UCLA’s Institute on Inequality and Democracy, which has organized two important conferences on this topic this year. You can find more information about the event in Barcelona here.

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Balibar, Fraser and Mbembe | Lectures at the Institute for Critical Social Inquiry

Étienne Balibar, Nancy Fraser and Achille Mbembe met in July for a series of talks and seminars at the New School’s Institute for Critical Social Inquiry. The lectures are now available through the Institute’s YouTube channel. For some reason the titles of the videos do not correspond to those given at the event; the headings below show the original ones.

Balibar, Fraser, Mbembe

Balibar, ‘Socialism before the catastrophe? The new dilemma’

Fraser, ‘What should socialism mean in the 21st century?’

Mbembe, ‘Technology and eschatology in the computational age’

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Introduction to The Funambulist by its Readers: Political Geographies from Chicago and Elsewhere — THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE

Dear readers, here is the introduction written for the book The Funambulist by its Readers: Political Geographies from Chicago and Elsewhere, a book commissioned by the curators of the Chicago Architecture Biennial 2019, which collects 20 articles we published in our 22 first issues, as well as five new texts by Chicago-based activists. You may…

via The Funambulist Magazine

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Neil Brenner | New Urban Spaces

New Urban Spaces: Urban Theory and the Scale Question, el nuevo libro de Neil Brenner, está disponible desde hace unas semanas en Oxford University Press. Se trata de un extenso desarrollo y reelaboración de textos que cubren el trabajo del autor durante más de 20 años: ocho piezas publicadas en revistas y libros, varias de ellas hoy difíciles de encontrar, revisadas en profundidad para su reedición; y una introducción y conclusión, material nuevo en dos capítulos monumentales que ocupan por sí solos un tercio del volumen. Brenner logra con este libro la compleja alquimia de fundir en una sola línea argumental textos clave en debates cruciales pero a priori bien diferenciados en los estudios urbanos de las últimas décadas: por un lado la discusión sobre las políticas de escala y las dinámicas urbanas, y por otro la exploración de los procesos contemporáneos de urbanización planetaria. Brenner forjó su relevancia como académico con sus intervenciones en el debate sobre la cuestión escalar desde finales de la década de 1990, y desde principios de la década de 2010 él y sus colaboradores dentro y fuera del Urban Theory Lab han revolucionado el campo de la teoría urbana con su trabajo sobre la extensión planetaria de la urbanización capitalista. Parecía difícil, en todo caso, unir ambas líneas de indagación ya que provienen de enfoques distintos, han manejado herramientas de análisis heterogéneas e incluso se han desarrollado en contextos disciplinares relativamente dispares: el primer bloque se centraba en los aspectos económico-políticos del cambio urbano y el segundo ha prestado mayor atención a las implicaciones espaciales, sociales y ambientales del proceso urbanizador, al menos hasta ahora. Conozco en profundidad los contenidos del libro, entre otros motivos porque trabajamos con parte de ellos a conciencia durante la preparación del monográfico sobre el autor publicado por la editorial Icaria—en ese volumen, de hecho, ambos momentos de la carrera de Brenner aparecían como etapas bien diferenciadas.

sdr

Lo que Brenner consigue en este libro, entre otras cosas, es mostrar cómo su reflexión sobre las dinámicas escalares contenía ya in nuce el desarrollo y ampliación posterior al problema de la urbanización planetaria. La revisión del material ya publicado busca de hecho enfatizar estos hilos comunes. Pero, más importante aún, New Urban Spaces muestra que esa evolución de hecho subyace a la propia lógica de acumulación/expansión capitalista—y la secuencia de arreglos espaciales que ésta genera en su permanente huida hacia delante—y que la apertura de nuevos escenarios de reflexión en torno al devenir planetario de la urbanización capitalista es la consecuencia directa de una teorización atenta a las transformaciones de su objeto de análisis. La teoría misma, por tanto, se ve obligada a mutar constantemente con dicho objeto, integrando nuevas problemáticas, métodos e incursiones transdisciplinares en su intento de alcanzar totalizaciones más certeras. La introducción y conclusión del libro se ocupan en particular de este aspecto y ofrecen intuiciones tremendamente valiosas sobre la naturaleza de la teoría, urbana o social en general— estas claves contienen un potencial meta-teórico único y difícil de encontrar en el campo de los estudios urbanos en la actualidad, que hará estas piezas referencia fundamental en las próximas décadas.

