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Royal Geographical
Society (with IBG) 2008 Annual Conference,
Call for papers
Negotiating urban
plurality: cross-national urban governance research in
As the European urban landscape becomes ever more complex, academically
and politically prominent, and difficult to compare and contain within
normative structures and debates, this session proposes a critical evaluation
of the practice, role and constitution of cross-national research in the field
of urban governance in
The session aims both to take stock of comparative and cross-national
work and to explore emerging possibilities at its cutting edge. Anglophone
cross-national research on urban governance has long been an integral part of
scholarship concerning European cities and their governance. This has more
often than not been characterised by a particular tried and tested analytical
consensus, oriented primarily around neoliberal and entrepreneurial logics; the
comparison of West European contexts (usually involving the juxtaposition of
empirical and policy cases, possibly at the expense of cross-national theoretical
innovation); and the foregrounding of elite and high-profile urban actors,
spaces and policies.
But the European urban context has undergone a substantial
pluralisation and is marked by a diversity that might be thought to stretch
beyond current analytical conventions. Enlargement, for example, has suddenly
and significantly increased the number of post-socialist cities, raising further
questions about the possible existence of a coherent European
‘urbanness’ and the efficacy of the ideological and political-economic
assumptions often driving comparative and cross-national research. At the same
time the European Union has stepped-up spatial policy, adding momentum to the
notion of a European urban policy, and urgency to calls for policy-relevant
research across national boundaries. Thus two potentially contradictory
patterns converge in
Against a backdrop of pertinent debates (ongoing discussions about the
rescaling and reconfiguration of governance in
At one level, issues familiar to comparative and cross-national
research, such as the problem of language and the need to respect unique local
conditions, might be thought of as acquiring renewed significance as urban
plurality in
1) The role of the European Union in encouraging/influencing/producing
cross-national urban comparison and perspectives as part of integration and enlargement
strategies and discourses.
2) Consequences of and possible strategies for overcoming new
linguistic challenges
3) New impetus for and ways of encouraging cross-national academic
collaboration on urban governance.
4) Potential for and possible challenges associated with the
integration of post-socialist urban governance contexts and perspectives.
5) Ways of blending under-represented national academic positions with
more conventional Anglo-American analytical consensuses.
6) Integrative/combinative cross-national work (research that combines
and integrates varying urban perspectives and positions –
cultural/institutional/empirical/theoretical – cross-nationally)
7) Missing spaces of cross-national urban governance research
(comparative work on non-elite, everyday spaces, for example).
Please send 200 word abstracts on these and other pertinent themes to
Chris Yeomans ([log in to unmask]) by 31st
January 2008.
With apologies for cross-posting and short notice
Chris
**************************************************
Dr Christian Yeomans
Lecturer in Political Geography
tel: 01970 622583
email: [log in to unmask]
web: www.aber.ac.uk/iges/staff/yeomanschristian.shtml
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