CALL FOR APPLICATIONS FOR SUMMER SCHOOL ON COMPARATIVE URBAN STUDIES, BERLIN, AUGUST 2013Home » Abstracts & Syllabus » Programme » Scholars » Application Form » Accommodation information » Getting around in BerlinABSTRACTS AND SYLLABUS Saturday 17th August 2013 Ares KalandidesBerlin between regional inequalities and the European crisis Abstract: Few cities in Europe have been hyped as much as Berlin in the past decade or so. Indeed, recent figures show a significant positive development in many fields: power, population, employment etc. As the capital of the largest EU economy it also comes to play an imporant political and symbolic role. Yet, this heroic rhetoric conceals some important spatial inequalities at several levels. In this presentation I will show the tension between on the one hand Berlin's "success" and on the other the growing internal inequalities, but also the disparities between Berlin and other German and Eruopean regions. Required reading(s) Cochrane, Allan and Passmore, Adrian (2001). Building a national capital in an age of globalisation:the case of Berlin. Area, Vol. 33, No. 4, pp. 341–352. Sunday 18th August 2013 BERLIN – PhD PRESENTATIONS Christine BarwickBridging out and bridging back - Networks of the Turkish-German middle classes in Berlin In this presentation I will examine networks of Turkish-German middle classes in Berlin. Thereby, the networks of stayers – people who have been and continue living in a socioeconomically disadvantaged area – are compared to those of movers – people who have moved out of a resource-poor into a resource-rich neighborhood. Julia NastResourceful cities? Organizational Inequality in Berlin’s Educational Infrastructure Using the case of Berlin, this presentation will argue for an organizational perspective on urban exclusion for understanding inequality in times of urban marginality. Comparing publicly-funded educational institutions in deprived and privileged neighborhoods in Berlin, the presentation discusses how the urban and its infrastructural provisions interact materially and symbolically to deepen social inequality within cities. In doing so, the presentation makes a plea for structured comparative approaches using quantitative data as well as ethnographic research. Nihad El-KayedPolitical Participation of Immigrants – The Local Context The presentation will focus on the question how the local context affects the political inclusion of immigrants. Previous research on the conditions of immigrant political participation has, besides emphasizing the influence of personal and group resources, pointed to the importance of local networks and organizations. While past research has tended to conceptualize these local conditions of political participation on the level of whole cities opportunities for political participation differ also in cities: Different neighborhoods offer different opportunities for different population groups e. g. because local networks of various groups are distributed unevenly across the city. Connecting to this the presented phd-project wants to examine the local conditions for political participation of immigrants on the neighborhood level by asking: How do contextual conditions on the neighborhood level influence the political participation of immigrants? What do these local differences mean for conceptions of citizenship which are mostly understood to be located at the national level? In the project this question will be examined through a comparison between four different neighborhoods with different contextual conditions. The project will be conducted by using quantitative as well as qualitative methods. Henrik SchulzeThe Limits of Social Relationships This presentation will explore the different views of residents regarding their gentrified neighborhoods of Berlin Prenzlauer Berg from a conflict perspective. Especially among one group (mostly but not always old-timer) I found evidence of a strong place-based collective memory which has a deep impact on their perception and assessment of the neighborhood of today while the other group doesn’t share or lacks these memories. The consequences are rival interpretations and symbolic conflicts about their neighborhood. Both groups tend to avoid relationships or at least social proximity, despite their often similar status in particular with regard to their cultural capital. The research shows that these groups were not always divided along the line of newcomer and old-timer or eastern vs. western socialization as supposed in the public discourse. While one group construct their contemporary urban place of today the other try to reconstruct a “lost community”. Lisa VollmerTenant Protest in Berlin – Processes of Politicization Since the Financial Crisis in 2008 a new range of tenant protest groups emerged in the rapidly gentrifying city of Berlin. Departing from their personal affectedness by failures of the housing market they quickly transcend to a political understanding of what they are doing. The presentation will introduce this groups and the methodology adopted to investigate this process of politicization. Monday 19th August 2013 Participants presentations on their own research and their urban research sites Tuesday 20th August 2013 Mixed methods in the study of shrinking and growing cities Jeremy SeekingsMixed methods: Measurement, precision and causation Pearce, Lisa D. (2012) “Mixed Methods Inquiry in Sociology” American Behavioral Scientist, 56. Further reading Alexander, Peter, et al. Class in Soweto. Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press (2013). Seekings, Jeremy. 'Perceptions of Class and Income in Post-Apartheid Cape Town'. CSSR Working Paper 198 (Cape Town: Centre for Social Science Research, University of Cape Town) (2007). Harper, Sarah, and Jeremy Seekings. 