JS-7
Looking at Urban Centres As Sites of Power. Part I

Monday, 16 July 2018: 10:30-12:20
Location: 701B (MTCC SOUTH BUILDING)
RC57 Visual Sociology (host committee)
RC21 Regional and Urban Development

Language: English

Cities do not merely provide a background for social action but they are, rather, the most complex form of human interdependence, as well as an environment consisting of specific infrastructuring processes. Nonetheless, these often occur in exclusionary forms, which are more or less visible, and invite researchers to explore how social actors and the spaces are in constant interaction with each other and, also, how visual experiences are mediated by the “discursive contexts in which they appear" (Jay 2002).

With the focus on different elements of urban landscape and infrastructure, this session invites papers that explore the politics of urban space, emerging and mutating socio-spatial relations behind the “spectacle” of urbanism. The papers are invited to explore social, material and political metamorphoses in cities around the globe. Specifically, we are interested in papers conceptualizing the infrastructuring processes in the city, how they can be explored from the visual perspective and how visual perspective can elucidate the complex knowledge-power relations behind them.

This session consists of max 5 oral presentations and the intention is to publish them. To this end full versions of accepted papers or extended abstracts (1000-2000 words with references) must be submitted by 1 June 2018 to session organizers.

Session Organizers:
Valentina ANZOISE, Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Italy, Italy, Gary BRATCHFORD, University of Central Lancashire, United Kingdom and Dennis ZUEV, CIES-ISCTE, Portugal
Chair:
Takashi MACHIMURA, Hitotsubashi University, Japan
Discussant:
Gary BRATCHFORD, The University of Central Lancashire, United Kingdom
Oral Presentations
Cruise Corporations Step Ashore: Urban Waterfronts As Sites of Power
Alexandra BAIXINHO, Goldsmiths, University of London, Portugal
Displacing Urban Nature: Visual Tools of Post-Socialist Neoliberal Urban Planning
Petr GIBAS, Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic; Irena BOUMOVÁ, Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic