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The Janus face of urban governance: State, informality and ambiguity in Berlin
Abstract
Informality is both produced by and an inherent characteristic of state practices. It thus requires close scrutiny of the structures, nature and uneven distribution of power between state and society. Using a focus on three different parks in Berlin, this article demonstrates how informality is appropriated and institutionalized in the planning regimes of pioneer urbanism at Tempelhofer Freiheit; how in everyday law enforcement, legality is stretched by policing illegitimate activities in zones of exceptions at Görlitzer Park; and why, in Preußenpark (aka Thai Park), the state embodies a theatricality of polyvalent performances, turning a blind eye to certain activities which are not tolerated in other settings. This analysis reveals the Janus-faced governance of social practices even as it exposes the inherent ambiguities in everyday statehood, in which the state is regulating activities that are beyond its rules and, at the same time, violating its own internal rules.
... This 'uneven modernisation' (Boudreau and Davis, 2017) implies that informal processes, understood as flexibility, exist behind the very ideals of the state-formalisation. These include internal contradictions (Haid, 2017), suspension of rules (Roy, 2005) and (re-)negotiability of decisions (McFarlane, 2012). ...
... The 'ambiguous' operations of the state authority in the governance of a park observed by Haid (2017) provide an example of what the political, practical processes of (in)formalisation might look like. Haid (2017) reports about food selling activities at a park in Berlin that were taking place even though residents complaint of smells, left garbage, and occupancy had led the local government to create a set of rules to restrict this particular form of activities. ...
... The 'ambiguous' operations of the state authority in the governance of a park observed by Haid (2017) provide an example of what the political, practical processes of (in)formalisation might look like. Haid (2017) reports about food selling activities at a park in Berlin that were taking place even though residents complaint of smells, left garbage, and occupancy had led the local government to create a set of rules to restrict this particular form of activities. For Haid, these activities continued to exist in part because the government's response to them involved ambiguities: the government officers were reluctant to eliminate the activities or give them formal permission. ...
The ongoing change in sport participation patterns is discussed often in the context of ‘informal’ sport on the rise and ‘formal’ sport struggling to attract more participants. While studies have revealed both ‘self-organised’ and ‘regulated’ aspects of ‘informal’ sport and indicated complex power relations in its governing processes, the possibly incongruent terms of ‘informal’ and ‘formal’ as modifiers of sport participation have not been fully explored. Drawing on an approach to (in)formality developed in urban studies, we aim to develop an alternative view to (in)formality in sporting contexts with which to better understand the governing processes of sport participation. This aim is better achieved after highlighting the risk of the terms ‘informal’ and ‘formal’, and associated binaries – organised/unorganised (self-organised), regulated/unregulated, and institutionalised/non-institutionalised – that can substantialise in/formality in a particular domain of sporting activities. The alternative view repositions (in)formality as processes rather than categories of participation forms. This perspective can reveal power relations manifested in the negotiation practices that stabilise and destabilise sporting resources, institutions, and even the differentiation between ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ sport itself, which will lead to unequal opportunities for participation.
... However, critical urban research questions state incapacity in the face of informality, demonstrating that state actors play an active role in shaping urban informality. For instance, several researchers focus on state practices for governing informality in urban spaces, through the study of processes of negotiation (Roy 2005), social practices (Haid 2017), and gray spaces (Yiftachel 2009). According to these scholars, urban informality is a social phenomenon that emerges as a linking device between the inhabitants of the city who are subjected to the spatial control of the state. ...
... From this perspective, governing practices are not linear and are prone to shifts depending on the political and economic interests of the stakeholders (Graaff & Ha 2015;Haid 2017;Roy 2005). The exploration of this situation has been mainly addressed in academic research focused on street vending and informal housing (Huang, Zhang & Zue 2018;Roy, 2005;Devlin 2018;Wu, Zhang & Webster 2013;Xue & Huang 2015). ...
... Either directly or tangentially, law development and enforcement have become a tangible manifestation of the state's capacity to intervene in the market economy, and tax it. Since regulation as a governing practice is affected by the political and economic interests of the stakeholders (Graaff & Ha 2015;Haid 2017;Roy 2005), it tends to be characterized as a cyclical process (Crossa 2018; Le Galès & Ugalde 2018;Roever 2012). According to Tucker and Devlin, this materializes in negotiability, forbearance, and the privatization of public spaces for street vending (2019: 463). ...
Based on Charles Tilly’s definition of state-making, this article develops the concept of legalized extortion to understand the expansion of the state’s fiscal capacity towards informal street vending. It presents an in-depth analysis of the case of the textile cluster of Gamarra (Lima, Peru), where the local government chose to profit from informal street vending by providing them labor security in exchange for extra ‘taxes.’ The study reveals the construction of a state-led governance regime where the boundary between taxation and extortion is blurred. It delves into the co-governance arrangements and extra-legal practices, and looks into the structural factors that sustain this governance regime. In doing so, the study contributes to theoretical debates about the governance of informal economies in Latin American cities and provides evidence about how the state’s fiscal capacity is employed for managing the use of public spaces for informal street trade.
... Similarly, Delvin (2011) reminds us how and how far related regulatory ambiguities and informal practices of the state are intrinsic to the management of street vending in New York, problematising the north/south binary in understanding the state-informality nexus. Hence, it becomes evident to see informality as practices (McFarlane, 2012), processes (Schinder, 2014 and sites of critical analysis (Banks, et al., 2020), where the boundary between formal and informal should be destabilised (Boudreau and Davis, 2017;Haid, 2017) while the role of informality as a modus operandi of the state uncovered Tuvikene et al. 2017). ...
... In this anti-essentialist reading of urban informality, we have been able to identify various patterns in which the state and non-state actors negotiate values, spaces and even power with each other. With such terms as regulatory ambiguity (Haid, 2017;Lindell, 2019;Roy, 2009), contingent (extra-)legality (Anjaria 2011;Lombard, 2019), fragmented agency (Baptista, 2019;Schindler, 2017), situational legitimacy (Huang, et al., 2019) and incoherent temporality (Boudreau, 2019;Yiftachel, 2009), we have got a diverse set of analytical concepts for decoding the governmental flexibility of the state (Haid and Hilbrandt, 2019), which is at best a fractured and intimate entity without "a coherent internal logic" (Anjaria, 2011). Together with the insights from research on everyday statehood 1 (Corbridge, et al., 2005;Mitchell, 1991;Painter, 2006;Scott, 1998;Sharma and Gupta, 2006), which renders concrete the nature and manifestations of the state through its everyday operations, this body of literature has enabled us to recognise mundane mechanisms and effects of the state's daily and often contingent conducts (see, for instance, Haid, 2017). ...
... With such terms as regulatory ambiguity (Haid, 2017;Lindell, 2019;Roy, 2009), contingent (extra-)legality (Anjaria 2011;Lombard, 2019), fragmented agency (Baptista, 2019;Schindler, 2017), situational legitimacy (Huang, et al., 2019) and incoherent temporality (Boudreau, 2019;Yiftachel, 2009), we have got a diverse set of analytical concepts for decoding the governmental flexibility of the state (Haid and Hilbrandt, 2019), which is at best a fractured and intimate entity without "a coherent internal logic" (Anjaria, 2011). Together with the insights from research on everyday statehood 1 (Corbridge, et al., 2005;Mitchell, 1991;Painter, 2006;Scott, 1998;Sharma and Gupta, 2006), which renders concrete the nature and manifestations of the state through its everyday operations, this body of literature has enabled us to recognise mundane mechanisms and effects of the state's daily and often contingent conducts (see, for instance, Haid, 2017). On top of its analytical power, however, this approach is yet still inflected by a certain "archive of knowing the city" (McFarlane, 2019), with its forms of categorisation and ways of seeing confined by the refusal of an internal logic of control -a logic that is often in the name of informality. ...