'Claims on and Obligations to Kin in Cape Town, South Africa'. CSSR Working Paper 272 (Cape Town: Centre for Social Science Research, University of Cape Town) (2010). Matthias BerndtWhat is Urban Shrinkage? The session will discuss the conceptual basis for the explanation of urban shrinkage. It will examine the reasons for population losses in different contexts and discuss how these relate to popular concepts used in the field of urban studies. The session will demonstrate that universal explanations of what is essentially a both local and place-specific and a universal phenomenon should be avoided. Instead of an invariant ‘process of shrinkage’, I call for acknowledging a ‘pluralist world of shrinkages’ and argue for exploring the causes and dynamics of urban shrinkage in a case- and context-sensitive way. This demands flexibility with methodological approaches and a mix of qualitative and quantitative techniques. Required Reading(s) Haase, A., Bernt, M., Mykhnenko, V., Großmann, K.(2013, forthcoming), Varieties of shrinkage in European cities. European Urban and Regional Studies. Recommended reading(s) Martinez-Fernandez, C., Audirac, I., Fol S. and Cunningham-Sabot, E. (2012), Shrinking Cities: Urban Challenges of Globalization. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 36: 213–225. Wednesday 21st August 2013 The socio-political construction of urban problems and urban policy. Qualitative approaches to area-based policies and participatory governance Claire Colomb / Henrik LebuhnThis session will focus on the critical evaluation of urban policy interventions (i.e. area-based policies) devised by various tiers of government (in cooperation with other actors) to respond to particular urban social problems. It builds on a social-constructivist approach to urban problems and public policy to introduce various qualitative methods and approaches to urban policy analysis and evaluation. In the first part of the session, Claire Colomb will introduce the concept of ‘urban policy’ and the social-political construction of ‘urban problems’ and of policy responses, building on various examples from Europe and North-America. Two sets of approaches for a critical analysis of contemporary urban policies will then be presented and discussed: applying (critical) discourse analysis to unpack the assumptions upon which urban policies are built; researching urban ‘policy mobilities’ to trace the global circulation of urban policy models. In the second part of the session, Henrik Lebuhn will focus on the dynamics of community involvement and public participation in urban policies (and more widely in urban governance) by discussing the opportunities and limits of participatory instruments and channels, often mediated through area-based policies such as the Socially Integrative City policy in Germany. Using examples from Berlin, and drawing from comparative research, we will ask who participates and what are the power relations and power differentials that impact on the ability to participate in meaningful ways? In which ways does participatory governance shape the meaning of participation, and what is its impact on the types of claims that can be advanced? Compulsory readings Part I Part II Thursday 22nd August 2013 17:00-18:30 (after the second Berlin excursion) Kanishka Goonewardena / Henrik Lebuhn / Margit MayerSocial Movements and the City. A Conversation with Kanishka Goonewardena, Henrik Lebuhn, and Margit Mayer about New Perspectives on Urban Research and Activism. In recent years, urban social movements have proliferated significantly. Especially the 'Right to the City Movement' has put social movement research back onto the agenda. However, urban scholars are presented with a variety of challenges ranging from a new complexity of movements and mobilizations, to competing concepts and methodological problems. In this session, we will meet for an in-depth discussion with Kanishka Goonewardena, Henrik Lebuhn, and Margit Mayer about current debates, new research perspectives, and methodological challenges in the field. Required Reading(s) Boudreau, J-A, Mayer, M. (2012): Social Movements in Urban Politics: Trends in Research and Practice, in: Oxford Handbook on Urban Politics, pp. 273-291 Recommended reading(s) CITY (2009): Special Issue: Cities for People, not for Profit, 13.2 Friday 23rd August 2013 Expressing inequalities, changing the urban form (qualitative interviews/urban ethnography) Talja BloklandEthnography and Qualitative Interviewing in Urban Research In this session, we discuss the methods of ethnographic fieldwork and qualitative interviewing in two parts. In the part on ethnography, two themes will be discussed. First, the theme of getting access, building relationships and ethics in the field, whereby Blokland relies on experiences of her own fieldwork in the USA from 2001 to 2004, a project on the ways in which residents of a US housing project and its adjacent middle class area create resources in the city, the various ways they use for doing so and the ways in which these practices are in- and exclusive. Using examples from her research, she asks how do you develop a research strategy that works for you as a scholar but is respectful and establishes some equilibrium between distance and engagement, especially with people living vulnerably under very difficult conditions? In the second part of this introduction, Blokland takes a slightly more general approach, and discusses the question of ‘evidence’ in relation to ethnography. Using one empirical excerpt and two rather contradictory theoretical approaches, she starts off the discussion on the nature of ‘evidence’ in social science. Required Reading(s) Blokland, T. (2012) Blaming the poor nor the middle classes Recommended reading(s) Blokland, T. (2008) Facing violence Birgit zur NiedenMethods and methodology in research on school choice in Berlin In the session we will