What does a feminist urban theory look like for the twenty first century? This book puts knowledges of feminist urban scholars, feminist scholars of social reproduction, and other urban theorists into conversation to propose an approach to the urban that recognises social reproduction both as foundational to urban transformations and as a methodological entry-point for urban studies.
- Offers an approach feminist urban theory that remains intentionally cautious of universal uses of social reproduction theory, instead focusing analytical attention on historical contingency and social difference
- Eleven chapters that collectively address distinct elements of the contemporary crisis in social reproduction and the urban through the lenses of infrastructure and subjectivity formation as well as through feminist efforts to decolonize urban knowledge production
- Deepens understandings of how people shape and reshape the spatial forms of their everyday lives, furthering understandings of the 'infinite variety' of the urban
- Essential reading for academics, researchers and scholars within urban studies, human geography, gender and sexuality studies, and sociology
Table of Contents
List of Contributors xi
Series Editors’ Preface xiii
Preface xv
1 Rethinking Social Reproduction and the Urban 1
Gökbörü Sarp Tanyildiz, Linda Peake, Elsa Koleth, Rajyashree N. Reddy, darren patrick/dp, and Susan Ruddick
Introduction 1
Social Reproduction 5
Social Reproduction and the Urban 10
Making the Urban Through Feminist Knowledge Production 13
Infrastructures 13
Subjectivities 17
Decolonizing Feminist Urban Knowledge 21
Methodologies 25
The Limits of Social Reproduction 29
Coda: Social Reproduction and the Urban During a Pandemic 31
References 34
2 Sociability and Social Reproduction in Times of Disaster: Exploring the Role of Expressive Urban Cultural Practices in Haiti and Puerto Rico 42
Nathalia Santos Ocasio and Beverley Mullings
Introduction 42
The Hidden Transcript of Resilience and Its Social Reproductive Roots 47
Sociability, Expressive Cultural Practice, and Social Reproduction in the Caribbean 51
Social Reproduction and the Unbearable Subversions of Expressive Cultural Practice: Exploring the Power of Rabòday and Plena 53
The Possibilities and Limits of Expressive Cultural Practice to Transformational Change 56
References 61
3 ‘Never/Again’: Reading the Qayqayt Nation and New Westminster in Public Poetry Installations 66
Emily Fedoruk
Introduction 66
Social Reproduction and the Urban in the Context of Settler Colonialism 69
Ask Again: Authorship and a Short History of the Qayqayt 74
Colonial Legibility and the Postmodern Media of Recognition 80
References 89
4 Gender in Resistance: Emotion, Affective Labour, and Social Reproduction in Athens 92
Mantha Katsikana
Introduction 92
Protest and Resistance in Athens 93
Feminist Social Reproduction in the Context of Urban Activism 96
Placing Social Reproduction in the Anti-authoritarian/Anarchist Commons 97
The Commons and the De-politicization of the Personal 101
Anarchist Commons: Performances and Cultures of Resistance and the Re-making of Safe Spaces 105
Politicizing Emotion: Dispossession and Empowering Practices of Social Reproduction in the Urban 107
Conclusion 110
References 112
5 ‘Sustaining Lives is What Matters’: Contested Infrastructure, Social Reproduction, and Feminist Urban Praxis in Catalonia 115
James Angel
Introduction 115
Positionality and Praxis 117
Social Reproduction, Infrastructure, and the Urban 119
Contested Catalonia 121
#AguaParaEsther 123
Feminist Praxis 126
Reproducing the Urban Otherwise 130
Conclusion 132
References 134
6 Global Restructuring of Social Reproduction and Its Invisible Work in Urban Revitalization 138
Faranak Miraftab
Introduction 138
A Landscape of New Inequalities in the Rustbelt and Its Social and Spatial Transformation 140
Social Reproduction and Its Global Restructuring 143
Relational Framing and Radical Feminist Urban Scholarship 144
Social Reproduction and Feminist Urban Scholarship 147
Outsourced Social Reproduction and Revitalization of Urban Space 150
Conclusion 153
References 157
7 From the Kampung to the Courtroom: A Feminist Intersectional Analysis of the Human Right to Water as a Tool for Poor Women’s Urban Praxis in Jakarta 162
Meera Karunananthan
Introduction 162
Methodology and Positionality 163
Water, the Urban, and Social Reproduction 164
The Privatization of Water and Anti-privatization Struggles in Indonesia 169
Solidaritas Perempuan Jakarta and Poor Women’s Rights to Water 171
Legal Challenges Against Privatization 172
Community-based Research on the Impacts of Privatization 174
Conclusion 178
References 181
8 Re-imagine Urban Antispaces! for a Decolonial Social Reproduction 186
Natasha Aruri
Introduction: Linking the ‘Anti-Politics Machine’ and Socio-Spacio-Cide 186
The ‘Anti-Politics Machine’ in Palestine 190
Socio-cide: Spatial Militarization and Antispaces 192
Ramallah’s Tomorrow: Between Individualisms and Commons 200
Refiguring and Reconfiguring for Resilience: Takhayyali [Imagine] Ramallah 203
References 211
9 Forced Displacement, Migration, and (Trans)national Care Networks: Practices of Urban Space Production in Colombia and Spain 215
Camila Esguerra Muelle, Diana Ojeda, and Friederike Fleischer
Introduction 215
(Trans)national Care Networks, Social Reproduction, and Urban Space 217
War, Migration, and Care: Colombian Care Workers in Spain 221
Communitarian Mothers in Colombia 225
Conclusion 229
References 232
10 Tenga Nehungwaru: Navigating Gendered Food Precarity in Three African Secondary Urban Settlements 236
Belinda Dodson and Liam Riley
Introduction 236
Food and Social Reproduction in African Cities 239
The Consuming Urban Poverty (CUP) Project: Research Methods and Researcher Positionality 241
Urban Food Systems and Food Insecurity in Kitwe, Kisumu, and Epworth 244
Lived Urban Geographies of Food Access and Food Poverty in Kitwe, Kisumu, and Epworth 247
Marital Status, Household Form, and Gendered Occupations 247
Food Procurement and Access 251
Conclusion 255
References 258
11 Infrastructures of Social Reproduction: Dialogic Collaboration and Feminist Comparative Urbanism 262
Tom Gillespie and Kate Hardy
Introduction 262
Feminist Urban Scholarship and Comparative Urbanism 263
Thinking Comparatively Between Córdoba and London 265
Dialogic Collaboration 268
Situated Knowledge 269
Solidarity 270
Collaboration 271
Iteration 272
Gendered Urban Struggles in Córdoba and London 273
Subjectivation 273
Demands 275
Strategy 276
Infrastructures of Social Reproduction and the Urban 279
Conclusion 280
References 281
Index 285
