_Exploring two decades of urban unrest and urban insecurity
RGS-IBG Annual Conference, Edinburgh, 3rd-5th July 2012
_Co-convened by Geoffrey DeVerteuil (University of Southampton) and Paul Kirkness (University of Edinburgh)
PAPER SESSION (1 session)
Urban unrest over the past two decades can be understood in terms of its relationship to urban insecurity. The assumption is that urban unrest and the multiple forms taken by urban insecurity – of neighborhoods, livelihoods, and life chances - are positively related, and have been compounded by neoliberalization and policies that ‘punish the poor'. Indeed, Wacquant’s chapter on ‘The Return of the Repressed’ in Urban Outcasts (2008) argues that the anatomy of urban unrest lies in the combined logics of ‘ethnoracial injustice’ and ‘economic deprivation and widening social inequalities’. More specifically, we use the 20th anniversary of the Los Angeles unrest/uprising (1992) – but also the more recent resurgence of unrest in cities of advanced economies (e.g. Paris, London, Athens) as well as those of the Global South (e.g. Tunis, Cairo) - as a springboard to critically review and update this relationship. We are concerned with gaining a greater understanding for the motivations that have led to much of the urban unrest since 1992 in order to critically examine the idea of urban unrest itself. We aim to unravel the multiple ways in which 'unrest' has been discursively constituted and we question whether there may be more appropriate ways of describing such phenomena. One of our endeavors is to render an interpretation of urban unrest, spanning over different periods and regions, which is inclusive of those voices that usually remain unheard: the perpetrators of the urban unrest who are framed as 'mindless rioters' and 'looters'.
We are looking for papers that critically examine and expand our understandings of the relationship to include:
- Explorations of the complex and multiple motivations that underlie periods of urban unrest;
- Interpretations of unrest as it is framed from the dominant perspective but also from that of partisan politics (ie. what the conservative and left-leaning interpretations of urban unrest might be and whether they are appropriate understandings of such periods);
- The stigmatization of specific places and the challenges to stigma-labels that emanate from their residents;
- The racialization of the poor and of the neighborhoods in which they reside;
- The link to transformative politics in this age of the ‘post-political’;
- Consumption practices and varying interpretations for urban unrest in neoliberal societies, especially the current economic crisis and the parallel upsurge in discourses of insecurity; and
- The development of police-neighborhood relationships.
Please submit abstracts of approximately 200 words to Geoffrey DeVerteuil ( g.p.deverteuil@soton.ac.uk) and Paul Kirkness (p.kirkness@sms.ed.ac.uk) by 20th January 2012. We look forward to hearing from you.
PAPER SESSION (1 session)
Urban unrest over the past two decades can be understood in terms of its relationship to urban insecurity. The assumption is that urban unrest and the multiple forms taken by urban insecurity – of neighborhoods, livelihoods, and life chances - are positively related, and have been compounded by neoliberalization and policies that ‘punish the poor'. Indeed, Wacquant’s chapter on ‘The Return of the Repressed’ in Urban Outcasts (2008) argues that the anatomy of urban unrest lies in the combined logics of ‘ethnoracial injustice’ and ‘economic deprivation and widening social inequalities’. More specifically, we use the 20th anniversary of the Los Angeles unrest/uprising (1992) – but also the more recent resurgence of unrest in cities of advanced economies (e.g. Paris, London, Athens) as well as those of the Global South (e.g. Tunis, Cairo) - as a springboard to critically review and update this relationship. We are concerned with gaining a greater understanding for the motivations that have led to much of the urban unrest since 1992 in order to critically examine the idea of urban unrest itself. We aim to unravel the multiple ways in which 'unrest' has been discursively constituted and we question whether there may be more appropriate ways of describing such phenomena. One of our endeavors is to render an interpretation of urban unrest, spanning over different periods and regions, which is inclusive of those voices that usually remain unheard: the perpetrators of the urban unrest who are framed as 'mindless rioters' and 'looters'.
We are looking for papers that critically examine and expand our understandings of the relationship to include:
- Explorations of the complex and multiple motivations that underlie periods of urban unrest;
- Interpretations of unrest as it is framed from the dominant perspective but also from that of partisan politics (ie. what the conservative and left-leaning interpretations of urban unrest might be and whether they are appropriate understandings of such periods);
- The stigmatization of specific places and the challenges to stigma-labels that emanate from their residents;
- The racialization of the poor and of the neighborhoods in which they reside;
- The link to transformative politics in this age of the ‘post-political’;
- Consumption practices and varying interpretations for urban unrest in neoliberal societies, especially the current economic crisis and the parallel upsurge in discourses of insecurity; and
- The development of police-neighborhood relationships.
Please submit abstracts of approximately 200 words to Geoffrey DeVerteuil ( g.p.deverteuil@soton.ac.uk) and Paul Kirkness (p.kirkness@sms.ed.ac.uk) by 20th January 2012. We look forward to hearing from you.