Dear CUAA Community,

I hope that each of your semesters are off to a strong start! This month features opportunities to organize and participate in panels for this year’s AAA Conference and highlights recent publications that explore urban spaces in Turkey and Haiti. I encourage you to look at each and connect with your colleagues!

As always, please continue to share publications, professional opportunities, and events with me. The deadline for that information to be included in next month’s newsletter is April 8^th. Don’t hesitate to email me at nathan.romine.183 @my.csun.edu!

Be well!

Nathan Romine

Announcements

The 2022 Anthony Leeds Prize in Urban Anthropology

The Anthony Leeds Prize is awarded annually by the Critical Urban Anthropology Association (CUAA), formerly SUNTA, to an outstanding book in urban anthropology published in 2021. The prize is named in honor of the late Anthony Leeds, a distinguished pioneer in the field. The goal of the Leeds Prize is to showcase a monograph that advances the research agenda of anthropologists working in urban and transnational societies in methodologically and theoretically innovative ways. Textbooks and anthologies will not be considered. The prize will be awarded at the CUAA business meeting at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association. The winner must be willing to have their prize acceptance remarks published in City and Society, the CUAA journal. A letter of nomination (from an author, colleague, or publisher) is only required for those authors whose Ph.D. is in a discipline outside of anthropology. The letter must specify the relevance of the book to urban anthropology. 

Books must be sent no later than May 16, 2022. 

Send a digital copy and four hard copies of the book to Leeds Prize chair Sylvia Nam, sylvia.nam@uci.edu 

Leeds Prize Committee

c/o Sylvia Nam

Department of Anthropology
University of California, Irvine

3151 Social Science Plaza

Irvine, CA 92697-5100

 

Upcoming Events

Teaching the City Digital Workshop 

How do we teach about the city? What sits at the core of our educational and pedagogical explorations of urban spaces and socialities within Anthropology and its sibling disciplines?

The Critical Urban Anthropology Association (CUAA) will host a digital workshop on April 8, 2022, to explore these questions through a half-day of presentations and conversations. The workshop will feature a keynote address by John L. Jackson, Jr., the Richard Perry University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania; a roundtable featuring interdisciplinary scholars; and a series of lightning talks focused on pedagogical questions and practical case studies.

Questions may be addressed to Suzanne Scheld (suzanne.scheld@csun.edu) and Angela Storey (angela.storey@louisville.edu). The registration link will be released and disseminated in the upcoming two weeks.

ADDITIONALLY:

This event’s organizers are collecting syllabi for undergraduate and graduate level courses that pertain to urban anthropology. Those syllabi will be made available as a resource to members of our community. Please send your syllabi to Hanadi Alhalabi at hanadi.alhalabi.241@my.csun.edu.

Suzanne Scheld and Angela Story are organizing a series of panels for this year’s AAA conference that will address themes and pedagogical questions that emerge from and are relevant to “Teaching the City.” Scholars and practitioners that are interested in participating in these panels are encouraged to reach out to Suzanne Scheld at suzanne.scheld@csun.edu

Publications

Police, Provocation, Politics: Counterinsurgency in Istanbul

Deniz Yonucu, Lecturer, Newcastle University |Co-Editor, Directions Section, Political and Legal Anthropology Review

In Police, Provocation, Politics, Deniz Yonucu presents a counterintuitive analysis of contemporary policing practices, focusing particular attention on the incitement of counterviolence, perpetual conflict, and ethnosectarian discord by the state security apparatus. Situating Turkish policing within a global context and combining archival work and oral history narratives with ethnographic research, Yonucu demonstrates how counterinsurgency strategies from the Cold War and decolonial eras continue to inform contemporary urban policing in Istanbul. Shedding light on counterinsurgency’s affect-and-emotion-generating divisive techniques and urban dimensions, Yonucu shows how counterinsurgent policing strategies work to intervene in the organization of political dissent in a way that both counters existing alignments among dissident populations and prevents emergent ones.

Yonucu suggests that in the places where racialized and dissident populations live, provocations of counterviolence and conflict by state security agents as well as their containment of both cannot be considered disruptions of social order. Instead, they can only be conceptualized as forms of governance and policing designed to manage actual or potential rebellious populations.

Deniz has graciously shared a 30% off coupon for CUAA community members that are interested in purchasing their book (see attached QR code)!

Street Sovereigns: Young Men and the Makeshift State in Urban Haiti

Chelsey L. Kivland, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Dartmouth College

How do people improvise political communities in the face of state collapse—and at what cost? Street Sovereigns explores the risks and rewards taken by young men on the margins of urban Haiti who broker relations with politicians, state agents, and NGO workers in order to secure representation, resources, and jobs for themselves and neighbors. Moving beyond mainstream analyses that understand these groups—known as baz (base)—as apolitical, criminal gangs, Chelsey Kivland argues that they more accurately express a novel mode of street politics that has resulted from the nexus of liberalizing orders of governance and development with longstanding practices of militant organizing in Haiti.

Kivland demonstrates how the baz exemplifies an innovative and effective platform for intervening in the contemporary political order, while at the same time reproducing gendered and generational hierarchies and precipitating contests of leadership that exacerbate neighborhood insecurity. Still, through the continual effort to reconstitute a state that responds to the needs of the urban poor, this story offers a poignant lesson for political thought: one that counters prevailing conceptualizations of the state as that which should be flouted, escaped, or dismantled. The baz project reminds us that in the stead of a vitiated government and public sector the state resurfaces as the aspirational bedrock of the good society. “We make the state,” as baz leaders say.

 

Call for Submissions and Participation

AAA 2022 Panel Opportunity:

Cityscapes of Precarity: Navigating Vulnerability and Possibility in Urban Life 

Austin Duncan, Post-Doctoral Scholar at the University of Arizona, and Sarah Renkert, Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Arizona, are organizing a panel on “Cityscapes of Precarity” for this year’s AAAs. Scholars and practitioners that are interested in participating should contact Austin at awdunc@arizona.edu

Abstract:

In a world wracked by a global pandemic, persistent and intensifying inequities, and a looming climate catastrophe, it is not surprising that precarity has been characterized as the condition of our time (Bourdieu 1998, Butler 2004, Tsing 2015). While precarity is not unique to urban areas, the cityscapes of today are distinctly marked by topographies of precarity superimposed on the luxury and wealth of the few. Many urban residents are unable to access the social and economic resources they need to thrive—or even survive—in the same communities, forced to inhabit spaces between “just getting by” and “total calamity” (Breman and van der Linden 2014; Das and Randeria 2015). This is an experience that is often exacerbated by health, racial, and gender disparities, among other forms of intersectional precarity (Misra 2021). As this panel will explore, today’s cities offer a unique context for considering the vulnerabilites and possibilities presented by precarity amidst an ever-growing concentration of diverse people, shifting social and economics relations, and the pervasiveness of urban disparities (Campbell and Laheij 2021).

