Making the invisible hyper-visible: Knowledge production and the gendered power nexus in critical urban studies

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 36-50
Author(s):  
Margath A. Walker ◽  
Emmanuel Frimpong Boamah
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Urban Studies ◽  
Cumulative Advantage ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
Invisible Colleges ◽  
Degree Of Dominance ◽  
Gendered Power ◽  
Critical Urban Theory ◽  
Education Academic ◽  
Insight Into

This paper employs the concept of “invisible colleges” to explore the processes through which spaces of critical urban theory are imbricated within a gendered power nexus. It assesses the degree of dominance in hegemonic knowledge production by clusters of scholars, their co-authors, and academic mentors and mentees. Using the example of critical urban theory, we use network graphs to map these concentrated hidden geographies understood collectively as “invisible colleges”. The resultant visualizations reflect the dominance of key scholars and their similarities (e.g. doctoral education, academic mentors, current institutional affiliations, etc.). These heretofore unmapped networks of connectivity provide insight into the masculinized spaces of critical urban theory bringing to the fore important topics for consideration. These include the politics of citation and “double dipping”, or frequent publication in the same journal outlets. In bringing attention to invisible colleges, a concept that has largely escaped attention in urban studies and geography, we highlight the usefulness of visibility as a technology of equity. En route, the paper describes and visualizes some of the impacts of the proliferation of uneven knowledge production through the coalescing of factors such as path dependency, cumulative advantage, expected inequality and the Matthew and Matilda Effects.

Theorizing Regulation-in-City for Homeless People’s Subaltern Strategy and Informality: Societalization, Metabolism, and Classes With(out) Housing

2021 ◽  
pp. 089692052110205
Author(s):  
Mahito Hayashi
Keyword(s):  
Urban Studies ◽  
Urban Form ◽  
Homeless People ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Theoretical Explanation ◽  
Urban Metabolism ◽  
Class Relations ◽  
Housing Consumption ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
Critical Urban Theory

This paper aims to expand critical urban theory and spatialized political economy through developing a new, broad-based theoretical explanation of homelessness and the informal housing of the deprived in public spaces. After reviewing an important debate in geography, it systematicallyreasserts the relevance of class-related concepts in urban studies and, mobilizing post-determinist notions, it shows how a class-driven theory can inform the emergence of appropriating/differentiating/reconciliating agency from the material bedrock of urban metabolism and its society-integrating effect (societalization). The author weaves an urban diagnostic web of concepts by situating city-dwellers—classes with(out) housing—at the material level of metabolism and then in the sociopolitical dynamic of regulation, finding in the two realms urban class relations (enlisted within societalization) and agency formation (for reregulation, subaltern strategies, and potential rapprochement). The housing classes are retheorized as a composite category of hegemonic dwellers who enjoy housing consumption and whose metabolism thus appears as the normative consumption of public/private spaces. Homeless people are understood as a subaltern class who lacks housing consumption and whose metabolism can produce “housing” out of public spaces, in opposition to a hegemonic urban form practiced by the housing classes. These urban class relations breed homeless–housed divides and homeless regulation, and yet allow for agency’s creative appropriation/differentiation/reconciliation. This paper avoids crude dichotomy, but it argues that critical urban theory can productively use this way of theorization for examining post-determinist urban lifeworlds in relation to the relative fixity of urban form, metabolic circuits, and class relations.

scholarly journals Stuck inside the urban with the dialectical blues again: abstraction and generality in urban theory

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 575-592 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Paul D Addie
Keyword(s):  
Urban Studies ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
Internal Relations ◽  
Epistemological Position ◽  
Critical Urban Theory ◽  
Vantage Points

Abstract This article discusses how critical urban theory understands generalisation and particularity by unpacking the process of abstraction. It develops an urban interpretation of dialectics through the philosophy of internal relations to: (i) heuristically examine conceptual and political fissures within contemporary urban studies and (ii) critically recalibrate neo-Marxist planetary urban theorising. Examining the conceptual extension, levels of generality and vantage points of our abstractions can assist in constructively negotiating relations between urban difference and generality. The challenge is not which assertions are true based on a given epistemological position, but which abstractions are appropriate to address specific issues, given the range of politics and possibilities each establishes.

