We share two new Calls for Papers for #POLLEN24 Lund-Sweden. More information is below. Call for Papers – Urban Frontiers. From Illegal Land Occupation to Legalized Property Theme: Political ecologies of…
We share two new Calls for Papers for #POLLEN24 Lund-Sweden. More information is below.
Call for Papers – Urban Frontiers. From Illegal Land Occupation to Legalized Property
Theme: Political ecologies of interconnected crises
Organizers: Kasper Hoffmann and Christian Lund, University of Copenhagen
Urban property development in the Global South often starts out in illegality and only subsequently becomes legal. It happens when people code and re-code access to land and then conjure up legality for facts already existing on the ground. The panel explores how this happens.
The issue is urgent. The world’s population is increasingly urban. Across the globe, cities struggle to accommodate the growing demand for land, housing, and public services. Yet, mainstream research on land and urbanization in the Global South is characterized by two shortcomings. First, questions on rural and urban land and property seem to live separate lives. Rural land is seen as a productive resource, and competition and land grabs as foundational conflicts in human development (White et al. 2014). Urban land, by contrast, is seen in technical terms of rapid urbanization, and the challenges of providing sufficient housing, infrastructure, and service (Fox and Goodfellow 2016, Ghertner and Lake 2021).
Yet, if we fail to understand the significance of the institutional transformation of urban land, we will not understand the future political landscape in the Global South, as landed property is a key pivot around which government and citizenship turn. With this panel, we seek to bring these important analyses on the institutional dynamics of rural property to town. Second, the work on urban land has an unfortunate focus on the distinction between formal/informal, and legal/illegal (Amankwaa and Gough 2022, Banks et al. 2020, McFarlane 2012, Storey 2021). These distinctions are diversions and conceal more than they reveal. They create a simplistic dichotomy where the urban poor are confined to informality and reproduce colonial categories. Yet, these categories are not fixed or stable, and they are not created by governments. Instead, when people attribute the qualities of law and legal to decisions, settlements are understood to be legal and have that effect. Consequently, by imitating and emulating law as they imagine it to be, people effectively contribute to its construction and become law makers in the process alongside government. In other words, law is being made from below as well as from above. Over time, non-legal settlements may become ‘established facts,’ too difficult and expensive to undo. This creates a paradox: Much of urban development does not follow official legal plans. Instead, real urban development is made to appear legal when land users and public authorities dress up mere access and possession as property. In other words, it becomes legalized. Such processes are contentious to the hilt because key questions of property, identity, and public authority ride on them. Hence, the image of the law as a source of universal justice and order obscures its actual operations. Rather than a source of universal justice, the law legitimates the actual distribution of rights, resources, and privileges.
We invite scholars, activists, journalists, and artists from across the Globe to send their contributions on this key subject to facilitate mutual learning. The call welcomes contribution that examines how different actors create law, fragment by fragment, constructing what they believe to be already there and the consequences of these processes. Moreover, they are but the latest episodes of long-term historical processes. Therefore, we invite contributions that explore the legacy of colonial processes of legalization on contemporary processes of rulemaking.
In short, we are interested in:
If you are interested, please send an abstract between 150 and 200 words to kh@ifro.ku.dk or clund@ifro.ku.dk. Deadline for the submission of abstracts: January 15th, 2024.
References
Amankwaa, E.F. and K. Gough, 2022, ‘Everyday contours and politics of infrastructure. Informal governance of electricity access in urban Accra.’ Urban Studies 59(12). Pp. 2468-88
Banks, N., M. Lombard, and D. Mitlin, 2020, ‘Urban informality as a site of critical analysis.’ The Journal of Development Studies 56(2). Pp. 223-38
Fox, S., and T. Goodfellow, 2016, Cities and Development. London, Routledge.
Ghertner, A.D., and R.W. Lake (eds), 2021, Land Fictions. The Commodification of Land in City and Country. Ithaca, Cornell University Press.
McFarlane, C., 2012, ‘Rethinking informality. Politics, crisis, and the city.’ Planning Theory and Practice 13(1). Pp. 89-108
Storey, A. D., 2021, ‘“It’s a long walk to development.” Navigating capacity and time in Cape Town’s informal settlements.’ Human Organization 80 (2):152-161.
White, B., S. M. Borras Jr., R. Hall, I. Scoones, and W. Wolford (eds), 2013, The New Enclosures: Critical Perspectives on Corporate Land Deals. London, Routledge.
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Call for Papers – Exploring the Pluriverse: Experiments in radical alternatives from eco-swaraj to degrowthure
Keywords: pluriverse; radical alternatives; global tapestry of alternatives; prefigurative politics
This call for papers seeks to explore the work of prefigurative politics in creating a pluriverse – a world where many worlds fit in. We invite submissions working on what we define as radical alternatives to the destructive hegemonic system. The session is hosted by the Global Tapestry of Alternatives, a process that has been working to create spaces of collaboration and exchange, in order to learn about and from each other, critically but constructively challenge each other, offer active solidarity to each other. It seeks to facilitate people seeking transformative change, hopefully eventually converging into a critical mass of alternative ways that can support the conditions for the radical systemic changes we need.
We invite both theories of radical transformation as well as papers grounded in community and activist articulations of what radical alternatives and a pluriverse are. We consider the pluriverse as an on-going experimental and organically developing process and the session offers the opportunity to co-develop an inclusive and dynamic knowledge and praxis of progressive alternatives. We also seek contributions that highlight the struggle of pluriversal transition from, for example, different cosmologies or understandings of alternatives to the mundane and practical elements of language and time zones.
Experiments in the majority and minority world are welcome including discussions of philosophies such as uBuntu, Buen Vivir, Eco Swaraj; Degrowth; and commoning. We are also interested in experiements to do with solidarity economies; health and healing; radical democracy; emancipatory pedagogy amongst others.
This panel is envisioned as a single-site, 90-minute panel in Lund (Sweden) with 3-4 presentations, but depending on received abstracts it could take on a hybrid form. Please send your proposed title and abstract (max. 200 words) to vasna.ramasar@hek.lu.se by the 05th January 2024, and we will respond shortly.
References
Dinerstein, A. C. (2022). Decolonizing Prefiguration: Ernst Bloch’s Philosophy of Hope and the Multiversum. In The Future is Now (pp. 47-64). Bristol University Press.
Escobar, A. (2018). Designs for the pluriverse: Radical interdependence, autonomy, and the making of worlds. Duke University Press.
Gills, B. K., & Hosseini, S. H. (2022). Pluriversality and beyond: consolidating radical alternatives to (mal-) development as a commonist project. Sustainability Science, 17(4), 1183-1194.
Kothari, A. (2020). Earth vikalp sangam: proposal for a global tapestry of alternatives. Globalizations, 17(2), 245-249.
Kothari, A., Demaria, F., & Acosta, A. (2014). Buen Vivir, degrowth and ecological Swaraj: Alternatives to sustainable development and the green economy. Development, 57(3-4), 362-375.