RC21 CONFERENCE 2013
Resourceful cities
Berlin (Germany), 29-31 August 2013
Humboldt-University Berlin, Institute for Social Science, Dept. for Urban and Regional Sociology
Infrastructures of cityness
If cityness is the city as a thing in the making (Simone), what are the visible and invisible, the material, social and affective structures, for this making? This session explores the concept of infrastructure to ask what connects people and spaces in the city, and what divides them. While scholars have argued that the better an infrastructure functions the harder it is actually to see it (Star, Graham), papers for this session seek to grasp those infrastructures when they become more visible, i.e. when they break down, are contested or when their ruins lie bare on the urban surface. Cities in the global South offer privileged insights into the discussion on urban infrastructures since it is here that a functioning infrastructure has rarely been taken for granted and is the result of a constant improvisation and struggle (Holston, McFarlane). The session thus seeks to capitalize on these differences between the North and the South without essentializing them. It assumes that structures that keep urban life running are often informal, ephemeral, or even illicit – and need to be conceptualized as infrastructures in their own right. The main question running through this session is: how can we conceptualize infrastructures as creating, enabling, or challenging access to crucial resources of urban life, be they material, affective, political or otherwise.
Session Organizers
Dr. Christine Hentschel, Stadt- und Regionalsoziologie, Philosophische Fakultät III, Inst. für Sozialwissenschaften, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Unter den Linden 6, 10099 Berlin, E: christine.hentschel@hu-berlin.de
Dr. Karen Rodríguez, Universidad de Guanajuato, México, Visual Arts Department, Ex-Hacienda de Durán No. 9, Col. Mellado, Guanajuato, GTO 36010 Mexico, E: karen.rodriguez@sit.edu
« back
