42 research outputs found
Book review symposium: [Un]Grounding
Full text link[Un]Grounding: Post-Foundational Geographies reviewed by Joe Blakey, Matina Kapsali and Nicola Guy with a response from Friederike Landau, Lucas Pohl, and Nikolai Roskam
Urban Conflicts
No full textThis collection of texts presents the work shared at the laboratory "Encounters and Conflicts in the City of Crisis," held from April 2013 to June 2014 in the Thucydides Valentis Room of the Faculty of Architecture at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. The laboratory was initiated by doctoral candidates and other members of the academic community with the goal of fostering a fresh, innovative approach to architecture.
The purpose of the lab was to create an open space for discussion, presentations, and lectures addressing the challenges of urban spaces amid the ongoing social and economic crisis. Recognizing both the absence of such forums within the university and the shrinking of existing ones, we saw this initiative as crucial—not only for advancing academic knowledge and research but for supporting our own intellectual and physical maintenance.
Through this lab, we aimed to approach our doctoral research as a collaborative effort, encouraging interaction, dialogue, and the sharing of knowledge. We wanted to bring our work, which might otherwise remain isolated in libraries or digital files, into an open, collective space. We emphasized the importance of communication among doctoral candidates, engagement with undergraduate students, and connection with researchers from outside Greece. In this context, interdisciplinarity emerged as an essential aspect of the workshop, responding to the increasing fragmentation of knowledge and academic disciplines.
In opposition to the privatized, commercialized university model and the dominance of neoliberal policies, we sought radical epistemological tools for knowledge production that support movements for social emancipation and empowerment. Our goal was to examine and discuss critical epistemological approaches for studying spatial expressions of crisis across various contexts and scales. Today, we believe it is especially urgent to promote the dissemination, deepening, and interconnection of these critical approaches with ongoing social struggles.
Throughout the workshop presentations and discussions, a range of perspectives and tools emerged, including dialectics, critical spatial theory, interdisciplinarity, as well as cultural, political, and postcolonial approaches. These conversations also underscored the crucial role of space in shaping contemporary issues, covering topics such as neoliberal spatial policies, social and cultural movements, migration geographies, the role of the state and nation, and the urban environment.
To foster both interdisciplinarity and international engagement, we ensured that workshop participants represented diverse backgrounds and regions, drawing on expertise from fields such as architecture, urban and regional planning, geography, archaeology, sociology, anthropology, visual arts, political science, law, economics, and pedagogy.
Most of the 57 presentations from the workshops are included in this collection. The volume organizes these discussions into five thematic sections: I. Spatial Policies and Practices, II. Body, Gender, and Sexuality in Urban Space, III. Geographies of Migration, IV. Contested Spaces and Places,V. Common Space and Social Movements of Cities and peripheries. Each section addresses critical issues and emerging perspectives within these themes, reflecting the diversity of topics explored during the workshops.
The laboratory was launched by Vaso Makrygianni, Orestis Pagkalos, Haris Tsavdaroglou and Eirini Oreopoulou and current members are Kostas Athanasiou, Eleni Vasdeki, Elina Kapetanaki, Maria Karayianni, Matina Kapsali, Vaso Makrygianni, Foteini Mamali, Orestis Pagkalos, Haris Tsavdaroglou. We are grateful for the contributions of Evi Athanasiou, Lia Yioka, Dimitris Kotsakis, and Sasha Lada, and we would like to thank everyone who participated and helped make these meetings possible.
In closing, we feel it is important to briefly acknowledge the setting of these seminars—the university space itself, a place we consciously chose to position ourselves within, alongside, and sometimes against. Historically, the university has been a fertile ground for collective emancipatory actions, social struggles, and radical experiments in self-organized knowledge production. However, in recent decades, neoliberal restructuring has transformed universities at every level, from modes of collectivization to curriculum content. This shift has affected everyone, from dismissed workers to marginalized researchers and the shrinking teaching staff, aligning academic priorities with market demands and marginalizing critical approaches.
In times of crisis, the neoliberalization of public universities appears to be accelerating. Against this backdrop, dynamic resistance movements have emerged worldwide, with social struggles taking root within universities that inspire, connect with, and learn from broader movements beyond their walls.
