ISTANBUL WORKSHOP: January 29-30, 2004

PROGRAM
Workshop Organization: Papers contributed to the workshop constitute a shared library around which workshop discussions are structured. All participants are expected to have read the papers in advance, there will be no formal paper presentations at the workshop itself. The facilitator will pose specific questions to open up the sessions based on the workshop papers and the thematic questions around which the sessions are organized. In each session the "presenters" will make brief contributions (5 minutes) after which the floor will be open for general discussion navigated by the facilitator.

Wednesday, January 28
Welcome Dinner (meet in hotel lobby at 7pm)

Thursday, January 29
9:00-9:30 Introductions

9:30-10:00 Project Description by the Network Coordinators

10:00-12:00 Session I: Theorizing Non-Western Urbanities
How might we theorize non-western urbanities? How have non-Western urbanities been conceived and experienced in different historical periods? How are we to theorize urban projects that are the outcome of crisis?

Facilitator: Kamran Ali
Presenters:
1. Kaveh Ehsani, Social Engineering and the Contradictions of Modernization in Khuzestan’s Company Towns: A Look at Abadan and Masjed-Soleyman
2. Ibrahim Elnur, War, Flight, Destitution and New Urbanities in Khartoum
3. Mandana Limbert, Asphalt and Mud Brick: New Roads and Old Forts in an Omani Oasis Town

12:00-1: 30 Lunch

1:30-3:30 Session II: The City and its Others
How do particular urban projects produce difference (raced, gendered, classed)? What strategies are deployed to discipline, naturalize and resist the production of difference?

Facilitator: Kahveh Ehsani
Presenters:
1. Betül Çelik, Experiences and Representation of Kurdish Women in Istanbul
2. Lilia Labidi, Women's Poverty in the Arab City: Between Moral Emotions and the Abject

3:30-4:00 Coffee

4:00-6:00 Network Discussion I:
The Politics of Inter-Regional and Cross-Regional Comparative Research

Dinner (meet in hotel lobby at 7:30)

Friday, January 30
9:00-11:00 Session III: Articulating Urban Consciousness
How do various visions of urban modernity map urban consciousness within particular national spaces? With an increasing focus on megacities, what sorts of urban modernities are being envisioned and produced in smaller urban centers and provincial towns? How do certain social groups produce and/or negotiate urban landscapes?

Facilitator: Martina Rieker
Presenters: 1. Alev Çinar, Imagining the Nation, Making the City: Materialization of Modernity and Nationalism in Ankara
2. Lisa Taraki, Middle Class Urban Modernities on the Periphery of the Periphery (Ramallah)

11:00-11:15 Coffee

11:15-1:15 Session IV: Subalternity and the Production of Urban Landscapes
How do the subaltern negotiate modernist urban imaginaries? How do larger structural changes affect social and spatial visions of the urban project? What new forms of public spaces and subjectivities are produced in societies that are the site of incessant violence?

Facilitator: Ayse Öncü
Presenters:
1. Zeynep Çelik, The Modernity of the Bidonville (Algiers)
2. Kamran Asdar Ali and Martina Rieker, We Are Still Here, We Never Went Away: Urban Poverty Studies Another Look, Another Century

1:15-2:30 Lunch break

2:30-4:30 Session V: Neo-Liberalism and Urban Lifeworlds
How are urban life-worlds effected by the collapse of regional populisms as viable ideologies, the rise of religious nationalism, the systemic erosion of the welfare state and the creation of neo-liberal urban landscapes? How do new classes execute their life-projects in increasingly commoditized urban spaces?

Facilitator: Lisa Taraki
Presenters:
1. Mona Fawaz, The Rise and Fall of a New Class of Urban Dwellers: Land Developers in Hay El Sellom (Beirut)
2. Ozlem Sandikci and Altan Ilkucan, Gentrification and Community: Constructing, Conquering and Contesting The Republic of Cihangir
3. Ayse Saktanber, Outdoor/Indoor? Urban Woman Goes to Socialize: Local Governments, Gender and the Reformulation of Islamic Neo-liberalism through Leisurescapes

4:30-6:00 Network Discussion II: Building a Network

7:30 Evening invitation by Ayse Öncü, Sabanci University

DESCRIPTION | PROGRAM | ABSTRACTS