We invite presentations on contemporary forms of urban precarity from around the globe that speak to the range of ways people in cities live precariously, including but not limited to urban poverty and economic instability, homelessness, racial, gender, and other social categories, disease, chronic health, and disability, and other forms of precarious vulnerabilities. We also seek to include perspectives that flesh out and delineate the changing meanings of precarity, including how urban precarity may be productive of new modes of subjectivity, citizenship, and organizing (Lorey 2012, Standing 2011). Drawing together papers from across the anthropological sub-fields and related disciplines, this panel will explore the ways that that precarity emerges from and is interwoven into city life, producing pervasive forms of vulnerability and instability, but also creative possibilities for mobilization and collective change.

Dear CUAA Community,

Welcome back! I imagine that, by now, many of you have returned to your respective classrooms or studies, and what better way to begin the year than to pencil in a few lectures and workshops?  Take a look at the events and publications below – perhaps of a few will interest you. As always, please continue to send me events, webinars, publications, and professional opportunities. This newsletter is meant to reflect the collective work and interests of our chapter’s community.

The deadline for that information to be included in next month’s newsletter is February 25^th. Don’t hesitate to email me at nathan.romine.183 @my.csun.edu

Hoping that you all are healthy, safe, and thriving,

Nathan

 

Upcoming Events

Teaching the City Digital Workshop 

How do we teach about the city? What sits at the core of our educational and pedagogical explorations of urban spaces and socialities within Anthropology and its sibling disciplines?

The Critical Urban Anthropology Association (CUAA) will host a digital workshop on April 8, 2022, to explore these questions through a half-day of presentations and conversations. The workshop will feature a keynote address by John L. Jackson, Jr., the Richard Perry University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania; a roundtable featuring interdisciplinary scholars; and a series of lightning talks focused on pedagogical questions and practical case studies.

We invite proposals for 5-minute lightning talks as part of this program. The emphasis for the workshop is on exchanging ideas and providing resources, and thus we invite presentations focused on specific teaching tools or case studies relevant for teaching and learning in Urban Anthropology.

Please see the attached PDF for further information on the program and call for proposals. Submit lightning talk proposals via email by Friday Feb. 18 to CUAA.Teaching@gmail.com. Questions may be addressed to Suzanne Scheld (suzanne.scheld@csun.edu) and Angela Storey (angela.storey@louisville.edu)

 

Spring Speaker Series

This Spring, the Public Space Research Working Group is hosting a series of speakers in February, March, and May. February’s speaker is confirmed, and the latter two will be announced soon. Keep an eye on the newsletter.

Designing the Public Realm

A presentation and discussion with Alex Bozikovic

February 24, 2022 at 3:30 PST

Register in advance for this meeting:

https://csun.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMtd-yurToiHNT2gsnEj2AZct43R8cFt57G

Alex Bozikovic is the architecture critic for the Globe and Mail and co-author of Toronto Architecture: A City Guide. Bozikovic co-edited House Divided: How the Missing Middle Will Solve Toronto’s Affordability Crisis and has also written for Azure, Dwell, Icon and Metropolis. He won the 2019 President’s Medal for Media in Architecture from the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada for his journalism.

 

Publications

The Moving City: Scenes from the Delhi Metro and the Social Life of Infrastructure

Rashmi Sadana, Associate Professor of Anthropology at George Mason University

The Moving City is a rich and intimate account of urban transformation told through the story of Delhi’s Metro, a massive infrastructure project that is reshaping the city’s social and urban landscapes. Ethnographic vignettes introduce the feel and form of the Metro and let readers experience the city, scene by scene, stop by stop, as if they, too, have come along for the ride. Laying bare the radical possibilities and concretized inequalities of the Metro, and how people live with and through its built environment, this is a story of women and men on the move, the nature of Indian aspiration, and what it takes morally and materially to sustain urban life. Through exquisite prose, Rashmi Sadana transports the reader to a city shaped by both its Metro and those who depend on it, revealing a perspective on Delhi unlike any other.

Dear CUAA Community,

I hope that you all are well. There are several upcoming events that I recommend attending. This Monday, November 15^th, we are hosting our annual business meeting, which is open to all members and interested parties.

CUAA will also be hosting two roundtable discussions at this year’s AAA Conferences. Additional details can be found below, as well as links to register for each of those events.  For our Business Meeting and AAA Conference Roundtables, please remember to register in advance.

As always, please continue to send me publications, events, news, and resources that you believe would be of interest to our community. The deadline for that information to be included in next month’s newsletter is December 8^th.

Sincerely,

Nathan

 

Upcoming Events

CUAA Business Meeting

Please join us at the Critical Urban Anthropology Association (CUAA) Business meeting on Monday, November 15^th, 3:30 EST/12:30 PST. All are welcome. Catch up on what’s new in CUAA and City & Society, and help us to celebrate the following winners of CUAA awards:

Robert Rotenberg and Deborah Pellow,2021 Lifetime Achievement Awards

Maurice Rafael Magaña, 2021 Anthony Leeds Prize for Cartographies of Youth Resistance: Hip-Hop, Punk, and Urban Autonomy in Mexico (University of California Press)

Julie Soleil Archambault and Sayd Randle, 2021 Prize for the Best Paper Published in City & Society.

·         Julie Soleil Archamault, “Urban Precarity and Aspirational Compromise: Feeling Otherwise in a Mozambican Suburb.” 33(2)

·         Sayd Randle, “Battling Over Bathwater: Greywater Technopolitics in Los Angeles” 33(3)

Register in advance for this meeting:

https://csun.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUqde2uqj8uH9FkOElMUn30zHsy42PD3JWk

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Questions? Contact: Suzanne.scheld@csun.edu

___________

AAA Conference – CUAA Roundtables

Roundtable: What is Critical About Critical Urban Anthropology?

When: Nov 18, 2021 7:15 AM-9:00 AM Pacific (10:15 AM – 12:00 PM EST)

Room: Key Ballroom 9 (AAA meetings in Baltimore)

Register in advance for this meeting:

https://csun.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYtd–tpzkjG9Ijqm1tkeqb-YlpxxSyP_pB

Description: This roundtable explores what a critical engagement with the city and a commitment to social justice and transformation through the intersection of ethnography and politically informed action offers for our future. Calls for a public ethnography, militant ethnography and protest anthropology reflect a growing interest in producing knowledge that is useful, benefits those we work with and addresses urban problems. We will be highlighting a new generation of scholars who are reformulating these concerns and will identify theories, methods, and ethnographies that will lead urban anthropology in new directions and encourage more engaged practice.

Participants: Suzanne Scheld, Susan Falls, Julian B. Brash, Setha M. Low, Rashmi Sadana, Roberto E. Barrios, John L. Jackson Jr., Matilde Cordoba Azcarate, Jeff Maskovsky

Roundtable: Truth Be Told: Insights from Applications of Anthropology to Urban Public Space Issues

When: November 17, 2021 1:30 PM-3:15 PM Pacific Time (4:30 PM – 6:15 PM Eastern Time)

Room: Room 336 (AAA meetings in Baltimore)

Register in advance for this meeting:

https://csun.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwkcO-orzIuEtDop6ZT-q-LbRB4c_FTLDGA

Description: This roundtable is intended to provide a timely opportunity to discuss urban anthropologists’ contributions to addressing issues concerning current public space use and access. It explores this topic at a moment when the field of urban anthropology is embracing a critical perspective and as the politics of public space are increasingly essential to unpacking fundamental aspects of contemporary urban life regarding issues of informality, extralegality, and gender and racial justice. We will also compare notes regarding the experiences and insights that session participants have gained through their applications of long-term ethnographic findings to public space issues. 