Amid this shifting landscape, we continue to view our work as a means of advancing and sharing critical thought. We envision universities as living, open laboratories—a space and a starting point for meaningful encounters
UniConflicts in spaces of crisis. Critical approaches in, against and beyond the University
No full textThe group “Encounters and Conflicts in the City” called radical research groups, critical workshops and researchers, students and collectives that are placed in, against and beyond the neoliberal university in an open gathering on the 11-14th June 2015 at the Department of Architecture at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece).
Through this gathering, it was aimed to create a public space of dialogue transcending divisions among academic and scientific disciplines and to critically approach the urban issues of the era of crisis, through a dialectic, intersectional and postcolonial approach. The central questions that raised are two:
1. What is the role of knowledge, of the university and of re-
searchers in the era of crisis?
2. What are the critical epistemological and methodological tools for studying the spatial expressions of the ongoing crisis at multiple scales? Within this context, it was sought to be examined the ongoing crisis not just as an over- accumulation crisis but also as a crisis of social disobedience and of the inability of the circulation of
capital, patriarchy and nationalism. Moving against the mystification of the crisis, the gathering was interested in critical approaches that focus on the spatialization of social relations and examined the spaces of dissent. Particularly, it was examined the articulations, the limits, the contradictions and the dialectic relation of commons, enclosures, inclusion, exclusion, insurgency and counter-insurgency as well as their hybrid intermediate forms, which emerge in and through physical space, modes of communication and the constitution of communities. Overall, the gathering aimed to break the North/South or East/West dichotomies and to focus on the fields of gender, race, class and culture. Building on the critical evaluation of social relations, the circulation of social struggles and subjects and communities in motion, we search for their contentious spaces and their spatial
transformations, limits, possibilities and contradictions in the era of crisis. Moreover, understanding education as a unity of theory and practice, we seek these epistemological and methodological tools that emerge from and aim to the deepening and the circulation of social struggles and social movements. In the context of today’s global and local crisis, we note that while a plethora of social struggles and insurgencies emerge, the academic research
often appropriates and commercializes their ideas. It is exactly here that we identify the dead-end.
Hence, the gathering sought to surpass the so-called academic activism and to set as a main target the critical examination of the following:
Α. The role of knowledge and of researchers in the university and in social movements
The neoliberal University and the educational system constitute strategic mechanisms for the production and reproduction of social relations. In particular, within a dynamic process of neoliberalization, the university studies are intensified and are linked more and more to the labour market. Within this context, it was examined issues such as the production of knowledge, knowledge as a common, the neoliberalization of the University, the
new educational enclosures and the concept of Anti-university. The transformation of knowledge into private property and consequently into a commodity creates new enclosures in the field of knowledge. These new enclosures in neoliberal education are expressed both through the commodification of the physical
space of the universities and through the objectification of human abilities. Some indicative examples are the increase of studying costs, the studying loans, the control of access to information, the commercialization of academic papers and books, the securitization of the University space, the criminalization and the rhetoric
against student mobilizations, the suppression of the struggles of university employees and the restriction of the freedom of speech. However, since 1960s and 1970s, the universities are spaces of collective emancipatory movements, of social struggles and of radical experiments of self-organization for the production of
knowledge. As a response to these movements, since 1980s, a number of educational reforms has been introduced. These reforms seek to promote the marketization of the university, aiming to produce the appropriate competitive workforce and to suppress student movements. Yet, during the last decade, many dynamic student movements have emerged in France (2006), Greece (2006-2007), the USA (2009-2010), the UK (2010), Italy (2010-2011) and so on, which targeted the enclosure of knowledge and were connected and inspired many other urban social movements. Axes of discussion
A.1 Social education and emancipatory movements in the uni-
versities
– Student movements: limits and contradictions, connection
with other urban movements, confrontation of their suppres-
sion and criminalization
– Perspectives of a radical pedagogy towards the knowledge
as common
– Ideas and practices of free-autonomous universities beyond
the education of the neoliberal university
A.2 Control and commodification of knowledge
– Public, state and private education in the neoliberal era
– Politics of knowledge enclosures and copyrights