In China’s endeavour to make its cities modern and international, street markets and street vendors have been repeatedly eliminated. But in the (post-)pandemic condition,
regulating street businesses inclusively turned out to be an efficient way in generating
jobs and has been promoted widely. This turn reveals a new pattern of China’s urban
governance that might contribute to rethinking the state-informality nexus. Drawing on
observations and interviews in Chengdu, as well as critical discourse analyses of related
government documents and news reports, in this paper we suggest there is always a
logic of rule underlying the new tactics of the state in regulating street businesses. By
looking into three tactics as such, namely, the regulatory tactics of performance, spatial
tactics of control and temporal tactics of contingency, we recognise both the state’s
centrality and its tactics to consolidate such centrality in the name of informality. Seeing
informality and state centrality as the condition for each other could interrogate both
the internal logic of rule and its contingency of operations. In the informal constitution
of state centrality, everyday negotiations and contestations of spatial claims eventually
render the “ordinary state” a hegemonic locus in shaping urban experiences and politics.
... Unwelcome encroachments of informality often appear to take place where citizens feel that some state instructions go against societal norms or go against them as citizens (Murru and Polese 2020;Scott 1998;Van Schendel and Abraham 2005), a circumstance that often arises when state and individual morality fail to overlap . However, states can also ease control over one or more areas of life, allowing informality and self-management to emerge for a more participative (by the citizens) and inclusive management of some public spaces (Haid 2017) or to take advantage of informal welfare tools making up for the lack of formal ones . Footing on the above points, the next four sections set out to analyze discipline-based literature. ...
... Looking after some areas or segments of the population while abandoning others, state institutions can indirectly create the space for private initiative and encourage the self-management space for people, businesses and non-state actors Polese 2015a, 2015b) that end up "supplementing the state" (Picker 2019;Rekhviashvili and Polese 2017;Rekhviashvili 2015). When this happens, the state becomes the primary producer of informality by simply not taking care of some aspects of social life or allowing private and uncoordinated initiatives to emerge in some spaces (Chiodelli 2019;Haid 2017), a thing that has also been widely explored in IR and political science debates, as documented in the next section. ...
Despite a growing number of studies featuring “informality” in their title, including many from the post-socialist region, little has been done to reach a consensus on what informality means, how to measure it and, more generally, to develop it into a widely agreed and shared theorization. Instead, and paradoxically, given that a significant number of studies rely on intuitive understandings of the phenomenon, often intended as “the opposite of formal”, this increased attention to informality has contributed to topical confusion rather than better defining what informality may be. By surveying and cross-comparing regional and world literature on informality, this article attempts to provide a coherent framework for delineating and understanding “informality studies”, outlining its main characteristics and eventually better understand its applicability and boundaries. While doing this, it calls for more attention to the political dimensions of informality and ways in which measurement of informality can be used both as a proxy for quality of governance and a deeper grasping of state–citizen relations.
... Concerning the contentious nature of these two Asian marketplaces, previous research has revealed the precariousness associated with the management of migrant spaces by Berlin's local authorities (Kreichauf et al., 2020;Schmiz, 2016;Schmiz & Kitzmann, 2017;Haid, 2017). My research builds on the existing literature by providing a more recent overview of the transformation process, with an emphasis on the role of migrant entrepreneurs in the process of spatial production and transformation. ...
Berlin has gradually become more diverse as the number of migrants living in the city increases. Although the presence of Asians in the city's food scene has been apparent since the 2000s, there has been limited research analyzing them as active actors who contribute to spatial transformation at the local level. This chapter aims to explore how two groups of Asian migrants, Thai and Vietnamese, have become active urban actors in Berlin's new spatial production through their involvement in entrepreneurial economic and spatial practices via municipal documents, the marketplaces' official websites, and field research. The research compares two Berlin marketplaces from the perspective of migrants' backgrounds, their self-employed economic engagement, and the spatial formation of the markets. Additionally, the chapter addresses spatial conflicts related to legal matters and explores how migrants have engaged in planning processes.
... Jarram notes how sometimes commons formation is less voluntaristic than even Ostrom admits, with the state forcing solutions to conflicts (Jarram, 2015). In the case of Tempelhofer Feld's urban pioneers, the state both restricted and enabled commoning (Haid, 2017). There are also examples of how longstanding commons resources quickly deteriorate once the state retracts support, such as the PARTICIPATORY PLANNING AND THE COMMONS Peterson 12 cooperative housing stock in Copenhagen which fell away once the legal regime shifted towards allowing privatization (Bruun, 2015). ...
Participatory planning is often heralded as transformative, but much critical planning discourse has assessed difficulties in achieving the democracy it promises. Because it is often constrained within neoliberal city administration, solutions which also assume this frame may be limited. Meanwhile, commoning theory offers insights into ways communities can collectively manage resources. This paper brings participation and the commons into conversation. It presents a case study of the creation of Tempelhofer Feld Park in Berlin, Germany. There, the city’s development plan was nullified by a referendum campaign which was bolstered by public efforts at creating common resources in the park. Finally, the paper analyzes how considering this case, commoning theory may give provide ideas towards new institutional forms which can improve participation by building towards new commons.
... Elements of this are apparent in the speech of the officers in the discourses of benefit and newness, as the officers ponder the advantages and future of CG. Enabling could be understood as an unregulated and somewhat informal way of governing (see Haid 2017;Bénit-Gbaffou 2018). However, the idea of gardening as a beneficial and favourable activity is not synonymous with enabling (Wesener et al. 2020, 4). ...
An ongoing academic debate shows that urban community gardening (CG) has diverse governance models with differing roles of city administration and citizens. This article uses an empirical case study conducted in the city of Tampere, Finland, to explore what I call the “operational space” of urban CG seen from the viewpoint of city officials. Two rounds of interviews were conducted with eight city officials, and a discourse analysis was applied for the data. As an analytic term developed in this article, the operational space emerges by administrative policies and practices that enable or constrain urban gardening under two general trends of urban governance: institutional ambiguity and neoliberal urban development. In this case, the operational space was rather rigid and narrow. The five main discourses on benefit, control of space, scarcity, unclarity, and newness referred to a clear aim to enable urban gardening. However, the discourses were restricted to strategic, limited, and instrumental levels, as the political-strategic aims of enabling urban gardening contradicted the administrative practices. The results show that cautiousness and unclarity in the administrative-political culture tend to lead to institutional ambiguity. In conclusion, operational space analysis is helpful to uncover the problems and possibilities between CG and city administration.
... Different actors perceive ambiguity in formal institutional structures in various ways in practice. Regarding state action, local police wield their power in an uncertain manner (Haid, 2017;Xue & Huang, 2015). In practice, the distinction between legal and illegal is arbitrary, and the state can strategically (re)interpret it as black or white (Yiftachel, 2009). ...
Urban villages in China are the spatial manifestation of urban informality. Previous research has attributed the proliferation of urban villages to a lack of state regulation or the inability of the state. This research seeks to reconsider state regulation of urban villages in light of a new conception of informality resulting from state action. Through a case study of urban transformation in Shenzhen, this research argues that the state is perpetually (re)producing new urban spaces to serve the evolving capital accumulation regime. Such efforts meet resistance when residents’ living areas are affected. Resulting from negotiations and compromise between the local authority and affected residents, informality arises during the social creation of space. To support the ever-changing accumulation regime, the state’s policies on urban villages constantly evolve, oscillating between tolerance and exclusion. The state defines which activities are formal versus informal, as well as which informality will flourish versus fade into the background of spatial production. Instead of a binary classification, urban village governance should be viewed as an ongoing process that relies on the state’s political-economic objectives and the greater urban process.