reflect on methodological questions and learn about the application of qualitative methods in conflictive research fields like processes of stigmatization and exclusion around education and public schools. The discussion will focus on the example of an on-going research project on the primary school-choice of migrant parents in recently gentrified areas of Berlin. In mainstream public and scientific discourse since the PISA surveys their children are implicitly or explicitly constructed as being a risk or hindrance for the education of other, namely German middleclass kids. While studies on school-choice usually take the perspective of the majority parents, the presented research looks on how minority parents use their resources and deal with stigmatisation and institutional exclusion within the German migration society. Required reading(s) Noreisch, Kathleen (2007): Choice as Rule, Exception and Coincidence: Parents' Understandings of Catchment Areas in Berlin. Urban Studies 1/2007: 1308-1328 Saturday 24th August 2013 Visual Urban Methods Claire Colomb / Christine HentschelCapturing and liberating images for urban analysis Over the past decades, researchers have increasingly focused their analysis on the role of representations, discourses and images of the city, of urban life and of urban change as part of the ‘cultural’, ‘discursive’ and ‘visual’ turns in social sciences. Images of the city are produced in the artistic and cultural spheres, as well as in the political and economic realm of local promotion, civic boosterism and place marketing. Yet “even as they proliferate, images of the city more and more tell us less and less about the city,” writes film theorist Ackbar Abbas. Is there anything left for images to tell us? What can and what can’t we learn from street signs, billboards, guerilla posters, and magazine covers if we want to understand the heartbeats of our cities? This session will focus on two aspects of the use of visual methods in urban research: first, how to analyse images of the city and visual materials in urban research; second, how to collect data in visual form, produce visual materials (e.g. photography or film) or use visual expression (e.g. digital content) for urban social research. The session introduces a number of techniques through which the visual can meaningfully enter urban sociology, anthropology, geography, and governmentality studies. We assume images to be more than mere ‘surface’ and want to think about and practice how to place images in a wider net of relations and infrastructures in the city – be they affective, material, economic, political or social. Required Reading(s) Rose, Gillian (2007) ‘Researching Visual Material: Towards a critical visual methodology’, in Visual Methodologies: An introduction to the interpretation of visual materials, London: Sage, pp. 1-27. Recommended reading(s) Grady, John (2001) ‘Becoming a visual sociologist’, Sociological Imagination, 38(1/2), online at http://wheatoncollege.edu/faculty/files/2012/06/VISUAL_SOCIOLOGIST.pdf Monday 26th August 2013 Mixed methods: examples Tim ButlerEducation as a form of displacement in the contemporary gentrification of East London In this session I will discuss the ways in which education and specifically school choice has become one of the main manifestations of displacement in contemporary East London. I will show how a range of methods can be used to plot the operation of school choice across East London and how this can be related to place of residence and also to educational attainment. I will demonstrate how different data sets can be used to indicate that school choice is dominated by the socially powerful to their advantage and how the social composition of a school drives the attainment of that school. Bringing together – for example – the Pupil Level Annual School Census (PLASC) with the National Pupil Database (NPD) can show how performance is related to a deprivation indicator (Free School Meals) but is not sufficiently nuanced to discriminate between relative levels of affluence. By combining these data sources with geodemographic approaches (such as Mosaic) however, we can use PLASC/NPD to indicate how there is a gradient of school performance that is related to social background with the highest social groups achieving the best results. These approaches nevertheless need to be contextualised by in-depth interview data to understand both how the school landscape is perceived by parents and how they strategise to maximise their position within it. Finally, I also show how published official data on school enrolment procedures can be used to map this emerging 'geography of education'. Required Reading(s) Tim Butler and Chris Hamnett (2011) Ethnicity, Class and Aspiration: Understanding London's New East End Bristol: Policy Press Recommended reading(s) Stephen J Ball (2008) The Education Debate Bristol: the Policy Press Yuri KazepovThe vignettes technique for comparative research Required Reading(s) Barberis Eduardo (2010) Methods and Contexts in the study of Rescaling, In Kazepov Yuri (ed.) Rescaling social Policies towards Multilevel Governance in Europe, Ashgate Farnham, pp. 431-470. Tuesday 27th August 2013 Capital forms and their spatial expressions Talja BloklandSocial networks and how to study them Social networks provide access to resources, spread news and gossips and have taken forms in the digital times that were unknown before. As webs of affiliations, networks are flexible and always changing, but provide important structural barriers and ways of inclusion in society. In this talk, I will explore the concept of social networks, introduce briefly some of the ways in which they are studied, present the way in which social networks were studied in some of the research projects that I did and discuss the challenges of doing actual research on social