Digital lecture: (Beyond) immunitary governance
After Maria Kaika, a founding figure of urban political ecology, spoke at the last event of the lecture series ‘Spatial and environmental justice’, a no less renowned representative of this field of research will speak at the upcoming event: Erik Swyngedouw.
Forth lecture
4 June (digital)
(Beyond) immunitary governance: Uneven socio-ecological urbanization in the planetary city
Erik Swyngedouw
Professor of Human Geography
School of Environment, Education and Development
University of Manchester (United Kingdom)
The speaker will mobilize ‘the Anthropocene’ — or better the Urbicene — as the popularized term to denote a new geological era during which humans have arguably acquired profound planetary geo-physical agency. Planetary urbanization is the geographical imprint of this Anthropocenic forcing. Under these conditions, a global urban intellectual and professional planning technocracy has spurred a frantic search for a ‘smart’ socio-ecological urbanity and seeks out the socio-ecological qualities of sustainable eco-development, retrofitting, eco-sensitive architecture, adaptive and resilient urban governance, the commodification of environmental ‘services’, and innovative – but fundamentally market-conforming – eco-design. These techno-managerial dispositifs that search for eco-prophylactic remedies for the predicament we are in have entered the standard vocabulary of both governmental and private actors, and have now been consensually established as the frontier of architectural, planning, and urban design theory and practice, presumably capable of saving both city and planet. The speaker will examine critically these planning tools and discourses, and suggest different possible ways forward.
Access link
For digital participation, please dial in via BigBlueButton.
URL: meeting.uni-weimar.de/b/kat-ek9-0up-qom
Access code: 635539
Information on further events:
www.uni-weimar.de/ifeu/justice
Facilitator: Hendrik Sander (IfEU)
Email: hendrik.sander[at]uni-weimar.de