... Informality scrutinizes power structures between the state and its citizens. (Haid, 2017). ...
Urban Informality is beyond the global poor or urban subaltern group. Informality is a portrait of the city's mode of life under power relations and resource inequalities. The paper focuses on the power dynamics within the boundaries of the Patpong district, Bangkok's most distinctive red-light district, by using site-critical analysis approaches to understand the economic, social, and political inequalities. The paper questions the power relation between powerful and marginalized actors and seeks the survival network created by the vulnerable group. The research exposes the dictated mafia regime with a strong bond with government institutions as an accumulation network. The network violates and exploits sex workers, forcing them to create a survival strategy to protect themselves. The paper elaborates on the correlation between power dynamics and the survival strategy of marginalized groups.
... Informality can thus be either recognised or ignored based on how informality fits the governmental agenda (Roy 2005;Haid 2017). Our example shows that the government may selectively incorporate prominent informal practices to further justify the formal restoration program and promote the officials' roles in combating pollution (see CEDS-FEBPU 2020). ...
Since 2001, the Indonesian government has formulated and implemented several restoration programs to improve the Citarum's water quality. However, these programs were often contested, particularly concerning the meanings of 'water quality' and how those informed approaches to responsibility and involvement. This paper problematises river restoration in view of these controversies towards improving people's lives and their environment. Our investigation found (1) a selective use of scientific knowledge of water quality and related responsibilities; (2) a tension between broader inclusion and military involvement in river restoration; and (3) a diverse host of informal restoration practices that largely remain unnoticed in view of the government programs. The findings indicate that river governance can benefit from recognising and tuning into below-the-radar restoration practices to tackle river pollution.
... The bigger the difference between the total labour cost in the official economy and after-tax earnings (from work), the greater the incentive to reduce the tax wedge and work in the shadow economy actors and state-citizen relations (Sarmiento and Tilly 2018; Haid and Hilbrandt 2019). Accordingly, it has been remarked that, inasmuch as the state may claim to reduce informality, it may also end up enhancing it in some areas that fall beyond its control, that are neglected or just remain loosely regulated (Davies and Polese 2015;Haid 2017;, not least because the state is not a monolithic entity but produces gaps in communication between institutions (Kasza 2002) and ultimately relies on the agency of its people who populate institutions (Jones 2008). This governance approach shows some similar points with what has come out of anthropological views. ...
To most, if not all, people active in the anti-corruption industry, this transaction that I witnessed has all the features of a bribe. The nurse could (or should) have refused the money since she had already a salary paid from the state and was not going to declare that extra income. But such a gesture has a different meaning in a hospital in London and Kyiv. In the latter context, doctors would work long hours for a salary that is a fraction of what they need to get to the end of the month.
... The bigger the difference between the total labour cost in the official economy and after-tax earnings (from work), the greater the incentive to reduce the tax wedge and work in the shadow economy actors and state-citizen relations (Sarmiento and Tilly 2018; Haid and Hilbrandt 2019). Accordingly, it has been remarked that, inasmuch as the state may claim to reduce informality, it may also end up enhancing it in some areas that fall beyond its control, that are neglected or just remain loosely regulated (Davies and Polese 2015;Haid 2017;, not least because the state is not a monolithic entity but produces gaps in communication between institutions (Kasza 2002) and ultimately relies on the agency of its people who populate institutions (Jones 2008). This governance approach shows some similar points with what has come out of anthropological views. ...
In the recent years, Poland has emerged as an attractive migration destination and has witnessed a substantial growth of the migrant population, especially coming from Asian countries. This has been especially visible in the urban and suburban areas around big cities. The chapter discusses the visible shift to diversity in the character of a suburban neighbourhood of Warsaw, and tries to uncover what it means for the different migrant groups in terms of access to the labour market, the formal and informal practices they engage in, and the role it plays in the migrant imaginary of post-socialist Poland. Thus, we take a closer look at migrant networks that are the basis of migrant life in Poland and allow them to legalize their stay, find employment, and build a safe environment for themselves. Not being part of the Polish informal networks leaves migrants unable to use the local strategy of “załatwianie” (getting things done”), and thus not integrated into the official labour market. We argue that using informal migrant networks in order to cope with everyday life in a foreign country is a substitute to the local practice of “getting things done”. Thus, we analyse how migrants, excluded linguistically and socially from the Polish labour market, are also being pushed into ethnic niches. These businesses are concentrated in the food and beauty sector. The last strategy we describe is entering the grey zone economics through undeclared or half-legal work.
... Just as with the state of emergency, support for temporary uses has been constituted by planners, economists, realtors and others as a political necessity, as something required by contemporary economic conditions, which renders traditional planning processes and instruments useless and invalid (Oswalt et al. 2013). As Haid (2017) notes in a study of informal food vending practices in Berlin's parks, it is the powerful actors of the state who have chosen to enable these new short-term flexibilities, to 'neoliberalise' planning. They have done this to enable and empower informal actors to help meet the government's strategic objectives in times of reduced tax revenues (to provide amenities and jobs for residents, prevent urban land lying fallow and declining in value and attracting more serious crime). ...
What defines certain transformations of urban spaces as ‘temporary’ or ‘tactical’, and what gives them fresh validity and value? This chapter draws upon Assemblage Thinking and Actor-Network Theory to focus on the role of temporariness in shaping urban development. It explores time in relation to the production and use of the urban environment. It shows how temporariness defines and enables specific relationships to the many actors and forces that shape cities. Before, during and after ‘temporary use’ people, money, regulations and materials are won over to it. Temporariness avoids and withstands challenges; it adapts. These dynamics are explored in terms of various benefits and impacts that temporary urbanism can have for other actors and longer-lasting forms of urban development. This characterisation of temporary urbanism and its networks of interdependence link it to wider critiques of neoliberalism, modernist masterplanning, and historic preservation. This examination of today’s temporary urbanism highlights two paradoxical dynamics that constantly influence the form of cities. Firstly, temporary urbanism, for all its claimed ephemerality, constantly establishes new, durable relationships and has broad and enduring effects. Secondly, all urban spaces are more-or-less impermanent assemblages of materials which are constantly being adjusted to meet changing resources and needs.
... As a consequence, power is perceived as dispersed among unevenly empowered state and non-state actors (Hackenbroch, 2011;Schindler, 2014). Moreover, the state has also been discussed as an informal entity in itself, whose power is performed with flexibility in the everyday enactment of state power through its representatives (Haid, 2016). In tandem, such accounts suggest that the implications of the state in the production of informality are much more complex and in need of scrutiny. ...