Participants: Claire Panetta, Nathan Romine, Jayne Howell, Colin McLaughlin-Alcock, Matilde Cordoba Azcarate, Helen A Regis, Britt Oates, Suzanne Scheld, Walter E. Little, Beth Baker, Setha M. Low

___________

Recent Publications

Urban Inequalities

Edited by Italo Pardo and Giuliana B. Prato

Urban Inequalities explores the displacement of citizenship in urban spaces via the marginalization of existing communities. It covers range of geographies, from the USA, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and India, and presents ethnographically engaged contributions that expand dominant understandings of social inequality in the contemporary era. 

This collection brings together leading thinkers on human beings in urban spaces and inequalities therein. The contributors eschew conceptual confusion between equality—of opportunity, of access to resources, of the right to compete for whatever goal one chooses to pursue—and levelling. The discussions develop in the belief that old and emerging forms of inequality in urban settings need to be understood in depth, as does the machinery that, as masterfully elucidated by Hannah Arendt, operates behind oppression to sustain power and inequality. Anthropologists and fellow ethnographically committed social scientists examine socio-economic, cultural and political forms of urban inequality in different settings, helping to address comparatively these dynamics.  

Call for Submissions

Conference: Shaping the Future of Urban Research

Hosted by The Urban Affairs Association (UAA)

The Urban Affairs Association (UAA) invites proposal submissions for its upcoming conference, “Shaping the Future of Urban Research,” to be held April 12-14, 2022, in Washington, DC. 

UAA returns to Washington, D.C. to celebrate its 50th anniversary of annual meetings. The Opening Plenary of the 2022 conference will address the theme, “The State of Urban Affairs and the State of Urban Affairs Research.” This theme sets the stage for the overarching goals of the conference, which are: (1) to better understand our past, (2) to assess current realities, and (3) to create visions for the future that support a global urban research agenda.  The conference will provide opportunities to assess urban affairs as a field, and to develop ideas for enhancing its long-term prospects and impacts. 

UAA encourages proposals for paper, panel, colloquy, and roundtable sessions to stimulate thinking and re-thinking of urban affairs, and to widen intellectual and professional networks.  

UAA 2022 will feature approximately 200 interdisciplinary sessions, a variety of professional development and networking opportunities, book exhibits, and more. Over 1000 international researchers and doctoral students attend the conference each year. Complete details about UAA 2022, including the full call for participation, are available on the conference website. https://tinyurl.com/UAA2022

Proposal submissions are due December 1, 2021. 

In addition to the conference theme, UAA encourages proposals that focus on an array of research topics including:

-Activist Scholarship

-Arts, Culture in Urban Contexts

-Disaster Planning/Management 

-Economic Development, Redevelopment, Tourism

-Education Policy in Urban Contexts, Educational Institutions & Urban Inequalities

-Environmental Issues, Sustainability

-Gender, Identity, Diversity

-Globalization, Multi-national Urban Issues

-Governance, Intergovernmental Relations, Regionalism, Urban Management

-Health and Urban Populations

-Historic Preservation, Space and Place

-Historical Perspectives on Cities, Urban Areas

-Housing, Neighborhoods, Community Development

-Human Services & Urban Populations, Nonprofit Sector in Urban Contexts

-Immigration, Population and Demographic Trends in Urban Areas

-Infrastructure, Capital Projects, Networks, Transport,

-Labor, Employment, Wages, Training

-Land Use, Growth Management, Urban Development, Urban Planning

-Poverty, Welfare, Income Inequality

-Professional Development, The Field of Urban Affairs

-Public Safety, Criminal Justice, Household Violence in Urban Contexts

-Race, Ethnicity, and Nationality in Urban and Metropolitan Contexts

-Social Capital, Democracy and Civil Society, Social Theory, Religion and the City

-Special Conference Topic:  Shaping the Future of Urban Research

-Special Track on Urban Entrepreneurship (Sponsored by Kauffman Foundation)

-Urban Communication (Urban Media Roles, Journalism, Social Media/Technology)

-Urban Design, Urban Architecture

-Urban Indicators, Data/Methods, Satisfaction/Quality of Life Surveys

-Urban Politics, Elections, Citizen Participation

-Urban Theory, Theoretical and Conceptual Issues in Urban Affairs

-Urban Issues in Asia and the Pacific Rim

-Urban Issues in Central & South America and the Caribbean

Professional Development

FIELD TRAINING SCHOOL AND RESEARCH SEMINAR ON “URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY AND THEORY”

by Giuliana B. Prato

Applications are now open for the Field Training School and Research Seminar on Urban Ethnography and Theory

Deadline: Applications will be accepted until 21 March 2022. 

Location: Montecatini Terme, Tuscany, Italy, on 18-26 July 2022.

This eight-day Summer programme is addressed to postgraduate and doctoral students, and to postdoctoral researchers, professionals and practitioners who are interested in ethnographic research and empirically-grounded analysis.

The School is organised and hosted by the International Urban Symposium-IUS in collaboration with an international group of senior scholars from European, Indian, Middle Eastern and US Universities, who will lead a series of teaching seminars, student research seminars and field trips. Teaching will be in English. Social events will also take place taking advantage of the centrality of the location within easy reach of Tuscany’s world-renowned iconic places.

The School will offer an interactive learning environment and opportunities to discuss the rationale and practices of traditional and new research methods and mainstream debates. Students will have the opportunity to present their own research and receive feedback from leading scholars; and to engage in team work and networking.

The Teaching Seminars will benefit from senior scholars’ wide range of ethnographic, methodological and theoretical expertise to address topical issues, including:

• urban diversity, migration, informality; 
• legitimacy and legitimation
• governance, stereotype and stigma;
• the role of sport mega-events, rituals;
• crisis, emergency and conflict;
• public space, vernacular landscape, heritage, identity.

The primary aim is to train students in the ‘art’ of conducting ethnographic fieldwork and develop the link between ethnographically based analysis and social theory. The in-class work will be supplemented by structured city walks and focused observational field trips, followed by students’ reports. 

With a view to honing and developing junior scholars’ skills as future professionals, the School will culminate in a full-day Research Seminar that will give students who are engaged in research the opportunity to present their work, engage in academic debate and benefit from expert feedback from the teaching staff. It is anticipated that expanded and revised versions of select Seminar papers will be published in outlets associated with theUS, including the open-access, peer-reviewed journal Urbanities-Journal of Urban Ethnography.

Dear CUAA Community,

I hope that each of your semesters are off to a strong start! This month features opportunities to organize and participate in panels for this year’s AAA Conference and highlights recent publications that explore urban spaces in Turkey and Haiti. I encourage you to look at each and connect with your colleagues!

