Think and Drink
Wintersemester 2024/25
Monday, the 28th of October 2024, 18 o'clock
Jiat-Hwee Chang
National University of Singapore
Thermal Governance and Citizenship: (Un)Making Air Conditioning Complexes in Urban Asia
As temperature rises and heat waves become more frequent and intense due to the climate crisis, air conditioning and other cooling technologies have received much attention from international media and global environmental NGOs. The crux of the matter seems to be: how do we cool the world’s population in an equitable manner without warming the planet?
This talk seeks to address this question concerning our global thermal future by studying the thermal past and present of two cities in Southeast Asia and the Persian Gulf—Singapore and Doha. Through an examination of the socio-technical histories and technopolitics of cooling technologies, particularly air-conditioning, and the built environment of these two Asian thermal frontiers, I argue that air conditioning dependency in these two cities are not due primarily to the globalizing forces of thermal capitalism. Instead, their air conditioning lock-in should be attributed to the political rationalities of what I call “thermal governance and citizenship” of the postcolonial developmental and rentier states that they were embedded within.
Monday, the 4th of November 2024, 18 o'clock
Henrik Lebuhn
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Stadt und Migration: Studentische Publikation zum Thema „Urban Citizenship"
Der Begriff Urban Citizenship fokussiert auf städtische und kommunale Politiken, die die gesellschaftliche Teilhabe auf lokaler Ebene stärken und sich dabei nicht an der nationalen Staatsbürgerschaft, sondern am faktischen Lebensmittelpunkt der Menschen orientieren. Das betrifft z.B. den Zugang zu Wohnraum, zum Bildungs- und Gesundheitssystem, aber auch die Nutzung des öffentlichen Raums. Im Prinzip ist das in einer durch Diversität geprägten Stadt für alle Bewohner*innen relevant. Vor allem aber fokussiert die Debatte auf Menschen mit Flucht- und Migrationsgeschichte, da sie von den an die nationale Bürgerschaft gekoppelten Rechten meist schon auf formaler Ebene ausgeschlossen bleiben und/oder mit informellen Zugangsbarrieren konfrontiert sind. Im September 2024 haben Studierende am ISW ihr MA-Projektseminar "Urban Citizenship" mit einer Zeitungsbeilage für die Wochenzeitung "der Freitag" abgeschlossen. In der "Freitag Extra" Ausgabe werden Fragestellungen rund um das Seminarthema journalistisch aufbereitet. Grafisch gestaltet wurde die Zeitung von Studierenden der FH Potsdam. Wir wollen die Publikation öffentlich vorstellen, Einblicke in die Seminararbeit geben und alle Interessierten zu einem gemeinsamen Abschluss einladen. Die Veranstaltung findet in deutscher Sprache statt.
Monday, the 11th of November 2024, 18 o'clock
Neşe Gurallar
TED University Ankara
Power, politics and urban public squares in Turkey: Beyazıt square
Beyazıt Square in the heart of the Historical Peninsula of İstanbul is a vibrant political stage of the history of Turkey. This presentation will compile its architectural history with the history of politics. Besides being a contested space of polarized politics of Islamists versus Secularists, Beyazıt Square is also a public space shaped by the ideological oppositions of two renowned architects Sedad Hakkı Eldem and Turgut Cansever. After briefly discussing its changing features during the Ottoman Empire and Early Republican Period, we will focus on three different and unfinished proposals of Sedad Hakkı Eldem in the late 1950s. While the construction was ongoing, the University student protest, which paved the way for the military coup of May 17, 1960, sparked ignited at Beyazıt Square. During the military government rule, Turgut Cansever designed a new project that refused Eldem's design approach. Not only as an architect but also as an Islamist thinker, his design fundamentally originated from his distaste of modern rational organization in favor of Islamic references. He refused the University Gate facing the Square as a symbol of 19th-century modernization. However, his construction halted like his predecessor Eldem's design. In the 1980s and 1990s, Beyazıt became a stage for Islamists for their protests against the headscarf ban. Islamist thinkers promoted architectural tastes and ideas of Cansever and rejected the University Gate; but Islamist activists and protestors embraced the Gate as well as the Beyazıt Square. Nowadays, Islamist activists are claiming Beyazıt Square as solely their Square and trying to exclude other civil demonstrations, particularly the LGBT movement. They seem eager to compensate for their frustration at Taksim Square, the epicenter of the Gezi Unrest in 2013 with Beyazıt Square. Beyazıt Square demonstrates that the concept of appropriation of space in terms of Henri Lefebvre can be interpreted in a new dimension within the Turkish context.
