Workshop: Local Space & Social Conflict
Wednesday, 30.5.2007, 12-18h
Center for Metropolitan Studies, TU Berlin
Social struggles emerge at the local level in the form of conflicts over public and private spaces. The transformation of socio-spatial environments as a result of what is commonly called ‘globalization’ has led to a deepening of social divisions and a re-hierarchization of space. This scalar re-organization becomes particularly visible within large urban centers, since it is here that many of the policies and practices responsible for this transformation have been and are being implemented. In response to intensified interurban competition, policies have shifted towards the attraction of investment, tourism and the middle classes to the inner city, while simultaneously tightening control over the urban poor. Visible poverty as well as non-conformity to norms that advance the above policies is pressurized due to a fear of social instability.
This process is contested. Urban social movements increasingly address the local level. ‘Anti-globalization’ activists highlight the spaces in which a neoliberal political economy is implemented and is at its most vulnerable. Local grassroots initiatives turn against the exclusionary effects of the new urban politics (e.g. gentrification, privatization, or festivalization of urban cultural events) as well as more NIMBY-oriented local initiatives.
We want to explore these issues along the following questions: What are the mechanisms and larger social structures behind local struggles? How and why are certain local conflicts controlled, appeased, ignored or even fostered and induced by state intervention? Which new forms of exclusion are produced? How is and can exclusion and control be contested at the local level?
The focus of the workshop is on cities in Europe and North America. Our goal is to investigate the empirical richness of concrete conflicts, but always in relation to larger social and political-economic processes.
The workshop aims at providing PhD-students and Postdocs from any discipline with an interest in critical urban studies with the opportunity to present and discuss their work in an informal environment.
http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/termine/id=6795