El conjunto del libro mantiene y desarrolla el estilizado materialismo histórico-geográfico que ha caracterizado la carrera del autor hasta la fecha, con un énfasis especial en la necesidad de alcanzar totalizaciones abstractas y generales. En todo caso, la argumentación se abre al diálogo y colaboración con otros paradigmas y tradiciones que identifica como aliadas en la elaboración de una crítica de la urbanización contemporánea, con especial énfasis en la ecología política urbana, los estudios urbanos postcoloniales y determinadas líneas de teorización post-estructuralista. De nuevo son los capítulos que abren y cierran el libro los encargados de desarrollar este aspecto en profundidad, con una invitación a la reflexión colectiva que resulta fresca y necesaria en un campo a menudo entregado a una rivalidad improductiva y dictada más por motivos corporativos que por la naturaleza del objeto analizado.

En definitiva, para los lectores que se acerquen por primera vez a Brenner el libro proporciona una síntesis depurada de su trabajo de varias décadas, incluyendo todas las problemáticas que ha tocado en sus contribuciones. Para los que ya conozcan parte del material o la trayectoria del autor, este libro supone una invitación a releer y desarrollar argumentos hoy clásicos bajo una lente nueva que, de hecho, proyecta con vigor el viejo aparato analítico hacia nuevos horizontes intelectuales.

Posted in Economía urbana, Espacio y política, Espacios Críticos, Espais Crítics, Estudios urbanos / Urban Studies, Geografía crítica, Marxism, Materialismo histórico-geográfico, Neil Brenner, Neoliberalismo, Planetary urbanization, Political economy, Politics and space, Sociología urbana, Teoría urbana, Urban politics, Urban studies, Urban Theory Lab, Urbanización | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Aesthetics as a weapon of mass domestication

On June 20th I will be participating in ‘Anesthetized: aesthetics as a weapon of mass domestication,’ a week-long seminar organized in SUR—the school of arts of Madrid’s Círculo de Bellas Artes—by Lucía Jalón and David Sánchez Usanos. More information about the course can be found here (in Spanish), and in the (very interesting) provisional program.

For a while now I have been focused on a book-length project and I try to minimize potential distractions, but this type of extra-disciplinary forays—most of the speakers in the seminar come from the fields of philosophy, art and literature, including playwrights and novelists—are a great opportunity to experiment with more speculative approaches and new research paths. In this occasion I intend to use various interpretive keys (Althusser, Rancière, Goonewardena, Trinh T. Minh-ha) and historical episodes of the avant-garde and neo-avant-garde (Neue Sachlichkeit, anti-architecture…) to explore how urban representations are used to regulate diverse regimes of production/social reproduction. I am also planning to use a discussion of counter-representations centered on alternative forms of reproduction to develop the notion of ‘urban sabotage’ and its potential connection to contemporary aesthetic practices.

 

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Henri Lefebvre, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche or the Realm of Shadows (Verso, February 2020)

Forthcoming English translation of Lefebvre’s 1975 Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche ou Le royaume des ombres, with an introduction by Stuart Elden, via Progressive Geographies. The Spanish translation was published in 2016 by Siglo XXI.

Progressive Geographies

71ZRRk3Z5OLI’m pleased to be able to share the news that Henri Lefebvre’s book Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche or the Realm of Shadows is forthcoming in English translation with Verso in early 2020. It’s not yet up on the Verso site, but their US distributors have it listed, and it’s in some online stores.

I’ve known about this book for quite some time now – it’s in a very fine translation by David Fernbach, and it has an introduction by me. The cover is interesting too. I’m really pleased that this book will finally be available in English. It’s one of my favourite books by Lefebvre, and along with Metaphilosophy, one of his key philosophical works. It was published in 1975, immediately after The Production of Space, and just before his epic four-volume De l’État.