Monday, the 18th of November 2024, 18 o'clock
Anna-Lisa Müller
Bielefeld University
Can we call it "migration background"? Reflecting on knowledge production, methodologies and epistemologies in migration studies
Today's society in Germany is, like many other societies, a migration society: a society shaped by migration. This is evident in qualitative terms, as people's everyday experiences are significantly shaped by encounters with migration and migrants respectively. And in quantitative terms, migration is an important characteristic of the German society, as today a quarter of the population has what is referred to as "migration background". This category has been used since 2005 to statistically capture individuals with family or personal migration biographies. From a scientific-theoretical and a socio-political perspective, this raises key questions, such as: what becomes visible through such classifications, what knowledge is (re)produced, and which discourses are thereby stabilized or called into question? Using the example of the category "migration background," I will illustrate and discuss how scientific classifications lead to the emergence of phenomena and certain forms of knowledge, what epistemological consequences arise from this, and what methodological and empirical implications this has also for the field of urban studies.
Monday, the 25th of November 2024, 18 o'clock
Maroš Krivy
Estonian Academy of Arts
Valuing indeterminacy: Terrain vague, temporary use and the production of urban expertise in Barcelona and Berlin
Much ink has been spilled in urban studies on the dynamics of abandoned industrial sites, rubble areas and other indeterminate landscapes teeming with biodiversity, artists and (post-)capitalist potential. What is less explored are the histories of making indeterminacy into a desirable feature of cities. Engaging a range of ideas and strategies including terrain vague and temporary urbanism, this talk examines the role of urban experts in giving a positive meaning to ‘non-design’ as a feature of post-industrial change. I draw evidence from late 20th century Barcelona and early 21st century Berlin: while the Catalan architect Ignasi de Solà-Morales called on his colleagues to appreciate the intrinsic value of terrain vagues even as he played a key role in Barcelona’s Olympic-led redevelopment, the Berlin collective Urban Catalyst advocated giving unused sites over to creative entrepreneurs as an alternative to the conservative policy of critical reconstruction. This talk presents findings from my ongoing project investigating a series of situated intellectual histories of how progressive urban experts in Europe and North America accommodated late capital.
Monday, the 16th of December 2024, 18 o'clock
Ignacio Farías, Felix Marlow, Rebecca Wall
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Buchvorstellung: Zaudern ums Gemeinwohl. Produktive Missverständnisse in der kooperativen Stadtentwicklung
Co-operative urban development is the buzzword of the moment. It stands for the pursuit of a fairer city that is orientated towards the common good. In new partnerships - public-civic partnerships - actors from politics and administration work together with actors from civil society. Contradictory practices of urban design lead to misunderstandings, controversies and uncertainties in these co-operations.
In this book, the authors explore the processes of two extraordinary experiments in cooperative urban development in Berlin: the Haus der Statistik and the Rathausblock Kreuzberg. To this end, they invite the actors involved to procrastinate. When hesitation becomes a method, ambivalences support cooperation, uncertainties replace conflicts and controversies between the partners become visible. The book presents concise theses on cooperative urban development, a glossary of misunderstandings and methodological reflections on the artistic-ethnographic research method and its embedding in urban anthropological discourses. For all those who are involved in co-operative urban development or want to accompany it with research. For a just city of the many.
Monday, the 6th of January 2025, 18 o'clock
Hanna Baumann
University College London
Infrastructures of Urban Citizenship
This talk focuses on the role of public services in delineating the boundaries of belonging and possibilities of participation in cities. Drawing on the notion of 'infrastructural citizenship', it asks how non-citizens navigate access to urban circulations and how rights and responsibilities are negotiated at these interfaces. Based on ethnographic, participatory and design research conducted with migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in the UK, Lebanon and Germany, it concentrates in particular on the physical and social infrastructures supporting the circulation of food and waste. The talk will outline the various ways in which migrants use infrastructural engagement to craft novel forms of belonging at the local level, contributing to our understanding of participation and equitable service delivery in increasingly diverse cities.
