240530 SE Politics of the City: Narratives, Place Making and Identity Formation (P4) (2021S)

This course provides a critical overview of urban studies with a particular focus on the role of narratives in urban politics. Over the past decade, urban studies have grown and prospered in parallel to the increasing importance of cities in economic and political restructuring under global neoliberalism. It has done so on the ground of a fruitful discussion under the themes of “city-making,” “urban entrepreneurialism/managerialism,” “gentrification,” “right to the city,” “securitization,” and so on. This course explores these recent discussions in urban studies through the lens of narratives and narrativity. What kinds of narratives are tied to cities in political, popular, and scholarly discourses? How are these narratives constructed? How do they complement and contradict each other? With such a perspective, this course intends to engage with the political and cultural context of the making of place and the city by highlighting its actors, policies, histories. The course will start with a theoretical engagement with the concept of narrative and narrativity in sociology and anthropology. We will continue with thematic discussions on the relations between narration and the making of cities. Some of the topics we debate through the readings include gentrification, art, under/development, heritage, security, cosmopolitanism, tourism, and so on. The methods and sources we discuss are multiple —from sociology and history, anthropology, political economy, and geography.

This course is intended for graduate students who have a research project or interest in such political and social processes and issues and a commitment to advance their engagement with these topics with the help of a case study through the class.

At the end of this course, the students will

1. Be fluent in the key concepts and issues covered in this course.
2. Be reflexive and pragmatic about how they can put narratives and narrativity to work in their own urban research agenda in a way that is both critical (i.e., politically relevant) and meticulous (i.e., empirically grounded).
3. Advance their own research agendas through written assignments and in-class discussion of personal projects.