ANTHROPOLOGY 391. Spring 2010
CITIES AND CITIZENSHIP
Wednesday 2-5 pm.
Kamran Asdar Ali
EPS 1-116
471-7531
asdar@mail.utexas.edu
Office hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays 1-2 pm or by appointment.
Requirements: I would expect you to come to class regularly and participate equally in
the discussion. There would be presentations of the material and we will decide the
modalities in class. Please come on time and attend all classes.
1. Each student will hand in a paragraph on the readings for every session. These
response papers will not be returned.
2. A research paper on a topic of your choice due at the end of the semester. The paper
should reflect your engagement with the texts and discussions in the class. We can
discuss the exact topics during the course of the semester.
The following texts have been ordered at the COOP.
Javier Auyero: Poor People’s Politics. Duke University Press, 2000.
Ananya Roy: City Requiem, Calcutta: Gender and the Politics of Poverty. University of
Minnesota Press, 2002.
Partha Chatterjee: The Politics of the Governed. Columbia University Press, 2004
Giorgio Agamben: State of Exception. University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Michael Taussig: Law in a Lawless Land. University of Chicago Press, 2005.
There is also a course-pack at Speedway Copies (Dobie Mall), this has most of the
readings.
Week 1: Introduction and Overview.
January 20
Week 2: Cities and Citizenship
January 27
James Holston and Arjun Appadurai, “Cities and Citizenship” (Public Culture 8(2),
1996), 187-204.
Saskia Sassen, “Whose City is it? Globalization and the Formation of New Claims”
(Public Culture 8(2), 1996), 205-223.
Jean and John Comaroff. Occult Economies and the Violence of Abstraction (AE 26(2),
1999), 279-303.
AbdouMaliq Simone, For the City Yet to Come. Chapters, Introduction, 2, 3, 6 and 7.
Week 3: The Historical Construction of Space and Spatiality
February 3
Frederick Jameson. Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, 1-54
Frederick Jameson. Future City. New Left Review 21 May-June 2003.
David Harvey. The Urban Experience, chapter 9.
Kamran Asdar Ali and Martina Rieker: Urban Margins. Social Text, 2008.
Susan Buck-Morris, The Dialectics of Seeing, Chapter 8.
Week 4: The Postmodernist City
February 10
Nigel Thrift. But Malice Afterthought: Cities and the Natural History of Hatred
Nigel Thrift. Intensities of Feeling: Toward a Spatial Politics of Affect
Achille Mbembe and Janet Roitman. Figures of the Subject in Times of Crisis. In the
Geographies of Identities.
Arjun Appadurai. “Deep Democracy: Urban Governmentality and the Horizon of Politic”
(Public Culture 14(1), 2002), 21-47.
Week 5:
February 10
Film: The Blade Runner.
David Harvey. The Condition of Postmodernity, chapter 18.
Simon Cole. “Do Androids Pulverize Tiger Bones to Use as Aphrodisiacs”, (Social Text
42, Spring 1995), 173-193.
Week 6: The City Modern or Postmodern
February 17
D. Massey. “Flexible Sexism”. ((Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 9,
1991). 31-57.
Mike Davis. Planet of Slums. New Left Review 26 March-April 2004.
David Scott. Refashioning Futures. Chapter 8.
Mathew Gandi. Learning from Lagos New Left Review 33 May-June, 2005
Rem Koolhas. Fragments of a Lecture on Lagos. In Under Siege Four African Cities
Week 7: Citizenship Debates
February 24
Wendy Brown. States of Injury. Chapters 5.
Karl Marx. On the Jewish Question
Carole Pateman. The Disorder of Women, 71-89, 118-140, 179-209.
Uday Mehta. The Anxiety of Freedom, Chapters 3-4.
Week 8: Citizenship Debates Continued
March 3
Chantal Mouffe. The Return of the Political, Chapters 2-4 and 9.
Charles Taylor. “Modern Social Imaginaries” (Public Culture 14(1), 2002) 91-124.
Partha Chaterjee. “Community in the East” (Economic and Political Weekly, Feb. 7,
1998) 277-282.
Uday Mehta. Liberalism and Empire. Chapters 2-3.
John and Jean Comaroff. Criminal Justice. Cultural Justice (American Ethnologist 31(2),
2004), 188-204.
Week 9: The State of Exception.
March 10
Giorgio Agamben. State of Exception.
Georgio Agamben. Mean Without End.
Foucault, Michel. Society Must be Defended. 238-263.
Achille Mbembe. Necropolitics (Public Culture 15(1), 2003) 11-40
SPRING BREAK
Week 10: Remapping the City and Rethinking Citizens.
March 24
Humphrey Caroline. Rethinking Infrastructure. Siberian Cities and the Great Freeze of
January 2001.
Thomas Blom Hansen. Race, Security and Urban Anxieties in the Post-Apartheid City.
Gendering Urban Space in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa.
AbdouMaliq Simone. Remaking Urban Socialities. Gendering Urban Space in the Middle
East, South Asia and Africa.
Jean and John Comaroff. Criminal Obsessions After Foucault.
Week 11:
March 30
Partha Chatterjee. The Politics of the Governed.
Week 12:
April 7
Javier Auyero: Poor People’s Politics.
Week 13:
April 14
Ananya Roy. City Requiem. Calcutta.
Week 14:
April 21.
Michael Taussig: Law in a Lawless Land
Week 15: Review
April 29
Week 16.
May 5
Last Day of Class. Paper due on May 5th before 5 pm in my office.
Papers Due on May 4th before 5 pm.