30. Urban Politics

Melissa Marschall, Rice University, marschal@rice.edu
Lester Spence, Johns Hopkins University, unbowed@gmail.com

The theme of this year’s conference is “Categories and the Politics of Global Inequalities.” Given both the historical and the contemporary role that urban spaces play in the production and reproduction of inequalities, whether in global cities like New York, Tokyo, and Mexico City, or more provincial cities such as New Orleans and Torino, this theme taps the myriad areas of inquiry central to urban politics research. Panels from past conferences have highlighted the way that norms, behaviors, and attitudes inscribe patterns of inequality in such areas as housing, schooling, employment, electoral participation, and civic involvement, via both formal institutions (zoning rules, mortgage lending practices, urban governing arrangements) and more informal or unconscious conventions (locational decisions, stereotyping, neighborhood context).  We welcome panels and proposals that highlight these enduring issues and relationships.

However we are also interested in work that highlights comparisons across jurisdictions in order to examine how various combinations of local, state/province, and national factors produce unequal outcomes. As the central hub for international labor pools, cities are faced with increasing complexities associated with immigrant populations. At the same time, urban
residents, both old and new, are confronted with a host of new challenges and incentives that have interesting and uncertain implications for how they compete or cooperate with one another for scarce resources in today's cities and in the cities of tomorrow. Given porous borders and other “limits” inherent to cities, we are interested in proposals that investigate both how cities are grappling with more contemporary issues (homeland security, voting rights, disaster management, culture wars), particularly as they relate to potential inequities in outcomes, and with how urban populations (and subpopulations) organize themselves and their urban environments to deal with and overcome these inequalities. We welcome all methodological approaches, including more traditional and established modes of inquiry as well as work that expands the boundaries of what we consider politics in order to consider the role that various cultural phenomena (the role of French hip-hop in the Paris riots come to mind) play in fighting and in crystallizing inequalities.