Neste artigo, discute-se o papel do Estado brasileiro na reprodução da informalidade a partir de debates pós-coloniais em estudos urbanos. Nesse contexto, informalidade é definida como uma ferramenta estratégica de governança implantada pelo Estado para regular o espaço urbano. Examinam-se diferentes grupos de cidadãos afetados por três projetos em Belo Horizonte/Brasil, todos associados à Copa do Mundo da FIFA de 2014. As diferentes habilidades desses grupos para ter suas reivindicações sobre o espaço validadas pelo Estado são exploradas. A discussão é estruturada em torno de três tópicos principais (1) como diferentes escalas do Estado interagem no processo através do qual a divisão entre formal/informal é produzida; (2) como cidadãos organizados podem acessar o Estado e afetar esse processo e (3) como agentes do Estado estão implicados nesta prática. O trabalho se baseia em dados qualitativos (entrevistas, notas de campo, e documentos de arquivo) coletados durante seis meses de trabalho de campo em Belo Horizonte/ MG, de julho de 2015 a dezembro de 2015, em relação aos três estudos de caso. Os resultados mostram que cidadãos organizados são capazes de influenciar o processo através do qual o Estado valida reivindicações sobre o espaço. De forma a terem suas reinvidicações legitimadas, os cidadãos exploram a existência de diferentes escalas do Estado, a relação com os agentes do Estado e os canais formais construídos através de lutas sociais no passado. No entanto, esse processo parece limitado, sendo que grupos diferentes de cidadãos tem mais ou menos condições de terem suas demandas reconhecidas. ABSTRACT In this paper, I will join postcolonial debates in urban studies to discuss the role played by the Brazilian State in the reproduction of informality. Informality is here understood as a strategic tool of urban governance deployed by the state to regulate space. I examine different groups of citizens affected by three development projects in Belo Horizonte/Brazil, all associated with the 2014 FIFA World Cup. I explore the different abilities of these groups to have their claims upon space validated by the state. The discussion is structured around three main topics (1) how different scales of the state interact in the process through which the formal/informal divide is produced; (2) how organized citizens can engage with the state and affect this process and (3) how state agents are implicated in this practice. The paper relies on qualitative data (interviews, field notes, pictures and archival documents) collected during six months of fieldwork in Belo Horizonte/MG, from July 2015 to December 2015 regarding three case studies. The findings show that organized citizens are able to influence the process through which the state validates claims upon space. Citizens explore different scales of the state, the relationship with state agents and formal channels built through past struggle to have their claims validated. However, the process seems limited and even the existent policies that partially recognize the urban poor's claim to space are eroding, engendering a new movement of insurgency.
... Even the strictest statutory standards in urban governance must have some flexibility to work (Nygren and Jokinen, 2013). In these silent practices, planners exercise their power ambiguously to make governance work (Haid, 2017), and to some extent they allow private landowners and citizens to do the same. In the case of strategic spatial planning and the urban innovation platform in Hiedanranta (Anttiroiko, 2016), the city administration invited informal action while reminding the gardeners of its temporary nature by saying that 'nothing is certain and lasting but change'. ...
This article examines the processes of urban commoning and its co‐produced features of urbanity, making the claim that, through these processes, informality becomes translated into institutionalized city planning. Commoning is analysed through a comparative study that utilizes contingent features of urbanity and three modalities accommodating the informality–formality meshwork during urban change. The article contributes to research on urban transformations by integrating commons, informality dynamics and the constitution of state institutions. This focus is elaborated with reference to collective gardening practices in the context of two of the less studied European cities, Narva in Estonia and Tampere in Finland. The results of the study indicate that urban commoning takes place through delegating a public mandate and enacting uncertainty, two processes that informalize city government practices. Particular differences appeared in regard to the institutional porosity that enables unregulated spaces of collective gardening to be mobilized as part of urban politics. We argue that networked movements appear as an essential part of the urban logic of action producing meaningful connections in an informal–formal meshwork and bringing together multiple sites in the commoning process.
... Furthermore, a bourgeoning body of African literature (Simone, 2001;Cleaver, 2002;Lindell, 2008) demonstrates the relevance of social relationships, ties and networks that influence governance within and beyond the state. Through this lens, a closer look at processes of governance in cities of the West rapidly unveils the state's inability to fully mediate processes of governance and points to the room for manoeuvre that is essential for understanding the ways in which informality can operate and thrive (Haid, 2016; see also literature on street-level bureaucracy and practices of discretion, e.g. Lipsky, 1980;Maynard-Moody and Musheno, 2000;2003). ...
Understandings of informality commonly derive from research undertaken in states perceived as lacking the capacity to regulate the practices of their populations. This Interventions forum aims to expand the geographical parameters of empirical research on urban informality. A more global approach, we argue, also necessitates questioning assumptions that undergird this concept––in particular the underlying conception of the state. In this vein, this collection of papers aims to rethink theories of the state through the lens of informality, and vice versa, to inform and refine the concept of informality through a more thorough understanding of states. In so doing, the contributions engage with concepts that have been central both to theories of the state and to the study of informality, namely governance, agency, legitimacy, sovereignty and legality. Following this introduction setting out our theoretical approach, the Interventions forum unites five empirical studies that discuss the nexus of informality and states in contexts that have been researched less extensively from this perspective, each tackling one of the above-mentioned concepts. Based on these different entry points, the papers provide novel angles on a state-theoretical understanding of informality. A concluding essay brings these approaches together, reflecting on the possibilities of translating concepts to different sites.
In this article I examine a participatory planning initiative in contemporary Berlin to propose a theoretical reflection on the entanglements between race and urban futures in the German capital. The promoters of the planning initiative aimed to solve the problem of drug dealing in an inner‐city park. Motivated by no economic interests or concerns, they framed the problem they aimed to solve as the long‐time residents’ dread of the figure of ‘the dealer’. The initiative ultimately gained broad consensus among residents, civil society and state institutions alike within an ‘affective economy’, which I call a ‘dread economy’. Such an ‘economy’, as I show, functioned as a cover‐up device for race to remain the unspoken rationale of the initiative. Against the backdrop of Berlin's liberal and progressive (self‐)image, I phenomenologically interrogate the conditions under which racial conceptions could be the rationale of a popular planning initiative. I argue that the ‘dread economy’ went unnoticed—and was therefore effective—because it was predicated on a counterintuitive combination of cultural tropes belonging to two seemingly unrelated forms of racism—anti‐Black racism and anti‐Jewish racism. I then extend my argument by analysing three cases of twenty‐first‐century Berlin planning, in which various racial conceptions quietly shaped citywide planning visions. In my conclusion, I call for further critical analysis of relational articulations of race in shaping European urban futures, and for comparative research with settler‐colonial and postcolonial urban regions where different (combinations of) racial conceptions may structure dominant visions of the future.
According to most scholars, urban informal spaces or spatial informality have been among the ambiguous and unclear concepts in urban planning across different periods. In most conceptual interpretations, these spaces are confined to the Global South and defined as "informal settlements" outside legal frameworks and as housing areas for the underprivileged. In recent decades, the theory of "gray space," which highlights structural processes, has gradually drawn attention to the ongoing tensions between capital, space, and power and their manifestation in the continuous construction of "gray space" between "whiteness" and "blackness." Beyond this, gray space provides a conceptual framework for understanding socio-economic processes related to urban conflicts and interpretations of the urban environment. From this perspective, the gray space of contemporary cities can signify profound changes in regimes, requiring a new context for recognition, analysis, and understanding. However, due to its specific contextual, social, economic, political, and ethical characteristics, various discourses around gray space have emerged in planning theory over the past six decades.
This discursive diversity has led to confusion and an inadequate theoretical understanding of the concept. Given this theoretical gap, the primary goal of this study is to identify the different discourses in the realm of gray spaces within urban planning thought through genealogical analysis to provide a deeper understanding of these discourses and urban planning theories. The following questions were considered to achieve this goal: How have the discourses on gray spaces in planning thought evolved over the past six decades? What are the distinguishing features and fundamental principles of these discourses? Accordingly, various discourses were examined, and an effort was made to gain an in-depth understanding of the identified intellectual streams. Moreover, prominent ideas from each type of planning philosophy were analyzed based on the discourse of gray spaces in studies and planning. The impact of values, power, and the prevailing conditions of their knowledge was also discussed in light of the historical and social contexts and values within the discourses. Using the genealogical method as both a historical perspective and a research methodology, this study seeks to present a critical perspective on informality within its spatial discursive system, moving beyond the entrenched binary view of formal versus informal.