As always, please continue to share publications, professional opportunities, and events with me. The deadline for that information to be included in next month’s newsletter is April 8^th. Don’t hesitate to email me at nathan.romine.183@my.csun.edu

Be well!

Nathan Romine

Announcements

The 2022 Anthony Leeds Prize in Urban Anthropology

The Anthony Leeds Prize is awarded annually by the Critical Urban Anthropology Association (CUAA), formerly SUNTA, to an outstanding book in urban anthropology published in 2021. The prize is named in honor of the late Anthony Leeds, a distinguished pioneer in the field. The goal of the Leeds Prize is to showcase a monograph that advances the research agenda of anthropologists working in urban and transnational societies in methodologically and theoretically innovative ways. Textbooks and anthologies will not be considered. The prize will be awarded at the CUAA business meeting at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association. The winner must be willing to have their prize acceptance remarks published in City and Society, the CUAA journal. A letter of nomination (from an author, colleague, or publisher) is only required for those authors whose Ph.D. is in a discipline outside of anthropology. The letter must specify the relevance of the book to urban anthropology.

Books must be sent no later than May 16, 2022. 

Send a digital copy and four hard copies of the book to Leeds Prize chair Sylvia Nam, sylvia.nam@uci.edu

Leeds Prize Committee

c/o Sylvia Nam

Department of Anthropology
University of California, Irvine

3151 Social Science Plaza

Irvine, CA 92697-5100

Upcoming Events

Teaching the City Digital Workshop

How do we teach about the city? What sits at the core of our educational and pedagogical explorations of urban spaces and socialities within Anthropology and its sibling disciplines?

The Critical Urban Anthropology Association (CUAA) will host a digital workshop on April 8, 2022, to explore these questions through a half-day of presentations and conversations. The workshop will feature a keynote address by John L. Jackson, Jr., the Richard Perry University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania; a roundtable featuring interdisciplinary scholars; and a series of lightning talks focused on pedagogical questions and practical case studies.

Questions may be addressed to Suzanne Scheld (suzanne.scheld@csun.edu) and Angela Storey (angela.storey@louisville.edu). The registration link will be released and disseminated in the upcoming two weeks.

ADDITIONALLY:

This event’s organizers are collecting syllabi for undergraduate and graduate level courses that pertain to urban anthropology. Those syllabi will be made available as a resource to members of our community. Please send your syllabi to Hanadi Alhalabi at hanadi.alhalabi.241@my.csun.edu.

Suzanne Scheld and Angela Story are organizing a series of panels for this year’s AAA conference that will address themes and pedagogical questions that emerge from and are relevant to “Teaching the City.” Scholars and practitioners that are interested in participating in these panels are encouraged to reach out to Suzanne Scheld at suzanne.scheld@csun.edu

Publications

Police, Provocation, Politics: Counterinsurgency in Istanbul

Deniz Yonucu, Lecturer, Newcastle University |Co-Editor, Directions Section, Political and Legal Anthropology Review

In Police, Provocation, Politics, Deniz Yonucu presents a counterintuitive analysis of contemporary policing practices, focusing particular attention on the incitement of counterviolence, perpetual conflict, and ethnosectarian discord by the state security apparatus. Situating Turkish policing within a global context and combining archival work and oral history narratives with ethnographic research, Yonucu demonstrates how counterinsurgency strategies from the Cold War and decolonial eras continue to inform contemporary urban policing in Istanbul. Shedding light on counterinsurgency’s affect-and-emotion-generating divisive techniques and urban dimensions, Yonucu shows how counterinsurgent policing strategies work to intervene in the organization of political dissent in a way that both counters existing alignments among dissident populations and prevents emergent ones.

Yonucu suggests that in the places where racialized and dissident populations live, provocations of counterviolence and conflict by state security agents as well as their containment of both cannot be considered disruptions of social order. Instead, they can only be conceptualized as forms of governance and policing designed to manage actual or potential rebellious populations.

Deniz has graciously shared a 30% off coupon for CUAA community members that are interested in purchasing their book (see attached QR code)!

Street Sovereigns: Young Men and the Makeshift State in Urban Haiti

Chelsey L. Kivland, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Dartmouth College

How do people improvise political communities in the face of state collapse—and at what cost? Street Sovereigns explores the risks and rewards taken by young men on the margins of urban Haiti who broker relations with politicians, state agents, and NGO workers in order to secure representation, resources, and jobs for themselves and neighbors. Moving beyond mainstream analyses that understand these groups—known as baz (base)—as apolitical, criminal gangs, Chelsey Kivland argues that they more accurately express a novel mode of street politics that has resulted from the nexus of liberalizing orders of governance and development with longstanding practices of militant organizing in Haiti.

Kivland demonstrates how the baz exemplifies an innovative and effective platform for intervening in the contemporary political order, while at the same time reproducing gendered and generational hierarchies and precipitating contests of leadership that exacerbate neighborhood insecurity. Still, through the continual effort to reconstitute a state that responds to the needs of the urban poor, this story offers a poignant lesson for political thought: one that counters prevailing conceptualizations of the state as that which should be flouted, escaped, or dismantled. The baz project reminds us that in the stead of a vitiated government and public sector the state resurfaces as the aspirational bedrock of the good society. “We make the state,” as baz leaders say.

Call for Submissions and Participation

AAA 2022 Panel Opportunity:

Cityscapes of Precarity: Navigating Vulnerability and Possibility in Urban Life 

Austin Duncan, Post-Doctoral Scholar at the University of Arizona, and Sarah Renkert, Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Arizona, are organizing a panel on “Cityscapes of Precarity” for this year’s AAAs. Scholars and practitioners that are interested in participating should contact Austin at awdunc@arizona.edu.

Abstract:

Cityscapes of Precarity: Navigating Vulnerability and Possibility in Urban Life 

In a world wracked by a global pandemic, persistent and intensifying inequities, and a looming climate catastrophe, it is not surprising that precarity has been characterized as the condition of our time (Bourdieu 1998, Butler 2004, Tsing 2015). While precarity is not unique to urban areas, the cityscapes of today are distinctly marked by topographies of precarity superimposed on the luxury and wealth of the few. Many urban residents are unable to access the social and economic resources they need to thrive—or even survive—in the same communities, forced to inhabit spaces between “just getting by” and “total calamity” (Breman and van der Linden 2014; Das and Randeria 2015). This is an experience that is often exacerbated by health, racial, and gender disparities, among other forms of intersectional precarity (Misra 2021). As this panel will explore, today’s cities offer a unique context for considering the vulnerabilites and possibilities presented by precarity amidst an ever-growing concentration of diverse people, shifting social and economics relations, and the pervasiveness of urban disparities (Campbell and Laheij 2021).

