Call for Papers: Collective Life and Urban Space
Research Group Affiliation: Urban Geography Research Group
Sesssion Convenors:
Andrew Barnfield (University College London)
Regan Koch (University College London)
The profound role that urban space plays in the constitution of collective life has
been increasingly recognised by geographers and social theorists. Ontologies that
press toward a greater appreciation of the materialities, rhythms, practices and
processes that given urbanity its texture have been important in this development
(cf. Lefebvre 1991; Massey, Allen and Pile 1999; Graham and Marvin 2001; Amin and
Thrift 2002; Latham and McCormack 2004; Schatzki 2006). Yet these understandings
infrequently unsettle a wider tendency of misgiving that prevails in urban
scholarship whereby cities are overwhelmingly framed as problems or as sites of
decline and alienation (Latham 2003; Lees 2004). One response has been a commitment
to revealing and celebrating urbanity at its social fringes. Groups and practices
considered radical, ‘alternative’ or subversive are regularly the focus of
theoretical and empirical attention. Without wanting to dispel the struggles,
stories and innovations that have emerged from such efforts, too often it seems
explorations of contemporary urban life focus disproportionately on the marginal, or
on ‘edgy’ people doing ‘cool’ things. The remarkable capacity of cities to generate
a tremendous range of social relations, solidarities and new ways of living with or
amongst others becomes all too easily overlooked or suppressed.
In keeping with the conference theme of ‘geographical imaginations’ this session
aims to explore ideas and analyses of the productive role of urban space in
generating new forms of collective life. We deploy the term collective life broadly
to include a range of social bonds however ephemeral or fragile: publics,
communities, friendships, social networks, clubs, interest groups, gatherings and
shared spaces. The intention is to open up a set of discussions within which
collective urban life--however mundane, pleasurable, problematic, improvisatory or
adaptive—can be explored. Underpinning this call is the goal of highlighting the
variety, richness and specificity of collective life in cities around the world—and
to explore how these arrangements and practices become assembled, enhanced or
obstructed and thus emerge in the lived reality of the everyday and the eventful.
We therefore invite theoretical and empirically focused papers---as well as
contributions in the realm of video, poetry, art or sonic expression--that attend to
these questions or relate to the following themes:
* Cities as sets of potentials that circulate unpredictable elements in ongoing
collective challenges and social responses
* Ordinary, banal or even ‘mainstream’ forms of collective life constituted within
urban spaces
* Urban sites of sociality that spark performative improvisations or innovations in
how we live with or among others
* Accounts of urban life that aim not to categorise, glamorise or romanticise but
instead focus on the mesh and mess that living with or amongst others generates
Please provide an abstract of around 250 words to both session convenors - Andrew
Barnfield ([log in to unmask]) and Regan Koch ([log in to unmask])
Call For Papers Deadline : 11-Feb-2011
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