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Apologies for cross-posting ----------------------------------------- *Reminder: Call for papers for RC21 Conference Session: Urban securitisation and the need for humanising alternativesRC21 Leeds Conference ‘Rethinking Global Urban Justice’ Leeds, 11-12 Sept. 2017* We are looking for paper abstracts problematising the provision of urban security across the global North and South, and addressing the need for humanising alternatives to this. Urban security discourses have become more complex while impacting on a wide range of daily urban processes and relations that infiltrate into the political, regulatory and social aspects of urban governance. As terrorism and the war on drugs accentuate security as prevention (Body-Gendrot 2012), technologies of control and surveillance are used in the management of space and control of everyday life (Graham 2010), particularly with regard to ‘problematic’ populations and areas. Thus pacification techniques and community-oriented policing have accompanied socio-economic policies promoting low-wage employment, reconfigured service provision and preventive programs targeting ‘at risk’ groups. Such security initiatives have contributed to the privatisation of public space, and accentuated processes of exclusion via the ‘penalisation’ of welfare (Wacquant 2008), the criminalisation of social policy (Rodger 2008) and the materialisation of security practices in daily life. In response to these developments in urban securitisation, innovative ideas on how to humanise the provision of security are required (Abello Colak and Pearce 2009). The humanisation of security becomes more urgent in the context of deepening inequalities and uncertainties which generate distrust of public institutions and of other citizens. In line with both the ‘urban’ and ‘justice’ themes of the RC21 Conference, this session will explore alternatives to urban securitisation, in support of the articulation of urban security approaches which allow citizens to exercise their rights and participate in the construction of more liveable cities. One such focus may be conviviality, understood as ‘autonomous and creative intercourse among persons, and the intercourse of persons with their environment’ (Illich 1973, 11), suggesting the need to shape spaces of encounter, including public space but also spaces of education, employment, housing and social care. We welcome papers focusing on this and other means to foreground the agency of those at the margins of top-down security debates and strategies. Papers that explore humane alternatives to urban securisation, the benefits of more inclusive regulation, or the tensions between securitisation and humanising alternatives across diverse urban contexts are also welcomed. Please send abstracts by 10 March 2017 to Melanie Lombard: [log in to unmask] ; Valeria Guarneros-Meza: valeria.guarne [log in to unmask] and [log in to unmask] For more information about this conference visit: https://rc21leeds2017.w ordpress.com/ Melanie Lombard Lecturer Department of Urban Studies and Planning University of Sheffield, Western Bank, Sheffield S10 2TN Programme Director, MA Cities and Global Development <http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/usp/taughtpg/courses/cgd/index> Latest publication: Land tenure and conflict in urban Mexico <http://www.seed.manchester.ac.uk/gurc/resources/workingpapers/wp-11/>, GURC Working Paper 11