We invite presentations on contemporary forms of urban precarity from around the globe that speak to the range of ways people in cities live precariously, including but not limited to urban poverty and economic instability, homelessness, racial, gender, and other social categories, disease, chronic health, and disability, and other forms of precarious vulnerabilities. We also seek to include perspectives that flesh out and delineate the changing meanings of precarity, including how urban precarity may be productive of new modes of subjectivity, citizenship, and organizing (Lorey 2012, Standing 2011). Drawing together papers from across the anthropological sub-fields and related disciplines, this panel will explore the ways that that precarity emerges from and is interwoven into city life, producing pervasive forms of vulnerability and instability, but also creative possibilities for mobilization and collective change.

of your semesters are off to a strong start! This month features opportunities to organize and participate in panels for this year’s AAA Conference and highlights recent publications that explore urban spaces in Turkey and Haiti. I encourage you to look at each and connect with your colleagues!

As always, please continue to share publications, professional opportunities, and events with me. The deadline for that information to be included in next month’s newsletter is April 8^th. Don’t hesitate to email me at nathan.romine.183 @my.csun.edu!

Be well!

Nathan Romine

Announcements

The 2022 Anthony Leeds Prize in Urban Anthropology

The Anthony Leeds Prize is awarded annually by the Critical Urban Anthropology Association (CUAA), formerly SUNTA, to an outstanding book in urban anthropology published in 2021. The prize is named in honor of the late Anthony Leeds, a distinguished pioneer in the field. The goal of the Leeds Prize is to showcase a monograph that advances the research agenda of anthropologists working in urban and transnational societies in methodologically and theoretically innovative ways. Textbooks and anthologies will not be considered. The prize will be awarded at the CUAA business meeting at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association. The winner must be willing to have their prize acceptance remarks published in City and Society, the CUAA journal. A letter of nomination (from an author, colleague, or publisher) is only required for those authors whose Ph.D. is in a discipline outside of anthropology. The letter must specify the relevance of the book to urban anthropology. 

Books must be sent no later than May 16, 2022. 

Send a digital copy and four hard copies of the book to Leeds Prize chair Sylvia Nam, sylvia.nam@uci.edu 

Leeds Prize Committee

c/o Sylvia Nam

Department of Anthropology
University of California, Irvine

3151 Social Science Plaza

Irvine, CA 92697-5100

Upcoming Events

Teaching the City Digital Workshop 

How do we teach about the city? What sits at the core of our educational and pedagogical explorations of urban spaces and socialities within Anthropology and its sibling disciplines?

The Critical Urban Anthropology Association (CUAA) will host a digital workshop on April 8, 2022, to explore these questions through a half-day of presentations and conversations. The workshop will feature a keynote address by John L. Jackson, Jr., the Richard Perry University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania; a roundtable featuring interdisciplinary scholars; and a series of lightning talks focused on pedagogical questions and practical case studies.

Questions may be addressed to Suzanne Scheld (suzanne.scheld@csun.edu) and Angela Storey (angela.storey@louisville.edu). The registration link will be released and disseminated in the upcoming two weeks.

ADDITIONALLY:

This event’s organizers are collecting syllabi for undergraduate and graduate level courses that pertain to urban anthropology. Those syllabi will be made available as a resource to members of our community. Please send your syllabi to Hanadi Alhalabi at hanadi.alhalabi.241@my.csun.edu.

Suzanne Scheld and Angela Story are organizing a series of panels for this year’s AAA conference that will address themes and pedagogical questions that emerge from and are relevant to “Teaching the City.” Scholars and practitioners that are interested in participating in these panels are encouraged to reach out to Suzanne Scheld at suzanne.scheld@csun.edu

Publications

Police, Provocation, Politics: Counterinsurgency in Istanbul

Deniz Yonucu, Lecturer, Newcastle University |Co-Editor, Directions Section, Political and Legal Anthropology Review

In Police, Provocation, Politics, Deniz Yonucu presents a counterintuitive analysis of contemporary policing practices, focusing particular attention on the incitement of counterviolence, perpetual conflict, and ethnosectarian discord by the state security apparatus. Situating Turkish policing within a global context and combining archival work and oral history narratives with ethnographic research, Yonucu demonstrates how counterinsurgency strategies from the Cold War and decolonial eras continue to inform contemporary urban policing in Istanbul. Shedding light on counterinsurgency’s affect-and-emotion-generating divisive techniques and urban dimensions, Yonucu shows how counterinsurgent policing strategies work to intervene in the organization of political dissent in a way that both counters existing alignments among dissident populations and prevents emergent ones.

Yonucu suggests that in the places where racialized and dissident populations live, provocations of counterviolence and conflict by state security agents as well as their containment of both cannot be considered disruptions of social order. Instead, they can only be conceptualized as forms of governance and policing designed to manage actual or potential rebellious populations.

Deniz has graciously shared a 30% off coupon for CUAA community members that are interested in purchasing their book (see attached QR code)!

Street Sovereigns: Young Men and the Makeshift State in Urban Haiti

Chelsey L. Kivland, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Dartmouth College

How do people improvise political communities in the face of state collapse—and at what cost? Street Sovereigns explores the risks and rewards taken by young men on the margins of urban Haiti who broker relations with politicians, state agents, and NGO workers in order to secure representation, resources, and jobs for themselves and neighbors. Moving beyond mainstream analyses that understand these groups—known as baz (base)—as apolitical, criminal gangs, Chelsey Kivland argues that they more accurately express a novel mode of street politics that has resulted from the nexus of liberalizing orders of governance and development with longstanding practices of militant organizing in Haiti.

Kivland demonstrates how the baz exemplifies an innovative and effective platform for intervening in the contemporary political order, while at the same time reproducing gendered and generational hierarchies and precipitating contests of leadership that exacerbate neighborhood insecurity. Still, through the continual effort to reconstitute a state that responds to the needs of the urban poor, this story offers a poignant lesson for political thought: one that counters prevailing conceptualizations of the state as that which should be flouted, escaped, or dismantled. The baz project reminds us that in the stead of a vitiated government and public sector the state resurfaces as the aspirational bedrock of the good society. “We make the state,” as baz leaders say.

Call for Submissions and Participation

AAA 2022 Panel Opportunity:

Cityscapes of Precarity: Navigating Vulnerability and Possibility in Urban Life 

Austin Duncan, Post-Doctoral Scholar at the University of Arizona, and Sarah Renkert, Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Arizona, are organizing a panel on “Cityscapes of Precarity” for this year’s AAAs. Scholars and practitioners that are interested in participating should contact Austin at awdunc@arizona.edu.

Abstract:

Cityscapes of Precarity: Navigating Vulnerability and Possibility in Urban Life 

In a world wracked by a global pandemic, persistent and intensifying inequities, and a looming climate catastrophe, it is not surprising that precarity has been characterized as the condition of our time (Bourdieu 1998, Butler 2004, Tsing 2015). While precarity is not unique to urban areas, the cityscapes of today are distinctly marked by topographies of precarity superimposed on the luxury and wealth of the few. Many urban residents are unable to access the social and economic resources they need to thrive—or even survive—in the same communities, forced to inhabit spaces between “just getting by” and “total calamity” (Breman and van der Linden 2014; Das and Randeria 2015). This is an experience that is often exacerbated by health, racial, and gender disparities, among other forms of intersectional precarity (Misra 2021). As this panel will explore, today’s cities offer a unique context for considering the vulnerabilites and possibilities presented by precarity amidst an ever-growing concentration of diverse people, shifting social and economics relations, and the pervasiveness of urban disparities (Campbell and Laheij 2021).