– The suppression of academic freedom and of the freedom
of speech
– Knowledge as private property and commodity for the pro-
duction of value and surplus value
– Student loans and study costs as mechanisms of disciplining
– The cultural politics of the neoliberal university
– Paid and unpaid work at the University
A.3 The role of the researcher
– Lifelong education, competitiveness and the precarious sta-
tus of the researcher
– The researcher as producer of dominant discourses and her/
his role in the reproduction of power
– Competitiveness, academic carrier and academic divisions
and hierarchies
– The biopolitical character of the neoliberal education and
the construction of new identities
– Education as praxis, understood as a unity of theory and
practice
– Researchers, networks and groups against and beyond the
neoliberal university
Β. Critical epistemological and methodological tools for the
study of the crisis’s spatial expressions at multiple scales
Against the privatization and commodification of the academic knowledge and the intended hegemony of the neoliberal perspectives, we seek those critical epistemological tools of knowledge production that encourage social emancipation. During the last years, urban movements and a plethora of visible and invisible practices of resistance and emancipation offer a variety of tools for the destabilization of the dominant ideologies,
ways of disaggregation of power, negotiation of contradictions and visibility of differences. In parallel, today there is the urgent need for the promotion, circulation and deepening of these critical perspectives and their linking to social struggles. Thus, we aim to discuss epistemological and methodological tools, such as the following:
B1. Dialectic critical urban theory
Which are those critical approaches that assist us to perceive and examine the multiple dimensions of urban space? How do dialectic approaches and critical urban theory contribute to the understanding of the spaces of social movements and the spaces of capital, racism and patriarchy?
B2. Intersectionality and urban space in the era of crisis How does intersectionality contribute to the study of the urban space? Which are the intersectional crossings of the multiple systems of domination, oppression and discrimination such as race, class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, dis/ability, age, cast, language, culture, body size, education level or citizenship?
B3. Cultural and postcolonial approaches
How do cultural and postcolonial studies contribute to the understanding of urban space and the conceptualization of body, identity and modes of communication. How does the criminalization
and the suppression of alternative modes of culture, information and lifestyle operate as mechanisms of control, disciplining and normalization? What is the role of social media in the communication of social struggles? We seek the expression of the ongoing crisis through the spaces of architecture, art, media, and internet
Grassroots temporary urbanism as a challenge to the city of austerity? Lessons from a self-organised park in Thessaloniki, Greece
No full textThis paper traces the legacies of austerity through a focus on grassroots temporary urban interventions in public spaces. Drawing on a self-organised neighbourhood park in Thessaloniki, Greece, it explores and analyses the politicising dynamics of these urban experiments that emerged as a direct response to state retrenchment but became a long-term legacy of austerity with material and social consequences. The aim of the paper is to contribute to contemporary scholarly debates on temporary grassroots urbanism amidst austerity by uncovering the ambiguous nature of such urban experiments without reproducing dichotomising approaches that understand them as either a vehicle of neoliberalisation or an instrument of revolt. Through the case of Svolou I develop a twofold argument. First, regarding their social dynamics and legacies, grassroots urban initiatives that lack a politicising element of disagreement with (planning and governance) authorities result in creating parallel micro-spheres of socialities and solidarities with a questionable long-term impact against austerity urbanism. Although such socialities are important at the local level, they often risk reproducing neoliberal rationalities of individual responsibility and exclusions. Second, regarding their material legacies, I argue that grassroots urban initiatives produce temporary self-organised spaces and experiment with innovative grassroots space-making processes but they often remain entrapped at the local level without being able to develop broader contestations of the uneven urban development model emerging in and through austerity.<br/
Equals in solidarity: Orfanotrofio’s housing squat as a site for political subjectification across differences amid the “Greek crisis”
Full text linkThis article engages with the political struggles staged by illegalised migrants and activists in solidarity amid the long summer of migration and the “Greek crisis”. Grounding its analysis on Orfanotrofio’s housing squat in Thessaloniki, it narrates how such struggles are articulated to politicise migration and stage the equality of newcomers—migrants and refugees—and locals. Drawing on Jacques Rancière’s political writings and contemporary geographical work on solidarity, the article argues that such struggles not only disrupt the exclusionary ordering of our cities but also construct political spaces and infrastructures of dissensus wherein equals in solidarity discuss common political problems and devise common political strategies. Through the notion of equals in solidarity, the article investigates how the performative enactment of equality can form the basis for solidarities across differences and analyses how some of the tensions that emerge around collective political subjectification are negotiated. Building on this, it explores some of the challenges and limitations that these struggles face in their efforts to transform the existing order of the city
