Fragment and Fluid

This call for papers has an interesting focus that makes me think further in the method for my work as layers of overlapped maps that produce space in the way.


I am organizing a panel on "Fragment and Fluid Urbanities" at the
European Conference on African Studies to be held in Leipzig 4-7 June
2009. I would like to invite innovative papers that contribute to
theorizing urban spatialities in African cities beyond dominant accounts
of socio-spatial fragmentation. The full panel description is copied
below. I have also attached some general information on the conference
and on how to submit an abstract. Please review the panel description
and consider providing a paper or pass this call for papers to other
interested colleagues. Abstracts need to be uploaded to the conference
website by December 31, 2008.

For a list of the approved panels and further information please see:
http://www.uni-leipzig.de/~ecas2009/approvedpanels
(Panel 56)

For questions regarding the panel please contact me.

Yours sincerely,

Christine Hentschel



Fragmented and Fluid Urbanities

This panel seeks to foster a new understanding of urban spatialities in
African contexts. It contrasts common accounts of fragmentation,
polarisation, and 'new segregation', with more dynamic, fluid
understandings of contemporary urban space.
Dominant accounts of postcolonial or post-apartheid cities emphasize
their deep-rooted or newly created morphologies of social and spatial
fragmentation. According to these depictions of contemporary urban
realities, the city, as such, does not exist (anymore) and is divided
into bubbles of gentrification and forgotten slums, into islands of
safety and hotspots of fear and terror. Wealth and spatial disparities
correlate with governance disparities, triggering new forms of exclusion.
This panel encourages urban scholars from a variety of disciplines (e.g.
geography, sociology, political science, urban planning and
criminology), to challenge the concept of the fragmented city with more
dynamic, fluid theories of urban space, governance and everyday life,
using temporality, movement and informal productions of space.