networks. This is illustrated through the use of various examples of work on social networks in mixed neighborhoods in Rotterdam, the Netherlands and New Haven, Ct, USA. Required Reading(s) Blokland & Van Eijk, Do Do People Who Like Diversity Practice Diversity in Neighbourhood Life? Neighbourhood Use and the Social Networks of ‘Diversity-Seekers’ in a Mixed Neighbourhood in the Netherlands http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13691830903387436 Recommended reading(s) Hannerz, U. (1980) Exploring the city. inquiries toward an urban anthropology, Columbia University Press, New York. Eduardo MarquesUrban poverty, segregation and sociability The relationships between residential segregation and poverty are well established by the urban studies literature. The classical assumption is that territorial isolation reduces economic and social opportunities for segregated poor populations and, consequently, hampers social mobility. This assumption, however, equals territorial isolation and social isolation, what has not been precisely analyzed empirically. The social capital literature tried to solve the problem replacing the empirical analysis of these elements by a metaphor. Required reading(s) Marques, E. 2012. ‘Opportunities and deprivation in the Global South: Poverty, segregation and social networks in São Paulo’. London: Ashgate Pub, chapters 5 to 7. Recommended reading(s) Bichir, R. and Marques, E. Poverty and sociability in Brazilian metropolises: comparing poor people´s personal networks in São Paulo and Salvador. Connecti Échanges sociaux et mécanismes relationnels à São Paulo et Salvador Wednesday 28th August 2013 Theorizing and mapping the urban Neil BrennerVisualizing an urban planet: theory, ideology and representation In what sense is the 21st century world urban? In this lecture, Neil Brenner critiques contemporary ideologies of the "urban age," which confront this question with reference to the purported fact that more than 50% of the world's population resides within cities. Against such demographic, city-centric understandings, Brenner argues that the geographies of 21st century urbanization can no longer be conceptualized with reference to cities, metropolitan regions or even megalopolises, but today encompass diverse patterns and pathways across the planetary sociospatial landscape, from Manhattan to the Matterhorn, from the Pearl River Delta to Mount Everest, from the Nile River valley to the Pacific Ocean, from the subterranean deposits of the Canadian tar sands to the atmospheric pathways of satellites and space junk. Deciphering this variegated urban fabric requires not only new sources of spatial data but a new epistemological and cartographic framework. We will discuss possible avenues for developing such a framework, as well as the possibilities and limitations of new forms of geospatial representation for the analysis of our urbanizing planet. Required Reading(s) Edward Soja and Miguel Kanai, "The urbanization of the world," In The Endless City. Eds. Ricky Burdett and Deyan Sudjic. London: Phaidon. Andrej HolmMapping as a tool for critical urban research “Mapping the frontier line — establishing its shifting location — not only provides a means for mapping the spread of gentrification, but also provides a tool through which local neighbourhood organizations, residents and housing activists can anticipate gentrification and thereby defend themselves against the processes and activities that convert their communities into a new urban frontier.” (Neil Smith, 1996). Required reading(s) H.A. Sandford 1979: Things Maps Don't Tell Us. Geography, Vol. 64, No. 4, 297-302 Recommended reading(s) Elvin, Wyly, and DanielHammel2005: Mapping neo-liberal American urbanism. In: R. Atkinson and G. Bridge (Eds):Gentrification in a Global Context: The New Urban Colonialism. London: Routledge, pp.18-38 Thursday 29th Saturday 31st August 2013 RC21 Conference “Resourceful Cities” Sunday 1st September 2013 Methods of comparing south and north urban ethnographies Suzanne M. HallWriting Urban Ethnography: spatial texts This workshop explores the pleasures of reading and writing urban ethnography, and will focus on a range of short texts, taken from authors who capture the essence of space. We will explore ethnographic writing in a broad sense, working with texts from novels, non-fiction and academia. Required Reading(s) Hall, S. 2012 'The art of sitting', in 'City Street and Citizen: The measure of the ordinary', London: Routledge Recommended reading(s) McFarlane, Colin 2011 Learning Assemblages (Chapter 1). In Learning the city: knowledge and translocal assemblage. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell; 2011. Christine HentschelUrban fabricating and the fabricating of urban concepts This session invites students to experiment with the notion of urban fabricating and to articulate related ethnographic techniques. Fabricating engages the urban fabric as on-its-way, always-already-there, yet always-changing. The urban fabric encompasses the spatial and the social, the material and the magic, the visible and the invisible urban tissue, the surface and the underneath. But to fabricate the urban is also to invent, to make up, and to recycle; it is to create interim solutions or muddle through when big visions are absent or opportunities limited. Fabricating also involves an aspect of hijacking the “real” or the “planned”. It draws attention to processes emerging outside the script, the law, or the moral order of the city. Required Reading(s) Comaroff, Jean and John L. Comaroff. 2011. Theory from the South: Or, how Euro-America is evolving toward Africa. Chapter 1. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Monday 2nd September 2013 Mike RacoPublishing (with exercises) Yuri KazepovFund-raising
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