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As requested (by Michael Edwards of INURI): ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 25 Jun 1996 09:11:53 +0000 From: Michael Edwards <[log in to unmask]> To: Kris Olds <[log in to unmask]> Cc: keith halfacree <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: INURA and the Exodus Collective: some info. (fwd) Dear Cris Olds - thanks for forwarding the INURA/EXODUS message and keith thanks for intiating it. I was there too for a bit of the meeting and got a lot of sustenace from it. The Exodus video made by Mark Saunders for Channel 4 is very good and, if you circulate again, I suggest you mention it as being avaiable from Mark, Spectacle TV Collective, Thackeray Rd, London SW8 3TW fax 0171 978 1361 for £10. If you have an Emailing-list, could you please also circulate the following?? Biss Newsletter 1996 The International Summer School on the Production of the Built Environment will take place at the Middle East Technical University, Ankara 2 - 7 September 1996 Main theme: Changing social relations in the production of the built environment: class, identity, culture, ethnicity and gender Announcement and Call for ContributionsŠ Social relations in cities all around the world have changed radically in recent years. New mechanisms of inequality and exclusion/inclusion are now at work and new divisions are emerging not only among the urban population but also between cities themselves. Contemporary capitalism takes on global dimensions by challenging an industrial capitalism based upon national economies. It leads to forms of inequality and mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion that appear radically different from those that prevailed, say, some twenty years ago. Re-distributive mechanisms are weakened and polarisation grows. We now know that class relations are multi-faceted, extremely complex and reproduced through a wide variety of mechanisms not strictly limited to the economic sphere. What social agents increasingly do is not simply to rehearse pre-determined rôles and fill in already-given vacant positions in social relations, but to open to contestation the very rôles themselves and generate mechanisms to challenge the existing positions. Social agents can no longer be understood as unified conscious classes, centred merely around the experiences of the workplace, but must be theorised as fragmented identities that are always partial and in the making. Thus the themes culture, identity, ethnicity and gender arise as crucially important areas to which critical social theory cannot remain indifferent, alongside class, in an analysis of social relations. The production and the use of the built environment play a pivotal role in the, still precarious, construction of subjectivity and the generation and contestation of new mechanisms of inequality in material life. Through the mediation of the built environment, social relations are produced and reproduced. This theme should incorporate both the theoretical and empirical analyses of changing social relations in cities in different parts of the world and exemplifying the very fact that the construction of the social is not 'a-spatial' and that of the spatial is not 'a-social'. The adequacy of our conceptual tools developed so far for the analysis of these changing social relations is deeply controversial. The critical point is whether the centrality and determinacy of the point of production in the construction of social consciousness, inevitably leads (in some versions) to a failure to understand the heterogeneity and complexity of today's social relations and forms of subjectivity. Materialist analyses are considered by some to have failed in their attempts to theorise subjectivity and identity in the face of today's rapidly changing and ephemeral social relations. On the other hand it is widely argued (in the Summer School and elsewhere) that the main unifying force in the world is the ubiquitous penetration of capital as an exploitative social relation into almost every corner of the world, leaving few individuals or cultures un-touched. In this context, the analysis of how capital relates to non-capital (i.e. to labour, to family and gender, to natural resources, to cultures and identities) is a crucial task - and a unifying basis for dialogue between people in different situations. These debates and themes are proposed as subject matter of the 1996 meeting. The city where the meeting will be held provides an excellent setting for the study of these complex social relations and in addition for the study of a very strong presence of the state in society and in the built environment.: Ankara is literally a republican dream, a city built from next-to-nothing. Call for Papers If you are thinking of submitting a paper, please send at least a provisional title - plus an abstract if you can. Send simultaneously to Melih Pinarcioglu in London and to Oguz Isik in Ankara to help with the planning of the meeting. (Addresses below.) for new readers What are the Summer Schools on the Production of the Built Environment? These meetings have, since 1979, been a unique forum for scientific discussion and debate among researchers, students and activists concerned with the Production of the Built Environment. They aim at crossing the boundaries between professions and disciplines - architecture, planning and city government, engineering, economics, history, geography - and at linking the experiences of regions and nations. In its first years it met exclusively in Europe (UK four times, Italy, France, West Germany, East Germany, Switzerland) and then began to range more widely (Mexico, Brazil and Soviet Union, but with a distinct European base. Later meetings have included Brussels - hosted by the Commission and La Cambre - Roubaix and Strathclyde. The Summer School is often called "Biss" because it started life as the Bartlett International Summer Schools on the Production of the Built Environment, under the auspices of The Bartlett School, University College London. One of the distinctive features of Biss meetings is the welcoming, cooperative, non-competitive, atmosphere. Further information: London: Michael Edwards and / or Melih Pinarcioglu The Bartlett, UCL, 22 Gordon Street, London WC1H 0QB, UK FAX: +44 (0)171 380 7502 EMAIL: [log in to unmask] EMAIL: [log in to unmask] Ankara: Dr Oguz Isik Department of City and regional Planning, Middle East Technical University, ANKARA, Turkey FAX: (90) 312 210 1250 EMAIL: [log in to unmask] Biss Secretariat General: Martin Schwartz and Jean-Claude Stofer 10 rue Michel Chauvet, 1208 GENEVA, Switzerland FAX: +41 (0)22 346 8261 EMAIL: not available http://www.metu.edu.tr/~www21/biss.html Michael %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%