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60670-01 - Studio: Coloniality, Infrastucture and Ecology (10 CP)
| Semester | spring semester 2023 |
| Course frequency | Irregular |
| Lecturers |
Kenny R. Cupers (kenny.cupers@unibas.ch)
Shourideh Cherie Molavi (sc.molavi@unibas.ch, Assessor) |
| Content | This course forms the thematic core of the Urbanism across Geographies module. This module explores how cities and landscapes are produced through translocal processes that cross global divides and geographical categories such as Global North and Global South. Building on postcolonial scholarship, it addresses how global systems of circulation, accumulation, and displacement produce unequal yet interconnected urban and rural conditions. This includes understanding how material infrastructures and unequal mobility patterns are shaped by enduring colonial relations of power. The aim of the module is to advance an approach to urban research that extends the study of urban lifeworlds to include the politics of mobility and resource extraction well as the spatial and environmental dimensions of political conflict. Drawing from architecture, political science, and anthropology in addition to urban studies, the module prepares students for site-based urban research, while opening up the possible geographies from which that knowledge is produced, circulated, and applied. Within this module, the studio course provides students with both theoretical foundations as well as practical sensibilities. The studio is a unique teaching format at the University of Basel, and one of the central elements of the MA in Critical Urbanisms. The studio combines conventional formats such as lectures, reading seminars, and tutorials, but most importantly, it allows students to work together in a shared space. Jointly taught by core faculty, with visits by external instructors, the studio takes place in a dedicated space, which acts as a laboratory in which small teams of students from different disciplinary backgrounds work closely together. Students work on a range of different and complementary outputs, ranging from essays to illustrated booklets, maps and diagrams, photographic projects, videos, and installations. This work will be assembled and edited to be made public as a collective outcome of the research studio. The theoretical framework for the course is grounded in four pillars: 1) The first pillar draws from political economy, (de)colonial studies, and critical urban theory. We are particularly interested in how processes of urbanization, colonialism, and racial capitalism intertwine, and how such macro-analytical concepts, inspired by radical and anti-colonial thinkers, can help us understand concrete places, such as the port cities of Palermo and Lamu. We will pay close attention to changing maritime and land-based networks of production and trade, and use borders and oceans as methodological lenses for understanding urbanization. 2) The second pillar starts from the ground up. It focuses on land, space, and territory as both objects of investigation and as sites of intervention—the very medium of every life and means through which power and resistance are represented and exerted. This leads us to explore different methods of research (particularly from architecture and landscape studies) that allow us to understand how concrete spaces and local practices are linked to broader economic and geopolitical forces. This allows us to examine how states mobilize land, territory, nature and property to organize and discipline life, but also how the material organization of everyday life transcends such structures of power. 3) The third pillar centers on infrastructure, which we approach both as an empirical object and an analytical approach. Building on the recent infrastructural turn in the social sciences, we will explore infrastructure as a lens to explore the endurance and reproduction of colonial and capitalist relations of power. We are interested in the imperial legacies that inhabit current infrastructure mega-projects, as well as the often-mundane role of infrastructure in supporting urban life. As such we will address both the promise of infrastructure to achieve progress and its darker sides of violence and neglect. 4) The fourth pillar is ecology, and here we will primarily draw from two scholarly debates—urban political ecology and the environmental humanities. Rather than seeing nature as an external or passive context for urbanization, we will approach the urban as a series of processes involving humans, non-humans, and material environments across multiple scales. This allows us to understand water provision, food production, waste management, and pollution as fundamentally political. We will also engage with critical work on environmental racism and decolonial ecology, allowing us to position ecology at the center of our theoretical framework. This theoretical framework will be explored not only in the classroom, through the seminar discussions in weeks 1-4, but also through site immersion in weeks 5-10, in exchange with a range of urban actors, local organizers and collaborators. This course is thus integrally linked to the mandatory course “Site Immersions,” with students working in Palermo, Sicily, and Lamu, Kenya. |