Book review: Common Space: The City as Commons
No full textDebates on the urban commons have gained ground during the last decade, in academic and activist circles alike. In what has grown to be a vast academic literature, scholarsfrom fields as diverse as urban and human geography, sociology, political theory and urban planning, have demonstrated that the urban commons could provide the way forward for the creation of more just and democratic urban futures. Stavros Stavrides, an architect, activist and academic, has already written extensively on issues pertaining to commoning practices and their emancipatory potential (Stavrides, 2002, 2007,2010a, 2010b, 2012, 2014, 2015). This book comes to be added in a series of recently edi-ted volumes that look deeper in the theory and practice of the urban commons (Borchand Kornberger, 2015; Dellenbaugh et al.,2015; Robles-Duran, 2014). But, not with-standing the significant inputs of the afore-mentioned volumes, Stavrides’ book is the first book-length attempt to produce a coherent analysis framework on the urban commons
Ιδιωτικοποίηση δημόσιων χώρων;::Νέα μοντέλα αστικής διακυβέρνησης και διαχείρισης δημόσιων χώρων στην Αθήνα της κρίσης
No full textThe publicness of public space is not unchanged or given over time but it is defined by both the design and planning of the physical space and the process of its production and management. This article contributes to the academic discussion on the privatisation of public space by examining the processes of production and management of public space in Athens in the years2010-2020. Focusing on “Athens Partnership”, the article argues that the management of public spaces through multilevel governance structures based on public-private partnerships is embedded in processes of neoliberalisation and post-democratisation of urban governance and is characterised by a democratic deficit
Political infrastructures of care:Collective home making in refugee solidarity squats
No full textSince 2015, Greece has emerged as a major stopover in refugees’ journey seeking a better life in Europe. In Greece, as in the rest of Europe, the long summer of migration has given rise to official discourses about ‘Europe’s refugee crisis’ and the management of migration flows. The Greek state in collaboration with global, European and national actors, adopted various housing practices in order to provide temporary accommodation to refugees. At the antipode of such discourses and policies, refugee solidarity squats have been organised in Greek cities through common struggles among local activists and people on the move. This article contributes to contemporary debates around migrant struggles for housing by conceptualising refugee solidarity squats as political infrastructures of care. By bringing into dialogue Jacques Rancière’s political writings with feminist scholarship on care and social reproduction, the article argues that refugee solidarity squats are not only sites of struggle against anti-migration policies but also stages for the collectivisation of care through the enactment of transversal equality. Through a close urban ethnographic reading of the Orfanotrofio housing squat for migrants in Thessaloniki, Greece, the article narrates the process of collective home making in the squat. In doing so, it analyses the everyday practices through which Orfanotrofio’s participants materially reproduced and affectively cared for each other and investigates how activists and refugees negotiated their different subject positions and challenged the differential lines of power that defined the squat’s participants, such as gender, political background, race and so on. Based on this, it manifests that distancing themselves from humanitarian approaches to housing that revolve around a disembodied care from a distance, spaces like Orfanotrofio construct in the here and now common political spaces of home and give birth to collective political subjects
Towards Transversal Housing Solidarities Across Space, Time and Subjects
No full textThe paper documents the emergence of precarious local and migrant tenants as political subjects that build transversal housing solidarities in Greek cities amidst multiple intersecting crises. In doing so, I introduce the feminist concept of transversal solidarities to housing studies and expand it by bringing it in dialogue with debates on housing precarity. Understanding transversal solidarity as an integral part of housing struggles and as an important theoretical concept in debates on housing precarity, I argue, is a crucial step forward to housing theory as it foregrounds transversal housing solidarities as translocal and intersectional processes through which collective political subjects emerge. Drawing from rent struggles in Greece, I demonstrate that transversal housing solidarities are being built across space, time and subjects: they are local and place-based initiatives, embedded in broader networks of trans-local solidarities that are generative of concrete social and political alternatives to the neoliberal housing model.</p
