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Outcast Cities: Displacement in (and of) Urban Theory AAG Annual Meeting, Chicago, April 21-25, 2015 Sponsored by the Urban Geography Specialty Group Organizers: D. Asher Ghertner, Rutgers University, [log in to unmask] Austin Zeiderman, London School of Economics, [log in to unmask] Outline: Displacement is perhaps the operative term in urban theory. Its genealogy can be traced through early sociological studies of mass migration to the rapidly industrializing cities of Western Europe (Durkheim, 1893; Simmel, 1903), the Chicago School’s focus on the destruction of personal and collective identity in American cities (Wirth, 1938), Ruth Glass’s (1964) observation of the middle-class “invasion” of London’s “shabby, modest mews and cottages,” Henri Lefebvre’s (1991) preoccupation with the disruptive effects of urbanization on the countryside, and David Harvey’s (2002) coinage of the phrase “accumulation by dispossession” to update “primitive accumulation” for a decidedly more urban world. We today witness both an expansion of the displacement lexicon, as well as new forms of “transnational trespassing” that push existing terms beyond the geographies within which they were developed. Argentine shantytown experiences are now read through the lens of “territorial stigma” in the Bronx (Auyero, 2001), while American gated communities are understood through Brazilian models of urban security (Low, 2004). Informality has become a truly “transnational perspective” of urban comparison (Roy and AlSayyad, 2004), while gentrification theory has been applied extensively beyond the north Atlantic, postindustrial geographies within which it emerged (Lees, 2012). Across diverse historical conjunctures and geographical locations, theorizing socio-spatial displacement continues to be the preeminent business of urban scholarship. This panel seeks to mobilize “displacement” as a way to examine the theorizing practices of urban studies and the creative ways in which urban theory is being remade as it is “cast out” in the world. Building on recent challenges to the implicitly northern locus of urban theory (Roy, 2008; Sheppard et al., 2013; Zeiderman, 2013; Ghertner, 2014) and the turn towards comparative urbanism (McFarlane, 2010; Robinson, 2011), we ask: What happens when concepts of displacement are themselves “displaced” onto new empirical terrain? What conceptual and political possibilities are opened, or foreclosed, when the privatization of public housing, the clearance of squatter settlements, and tenant evictions are theorized as “accumulation by dispossession”? What processes are illuminated when “informality,” an analytic developed in post-colonial contexts, is applied to the study of street vendors in New York or day laborers in London? What analytical insights are revealed, or concealed, when diverse experiences of insecure tenure and marginal shelter are subsumed under the category “slum”? While urbanization may be becoming increasingly “planetary” in scale and scope (Brenner, 2014), this session solicits contributions that resist treating the urban experience as either general or generalizable. We invite papers that offer grounded insights into processes, experiences, and meanings of displacement, or that critically interrogate existing theories used to understand it. We specifically request papers that seek to: - Challenge, modify, or explode existing theories of displacement as generalizable and generalized; such theories may include: dual cities, gentrification, accumulation by dispossession, informality, urban revolution, zones of exception, territorial stigmatization, the camp, planet of slums, among others. - Offer geographically specific concepts that elucidate local patterns and experiences of displacement that differ from or cannot be subsumed within meta-theoretical approaches to urbanization. - Offer innovative ways of employing concepts of displacement transnationally, and that do not simply “test” or confirm the applicability of “core” concepts “elsewhere.” - Displace Euro-American urban theory, show the parochialism of seemingly “general” concepts, or otherwise disrupt the existing geography of urban theory. - Challenge the privilege of the “urban” as the site/scale of theory-making, or that put distinctly urban questions of displacement into conversation with rural or agrarian change. - Interrogate displacement’s imagined "others" – inclusion, entitlement, possession, the right to stay, occupy, commons, etc. – and their conceptual and political entanglements with regimes of dispossession. Submission Procedure: Please send abstracts of up to 250 words, including your affiliation, to: [log in to unmask] and [log in to unmask], with “Outcast Cities AAG” as the subject line. The deadline for receipt of abstracts is October 1, 2014. Accepted papers will need to register for the AAG meeting online and will be considered for a special issue or edited volume edited by the organizers. References: Auyero, J. (2001). Poor People’s Politics: Peronist Survival Networks and the Legacy of Evita. Durham: Duke University Press. Brenner, N. (2014). Implosions/Explosions: Towards a Study of Planetary Urbanization. Berlin: Jovis Verlag. Durkheim, E. (1997 [1893]). The Division of Labor in Society. New York: The Free Press. Ghertner, D. A. (2014). “India’s Urban Revolution: Geographies of Displacement Beyond Gentrification.” Environment and Planning A 46: 1554-1571. Glass, R. (1964). “London: Aspects of Change.” Centre for Urban Studies, University College London. Harvey, D. (2002). The New Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lees, L. (2012). "The Geography of Gentrification: Thinking through Comparative Urbanism." Progress in Human Geography 36: 155-171. Lefebvre, H. (1991). The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Low, S. (2004). Behind the Gates: Life, Security, and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America. New York: Routledge. McFarlane, C. (2010). “The Comparative City: Knowledge, Learning, Urbanism.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 34: 725–742. Robinson, J. (2011). “Cities in a World of Cities: The Comparative Gesture.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 35: 1–23. Roy, A. (2008). “The 21st Century Metropolis: New Geographies of Theory.” Regional Studies 43: 819-830. Roy, A. and N. AlSayyad, eds. (2004). Urban Informality: Transnational Perspectives from the Middle East, Latin America, and South Asia. New York: Lexington Books. Sheppard, E., H. Leitner and A. Maringanti (2013). “Provincializing Global Urbanism: A Manifesto.” Urban Geography 34: 893-900. Simmel, G. (1976 [1903]). The Metropolis and Mental Life. New York: Free Press. Wirth, L. (1938). “Urbanism as a Way of Life.” American Sociological Association. Zeiderman, A. (2013). “Living Dangerously: Biopolitics and Urban Citizenship in Bogotá, Colombia.” American Ethnologist 40: 71–87. -------------------------------------------------------------------- D. Asher Ghertner Assistant Professor, Department of Geography Director, South Asian Studies Program Rutgers University 54 Joyce Kilmer Ave, B-238 Lucy Stone Hall Piscataway, NJ 08854 USA Faculty Profile --------------------------------------------------------------------