| Learning objectives | This course provides the theoretical framework as well as practical skills for urban research across geographies. By the end of the course, we hope you will be able to: - Engage with foundational literature on global and postcolonial urbanism, allowing you to conceptualize and pursue site-based urban research that attends to translocal dynamics of capital, mobility, extraction, and conflict - Reflect independently on the ways in which global systems of circulation, accumulation, and displacement produce unequal yet interconnected urban and rural conditions, and understand how concrete spaces and local practices are linked to broader societal dynamics and geopolitical forces - Confidently analyze and write about urban scholarship from multiple disciplinary positions, including geography, history, architecture, and political science - Work collaboratively on locally engaged public presentation of research outcomes |
| Comments | The University of Basel provides a small grant to help cover the costs of the travel and logistics of the semester. Full details will be provided via email to all UAG-track students. |
| Admission requirements | Anmelden: Belegen; Abmelden: nicht erforderlich This course is only open for first year MA students in Critical Urbanisms |
| Course application | Anmelden: Belegen Abmelden: nicht erforderlich |
| Language of instruction | English |
| Use of digital media | No specific media used |
| Interval | Weekday | Time | Room |
|---|---|---|---|
| wöchentlich | Tuesday | 09.15-16.00 | Alte Gewerbeschule, Studio 357 |
Dates
| Date | Time | Room |
|---|---|---|
| Tuesday 21.02.2023 | 09.15-16.00 | Alte Gewerbeschule, Studio 357 |
| Thursday 23.02.2023 | 09.15-16.00 | Alte Gewerbeschule, Studio 357 |
| Tuesday 07.03.2023 | 09.15-16.00 | Alte Gewerbeschule, Studio 357 |
| Thursday 09.03.2023 | 09.15-16.00 | Alte Gewerbeschule, Studio 357 |
| Tuesday 14.03.2023 | 09.15-16.00 | Alte Gewerbeschule, Studio 357 |
| Thursday 16.03.2023 | 09.15-16.00 | Alte Gewerbeschule, Studio 357 |
| Tuesday 21.03.2023 | 09.15-16.00 | - Online Präsenz -, -- |
| Thursday 23.03.2023 | 09.15-16.00 | - Online Präsenz -, -- |
| Tuesday 28.03.2023 | 09.15-16.00 | - Siehe Bemerkung, -- |
| Thursday 30.03.2023 | 09.15-16.00 | - Siehe Bemerkung, -- |
| Tuesday 04.04.2023 | 09.15-16.00 | - Siehe Bemerkung, -- |
| Thursday 06.04.2023 | 09.15-16.00 | Ostern |
| Tuesday 11.04.2023 | 09.15-16.00 | - Siehe Bemerkung, -- |
| Thursday 13.04.2023 | 09.15-16.00 | - Siehe Bemerkung, -- |
| Tuesday 18.04.2023 | 09.15-16.00 | - Siehe Bemerkung, -- |
| Thursday 20.04.2023 | 09.15-16.00 | - Siehe Bemerkung, -- |
| Tuesday 25.04.2023 | 09.15-16.00 | - Siehe Bemerkung, -- |
| Thursday 27.04.2023 | 09.15-16.00 | - Siehe Bemerkung, -- |
| Tuesday 02.05.2023 | 09.15-16.00 | - Siehe Bemerkung, -- |
| Thursday 04.05.2023 | 09.15-16.00 | - Siehe Bemerkung, -- |
| Tuesday 09.05.2023 | 09.15-16.00 | Alte Gewerbeschule, Studio 357 |
| Thursday 11.05.2023 | 09.15-16.00 | Alte Gewerbeschule, Studio 357 |
| Tuesday 16.05.2023 | 09.15-16.00 | Alte Gewerbeschule, Studio 357 |
| Thursday 18.05.2023 | 09.15-16.00 | Alte Gewerbeschule, Studio 357 |
| Tuesday 23.05.2023 | 09.15-16.00 | Alte Gewerbeschule, Studio 357 |
| Thursday 25.05.2023 | 09.15-16.00 | Alte Gewerbeschule, Studio 357 |
| Tuesday 30.05.2023 | 09.15-16.00 | Alte Gewerbeschule, Studio 357 |
| Thursday 01.06.2023 | 09.15-16.00 | Alte Gewerbeschule, Studio 357 |
| Modules |
Module: Urbanism across Geographies (Master's degree program: Critical Urbanisms) |
| Assessment format | continuous assessment |
| Assessment details | Pass/Fail |
| Assessment registration/deregistration | Reg.: course registration; dereg.: not required |
| Repeat examination | no repeat examination |
| Scale | Pass / Fail |
| Repeated registration | as often as necessary |
| Responsible faculty | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, studadmin-philhist@unibas.ch |
| Offered by | Fachbereich Urban Studies |