This article analyses the challenges of controlling short-term rentals (STR) in an era of intermediation by digital platforms, focusing on the process of regulatory enforcement. Drawing on evidence from large European cities, it investigates how public authorities identify and tackle STR deemed illegal, how operators of illegal STR seek to escape detection, and the relationships between city governments and digital platforms in the process of regulatory enforcement. The article shows what digitalisation and ‘platformisation’ do to the possibility of (local) state regulation of housing informality and illegality in the European context. As platforms have been reluctant to release individualised STR listings to local authorities, the latter have had to rely on imperfect, ‘DIY’ methods of data gathering in the physical and digital worlds, in the context of attempts to regulate STR for public interest objectives such as the protection of the long-term residential stock.
To challenge the notion of the Okinawan moai as a Rotating Saving and Credit Association, this article provides a short overview of the practice before reflecting on an interesting pattern. While moai has been phased out in most of Japan, it persists in some areas where, incidentally, life expectancy is higher than the rest of the country (and of much of the rest of the world). Expanding upon the idea that moai’s main function is social rather than economic makes it possible to suggest the existence of alternative currencies that, although less tangible than money, have a major role in the people’s lives, create mutual dependency and ultimately enhance people’s wealth, intended here to refer not to economic wealth but also in a more inclusive or socially mediated manner including social relations, happiness, a sense of protection and so on.
This article discusses how to achieve inclusive resettlement for landless villagers amid China’s promotion of urbanization through resettlement. This research conceptualizes the right to resettlement in China by synthesiz-ing the literature on resettlement, the right to the city, and informality. This research captures four subsets of rights to resettlement based on a review of existing resettlement literature, including rights to economic enhancement, spatial adaptation, social stability, and political inclusiveness. While state-led resettlement policies should have prioritized inclusive resettlement, our case study reveals the significant role played by villagers’ bottom-up approaches, utilizing informality and collective strategies, in enhancing inclusiveness. The research adopts an explanatory-sequential approach that uses principal component analysis, semi-structured interviews, and questionnaire surveys to investigate post-resettlement adaptation in 12 resettlement communities in Hangzhou, China. The empirical evidence suggests informal economic activities, spontaneous spatial transformation, hybrid governance structures, and non-institutionalized participation have contributed significantly to vil-lagers claiming their right to resettlement. We conclude with recommenda-tions for achieving inclusive resettlement.
This article examines the relationship between bordering practices and processes of situated intersectionality by exploring how British migrants encounter and erect borders as they move through Berlin. Through exploring how research participants conceptualise and orientate themselves towards Berlin’s city spaces and how this relates to transnational and translocal processes of classification, I interrogate how processes of racialisation and classification move across European contexts to manifest within localised spaces. The research explores how these intersections work to minimise, accentuate or transfigure one another as inequalities come into being through urban space by placing feminist intersectional approaches in conversation with border studies. By uniquely focusing on a migrant group infrequently considered in European migration literatures, and often regarded as invisible or unproblematic, we can examine how race, class and gender intersect with nationality and how racialised exclusions from European belonging function through everyday processes. I highlight how classification processes have transnational portability and carry intra-European similarities, yet also assuming context-specific features.
Meykhana is spoken word improvization, verbal recitatives, and an example of a musical genre in the promotion of which the state and society find their common goals. Based on the results of field research, and available sources, I pay attention to the relationship between what is offered by the government and how meykhana is practiced and perceived by ordinary people. Taking into account everyday practices of local players and using such an aspect of nationalism as folklorization, I examine how the interplay between formal and informal approaches can be used in the study of national building process. This paper contributes a case study to the rich body of literature on political dimension of informality and nationalism by analyzing the ways in which local players have concrete impact on top-level politics, including cultural policy.
In this article, I try to analyze the place of undocumented migrants in the society and national economy of modern Russia. Based on life stories of migrants living with HIV in Russia I try to reflect on their vulnerabilities and routine practices of the state to control and maintain an untransparent and ostentatious migration policy toward undocumented migrants. What is the rationale behind this “performance of illegality” the government seems to be producing? I reflect on these questions in relation to migrants’ access to social entitlements and the biopolitics of the state in state management of migration on the example of the state policy of the Russian Federation toward international migrants living with HIV—a mobile population residing in a constructed limbo and a legal uncertainty. By exploring the lived experiences of this population in I am trying to think of a rationale behind the status quo of the Russian migration policy.
O artigo procura analisar os desdobramentos materiais de práticas informais. Para isso, centra sua reflexão na reflexão sobre como a informalidade permite práticas de construções mais flexíveis, modulando, através da autoconstrução, a habitação de acordo com as necessidades familiares. Da mesma forma, analisa a gestão informal de certos serviços coletivos, assim como a delimitação oficial das zonas de favela através do estudo da aplicação de medidas de isenção fiscal para os alvarás comerciais nesses espaços. O estudo desses três casos busca compreender como os moradores adaptaram suas práticas informais às suas necessidades, de forma a compreender paradoxalmente a informalidade como uma função social, já que permite a parte considerável da população do Rio de Janeiro de acessar à cidade e seus recursos.
This paper offers an exploratory overview of different research literatures
examining the relationship between urban nature or green space on the one hand,
and marginalized, stigmatized, and illicit activities on the other. We situate this
discussion within the geographic literature concerning assemblage theory and
informality, and apply these concepts to urban green space. We offer some
comparative examples from Detroit and Berlin, two cities known for their green
space and illicit activity, but with very different histories and cultural contexts. For
this purpose, we draw on our own primary research in both Detroit and Berlin,
examining how the dynamics of these interactions produce diverse and distinctive
urban places in some cases and associations of danger or insecurity in others,
sometimes both simultaneously. We utilize diverse methodologies, including
qualitative interviews and focus groups, mobile explorations, photography and
sketching to provide examples of spaces as complex assemblages of actors with
diverse, emergent potentials. We conclude by contending that green spaces and
urban nature belong on the same map as studies of informal and illicit activities,
adopting a more fluid conception of the shifting relationship between people and
green space in the evolving city
Formalisation in cities is commonly associated with top-down processes like slum demolition, land titling and economic regulation. By contrast, this article explores processes of everyday formalisation by considering how locally grounded understandings of formality and informality are reproduced. It thus theorises everyday formalisation as a process distinct from state-led formalisation in terms of both the scale (local) and mechanisms (everyday) through which formal/informal dichotomisation occurs. To explore the effects of such everyday formalisation, this article draws on a case study of water access in a low-income settlement of Karachi, Pakistan. Turning attention to everyday practices of water access in the settlement, this article highlights how residents and water board officials understand and enact distinctions between formality and informality through daily knowledge practices and meanings of neutrality. By focusing on everyday formalisation, this article makes two wider contributions to urban theory. First, it demonstrates that urban informality gives rise to diverse lived experiences, not all of which may be characterised as examples of subaltern agency. Secondly, it demonstrates that urban learning and local knowledge generation can be conceptualised not only as tools for urban ‘navigation’, but as distinctive practices that reproduce urban space according to hegemonic categories like formal and informal.
The urban nature of Berlin is becoming a key factor in the city’s marketing and planning strategies. On reviewing the capital's green spaces in the past century, Berlin’s nature is often beholden to larger political or economic agendas. Through an analysis of the “future-focused” Berlin Strategy, alongside Berlin’s official website (berlin.de), I critique the appropriation and institutionalization of informal planning regimes by the city of Berlin. These inconsistencies are demonstrated with a case study on Tempelhofer Feld, a space coined by Berliner Morgenpost as Berlin’s “newest and best Befreite Brache” (“Liberated Fallow”). I demonstrate that Brachen, or spontaneously-growing fallow fields, are being hyper-cultivated by the state rather than preserved as biodiverse spaces. This hyper-aestheticization of Tempelhofer Feld serves as a fundamental case of how pioneer urbanism and local initiatives have been appropriated to fit the city’s liberal and laissez-faire image, consequently stripping the field of its unique qualities, and appropriating how the public interacts with natural spaces.