We invite presentations on contemporary forms of urban precarity from around the globe that speak to the range of ways people in cities live precariously, including but not limited to urban poverty and economic instability, homelessness, racial, gender, and other social categories, disease, chronic health, and disability, and other forms of precarious vulnerabilities. We also seek to include perspectives that flesh out and delineate the changing meanings of precarity, including how urban precarity may be productive of new modes of subjectivity, citizenship, and organizing (Lorey 2012, Standing 2011). Drawing together papers from across the anthropological sub-fields and related disciplines, this panel will explore the ways that that precarity emerges from and is interwoven into city life, producing pervasive forms of vulnerability and instability, but also creative possibilities for mobilization and collective change.

Dear CUAA Community,

I hope that you all are well. September was quiet month on our end. Still, I’ve included a few items that may be of interest.

As always, please continue to send me publications, events, news, and resources that you believe would be of interest to our community. The deadline for that information to be includes in next month’s newsletter is October 18^th.

Wishing you all a fantastic start to your fall semesters,

Nathan

Upcoming Events

New Name, New Website: CUAA Partners with IntersectLA

A few of you may have noticed that our current website is outdated. We’ve decided to partner with IntersectLA, a student-operated and faculty-run creative strategy agency at California State University, Northridge, to redesign it. Our new website will be fresh, easily accessible, and will highlight the work of our members and our section’s journal, City and Society. As we begin discussions with IntersectLA, I encourage you to reach out and share any ideas that you have. Perhaps, you’ve seen a feature on another website that you found exceptionally useful. Or maybe there is specific content that you would like us to incorporate.

Regarding the latter, we are creating a repository of syllabi covering a variety of courses in anthropology. We believe that this will be a useful tool to newer and more seasoned scholars alike, as they refine and introduce new courses at their respective institutions. Should you be willing and interested in sharing, please send syllabi to nathan.romine.183@my.csun.edu.

AAA Hybrid Annual Meeting in Baltimore, MD (November 17-21)

This year’s annual AAA meeting is a hybrid event – registrants can participate virtually or in person in Baltimore, MD. The theme is “Truth and Responsibility.” Our sections plans to host two roundtables: “What is Critical about Critical Anthropology” and “Truth Be Told: Insights from Applications of Anthropology to Urban Public Space Issues.” Members interested in attending can register here.

Recent Publications

New Book Series: Higher Education and the City

A new book series titled Higher Education and the City (Johns Hopkins University Press), is seeking scholarly, book length manuscript submissions that examine higher education ecosystems from the lens of urban change with an emphasis on the past and future of cities and metropolitan areas.  Relevant cultural and social issues, the pursuit of innovation, and the relationship between higher education, economic and community development, will contribute to ongoing dialogues.  For information on contributing to the series, contact Costas Spirou, Book Series Editor at costas.spirou@gcsu.edu.  Please share the opportunity with any colleagues that might be interested in this initiative.

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Call for Papers

The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences Announces a Call for Articles on “Building an Open Qualitative Science”

The purpose of this call for articles is to roll out this AVP-based qualitative analysis by opening up the AVP dataset to qualified scholars and analysts. We welcome research on the many topics—including health, poverty, politics, protest, employment, coping, and anomie—that the AVP interviews can assist in understanding. Although most issues of RSF are topically focused, this issue will be topically broad and is instead unified by a commitment to exploring the hopefully broad payoff to this new form of qualitative data collection. The balance of this call discusses the design of the AVP, the topics covered in the interview schedule, and the types of research questions that it opens up and that are supported by this call.

Click here for a full description of the topics covered in this call.

Dear CUAA Community,

I hope you all are savoring the remaining days of summer. I invite you to peruse the recent publications that our members have shared with us. Topics range from gentrification, art, neoliberalism, and racial equity. Additionally, our affiliated journal, City and Society, has released their latest issue.

As always, please continue to send me publications, events, news, and resources that you believe would be of interest to our community.

Wishing you all well!

Nathan

Upcoming Events

New Name, New Website: CUAA Partners with IntersectLA

A few of you may have noticed that our current website is outdated. We’ve decided to partner with IntersectLA, a student-operated and faculty-run creative strategy agency at California State University, Northridge, to redesign it. Our new website will be fresh, easily accessible, and will highlight the work of our members and our section’s journal, City and Society. As we begin discussions with IntersectLA, I encourage you to reach out and share any ideas that you have. Perhaps, you’ve seen a feature on another website that you found exceptionally useful. Or maybe there is specific content that you would like us to incorporate.

Regarding the latter, we are creating a repository of syllabi covering a variety of courses in anthropology. We believe that this will be a useful tool to newer and more seasoned scholars alike, as they refine and introduce new courses at their respective institutions. Should you be willing and interested in sharing, please send syllabi to nathan.romine.183@my.csun.edu.

AAA Hybrid Annual Meeting in Baltimore, MD (November 17-21)

This year’s annual AAA meeting is a hybrid event – registrants can participate virtually or in person in Baltimore, MD. The theme is “Truth and Responsibility.” Our sections plans to host two roundtables: “What is Critical about Critical Anthropology” and “Truth Be Told: Insights from Applications of Anthropology to Urban Public Space Issues.” Members interested in attending can register here.

Recent Publications

City and Society, our affiliated journal,recently released their latest issue. It includes a special section that discusses the right to the city in Latin America, as well as two additional dispatch sections, featuring articles examining COVID-19 and Policing the City.

__________

The Inconvenient Generation: Migrant Youth Coming of Age on Shanghai’s Edge

Minhua Ling, Associate Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, follows the trajectories of dozens of children coming of age at a time of competing economic and social imperatives, and its everyday ramifications on their sense of identity, educational outcomes, and citizenship claims.

After three decades of massive rural-to-urban migration in China, a burgeoning population of over 35 million second-generation migrants living in its cities poses a challenge to socialist modes of population management and urban governance.  The Inconvenient Generation offers the first longitudinal study of these migrant youth from middle school to the labor market in the years after the Shanghai municipal government partially opened its public school system to them.  It shows how they are inevitably funneled through the school system toward a life of manual labor under policies and practices of segmented inclusion. The politics of segmented citizenship is revealed in the complex processes of selective inclusion/exclusion of migrant youth through regulatory and market mechanisms as well as discursive practices.

__________

“The Destiny of Urban Peripheries: Downtown Tel Aviv’s Contested Realities” (PDF attached with author’s permission)

Moshe Shokeid, Professor Emeritus of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel Aviv University, discusses gentrification and its impediments in two slummy neighborhoods in downtown Tel Aviv. His continued ethnographic engagement in those spaces has identified specific elements affecting urban transformation, including a varied population (old-time residents, foreign labor, refugees and asylum seekers, better-off dwellers) and industrial and socioeconomic structural establishments.

