Friday 18 July 2014

Introduction to Urban Politics, Politics II, 2014

A Right to the City?
An introduction to urban politics

Week One: An Introduction to the Contemporary Urban Question 21 July – 25 July 2014

  • Davis, Mike. 2004. ‘Planet of Slums’, New Left Review, No. 26
  • Davis, Mike. 2006. ‘Fear and Money in Dubai’, New Left Review, No. 41
  • Harvey, David. 2008. ‘The Right to the City’, New Left Review, No. 53.

 Week Two: Early Modern Cities 28 July- 1 August 2014

  • Linebaugh, Peter & Rediker, Marcus. 1990. 'The Many Headed Hydra: Slailors, slaves & the Atlantic Working Class in the Eighteenth Century', Journal of Historical Sociology. Vol. 3, No. 3.
  • Engels, Frederick. 1872. 'How the Bourgeoisie Solves the Housing Question', from The Housing Question
  • Du Bois, W.E.B. 1889. Excerpts from 'The Philadelphia Negro'.
  • Castells, Manuel. 1983. 'The Glasgow Rent Strike of 1915’, The City & the Grassroots (University of California Press: Berkeley)


Week Three: The Paris Commune 4 – 8 August 2014

  • Marx, Karl. 1871. ‘Paris Commune’, The Civil War in Paris
  • Bakunin, Mikhail. 1871. The Paris Commune and the Idea of the State
  • Badiou, Alain. 2006. ‘The Paris Commune: A Political Declaration on Politics’, Polemics (Verso: London)
  • Ross, Kristin. 2008. ‘The Right to Laziness’, The Emergence of Social Space: Rimbaud & the Paris Commune (Verso: London)


Week Four: The Colonial City 11 – 15 August 2014

  • Van Onselen, Charles. 1984. 'The Small Matter of a Horse: The life of 'Nongoloza' Mathebula, 1867-1948.' Collective Action Notes (Ravan Press: Johannesburg)
  • Stadler, Alfred. 1979. Birds in the Cornfield: Squatter Movements in Johannesburg, 1944-1947, Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 6, No. 1
  • Edwards, Iain. 1996. ‘Cato Manor June 1959’, The People's City (ed. Iain Edwards & Paul Maylam) (University of Natal Press: Pietermaritzburg)
  • Fanon, Frantz. 1961. 'On Violence', The Wretched of the Earth. (Penguin: London)


Week Five:  The Post-Colonial City 18 -22 August 2014

  • Perlman, Janice.1976. 'Political Marginality'. The Myth of Marginality. (Los Angeles: University of California Press)
  • Bayet, Asef. 1997. 'Un-civil society: the politics of the 'informal people'. Third World Quarterly, Vol. 18. No. 1.
  • Chatterjee, Partha. 2004. 'Populations & Political Society'. The Politics of the Governed (Delhi: Permanent Black)
  • Zibechi, Raul. 2012. ‘The Urban Peripheries: Counter-Powers from Below?’. Territories in Resistance (Oakland: AK Press)



Week Six: Urban Theory from the South 25 – 29 August 2014

  • hooks, bell. 1990. Homeplace (A Site of Reistance)
  • Gidwani, Vinay. 2013. ‘Six theses on waste, value, and commons’, Social & Cultural Geography
  • Souza, Marcelo Lopes. 2006. ‘Together with the state, despite the state, against the state’, City
  • Mbembe, Achille. 2011 Democracy as Community Life


Week Seven:  The Contemporary South African City 1 – 5 September
  • Ballard, Richard. 2004. ' 'Middle Class Neighbourhoods or African Kraals?' The impact of informal settlements and vagrants on white identity in post-apartheid South Africa.', Urban Forum, Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 48-73.
  • Alexander, Peter. 2010. 'Rebellion of the Poor'. Review of African Political Economy. Vol. 33, . No. 21.
  • Selmeczi, Anna. 2012. 'Abahlali’s Vocal Politics of Proximity: Speaking, Suffering and Political Subjectivization', Journal of Asian & African Studies, Vol. 4, No. 5,
  • Sacks, Jared. 2010. 'Sweet Home Report'. Mail & Guardian