Through a critical comparison of the spatial management of street vending in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay and New York City, USA, we show how uncertainty enables the management of vending and urban space. By uncertainty, we mean a condition characterized by legal complexity and negotiable enforcement of laws and regulations. Putting New York and Ciudad del Este in dialogue, we demonstrate that these negotiated legalities are not limited to Southern urbanisms, nor are they remnants of unmodern social forms. We find similarities in how vendors experience and negotiate uncertainty, even as divergent mechanisms link uncertainty and inequality. By claiming streets as sites of work, vendors challenge dominant notions of global urbanism which conceive of sidewalks as sites of circulation, rather than livelihood. Especially in Ciudad del Este, vendors know the biases of law, and ground their claims to livelihood in ethics rather than legal compliance. Yet vendors’ claims can also reinscribe hierarchical relationships with frontline enforcers and reinforce exclusionary notions of rights based in productive citizenship. Understanding how uncertainty works as a logic of governing helps expose these unavoidable tensions and therefore to imagine and construct pathways toward more just urban economies.
Die Autoren untersuchen die Konstruktion so genannter ‚gefährlicher Orte‘ (auch ‚verrufene Orte‘, ‚Gefahrengebiete‘, ‚Kriminalitätsbrennpunkte‘ u.ä.). Sie zeigen, dass die mittlerweile fest im deutschen Polizeirecht verankerte und durch lokale Legislation flankierte Rechtskonstruktion ‚gefährliche Orte‘ Zonen polizeilicher Sondervollmachten schafft, die einen selektiven Kontrolldruck auf bestimmte Gebiete – und dadurch vermittelt auf bestimmte Bevölkerungsgruppen – ermöglichen. Die Anwendung und Durchsetzung, also die ‚Politik gefährlicher Orte‘, erfolgt mit unterschiedlichen Mitteln (stichprobenhafte Personenkontrollen, Komplexkontrollen, Videoüberwachung u.a.) und kann der Durchsetzung verschiedener Ziele dienen, von räumlich orientiertem Kriminalitätsmanagement, nicht zuletzt im Rahmen städtischer Aufwertungsprozesse, über die Kontrolle unerwünschter Verhaltensweisen im substrafrechtlichen Bereich bis hin zur Einhegung politischer Dissidenz oder kultureller Heterogenität. Anhand von Beispielen aus Leipzig und Berlin werden die rechtlichen Voraussetzungen, die polizeiliche Praxis, die Spannbreite der Anwendungsgebiete sowie deren diskursive Legitimierung dargestellt. Damit soll insbesondere Praktiker/innen der sozialen Arbeit ein kritischer Blick auf Problemkonstruktionen ermöglicht werden, die aufgrund ihrer Verankerung in Sicherheitslogiken zur Ontologisierung von Kriminalität neigen. Die Beispiele können illustrieren, dass die Konstruktion ‚gefährlicher Orte‘ eng mit einer Konstruktion von Kriminalität und scheinbarer Gefahr einhergeht, die, einem Sicherheitsparadigma folgend, die Legitimität sozialarbeiterischer oder akzeptierender Perspektiven auf die thematisierten sozialräumlichen Lagen unterminiert
Die Autoren untersuchen die Konstruktion so genannter ‚gefährlicher Orte‘ (auch ‚verrufene Orte‘, ‚Gefahrengebiete‘, ‚Kriminalitätsbrennpunkte‘ u.ä.). Sie zeigen, dass die mittlerweile fest im deutschen Polizeirecht verankerte und durch lokale Legislation flankierte Rechtskonstruktion ‚gefährliche Orte‘ Zonen polizeilicher Sondervollmachten schafft, die einen selektiven Kontrolldruck auf bestimmte Gebiete – und dadurch vermittelt auf bestimmte Bevölkerungsgruppen – ermöglichen. Die Anwendung und Durchsetzung, also die ‚Politik gefährlicher Orte‘, erfolgt mit unterschiedlichen Mitteln (stichprobenhafte Personenkontrollen, Komplexkontrollen, Videoüberwachung u.a.) und kann der Durchsetzung verschiedener Ziele dienen, von räumlich orientiertem Kriminalitätsmanagement, nicht zuletzt im Rahmen städtischer Aufwertungsprozesse, über die Kontrolle unerwünschter Verhaltensweisen im substrafrechtlichen Bereich bis hin zur Einhegung politischer Dissidenz oder kultureller Heterogenität. Anhand von Beispielen aus Leipzig und Berlin werden die rechtlichen Voraussetzungen, die polizeiliche Praxis, die Spannbreite der Anwendungsgebiete sowie deren diskursive Legitimierung dargestellt. Damit soll insbesondere Praktiker/innen der sozialen Arbeit ein kritischer Blick auf Problemkonstruktionen ermöglicht werden, die aufgrund ihrer Verankerung in Sicherheitslogiken zur Ontologisierung von Kriminalität neigen. Die Beispiele können illustrieren, dass die Konstruktion ‚gefährlicher Orte‘ eng mit einer Konstruktion von Kriminalität und scheinbarer Gefahr einhergeht, die, einem Sicherheitsparadigma folgend, die Legitimität sozialarbeiterischer oder akzeptierender Perspektiven auf die thematisierten sozialräumlichen Lagen unterminiert.
The author analyzes the political geography of globally expanding urban informalities. These are conceptualized as `gray spaces', positioned between the `whiteness' of legality/approval/safety, and the `blackness' of eviction/destruction/death. The vast expansion of gray spaces in contemporary cities reflects the emergence of new types of colonial relations, which are managed by urban regimes facilitating a process of `creeping apartheid'. Planning is a lynchpin of this urban order, providing tools and technologies to classify, contain and manage deeply unequal urban societies. The author uses a `South-Eastern' perspective to suggest the concept of `planning citizenship' as a possible corrective horizon for analytical, normative and insurgent theories.
This paper focuses on the fifth dimension of social innovation—i.e. political governance. Although largely neglected in the mainstream 'innovation' literature, innovative governance arrangements are increasingly recognised as potentially significant terrains for fostering inclusive development processes. International organisations like the EU and the World Bank, as well as leading grass-roots movements, have pioneered new and more participatory governance arrangements as a pathway towards greater inclusiveness. Indeed, over the past two decades or so, a range of new and often innovative institutional arrangements has emerged, at a variety of geographical scales. These new institutional 'fixes' have begun to challenge traditional state-centred forms of policy-making and have generated new forms of governance-beyond-the-state. Drawing on Foucault's notion of governmentality, the paper argues that the emerging innovative horizontal and networked arrangements of governance-beyond-the-state are decidedly Janus-faced. While enabling new forms of participation and articulating the state – civil society relationships in potentially democratising ways, there is also a flip side to the process. To the extent that new governance arrangements rearticulate the state-civil society relationship, they also redefine and reposition the meaning of (political) citizenship and, consequently, the nature of democracy itself. The first part of the paper outlines the contours of governance-beyond-the-state. The second part addresses the thorny issues of the state –civil society relationship in the context of the emergence of the new governmentality associated with governance-beyond-the-state. The third part teases out the contradictory way in which new arrangements of governance have created new institutions and empowered new actors, while disempowering others. It is argued that this shift from 'government' to 'governance' is associated with the consolidation of new technologies of government, on the one hand, and with profound restructuring of the parameters of political democracy on the other, leading to a substantial democratic deficit. The paper concludes by suggesting that socially innovative arrangements of governance-beyond-the-state are fundamentally Janus-faced, particularly under conditions in which the democratic character of the political sphere is increasingly eroded by the encroaching imposition of market forces that set the 'rules of the game'.
