At a time when the global south is being reconstituted by the force of urbanization there is simultaneously hope and despair. Hope in that cities of the global south are our future - they present opportunities for economic growth, a better quality of life, provide multiple possibilities of being and becoming, and offer freedoms to express, participate and collectively decide these futures. And despair in that southern cities, with widely different histories and diverse development trajectories, are characterised by degrees of unevenness, spatial polarization, social inequality and debilitating poverty.

Both these positions are informed by theories, concepts, approaches and methodologies that have emerged predominantly from the global north. Given that the empirics of urbanization is shifting definitively to the global south, there is an urgent need therefore to stimulate comparative conversations, actively build knowledge and analysis, and consolidate empirical and theoretical studies about the urban. This requires a critical, grounded and southern perspective, by privileging conversations focused on southern narratives, experiences, and voices that challenge and engage with the existing scholarship on cities, exploring continuities as well as disjuncture with cities in the developed countries.

This conference seeks to include voices from the ground to better understand the aspirations, the strategies, the actions and the agency of communities and people in actively seeking to align with the urban transformation, or to influence the restructuring process, to seek strategic spaces to consolidate their tenuous claims to space, identity and livelihood, and the protests or violence they resort to in response to their exclusion from the body politic of the city in violent and repressive ways. In bringing divergent viewpoints and multiple voices situated across a range of cities in the global south, this international conference seeks to contribute to recent theorizations on the heterogeneous processes of urbanization and urban restructuring that have been emerging from urban scholars working in Latin America, Asia, and South Africa.

The conference themes include:

  • Theorizing spatial justice in cities of the global south, the different histories and legacies of spatial (in)justice in different urban contexts
  • Theorizing urban violence in cities of the global south, examining the everyday and episodic nature of urban violence, violence as repression and violence as protest, violent state versus extra-legal modes of violence
  • Theorizing the role of the state, and state-society interaction in the restructuring of cities in the global south, interrogating the role of urban planning, governance and policy and the possibility of insurgent, radical and progressive planning in countering the spatial (in)justice
  • Re-examining and reimagining the “south”, what constitutes the global South? In the new world order, what kind of strategic space is being sought by the global South? What kind of political and economic alignments are being crafted across civil society groups, across social movements, across academia, across nations?
  • Deciphering the variety of outcomes, (both intended and unintended) from the socio-spatial transformations in cities of the global south at different levels - from the street level, to the neighbourhood level and to the city and city-regional level, understanding spatial restructuring engendered through mega urban infrastructure projects and mega events and its implication on people, places and the city, with a particular focus on ethnic and religious minorities, women and the poor
  • Debating the contradictions between justice and efficiency in shaping urban futures
  • Narratives of peace production in cities of the global south
  • Analysing the stories of the people, by the people and for the people in trying to counter, resist, influence and deal with urban restructuring and the learnings they can share of their struggles

ABOUT THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

The conference is being organized by the Centre for Urban Policy and Governance at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai in partnership with Instituto de Pesquisa e Planejamento Urbano e Regional, Rio and University of KwaZulu Natal, Durban as the culmination of a three year research on “People, Places and Infrastructure: Countering Urban Violence and Promoting Peace in Mumbai, Rio and Durban” funded by the International Development Research Centre, IDRC as part of their Safe And Inclusive Cities project. The major theoretical frameworks, empirical findings, and case studies from the project will be shared during the course of the conference through specific panels and presentations as well as field visits in Mumbai.

This conference invites academics, students, community activists, trade unions, political activists, urban practitioners, state actors, planners, engineers, architects, policy makers, and NGOs who are engaged in research, advocacy, campaigns and movements to promote social and spatial justice in cities situated in the global south. The two and half day international conference to be held in the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai hopes to provide a space to facilitate a discussion and deliberation across groups and individuals with diverse opinions about these issues, to sow the seeds of a global south-south network cutting across these issues, and to develop an urban agenda for the global south.

The conference will feature international speakers, urban academics and activists from the global south as well as local urban practitioners and students. There will be paper presentations and panel discussions, plenaries and key note addresses. The organizers also hope to enliven the conference venue through poster and photography exhibitions, local music, street art and plays. Conference participants will be given a sneak peek into the Maximum City’s diverse neighbourhoods through field trips organized in collaboration with local non-governmental organisations and community groups.

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS AND SELECTION PROCESS

We invite interested authors, academics, students, practitioners and activists for paper presentations.

Abstract submission

The abstract submission will be open from the 15th of May 2015. The deadline for abstract submission is August 15, 2015, 6.00 pm E.S.T. Abstracts for proposed papers should be 500 words and should be submitted at the following id: [email protected]

Abstracts should contain the following information:

  1. A synthesis of the issues to be addressed in the paper, the key arguments underlying them, the empirical and/or the theoretical basis, and the structure of the paper in 500 words.
  2. The contact of the author(s): Name(s), affiliation, address, and an e-mail address

Final paper

Upon selection by a Selection Committee, authors will receive more detailed instructions about the full paper by 30th of September 2015. The final paper will be around 20,000 characters long. It is due by the 15th of December 2015, 6.00 pm E.S.T. The full papers have to be submitted to the following id: cupg.tiss at gmail.com