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“Proximal Disruptions: Artists, Arts Led Urban Regeneration and Gentrification in Oakland, California” in Art and Gentrification in the Changing Neoliberal Landscape (PDF attached with author’s permission)

In her latest article, Robin Balliger, Associate Professor at the San Francisco Art Institute, critiques longstanding assumptions about the role of artists in the gentrification process by contrasting the everyday lives of artists in a disinvested West Oakland neighborhood with city-sponsored arts-led regeneration strategies.  Through longitudinal ethnography, she shows how the regional economy of the Bay Area (particularly the information technology sector) substantially increased displacement and inequality, a context which also fostered mutual aid among diverse residents in a neglected neighborhood.

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Renovating Value: HGTV and the Spectacle of Gentrification

Robert Goldman, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Lewis & Clark College, reveals how the comforting story told by HGTV programs obscures the reality of housing investment, renovation, and flipping.

HGTV has perfected stories about creating and capturing value in the housing market. This lifestyle network’s beloved flagship programs, Flip or Flop, Property Brothers, and Fixer Upper—where people revitalize modern spaces and reinvent property values—offer “fairy tales” in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis. The cable channel’s seductive, bingeable programs may show how to find and extract value from properties, but, in fact, they insidiously ignore the realities of the real estate and mortgage markets, housing inequality, gentrification, economic insecurity, and even homelessness. In effect, HGTV has turned house flipping into a master narrative about getting ahead in America during an era of otherwise uneasy economic prospects.

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Furthering Fair Housing: Prospects for Racial Justice in America’s Neighborhoods.

The volume, whose editors and contributors are a mix of civil rights, advocates, policymakers, and public officials, provides critical perspectives and identifies promising new directions for future policies and practices. Placing the history of fair housing in the context of the centuries-long struggle for racial equity, Furthering Fair Housing shows how this policy can be revived and enhanced to advance racial equity in America’s neighborhoods.

Contributors: Vicki Been, Raphael Bostic, Edward G. Goetz, Megan Haberle, Howard Husock, Reed Jordan, Michael C. Lens, Katherine O’Regan, Patrick Pontius, Alexander von Hoffman, and the editors

Editors: Justin P. Steil, Nichola F. Kelly, Lawrence J. Vale, Maia S. Woluchem.

__________

Becoming Nisei

Lisa M. Hoffman, Professor of Urban Studies at the University of Washington, Tacoma, and Mary L. Hanneman, Associate Professor of Asian Studies and History at the University of Washington, Tacoma, examine Japanese America Tacoma in the 1920’s and 30’s in their latest book.

Tacoma’s vibrant Nihonmachi of the 1920s and ’30s was home to a significant number of first-generation Japanese immigrants and their second-generation American children, and these families formed tight-knit bonds despite their diverse religious, prefectural, and economic backgrounds. As the city’s Nisei grew up attending the secular Japanese Language School, they absorbed the Meiji-era cultural practices and ethics of the previous generation. At the same time, they positioned themselves in new and dynamic ways, including resisting their parents and pursuing lives that diverged from traditional expectations.

Becoming Nisei, based on more than forty interviews, shares stories of growing up in Japanese American Tacoma before the incarceration. Recording these early twentieth-century lives counteracts the structural forgetting and erasure of prewar histories in both Tacoma and many other urban settings after World War II. Lisa Hoffman and Mary Hanneman underscore both the agency of Nisei in these processes as well as their negotiations of prevailing social and power relations.

Job and Research Opportunities

Job Title: Assistant Professor, Urban Studies

Company: Worcester State University, Worcester, MA

Job Description: The Department of Urban Studies at Worcester State University seeks to fill a tenure-track, full-time, and benefited position at the Assistant Professor level beginning in the Fall Semester of 2022. We are particularly interested in scholars whose teaching and research interests are in the areas of quantitative policy analysis, urban environmental policy, urban economics, community-engaged planning, urban education, and public health.

The ideal candidate will be an interdisciplinary scholar who is able to teach quantitative research methods, and who can demonstrate an ability to situate these methods in a socio-cultural context. They will teach introductory and upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses. Courses involving policy analysis and quantitative methods may cover several different topics, including:

• Transportation

• Housing

• Urban health & social systems

• Urban food systems

Application Instructions:

Worcester State University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. M/F/D/V. Members of historically underrepresented groups are strongly encouraged to apply.

All applicants must apply online through Interview Exchange: www.worcester.interviewexchange.com

Please submit a cover letter, curriculum vitae, and the contact information for 3 professional references who will submit a letter of reference on your behalf.

Grants and Awards

Member Awarded Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada Grant

Dr. B. Lynne Milgram (OCAD University), as a co-applicant, is part of an international research team that was just awarded a Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) three-year ‘Partnership Development Grant’ entitled, Resilient Urban Communities & Local Food Systems after COVID-19: Developing Knowledge Partnerships Beyond the Pandemic. 

Led by the project’s Principal Investigator, Dr. Jayeeta Sharma, (University of Toronto, Scarborough), team members will engage cross-sectoral research to promote a better understanding of the policy-related and community-focused measures that will contribute to collective food security and post-pandemic urban food resiliency. 

Dear CUAA Community,

I hope that you all are well. It has been a relatively quiet month, but we anticipate that to change as fall approaches. Please continue to send me publications, events, and news that you believe would be of interest to our community.

Sincerely,

Nathan

Recent Events

Graduate Student Working Group

The Graduate Student Working met on June 25^th and continued to discuss its direction and members’ needs. Several doctoral students expressed an interest in creating a writing circle. This would be a space where students could find partners to review each other’s work, bounce ideas of each other, and, generally, hold themselves accountable. If you know of a graduate student that could benefit from participating in a writing circle, don’t hesitate to put them in contact with me at nathan.romine.183@my.csun.edu.  The next formal meeting for the graduate student working group will take place in late August (more details to come in next month’s newsletter).

Upcoming Events

New Name, New Website: CUAA Partners with IntersectLA

A few of you may have noticed that our current website is outdated. We’ve decided to partner with IntersectLA, a student-operated and faculty-run creative strategy agency at California State University, Northridge, to redesign it. Our new website will be fresh, easily accessible, and will highlight the work of our members and our section’s journal, City and Society. As we begin discussions with IntersectLA, I encourage you to reach out and share any ideas that you have. Perhaps, you’ve seen a feature on another website that you found exceptionally useful. Or maybe there is specific content that you would like us to incorporate.

Regarding the latter, we are creating a repository of syllabi covering a variety of courses in anthropology. We believe that this will be a useful tool to newer and more seasoned scholars alike, as they refine and introduce new courses at their respective institutions. I’ll be following up on this matter and collecting material in the coming weeks and months.

AAA Hybrid Annual Meeting in Baltimore, MD (November 17-21)

This year’s annual AAA meeting is a hybrid event – registrants can participate virtually or in person in Baltimore, MD. The theme is “Truth and Responsibility.” Our sections plans to host two roundtables: “What is Critical about Critical Anthropology” and “Truth Be Told: Insights from Applications of Anthropology to Urban Public Space Issues.” Members interested in attending can register here.

Recent Publications

Lynne Milgram, Professor at the Ontario College of Art and Design University (OCAD U), recently published two articles that explore social entrepreneurship in coffee production and at public markets in the Philippines.