Urban theory with an outside

2017 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 405-419 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tariq Jazeel
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Urban Studies ◽  
Spatial Process ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
City Formation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Value ◽  
The City ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

This paper critically engages planetary urbanization’s claim that it generates ‘Urban Theory Without an Outside’. It argues planetary urbanization is part of the broader ideological terrain of urban studies whose textual field reifies the city, the urban and urbanization as objects and processes of analyses through a kind of ‘methodological urbanization’. The paper argues the conceptual and political value of delineating views from outside urban studies and planetary urbanization – in particular from domains like area studies – that unmoor the primacy of the city, the urban and particularly urbanization in understandings of socio-spatial processes across planetary space. It suggests how these perspectives can usefully act as ‘supplements’ indifferent to urban studies, reminding urban studies of the limits of its own forms of knowledge production in relation to socio-spatial process and city formation. To do this, the paper sketches an anti-colonial history of Colombo, Sri Lanka.

scholarly journals Kulturowa artykulacja nowych idei miejskich

2020 ◽  
pp. 321-338
Author(s):  
Ewa Rewers
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Urban Studies ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Urban Political Ecology ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
Cultural Approach ◽  
Political Economies ◽  
Critical Urban Theory ◽  
Cultural Turn

The way in which cultural approach operates though disciplines of knowledge and urban theories is a central theme of this article. If cultural approach in urban studies worked largely through cultural turn ideas in the end of 20th century, recently works through reinterpreted and expanded concept of culture as a structure/infractructure of urban life. Reflecting the crisis of cultural turn in urban theory in 21st century some authors and disciplines became more interested in the study of the urban political economies, urban political ecology and critical urban theory. Research seeking to explore recent urban crisis as a result of climate changes, growing social inequality and lack of solidarity in global scale has unsurprisingly been diverse and varied. Analitically this moment is compelling because it emphasizes the weakness of cultural factors in the process of articulation of a new urban ideas. This, however, raises a question with respect to much of the most visible results of urban studies and urban theory: are its proponents inclined to accept again the offer of cultural oriented urban studies in terms of cultural materialism, eco-criticism, eco-philosophy, ethics and aesthetics? Are they ready to rethink the relationship between economic and extraeconomic causality in the conditions of global multilevel crisis? This article is therefore primarily a theoretical attempt to articulate how urban theory might be moulded by global urbanisation in crisis.

Openings: The Urban Question as a Scale Question?

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-45
Author(s):  
Neil Brenner
Keyword(s):  
Urban Studies ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Urban Restructuring ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
The Core ◽  
Spatial Restructuring ◽  
Critical Urban Theory ◽  
The City ◽  
Intense Debate ◽  
Geopolitical Context

For over a century, the urban question has generated intense debate on matters of conceptualization, method, and interpretation. Since the 1990s, in the context of debates on post-Fordism, globalization, and urban restructuring, the urban question has been redefined as a question of scale. Why has this scalar redefinition of the urban occurred, and what does this mean for urban theory and research? What are its analytical possibilities and dangers? In what ways does such an approach reframe the long-standing emphasis on the “city” as the core focal point for urban studies? This opening chapter elaborates these questions in intellectual and geopolitical context, thus setting the stage for the explorations of urbanization, state spatial restructuring, and rescaling processes that follow in the rest of the book. This chapter also situates the book’s argument in relation to contemporary debates on abstraction, generalization, comparison, and contextual particularity in critical urban theory.

Critical Urban Theory versus Critical Urban Studies: A Review Debate

2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (5) ◽  
pp. 1904-1917 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Marcuse ◽  
David Imbroscio ◽  
Simon Parker ◽  
Jonathan S. Davies ◽  
Warren Magnusson
Keyword(s):  
Urban Studies ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
Theory Versus ◽  
Critical Urban Theory

scholarly journals The gendered politics of researching military policy in the age of the ‘knowledge economy’

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Sergio Catignani ◽  
Victoria M. Basham
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Knowledge Economy ◽  
Power Relationships ◽  
Potential Contribution ◽  
Publicly Funded ◽  
Gendered Politics ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Gendered Power ◽  
Army Reserves ◽  
Multiple Challenges

Abstract This article explores our experiences of conducting feminist interpretive research on the British Army Reserves. The project, which examined the everyday work-Army-life balance challenges that reservists face, and the roles of their partners/spouses in enabling them to fulfil their military commitments, is an example of a potential contribution to the so-called ‘knowledge economy’, where publicly funded research has come to be seen as ‘functional’ for political, military, economic, and social advancement. As feminist interpretive researchers examining an institution that prizes masculinist and functionalist methodologies, instrumentalised knowledge production, and highly formalised ethics approval processes, we faced multiple challenges to how we were able to conduct our research, who we were able to access, and what we were able to say. We show how military assumptions about what constitutes proper ‘research’, bolstered by knowledge economy logics, reinforces gendered power relationships that keep hidden the significant roles women (in our case, the partners/spouses of reservists) play in state security. Accordingly, we argue that the functionalist and masculinist logics interpretive researchers face in the age of the knowledge economy help more in sustaining orthodox modes of knowledge production about militaries and security, and in reinforcing gendered power relations, than they do in advancing knowledge.

