KHARTOUM
WORKSHOP: JUNE
24-26, 2005
This workshop is organized in collaboration with the Middle East Awards Program of the Population Council, Office for West Asia and North Africa (Cairo). It is co-organized in Khartoum-Omdurman by the Institute for Women, Gender and Development Studies at Ahfad University.
Urban
Landscapes on the Margins: Khartoum and Karachi The
purpose of this workshop is to initiate a critical dialogue on ways in
which urban poverty is lived in two countries and more importantly in
two mega-cities at quite distinct locations within the global economy.
There has been much critical re-engagement with the concept of poverty
in the last few years (e.g. World Bank 2000). Among others, it is becoming
evident that only through a focus on specific local social histories can
poverty be understood productively. Enmeshed within these local productions
of place and space are global development visions and plans. We seek to
particularly focus on the relationship between how the urban poor perceive,
experience and practice their lived reality and how international development
agencies and agendas have targeted these populations in the recent past.
The forum shall seek to explore how the entanglements, contradictions,
symbiosis and confrontation embedded within internationally sponsored
programs on urban revitalization, poverty eradication and low income housing
inform local activists and how it defines and limits the borders of their
engagement. We propose that this process is pivotal to understand before
we can start to rethink a more constructive agenda of urban change and
poverty reduction in the two
regions. By emphasizing work processes, local-state relationships, social
relations, youth culture etc. this comparison will suggest fruitful ways
to evaluate the life-worlds of the poor at discrepant locations in the
21st century. This workshop will invite 15-20 members of the NGO community
in Khartoum and Karachi in particular and also from other parts of Sudan
and Pakistan.
The workshop will focus on the following themes:
1. The Problem of Social Capital
2. Urban Poverty and Mobility
3. Gendering Urban Poverty
4. Labor and Housing
5. Urban Conflict and Violence
6. Resource Distribution and Urban Growth
7. Refugees, Displaced Populations and "New" Immigrants.
8. Gendered Public Sphere and the Urban Poor
9. Health and Social Capital