Urban informality has been the subject of renewed attention in recent years, with a resurgence of interest from architecture and planning. A focus on informality has however been criticised as reviving colonial hierarchies, characterising entire cities in terms of lack and rendering them perpetually inferior to Western cities. The call to postcolonialise urban studies has been answered by an emerging literature which has neglected Latin America. This article therefore examines recent work on urban informality in the region that resonates with other scholarship at the intersection of postcolonial and urban studies. The Latin American work is characterised by an emphasis on informality as resistance and by challenges to the formal/informal binary. Its ‘favela-isation’ of the continent can however perpetuate dualistic interpretations, entrenching or inverting stereotypes rather than disrupting them. The article also asks what postcolonial readings of informality from elsewhere can contribute to understanding Latin American experience.
The turn of the century has been a moment of rapid urbanization. Much of this urban growth is taking place in the cities of the developing world and much of it in informal settlements. This book presents cutting-edge research from various world regions to demonstrate these trends. The contributions reveal that informal housing is no longer the domain of the urban poor; rather it is a significant zone of transactions for the middle-class and even transnational elites. Indeed, the book presents a rich view of 'urban informality' as a system of regulations and norms that governs the use of space and makes possible new forms of social and political power. The book is organized as a 'transnational' endeavor. It brings together three regional domains of research—the Middle East, Latin America, and South Asia—that are rarely in conversation with one another. It also unsettles the hierarchy of development and underdevelopment by looking at some First World processes of informality through a Third World research lens.
Bringing together an interdisciplinary and international group of researchers working on a wide variety of cities throughout Asia, Latin America and Europe, this book addresses, rethinks and, in some cases, abandons the notions of formal and informal urbanism. This collection critically interrogates both the ways in which 'informal' and 'formal' are put to work in the governing and politicisation of cities, and their conceptual strengths and weaknesses. It does so by focusing on a wide variety of topics, from specific forms of housing and labour often traditionally linked to the formal/informal divide, to urban political negotiations, cultural practices, and ways of being in the city. The book takes stock of and reflects on how contemporary urban informality/formality relations are being produced and are/might be understood, and puts forward an enlarged and comprehensive understanding of urban informality. © Colin McFarlane and Michael Waibel 2012, All rights reserved.
City Life from Jakarta to Dakar focuses on the politics incumbent to this process - an "anticipatory politics" - that encompasses a wide range of practices, calculations and economies. As such, the book is not a collection of case studies on a specific theme, not a review of developmental problems, nor does it marshal the focal cities as evidence of particular urban trends. Rather, it examines how possibilities, perhaps inherent in these cities all along, are materialized through the everyday projects of residents situated in the city and the larger world in very different ways.
This book explores the politics of place marketing and the process of ‘urban reinvention’ in Berlin between 1989 and 2011. In the context of the dramatic socio-economic restructuring processes, changes in urban governance and physical transformation of the city following the Fall of the Wall, the ‘new’ Berlin was not only being built physically, but staged for visitors and Berliners and marketed to the world through events and image campaigns which featured the iconic architecture of large-scale urban redevelopment sites. Public-private partnerships were set up specifically to market the ‘new Berlin’ to potential investors, tourists, Germans and the Berliners themselves. The book analyzes the images of the city and the narrative of urban change, which were produced over two decades. In the 1990s three key sites were turned into icons of the ‘new Berlin’: The new Postdamer Platz, the new government quarter, and the redeveloped historical core of the Friedrichstadt. Eventually, the entire inner city was ‘staged’ through a series of events which turned construction sites into tourist attractions. New sites and spaces gradually became part of the 2000s place marketing imagery and narrative, as urban leaders sought to promote the ‘creative city’. By combining urban political economy and cultural approaches from the disciplines of urban politics, geography, sociology and planning, the book contributes to a better understanding of the interplay between the symbolic ‘politics of representation’ through place marketing and the politics of urban development and place making in contemporary urban governance.
Neoliberalism is commonly viewed as an economic doctrine that seeks to limit the scope of government. Some consider it a form of predatory capitalism with adverse effects on the Global South. In this groundbreaking work, Aihwa Ong offers an alternative view of neoliberalism as an extraordinarily malleable technology of governing that is taken up in different ways by different regimes, be they authoritarian, democratic, or communist. Ong shows how East and Southeast Asian states are making exceptions to their usual practices of governing in order to position themselves to compete in the global economy. As she demonstrates, a variety of neoliberal strategies of governing are re-engineering political spaces and populations. Ong’s ethnographic case studies illuminate experiments and developments such as China’s creation of special market zones within its socialist economy; pro-capitalist Islam and women’s rights in Malaysia; Singapore’s repositioning as a hub of scientific expertise; and flexible labor and knowledge regimes that span the Pacific.Ong traces how these and other neoliberal exceptions to business as usual are reconfiguring relationships between governing and the governed, power and knowledge, and sovereignty and territoriality. She argues that an interactive mode of citizenship is emerging, one that organizes people—and distributes rights and benefits to them—according to their marketable skills rather than according to their membership within nation-states. Those whose knowledge and skills are not assigned significant market value—such as migrant women working as domestic maids in many Asian cities—are denied citizenship. Nevertheless, Ong suggests that as the seam between sovereignty and citizenship is pried apart, a new space is emerging for NGOs to advocate for the human rights of those excluded by neoliberal measures of human worthiness.
If informality has been conventionally understood as a territorial formation or as a labour categorisation, this paper offers an alternative conceptualisation that conceives informality and formality as forms of practice. The paper examines how different relations of informal and formal practice enable urban planning, development and politics, and explores the changing relationship between informality and formality over time. To illustrate the political potential of conceiving informality and formality as practices, it highlights the fall-out from a particular urban crisis: the 2005 Mumbai monsoon floods. In the final section, the paper offers three conceptual frames for charting the changing relations of informal and formal practices: speculation, composition, and bricolage.
Many of the significant urban transformations of the new century are taking place in the developing world. In particular, informality, once associated with poor squatter settlements, is now seen as a generalized mode of metropolitan urbanization. This article focuses on urban informality to highlight the challenges of dealing with the "unplannable" - exceptions to the order of formal urbanization. It argues that planners Must learn to work with this state of exception Such policy epistemologies are useful not only for "Third World" cities but also more generally for urban planning concerned with distributive justice.
This article is an intervention in the epistemologies and methodologies of urban studies. It seeks to understand and transform the ways in which the cities of the global South are studied and represented in urban research, and to some extent in popular discourse. As such, the article is primarily concerned with a formation of ideas —‘subaltern urbanism’— which undertakes the theorization of the megacity and its subaltern spaces and subaltern classes. Of these, the ubiquitous ‘slum’ is the most prominent. Writing against apocalyptic and dystopian narratives of the slum, subaltern urbanism provides accounts of the slum as a terrain of habitation, livelihood, self‐organization and politics. This is a vital and even radical challenge to dominant narratives of the megacity. However, this article is concerned with the limits of and alternatives to subaltern urbanism. It thus highlights emergent analytical strategies, utilizing theoretical categories that transcend the familiar metonyms of underdevelopment such as the megacity, the slum, mass politics and the habitus of the dispossessed. Instead, four categories are discussed — peripheries, urban informality, zones of exception and gray spaces. Informed by the urbanism of the global South, these categories break with ontological and topological understandings of subaltern subjects and subaltern spaces.