“Social Entrepreneurship and Arabica Coffee Production in the Northern Philippines: Navigating Opportunities and Constraints”

“Repositioning the Edge: The Resilience of a Wholesale Vegetable Market in Benguet Northern Philippines” In Norms and Illegality: Intimate Ethnographies and Politics.

In his latest work, Gerald Roche, Anthropologist and Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Politics and Philosophy at La Trobe University, examines urbanization in Tibet and critically reviews literature discussing urban minority minzu in the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Urbanizing Tibet: differential inclusion and colonial governance in the People’s Republic of China

Urbanizing Minority Minzu in the PRC: Insights from the Literature on Settler Colonialism

Let’s Get This Balloon to Float

Again, we’d like this newsletter to reflect our member’s work, interests, and ideas. Should you have any information or ideas that you would like us to share with the community in our next newsletter, email nathan.romine.183@my.csun.edu by August 10th.

Dear CUAA Community,

Recently our section voted in favor of changing our name from Society of Urban National Transnational Anthropology (SUNTA) to Critical Urban Anthropology Association (CUAA). The latter better reflects our new orientation toward critical social theory, which in the last 20 years has reshaped urban studies as a dynamic interdisciplinary field involving many anthropologists. We have found that current graduate students and early career anthropologists are especially excited by the critical urban orientation that we are proposing.

This is the first of what will be many monthly newsletters.  Each month, we will be highlighting our members’ work, sharing resources, and announcing upcoming events and opportunities. As you become aware of content within those categories or discover other news or information that you believe would be of interest to our community, please send it to  nathan.romine.183@my.csun.edu. It will be included on subsequent newsletters and listserv postings.

Recent Events

Politicizing Invisible Digital Infrastructures: San Diego and the Fight Over the Smart City, a Discussion with Dr. Lily Irani

The Public Space Research Group (West) recently hosted a presentation and discussion with Dr. Lilly Irani, Associate Professor at UC San Diego. She shared her latest work, which examines the politicization of invisible digital infrastructure – streetlights with the capacity to capture and record audio and visual content. To learn more about her work as an academic and activist regarding this issue, visit the San Diego TRUST Coalition and check out her latest book, co-authored with Jesse Marx –  Redacted.

Proposed Roundtables for AAA Annual Meeting

CUAA recently proposed and submitted two roundtables to take place at the 2021 AAA Hybrid Annual Meeting in Baltimore this November. We hope that they will be accepted. Thank you to each of the participants and organizers who elected to present and discuss the topics described below. 

Roundtable 1: What is Critical About Critical Anthropology?

Description: This roundtable explores what a critical engagement with the city and a commitment to social justice and transformation through the intersection of ethnography and politically informed action offers for our future. Calls for a public ethnography, militant ethnography and protest anthropology reflect a growing interest in producing knowledge that is useful, benefits those we work with and addresses urban problems. We will be highlighting a new generation of scholars who are reformulating these concerns and will identify theories, methods, and ethnographies that will lead urban anthropology in new directions and encourage more engaged practice.

Participants: Suzanne Scheld, Susan Falls, Julian B. Brash, Setha M. Low, Rashmi Sadana, Roberto E. Barrios, John L. Jackson Jr., Matilde Cordoba Azcarate, Jeff Maskovsky

Roundtable 2: Truth Be Told: Insights from Applications of Anthropology to Urban Public Space Issues

Description: This roundtable is intended to provide a timely opportunity to discuss urban anthropologists’ contributions to addressing issues concerning current public space use and access. It explores this topic at a moment when the field of urban anthropology is embracing a critical perspective and as the politics of public space are increasingly essential to unpacking fundamental aspects of contemporary urban life regarding issues of informality, extralegality, and gender and racial justice. We will also compare notes regarding the experiences and insights that session participants have gained through their applications of long-term ethnographic findings to public space issues. 

Participants: Claire Panetta, Nathan Romine, Jayne Howell, Colin McLaughlin-Alcock, Matilde Cordoba Azcarate, Helen A Regis, Britt Oates, Suzanne Scheld, Walter E. Little, Beth Baker, Setha M. Low

Upcoming Events in June

Public Spaces and Urban Cultures E-Festival (June 2^nd – 18^th)

Regions in Recovery is hosting an E-Festival with a rich and extensive program. Take a look – perhaps one aligns with your schedule. For those interested in matters of public space, the AESOP Thematic Group Public Spaces and Urban Cultures [facebook.com] is hosting several sessions on June 15^th. Presentations include Struggles Around Inclusive Public Space: Gender, Care and Safety; Infrastructure of Inclusive Public Spaces; and The Making of Inclusive Public Spaces.

Graduate Student Working Group Meeting (June 25^th)

The Graduate Student Working Group will host their next meeting on June 25^th at 10 AM PST/ 1PM EST. This group offers a space for graduate students to connect and collaborate with each other.  If you are interested in networking, finding partners to write with, or seeking insight and feedback on your work, please drop in! Likewise, if you know a graduate student who might be interested or could benefit, please share this announcement with them.

Please register in advance for this meeting:

https://csun.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAqcu2vrToqG92mNNMRpqpZbu8cHqi9Ht5

Public Space Working Group Meeting (August)

This year, members within CUAA formed the Public Space Working Group. Across several meetings, members shared their research and started a small reading circle that critically engaged with publications in the field. The Working Group is also developing a virtual roundtable to incorporate our wider body in January 2022. They will also be participating in the City University of New York’s Public Space Research (CUNY PRSG) Network Meeting in October. You can expect more detailed information as these events draw closer. If you are interested in joining the Working Group, email Suzanne.Scheld@csun.edu

AAA Hybrid Annual Meeting in Baltimore, MD (November 17-21)

This year’s annual AAA meeting is a hybrid event – registrants can participate virtually or in person in Baltimore, MD. The theme is “Truth and Responsibility.” Early-bird discounted registration rates are available until June 30^th.

Recent Publications and Work

Creativity, Sociability, Solidarity: New-Wave Carnival Krewes’ Responses to COVID-19 in New Orleans

Martha Radice, Associate Professor of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Dalhousie University, published an article in Anthropologica that examines new-wave carnival krewes responses to COVID-19 in New Orleans. It’s open access, and it might make a good undergraduate teaching article – the reading is very accessible.

Building Socialism: The Afterlife of East German Architecture in Urban Vietnam

In her latest book, Chistina Schwenkel, Professor of Anthropology at The University of California, Riverside, “examines the utopian visions of an expert group of Vietnamese and East German urban planners who sought to transform the devastated industrial town of Vinh into a model socialist city.”

Fencing in Democracy: Border Walls, Necrocitizenship, and the Security State

Anthropologists Margaret E Dorsey and Miguel Diaz-Barriga discuss the ways in which the construction of the U.S. Mexico border wall manifests transformations in citizenship practices that are aimed not only at keeping migrants out but also at enmeshing citizens into a wider politics of exclusion

Let’s Get This Balloon to Float!   Again, we’d like this newsletter to reflection of our member’s work, interests, and ideas. Should you have information or ideas that you would like us to share with the community in our next newsletter, email nathan.romine.183@my.csun.edu by July 9th.