Applications are invited for the following session at the RGS-IBG
conference. While broader postcolonial and developmental themes will be
addressed in the session, we are looking for papers that investigate
examples of colonial urban development/improvement.
Call for papers: Ordinary Spaces of Urban Development Conference of the
Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers London 2005
Recent scholarship has criticised a tendency in urban geography to make
analytical generalisations of 'non-western' urban forms (Robinson, 2002).
This session aims to bring together scholars who are interested in thinking
beyond such a parochialist urge and who stress the contingent and
particular nature of these urban forms. This requires attention to the ways
in which different social actors are engaged in 'Improvement' or
'developing others', and how these meanings are contested. These
contingencies arise in a variety of spaces of urban development. For
example:
i) local power networks and the bargaining between them, social
organisations, NGOs, campaigning groups, etc. That is, what Chatterjee has
termed the subaltern negotiations of governmental categories in "political
society" (2004).
ii) Individuals involved in policy implementation, and the tensions that
exist between them and the abstract ideals of development initiatives
iii) The historical momentum of previous development/improvement programmes
iv) The local geographies that must mediate the implementation of general
programmes
Contributors will seek to chart and explore the diverse geographies of
urban development, and may address one or more of the following topics:
- Questioning the role of individual authorship and intentionality within
the implementation of urban development programmes.
- Providing case studies that highlight the effort that goes into urban
planning at the local level and the vocabularies and techniques used by
city dwellers to negotiate with policy makers.
- Historical investigations of colonial or early developmental programmes
that may have contemporary resonances.
Please send a proposal of between 300 and 500 words to both Steve and Colin.
Many thanks
Dr Stephen Legg
Department of Geography
University of Cambridge
Downing Place
Cambridge
CB2 3EN
Email: [log in to unmask]
Dr Colin McFarlane,
Department of Geography,
Open University
Walton Hall,
Milton Keynes
MK7 6AA.
Email: [log in to unmask]
|