“Othered space in Über-urbanity”: A Bourdieuvian analysis of the good city and the right city through the Praxis of zoning in Southern Urbanism

In this instalment of the Theory 101 series, Dr Herman Geyer (CRUISE) will present a seminar on the presentation presents an analysis of Bourdieuvian thought in contemporary urbanism in the Global South. It analyses the theory and thought of Bourdieu, and how he forms an intersection between the earlier poststructuralists Castells and Lefebvre, and the later work of Foucault and Lacan. This is connected to the Los Angeles School of Urban Sociology evaluating the concepts of Thirdspace, Post-Fordism, Edge cities, Privatopia, and Themed cities. The research evaluates the Praxis of zoning in the Global South from poststructuralist theory. Urban planning can be described as a Bourdieuvian game that encumbers urbanism with lengthy and costly registration procedures, unresponsive and outdated land-use regulations, and expensive and often ineffective conflict-resolution mechanisms. As in other related socio-technical disciplines, it masks its ideology and language as scientificity and rationality, reflecting their subjective revaluations and biases into the system. In contrast, real-lived urban spaces in the informal peri-urban exist as a constitutive Other antithetical to the ‘normal’ processes of zoning based on the myth of marginality. In these spaces the increasing cultural, ethnic, linguistic, and religious heterogeneity of informality creates an anarchic subaltern DIY urbanism that is adaptive, dynamic, and vitalist, but also increasingly chaotic, haphazard, and unsettled, unmapping socio-technical space as adaptable and negotiable. This sends the socio-technical zoning into a crisis of redundancy, in terms of social justice and distributive ethics, hollowing out the role of the state and confronting asymmetrical power relations.

Dr Herman Geyer

Herman is an Urban Planner, Economic, Transportation and Urban Geographer, and Regional Scientist at the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Stellenbosch. He has worked for over 18 years in various aspects of urban development and published over 40 articles on Regional Development, Agrarian Economics, Global Value Chains, Territorial Governance, Demographics, Medical Geography, Informality, Peri-Urbanism, Customary Land Use Regulation Systems, Green Infrastructure, and Mixed-Use Development. His research focuses on Southern Urbanism from an African perspective, based on the everyday lifeworld of the actor in the Global South.

Tuesday 21 May 14h30-15h30

Venue Room 401 in the FASS (Faculty of Arts and Social Science) BUilding