The City-Logic of Resistance: Subverting Urbicide in the Middle East City

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 10-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Stanley
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
Civil Resistance ◽  
Extreme Variant ◽  
Urban Terrain ◽  
Critical Urban Theory ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

Most armed conflict today takes place within urban terrain or within an urbanised context. An extreme variant of such armed conflict is violence perpetrated by external state and non-state forces within the city, known as urbicide. Urbicidal violence deliberately strives to kill, discipline or deny the city to its inhabitants by targeting and then reordering the sociomaterial urban assemblage. Civil resistance within urbicidal violence seeks to subvert the emerging alternative sovereign order sought by such forces. It does so by using the inherent logic of the city in order to maintain/restore the community's social cohesion, mitigate the violence, affirm humanity, and claim the right to the city. This paper investigates the city-logic of civil resistance through examples drawn from the recent urbicidal experiences of Middle East cities such as Gaza, Aleppo, Mosul, and Sana'a. Theoretical insights from the conflict resolution literature, critical urban theory, and assemblage thinking inform the argument.

Exploring the roots of participatory action research: An interview with Dr Marja-Liisa Swantz

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 319-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florence Nyemba ◽  
Minna Mayer
Keyword(s):  
Action Research ◽  
Production Process ◽  
Participatory Action Research ◽  
Women's Studies ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Development Studies ◽  
Participatory Action ◽  
Women’S Studies ◽  
Significant Research ◽  
Insight Into

This article is based on a dialog with Professor Marja-Liisa Swantz, a distinguished participatory action research expert whose work has contributed immensely in the fields of development studies, women's studies, health, and technology internationally. Drawing from her experiences, the conversation provides an insight into how one can grow from a novice researcher to a very distinguished intellectual by staying focused and with a clear grasp of one's aspirations. We also learn from this dialog how participatory action research emerged as the most significant research style that argues in favor of involving participants as research partners in the knowledge production process.

Why is lived experience important for market stewardship? A proposed framework for why and how lived experience should be included in stewarding disability markets

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ariella Meltzer ◽  
Helen Dickinson ◽  
Eleanor Malbon ◽  
Gemma Carey
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Policy Research ◽  
Market Forces ◽  
Research Knowledge ◽  
Key Points ◽  
People With Disability ◽  
And Control ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Inputs And Outputs

Background: Many countries use market forces to drive reform across disability supports and services. Over the last few decades, many countries have individualised budgets and devolved these to people with disability, so that they can purchase their own choice of supports from an available market of services.Key points for discussion: Such individualised, market-based schemes aim to extend choice and control to people with disability, but this is only achievable if the market operates effectively. Market stewardship has therefore become an important function of government in guiding markets and ensuring they operate effectively.The type of evidence that governments tend to draw on in market stewardship is typically limited to inputs and outputs and has less insight into the outcomes services do or do not achieve. While this is a typical approach to market stewardship, we argue it is problematic and that a greater focus on outcomes is necessary.Conclusions and implications: To include a focus on outcomes, we argue that market stewards need to take account of the lived experience of people with disability. We present a framework for doing this, drawing on precedents where people with disability have contributed lived experience evidence within other policy, research, knowledge production and advocacy contexts.With the lived experience evidence of people with disability included, market stewardship will be better able to take account of outcomes as they play out in the lives of those using the market and, ultimately, achieve greater choice and control for people with disability.<br />Key messages<br /><ul><li>Market stewardship is key to guiding quasi-markets, including in the disability sector;</li><br /><li>Evidence guiding market stewardship is often about inputs and outputs only;</li><br /><li>It would be beneficial to also include lived experience evidence from people with disability;</li><br /><li>We propose a framework for the inclusion of lived experience evidence in market stewardship.</li></ul>

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