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Theme: 4. Seeing from the Neighbourhood: States, Communities and Human Mobility
Yimin Zhao
Durham University, United Kingdom
Jiahui Zeng
Tsinghua University, China
Yimin Zhao
Durham University, United Kingdom
Yang Zhan
Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
Jiahui Zeng
Tsinghua University, China
Urban frontiers and/or peripheries have been a widely debated theme in Urban Studies and other related disciplines. Instead of a homogeneous narrative of the “suburb” talk, we are reminded of the various names, socio-spatialities, political economies and political dynamics that have been characterising different peripheral localities and subjects. When looking into existing discussions more carefully, however, we are more often than not encountering meta-narratives such as urban informality, urban peripherality, urban majority and the like, which are at the same time enabling and limiting the scope of further reflections on the lived experiences of being peripheral. While familiar narratives are traveling around and attached to many different contexts, we may sometimes wonder if the urban frontiers are getting similar to each other - analytically - and becoming boring in and through analogous lenses of analyses.
How shall we deal with the boring frontiers? Instead of appealing to yet another meta-narrative, an alternative and hopefully more productive way is to look into the ordinary and daily experiences that have been shaping and shaped by such peripheral localities, which of course are also connected with numerous trans-local and global processes. Shifting the focus from presumed analytical lenses (political-economic, postcolonial, etc.) to lived experiences of being peripheral, and by bringing different experiences into dialogues with each other, we might be able to figure out how and how far the (extra-)ordinary ways of becoming urban have been (and/or could be) unfolded right through these seemingly boring places, lives and subjects. This session invites empirical, theoretical and epistemological investigations of and reflections on being peripheral in Asian contexts, and aims to further draw out collective responses to the emerging urban frontiers and their analytical boredom in a more generative way.
Presenter: Yimin Zhao – Durham University
Presenter: Yang Zhan – Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Presenter: Jiahui Zeng – Tsinghua University