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H-ASIA November 26, 2005 International Symposium: Cities and Globalization: Challenges for Citizenship, Beirut, December 9-11, 2005 ---------- Ed. note: Although the primary focus of this event is on the Middle East, the issues are of broad interest to scholars of urban life and culture elsewhere--and there is a paper on Mumbai. FFC ************************************************************************* Cities and Globalization: Challenges for Citizenship Beirut, December 9-11 International interdisciplinary academic symposium in cooperation with the Institut Français du Proche-Orient (IFPO) and the American University of Beirut (AUB). Detailed Program Outline While much attention has been devoted to the challenges globalization poses to the authority of the nation state, the consequences for traditional concepts of citizenship hinged upon the existence of sovereign nation states have only recently become a focus of research and scholarship, with attention mainly devoted to "Global Cities"such as New York, London or Tokyo, that have become emblematic of the very concept of globalization. While the "strategic importance of cities in the making of modern citizens" has long been recognized, attention has now extended to the question of how and to what measure "Global Cities" are spaces where the very meaning, content and extent of citizenship are being made and transformed, and to what extend they may become "strategic sites" for emerging and yet undefined forms of "Global Citizenship". This conference intends to extend the debate about the relation between city and citizenship and explore the impact of globalization on concepts and practices of citizenship in major cities of the South. The notion of urbanity, referring to a mode of social relations proper to urban life, is often used to define the socio-cultural identity of the inhabitants of a city as well as a type of social organization, which is specific to urban society. Cities, on the other hand, constitute the main link between the local and the global, and provide the social and physical arena where globalization is introduced, contested and reinforced. They offer a space for social and political mobilization and determine the expression and manifestations of crises. While these processes may surpass the urban territory, the city still remains the symbolic staging ground for political expression, and the functional node of communication and mobilization. However, the current process of globalization tends to generate an increasing fragmentation of urban spaces and societies. As contemporary cities become subject to intense social and spatial disruption the coexistence of different modes of belonging to the city become increasingly succinct. Rather than speaking of globalization as a singular noun, we should thus put the concept in the plural to refer to the different historical processes of globalization and to the many contextual ways of understanding the concept. Globalization changes in relation with differential positioning in space, often conceived of as a hierarchical positioning of center versus periphery. However, discourses on globalization all carry a certain ideology, and tend to naturalize existing relations of power, supremacies and hierarchies. Rather than reifying these ideological assumptions, the analysis needs to focus on the power structures and social dynamics spawned and directed by the process of globalization. This conference aims at questioning the dynamics engendered by the process of globalization in the relations of power between the state, the city and the different components of urban society. Scholars are invited to reflect on the particular forms that globalization takes in the cities of the so-called Global South and on the subsequent redefinition of the local political, economical and cultural relations, and to consider the challenges these reflections constitute for existing notions of citizenship. While the formation of a global citizenship remains hypothetical, a new repertory of values and political claims of a global kind have emerged and seem to constitute a base of legitimacy for those who try to fight for the creation of public spaces where new forms of citizenship are debated. Just as is the case with globalization, citizenship needs to be considered as a plural notion, taking on different forms and different meanings, changing over time and place. The conference is organized around three thematic panels, preceded by a general panel reflecting on general theoretical notions of city, citizenship and globalization. Panel 1: Cities, Citizenship and Globalization The opening panel will discuss questions related to the theoretical nexus between Citizenship and Cities, to what extend concepts of citizenships are changing under the impact of Globalization, and which specific questions should be raised when studying these developments in metropolises of the South. The participants are invited to ask questions about mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion, the changing role of these cities in global/regional systems of power, and the validity of concepts of multicultural citizenship in societies threatened by ethnic conflict. Panel 2: Gates to Globalization and Citizenship In each