Conference of the German Anthropological Association (GAA) 2017 - Belonging: Affective, moral and political practices in an interconnected world. GAA group: Urban anthropology - The city - Aspiration, belonging, imagination
Abstrakt
According to figures of the UN more than half of the world's population live in urban areas. Projections depict the number to increase up to 66 per cent by 2050-mainly in Africa and Asia.
Seemingly transnational concepts like "World Class City" or "Smart City" are spreading-visions that disguise social divides alongside urban poverty. In the light of these global trends, social and cultural studies in and about the complexity of cities seem more relevant than ever.
Cities have long been regarded as social laboratories whose diversity and density represent current political, economic and cultural dynamics. These notions led to the development of "the city" as an interdisciplinary research field.
Hereby anthropologists share their interest in urban communities, spaces and structures with sociologists, geographers, planners and architects. Migration into cities, the relationship between urban centres and the hinterland as well as social segregation are among the crucial topics to be studied.
Of special interest to anthropologists are symbolic representations of diverse aspects of belongings as well as power relations or the construction and appropriation of the built environment. This panel seeks to gather anthropologists, who explore urban areas.
We shall discuss the city as a locus of research in different parts of the world, and as a focus in times of globalization and dynamic fluid belongings. We are interested in social relations and new identities that emerge in cities, in rural-urban interactions, in representations of communities and/or "urban tribes", in the articulation of specific values towards urban spaces and architectures, and in local imaginaries of the "self" and the "other".
These topics shall give us opportunity to discuss ethnographic case studies and questions of methodology. Furthermore we wish to identify specific anthropological approaches towards urban configurations and reflect critical debates in the broad field of urban studies.