[URBANTH-L]CFP: Fragment and Fluid Urbanities (Leipzig, Germany)

[Angela Jancius]

Dear Colleagues,

I am organizing a panel on "Fragment and Fluid Urbanities" at the 
European Conference on African Studies to be held in Leipzig 4-7 June 
2009.  I would like to invite innovative papers that contribute to 
theorizing urban spatialities in African cities beyond dominant accounts 
of socio-spatial fragmentation. The full panel description is copied 
below. I have also attached some general information on the conference 
and on how to submit an abstract. Please review the panel description 
and consider providing a paper or pass this call for papers to other 
interested colleagues. Abstracts need to be uploaded to the conference 
website by December 31, 2008.  

For a list of the approved panels and further information please see: 
http://www.uni-leipzig.de/~ecas2009/approvedpanels
(Panel 56)

For questions regarding the panel please contact me.
 
Yours sincerely,

Christine Hentschel



Fragmented and Fluid Urbanities

This panel seeks to foster a new understanding of urban spatialities in 
African contexts. It contrasts common accounts of fragmentation, 
polarisation, and 'new segregation', with more dynamic, fluid 
understandings of contemporary urban space.
Dominant accounts of postcolonial or post-apartheid cities emphasize 
their deep-rooted or newly created morphologies of social and spatial 
fragmentation. According to these depictions of contemporary urban 
realities, the city, as such, does not exist (anymore) and is divided 
into bubbles of gentrification and forgotten slums, into islands of 
safety and hotspots of fear and terror. Wealth and spatial disparities 
correlate with governance disparities, triggering new forms of exclusion.
This panel encourages urban scholars from a variety of disciplines (e.g. 
geography, sociology, political science, urban planning and 
criminology), to challenge the concept of the fragmented city with more 
dynamic, fluid theories of urban space, governance and everyday life, 
using temporality, movement and informal productions of space.


Christine Hentschel
Department of African Studies
University of Leipzig
Beethovenstr. 15
04107 Leipzig, Germany

Phone +49 (0)30 21229163
Cell +49 (0)1702121392