society, local agents filter the effects of global processes. These agents of globalization are not restricted to urban elites who often adopt discourses of hybridism and métissage to their own celebration, but are also found among merchants, new Diasporas and entrepreneurs operating in close proximity to the state. New forms of mediation arise, limited and shaped by the degree of openness and closure the state apparatus imposes on transnational flows. To what extend do these modes of economic investments and forms of mobility create new territorial and political belongings, which reshape the notion of citizenship? Panel 3: Struggle over Space: Local Powers and Global Players On the political level, the city often appears as a metaphor of the relations between the state and its subjects. This perspective is even more pertinent in the context of the countries of the South where mechanisms of delegating local power are often oriented towards the maintenance of control rather than towards political representation, and political governance and administration remain scarcely representative of the social components of the city. At he same time, the recent affirmation of new sectors of civil society, often themselves globally connected, challenges both old and new forms of control over urban space. Which are the changes to existing concepts of citizenship that emerge from these dynamics? Panel 4: Urban Identities and Claims to Citizenship Conflicts of inclusion and exclusion in social and political space are often played out in an urban context, marked by the dissociation of citizenship, urbanity and urban localities, and accentuated by the accelerated urbanization of whole societies. New identities engendered by the urban experience become a mobilizing force for new claims to participation, inclusion and belonging. The city has often been considered the birth ground of Western concepts of citizenship; can it play the same role in the countries of the South, caught up in a globalizing process, which tends to universalize, without much questioning or without adaptation, democratic ideals conceived in a particular social and geographic setting, and a specific historic moment? CONFERENCE AGENDA Friday, December 9 (Hotel Gefinor Rotana) Opening Evening 18.30 Keynote address Jean-François Bayart Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales (CERI), Paris La ville, 'nouvelle frontière' de la globalisation Saturday, December 10 (AUB West Hall, 204) 9:30: Opening Address Kirsten Maas (hbf), Franck Mermier (IFPO) 10.00 - 13.00 Cities, Citizenship and Globalization Moderator: Nawaf Salam (AUB) Michel Agier L'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris Des camps de réfugiés à l'invention des villes Alain Tarrius (University of Toulouse, Social & Urban Anthropology) Une Europe sans frontières: migrations en réseaux, territoires transnationaux et activités informelles Engin Isin York University/Toronto, Dep. of Geography Bombs, Bodies, Bits: Acts, Claims, Struggle 14.00 - 17.00 Gates to Globalization and Citizenship Moderator: Sari Hanafi (AUB) Rima Sabban Dubai University College, Dep. Of Sociology Global Actors, National Citizens at Crossroads of Cooperation, Creation, and Conflicts: The Predicament of a Global City in a Small Nation Leïla Vignal Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - Groupe de Recherches et d'Etudes sur la Méditerranée et le Moyen-Orient (CNRS-GREMMO), Lyon The Emergence of a Consumer Society in the Middle East: Evidence from Cairo, Damascus and Beirut Diane Singerman American Univ. Washington, Department of Government & Public Affairs Hierarchical Cosmopolitanism in Cairo: Feeding Consumerism or Citizenship? SUNDAY, December 11 (AUB West Hall, 204) 10.00 -13.00 Struggle over Space: Local Powers and Global Players Moderator: Mona Harb (AUB) Myriam Catusse Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique à l'Université d'Aix en Provence L’espace urbain comme enjeu du politique Vyajanthi Rao New School/New York, Anthropology Transit City/Transient Citizenship - The Mumbai Makeover Project Mariana Cavalcanti University of Chicago, Anthropology Redefining (Il)legal Boundaries: Space and Citizenship in Rio de Janeiro's Favelas 14.00 - 17.00 Urban Identities and Claims to Citizenship Moderator: Barbara Drieskens (IFPO) Melhem Chaoul (Lebanese University) Demonstrating in the City - Urban Space and Social Expression Marc Lavergne Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris - Nanterre Global City, tribal Citizenship: Dubaï's paradox Hassan Abbas Institut Français de Proche Orient á Damas Damas: la mémoire dans la ville mondialisée Ayse Öncü Sabanci University Istanbul, Sociology Global Discourses of Multiculturalism and Political Claims to Istanbul's Present/Pasts 18.00 - 20.00 Concluding Session Cities & Citizenship in the Global South: A viable concept? Jean-François Bayart (CERI) Mona Harb (AUB) ****************************************************************** To post to H-ASIA simply send your message to: <H-ASIA@h-net.msu.edu> For holidays or short absences send post to: <listserv@h-net.msu.edu> with message: SET H-ASIA NOMAIL Upon return, send post with message SET H-ASIA MAIL H-ASIA WEB HOMEPAGE URL: http://h-net.msu.edu/~asia/
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