With the translation of Lefebvre’s philosophical writings, his stature in the English-speaking world continues to…

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Martín Arboleda — Planetary Mine: Territories of Extraction Under Late Capitalism (Verso, forthcoming January 2020)

So, I am breaking the silence on this blog again to share the good news that Martín Arboleda’s Planetary Mine: Territories of Extraction Under Late Capitalism will finally be out with Verso early next year — probably one of the books I am more excited to read soon, blending a political economy of extractive capitalism with planetary urbanization theory.

Planetary_mine_a

Planetary Mine rethinks the politics and territoriality of resource extraction, especially as the mining industry becomes reorganized in the form of logistical networks, and East Asian economies emerge as the new pivot of the capitalist world-system. Through an exploration of the ways in which mines in the Atacama Desert of Chile—the driest in the world—have become intermingled with an expanding constellation of megacities, ports, banks, and factories across East Asia, the book rethinks uneven geographical development in the era of supply chain capitalism. Arguing that extraction entails much more than the mere spatiality of mine shafts, Planetary Mine points towards the expanding webs of infrastructure, of finance, and of struggle, that drive resource-based industries.

You can download earlier material by Arboleda related to this project on the Urban Theory Lab’s publications website, and here is a presentation of some of the material from the book:

Posted in Planetary urbanization, Political economy, Teoría urbana, Urban Theory Lab, Urbanización | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Henrik Ernstson and Erik Swyngedouw (eds.) Urban Political Ecology in the Anthropo-obscene: Interruptions and Possibilities

Henrik Ernstson and Erik Swyngedouw (eds.) Urban Political Ecology in the Anthropo-obscene: Interruptions and Possibilities, out today with Routledge — extraordinary set of contributions!

https://images.tandf.co.uk/common/jackets/agentjpg/978113862/9781138629196.jpgUrban Political Ecology in the Anthropo-obscene: Interruptions and Possibilities centres on how to organize anew the articulation between emancipatory theory and political activism.

Across its theoretical and empirical chapters, written by leading scholars from anthropology, geography, urban studies, and political science, the book explores new political possibilities that are opening up in an age marked by proliferating contestations, sharpening socio-ecological inequalities, and planetary processes of urbanization and environmental change. A deepened conversation between urban environmental studies and political theory is mobilized to chart a radically new direction for the field of urban political ecology and cognate disciplines: What could emancipatory politics be about in our time? What does a return of the political under the aegis of equality and freedom signal today in theory and in practice? How do political movements emerge that could re-invent equality and freedom as actually existing socio-ecological practices? The hope is to contribute discussions that can expand and rearrange critical environmental studies to remain relevant in a time of deepening depoliticization and the rise of post-truth politics.

Urban Political Ecology in the Anthropo-obscene will be of interest to postgraduates, established scholars, and upper level undergraduates from any discipline or field with an interest in the interface between the urban, the environment, and the political, including: geography, urban studies, environmental studies, and political science.

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Intervention – “Changing the Question from ‘The End of Austerity?’ to ‘What Ends in Austerity?’”

AntipodeFoundation.org

Ruth Raynor
School of Architecture, Planning, and Landscape, Newcastle University
Ruth.Raynor@Newcastle.ac.uk

A short break from ceaseless punditry on “Brexit” was given over to chancellor Phillip Hammond’s declaration of the “end of austerity” in the UK. Of course this comment on the autumn budget, made at the end of October, has been met with scepticism. Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies told the BBC (2018): “Arguably he’s just about got to the absolute minimal definition of ending austerity but it’s certainly nothing like a bonanza for the rest of the public services”. And what does it mean to make plans for the future amidst the uncertainty of Brexit? The two events can hardly be separated (Fetzer 2018; Goodwin and Heath 2016). What we are seeing is not the end of actually existing austerity but the end of austerity’s discursive/affective usefulness for a government in chaos. Use has been shifted…

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Advance copy of Shakespearean Territories (University of Chicago Press, 2018) received — Progressive Geographies

I’ve just received an advance copy of Shakespearean Territories (University of Chicago Press, 2018). The book has been a long time in production, and the final stages were delayed by paper shortages and printer problems in the US. I’ve been told that warehouse copies will follow, which usually the sign for when the book is […]

via Progressive Geographies

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