240084 SE Cities and Citizenship (P4) (2014S)

This course aims to approach city as a site of politics and belonging beyond the trope of community. In times of increasing importance of cities in the context of contemporary globalization, it is important to revisit the questions of participation, claim making, citizenship, and governmentality in cities, as well as the different forms of connectivity, organization and solidarity networks, and the images of urban power in a historical context. How do claims of participation to the city life are organized, mediated, negotiated and performed by different groups, including the new comers to the city? How is the contemporary urban micro- politics entangled with the changing relations between cities and states in times of neoliberal globalization? On the basis of case studies from Africa, Asia and Europe, this course will focus on city as a performative space in which particular forms of power, rights, resistance and belonging are enacted beyond the legal status of citizenship.