Résumé
Intervenant sur les aspects épistémologiques et méthodologiques des études urbaines, cet article cherche à comprendre et à modifier les modalités d'analyse et de représentation des villes des pays du Sud dans la recherche urbaine et, jusqu'à un certain point, dans le discours populaire. Pour ce faire, l'attention est portée sur une formation d'idées, ‘l'urbanisme subalterne', qui vise la conceptualisation de la ‘mégacité', avec ses espaces subalternes et ses classes subalternes. Parmi ceux‐ci, le ‘taudis' ( slum ) omniprésent est le plus saillant. Contredisant les textes apocalyptiques et dystopiques sur ce lieu, l'urbanisme subalterne apporte des récits du taudis vu comme un cadre d'habitation, de source de revenu, d'auto‐organisation et de réflexion politique. Les écrits explicatifs dominants sur la mégacité sont ainsi mis en question de façon cruciale, voire radicale. Toutefois, l'article s'intéresse aux limites de l'urbanisme subalterne et à ses alternatives. Il met donc en avant des stratégies analytiques nouvelles, avec des catégories théoriques qui transcendent les métonymes habituels du sous‐développement comme mégacité, taudis, politique de masse et habitus des défavorisés. Quatre catégories sont présentées à la place: périphéries, informalité urbaine, zones d'exception et espaces gris. Reposant sur l'urbanisme des pays du Sud, elles dérogent aux conceptions ontologiques et topologiques des sujets subalternes et des espaces subalternes.
Two months after the attacks of 9/11, the Bush administration, in the midst of what it perceived to be a state of emergency, authorized the indefinite detention of noncitizens suspected of terrorist activities and their subsequent trials by a military commission. Here, distinguished Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben uses such circumstances to argue that this unusual extension of power, or "state of exception," has historically been an underexamined and powerful strategy that has the potential to transform democracies into totalitarian states. The sequel to Agamben's Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, State of Exception is the first book to theorize the state of exception in historical and philosophical context. In Agamben's view, the majority of legal scholars and policymakers in Europe as well as the United States have wrongly rejected the necessity of such a theory, claiming instead that the state of exception is a pragmatic question. Agamben argues here that the state of exception, which was meant to be a provisional measure, became in the course of the twentieth century a normal paradigm of government. Writing nothing less than the history of the state of exception in its various national contexts throughout Western Europe and the United States, Agamben uses the work of Carl Schmitt as a foil for his reflections as well as that of Derrida, Benjamin, and Arendt. In this highly topical book, Agamben ultimately arrives at original ideas about the future of democracy and casts a new light on the hidden relationship that ties law to violence.
The work of Giorgio Agamben, one of Italyâs most important and original philosophers, has been based on an uncommon erudition in classical traditions of philosophy and rhetoric, the grammarians of late antiquity, Christian theology, and modern philosophy. Recently, Agamben has begun to direct his thinking to the constitution of the social and to some concrete, ethico-political conclusions concerning the state of society today, and the place of the individual within it. In Homo Sacer, Agamben aims to connect the problem of pure possibility, potentiality, and power with the problem of political and social ethics in a context where the latter has lost its previous religious, metaphysical, and cultural grounding. Taking his cue from Foucaultâs fragmentary analysis of biopolitics, Agamben probes with great breadth, intensity, and acuteness the covert or implicit presence of an idea of biopolitics in the history of traditional political theory. He argues that from the earliest treatises of political theory, notably in Aristotleâs notion of man as a political animal, and throughout the history of Western thinking about sovereignty (whether of the king or the state), a notion of sovereignty as power over âlifeâ is implicit. The reason it remains merely implicit has to do, according to Agamben, with the way the sacred, or the idea of sacrality, becomes indissociable from the idea of sovereignty. Drawing upon Carl Schmittâs idea of the sovereignâs status as the exception to the rules he safeguards, and on anthropological research that reveals the close interlinking of the sacred and the taboo, Agamben defines the sacred person as one who can be killed and yet not sacrificedâa paradox he sees as operative in the status of the modern individual living in a system that exerts control over the collective ânaked lifeâ of all individuals.
Abstract
Despite long-standing calls to rethink the state ‘as a social relation’, reified understandings that view the state as a differentiated institutional realm separate from civil society are notably persistent in academic and political debate. By contrast, this paper focuses on the myriad ways in which everyday life is permeated by the social relations of stateness, and vice versa. The paper reviews the conceptual difficulties in defining ‘the state’ and suggests that these can be addressed in part through a focus on the mundane practices that give rise to ‘state effects’. It considers how the concept of prosaics, based on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, might provide a fruitful approach for studying such practices, their geographies and the geographies of state effects. A case study of the governance of anti-social behaviour in the UK is used to show the potential application of this approach in empirical research. The paper concludes with some reflections on possible future avenues of research.
This article proposes a narrative of city contestations beyond policy and programs. It considers why Indian metro elites, large land developers and international donors paradoxically lobby for comprehensive planning when confronting ‘vote bank politics’ by the poor. Poor groups, claiming public services and safeguarding territorial claims, open up political spaces that appropriate institutions and fuel an economy that builds complex alliances. Such spaces, here termed ‘occupancy urbanism’, are materialized by land shaped into multiple de‐facto tenures deeply embedded in lower bureaucracy. While engaging the state, these locality politics remain autonomous of it. Such a narrative views city terrains as being constituted by multiple political spaces inscribed by complex local histories. This politics is substantial and poses multiple crises for global capital. Locally embedded institutions subvert high‐end infrastructure and mega projects. ‘Occupancy urbanism’ helps poor groups appropriate real estate surpluses via reconstituted land tenure to fuel small businesses whose commodities jeopardize branded chains. Finally, it poses a political consciousness that refuses to be disciplined by NGOs and well‐meaning progressive activists and the rhetoric of ‘participatory planning’. This is also a politics that rejects ‘developmentalism’ where ‘poverty’ is ghettoized via programs for ‘basic needs’ allowing the elite ‘globally competitive economic development’.
Résumé
Cet article rend compte des contestations urbaines au‐delà de l’action publique et des programmes. Il porte sur les raisons pour lesquelles les élites métropolitaines indiennes, de gros aménageurs fonciers et des donateurs internationaux plaident paradoxalement pour un urbanisme complet lorsque la politique de vote bank se heurtent aux pauvres. Ces groupes, qui réclament des services publics et gardent des revendications territoriales, ouvrent des espaces politiques qui s’approprient des institutions et alimentent une économie aux alliances complexes. Ces espaces, dénommés “urbanisme d’occupation”, sont matérialisés par des terrains formés de multiples occupations de fait, profondément ancrées dans les échelons inférieurs de l’administration. Même si elle implique l’État, la politique de ces localités demeure autonome à son égard. D’après cet exposé, les terrains urbains sont constitués de nombreux espaces politiques aux historiques locaux complexes. Cette politique, non négligeable, est source de problèmes pour le capital mondial. En effet, des institutions ancrées au plan local bouleversent d’énormes projets d’infrastructure haut de gamme. “L’urbanisme d’occupation” aide les groupes pauvres à s’approprier les excédents immobiliers grâce à des modes de jouissance fonciers reconstitués pour stimuler de petites entreprises dont les produits menacent des chaînes de marque. Enfin, elle suscite une conscience politique qui refuse la discipline des ONG ou des partisans progressistes bien intentionnés, de même que la rhétorique de “l’aménagement participatif”. Cette politique rejette aussi un “développementalisme” où la pauvreté est “ghettoïsée” par des programmes en faveur des “besoins fondamentaux” qui permettent aux élites un “développement économique compétitif au plan mondial”.
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