Monday, the 13th of January 2025, 18 o'clock
Annegret Haase
Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, Leipzig
Forced migration as a challenge for urban transformation and resilience thinking – exploring the nexus
One of the most significant challenges currently facing urban development is that of how cities and urban societies respond to and govern forced migration. Migration events, such as the movement of refugees from Syria in 2015-16 or from Ukraine in 2022, present significant challenges for cities, their societies, stakeholders and governance structures. This is occurring within a context in which the host urban societies themselves are undergoing multiple transformations, including those towards more sustainable development, more climate adaptation, a good quality of life and housing, as well as the fairest possible distribution of the gains and losses of these transformations and the possibility of broad participation in the discussion about their design. In this context, questions of resilience are also being increasingly posed – how can cities and urban societies position themselves to cope effectively with the aforementioned challenges? In which areas are the greatest risks to be found? What potential can cities and urban societies leverage to their advantage? Furthermore, in what way can the subject of forced migration be classified within the conceptual framework of urban transformation and resilience? Set against this background, the objective of this lecture is to address the “nexus” between forced migration and current urban transformation and resilience thinking and debate. It will establish a connection between conceptual considerations and empirical examples drawn from a variety of empirical research projects from 2018-today, thereby providing provide food for thought for the further discussion.
Monday, the 20th of January 2025, 18 o'clock
Andrei Semenov
Nazarbayev University
Authoritarian Urbanism in Eurasia
Authoritarian urbanism has recently become a buzzword applied to different settings and situations. In this talk, I attempt to clarify the conceptual foundations of this term by using a combination of political science and urban sociology analytical frameworks. I show that the authoritarian part refers to the dictators' response to two key challenges to their rule: elite factionalism and mass uprisings. While a wide set of strategies is available to dictators, the instruments and practices of urban development constitute one possible way of responding. More specifically, I argue that authoritarian urbanism simultaneously aims at two (not always compatible) goals: providing rents to ensure the elites' loyalty and satisfying the mass demand for housing and a comfortable urban environment. I illustrate these features with examples from Eurasian countries and conclude with some further research questions.
Monday, the 27th of January 2025, 18 o'clock
Alberto Martín Pérez
University of Barcelona
Being a citizen in rural environments: citizenship and the challenges of depopulation in contemporary rural Spain
What does it mean to be a citizen in a village within a rural area experiencing population decline? How do people in rural areas, where public services are sometimes limited, experience citizenship? How does it feel when the predominant outlook for your community’s future is one of depopulation? These are some of the questions we aim to address in the RURALCIT project, which explores citizenship and the challenges of depopulation in contemporary Spain.
We are examining citizenship in three dimensions: First, as a narrative built on the daily practices and experiences of people living permanently in rural areas at risk of depopulation. Second, as a set of emotions that shape rural citizenship into an emotional landscape, defined by love and pride, alongside fear, sadness and resentment. And third, as a projection into an uncertain future for rural areas, where citizenship seems to be struggling to fulfill its purpose of securing the pursuit of a better life for future generations.
Monday, the 10th of February 2025, 18 o'clock
Ceren K. Akyunak
Koc University, Istanbul
Book presentation: "Turkish Muslim Women in Berlin: Navigating Boundaries in the City“
Kulkul presents her ethnographic work with Turkish Muslim women in Berlin as evidence that community is not an entity but is produced by instrumentalizing specific forms of identification and boundary-making.
In examining the role of community in the case of her participants, Kulkul finds that religion and culture are important not for the values they perpetuate, but for their role in forming and sustaining the community. She looks at the importance of boundaries and especially their reciprocity. Social boundaries are a set of codes of exclusion often used against migrants and refugees, while symbolic boundaries are typically understood as the way one defines one’s own group. Kulkul argues that these two types of boundaries tend to trigger each other and thus be mutually reinforcing. At the same time, she presents a picture
of everyday life from the perspective of migrants and the children of migrants in a cosmopolitan European city – Berlin.
A valuable read for scholars of migration and culture, which will
especially interest scholars focused on Europe.