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79779-01 - Seminar: Metabolic Urbanism (3 KP)
| Semester | Herbstsemester 2026 |
| Angebotsmuster | unregelmässig |
| Dozierende | Kenny R. Cupers (kenny.cupers@unibas.ch, BeurteilerIn) |
| Inhalt | Cities do not simply exist within nature. They consume, transform, and excrete vast flows of matter and energy, reorganizing ecological and social relations across enormous distances in the process. Metabolic frameworks in urban studies (first gathered under the banner of Urban Political Ecology) have largely been built from research on European and American industrial cities and from Marxist political economies. The metabolic transformations of cities and hinterlands elsewhere, particularly across the Global South, have instead been theorized through postcolonial perspectives on race, extractivism and waste. This course confronts these different traditions in order to generate new understandings of urban metabolism. It explores what metabolic urbanism can mean and do today, in an era of escalating ecological crises and forms of colonialism. The course takes William Cronon's Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (1991) as its primary text—read cover to cover, as books deserve to be. Nature’s Metropolis is a landmark study of how one city was built by metabolizing nature, and how that city’s growth restructured commodity flows, ecological systems, and economic geographies across a continental region. More than thirty years on, Cronon's book remains exceptionally powerful in its analysis. But its framework, and the urban political ecology tradition it helped produce, rests on constitutive silences: about Indigenous land as metabolic precondition than historical backdrop; about race as the organizing logic of capitalist accumulation; and about the many human and other-than-human lives assigned to invisibility by anthropocentrism and colonialism. The seminar develops in a double movement. Each class, we read one of Cronon’s book chapters closely, recovering the conceptual force of his deeply researched account of second nature, commodity abstraction, and metabolic escalation. Each class, we confront this work with recent scholarship on postcolonialism, capitalism (Jason Moore), infrastructure (Simone), geology, race, and Blackness (Kathryn Yusoff), waste colonialism (Max Liboiron), extractivism and residual governance (Gabrielle Hecht), and multispecies ecologies (Maan Barua; Les Beldo). The course explores how this confrontation forces metabolic analysis to answer for the racial and colonial dynamics that have always subtended it. Format: This is an electronics-free seminar. Its method is close reading and sustained critical dialogue. Students are expected to read carefully, annotate, and arrive prepared to defend and contest interpretations. No laptops, phones, or tablets allowed. |
| Lernziele | By the end of the course, students will be able to: - Command the principal traditions of metabolic thinking in urban studies and situate them within current debates in postcolonial urbanism, Black and Indigenous studies, multispecies ecologies, discard studies, and the Anthropocene. - Practice close reading and dialogue as scholarly methods. |
| Literatur | Cronon, W. (1991) Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Barua, M. (2024) "Metabolic Politics: A Comparative Synthesis" Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers Barua, M. (2025) "Metabolic Geographies: Work, Shifts and Politics" Progress in Human Geography 49(2): 145–163 Beldo, L. (2017) "Metabolic Labor: Broiler Chickens and the Exploitation of Vitality" Environmental Humanities 9(1): 108–128 Guthman, J. & Mansfield, B. (2013) "The Implications of Environmental Epigenetics: A New Direction for Geographic Inquiry on Health, Space and Nature-Society Relations" Progress in Human Geography 37(4): 486–504 Hecht, G. (2023) Residual Governance: How South Africa Foretells Planetary Futures. Durham: Duke University Press. [Introduction: "The Racial Contract is Technopolitical," pp. 1–18] Kooy, M. & Bakker, K. (2008) "Splintered Networks: The Colonial and Contemporary Waters of Jakarta" Geoforum 39: 1843–1858 Liboiron, M. (2021) Pollution Is Colonialism. Durham: Duke University Press. [Introduction, pp. 1–38] Moore, J.W. (2017) "Metabolic Rift or Metabolic Shift? Dialectics, Nature and the World-Historical Method" Theory and Society 46: 285–318 Newell, J.P. & Cousins, J.J. (2014) "The Boundaries of Urban Metabolism: Towards a Political-Industrial Ecology" Progress in Human Geography 39(6): 702–728 Simone, A. (2004) "People as Infrastructure: Intersecting Fragments in Johannesburg" Public Culture 16(3): 407–429 Yusoff, K. (2018) A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. [Chapter 1: "Geology, Race, and Matter"] |
| Bemerkungen | The course is open to Master students from other programs with a priority for MA Students in Critical Urbanisms and in Changing Societies on timely registration. Max. capacity 20. |
| Teilnahmevoraussetzungen | none |
| Unterrichtssprache | Englisch |
| Einsatz digitaler Medien | kein spezifischer Einsatz |
| Intervall | Wochentag | Zeit | Raum |
|---|---|---|---|
| wöchentlich | Donnerstag | 10.15-12.00 | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 103 |
Einzeltermine
| Datum | Zeit | Raum |
|---|---|---|
| Donnerstag 24.09.2026 | 10.15-12.00 Uhr | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 103 |
| Donnerstag 01.10.2026 | 10.15-12.00 Uhr | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 103 |
| Donnerstag 08.10.2026 | 10.15-12.00 Uhr | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 103 |
| Donnerstag 15.10.2026 | 10.15-12.00 Uhr | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 103 |
| Donnerstag 22.10.2026 | 10.15-12.00 Uhr | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 103 |
| Donnerstag 29.10.2026 | 10.15-12.00 Uhr | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 103 |
| Donnerstag 05.11.2026 | 10.15-12.00 Uhr | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 103 |
| Donnerstag 12.11.2026 | 10.15-12.00 Uhr | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 103 |
| Donnerstag 19.11.2026 | 10.15-12.00 Uhr | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 103 |
| Donnerstag 26.11.2026 | 10.15-12.00 Uhr | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 103 |
| Donnerstag 03.12.2026 | 10.15-12.00 Uhr | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 103 |
| Donnerstag 10.12.2026 | 10.15-12.00 Uhr | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 103 |
| Donnerstag 17.12.2026 | 10.15-12.00 Uhr | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 103 |
| Module |
Modul: Fields: Environment and Development (Master Studiengang: African Studies) Modul: The Urban across Disciplines (Master Studiengang: Critical Urbanisms) |
| Prüfung | Lehrveranst.-begleitend |
| Hinweise zur Prüfung | For a successful learning experience, this class requires everyone’s active participation. You are assessed on a Pass/Fail basis. To pass this course, you are required to participate actively in each class discussion. More than one unexcused absence equals a fail for this course. You are expected to prepare for class discussions by making reading and reflection notes prior to each class, and post these on ADAM by Monday evening 5pm before each class. AI use is not allowed for these notes. |
| An-/Abmeldung zur Prüfung | Anmelden: Belegen; Abmelden: nicht erforderlich |
| Wiederholungsprüfung | keine Wiederholungsprüfung |
| Skala | Pass / Fail |
| Belegen bei Nichtbestehen | beliebig wiederholbar |
| Zuständige Fakultät | Philosophisch-Historische Fakultät, studadmin-philhist@unibas.ch |
| Anbietende Organisationseinheit | Fachbereich Urban Studies |