Joint session of RC21 Regional and Urban Development and WG03 Visual Sociology [host committee]
at the ISA World Congress of Sociology to be held in Yokohama 13-19 July 2014
Session Organizers
Lidia K. C. MANZO, University of Trento, Italy, lidia.manzo@gmail.com
Jerome KRASE, City University of New York, USA, JKrase@brooklyn.cuny.edu
Session in English
This session visually focuses on the intersections of inequalities in urban worlds where the competition for living space has had perverse visual effects.
Sociologists have long described how as a consequence of different life chances, groups are distributed differently in space such as in segregation and gentrification. Inequality and social justice are made visible by spatial processes of change. Whether luxurious or humble, dwellings serve important symbolic and practical functions for residents of all social classes and cultural backgrounds. In this regard Ernest Burgess’s classical urban ecological paradigm of neighborhood invasion and succession has served almost a century (1925).
Contemporarily, for Sassen and many others it is contradictions of the globalization of capital that concentrate both the more and less disadvantaged in cities where even the marginalized make claims on “contested terrain” (2001). It is also ironic that the concentrations of mobile capital in global cities have simultaneously enhanced “the potential mobility of some, while detracting from the mobility potential of others” (Sheller 2011). In a way we can say the rich get not only richer but also more mobile as the poor get poorer and relatively less so.
This session seeks submissions that critically examine, through the use of innovative visual approaches, urban vernacular panoramas that range from homelessness to gentrification. Immediate contrasts, such as the displaced or the homeless in gentrified or upscale areas, the “slumming” or “poverty tourism” phenomena, and comparative analyses are especially welcome to critically dramatize issues of Social Justice and the City (Harvey 2010).
Presenters will be asked to send a draft of their full papers (of 6000 words, including references) to session organizers by 12 June 2014 (one month prior to the conference).
If you have questions about any specific session, please feel free to contact the Session Organizer for more information.
On-line abstracts submission
June 3, 2013 – September 30, 2013 24:00 GMT.
A direct submission link will be provided in due course.
ISA Yokohama 2014
What scholars think of as gentrification is often associated with more expensive and aesthetically elegant cafes, restaurants, and boutiques that appeal to the high-class consumers’ tastes. Yet, it also means the displacement of working class residents and their stores. There happened to a bakery in the south part of Park Slope, a place where coffee cost less than a dollar, but the rent jumped up from four thousand dollars a month to a whopping five thousand dollars a month. So, what might be the real face of this transition? Perhaps, the face of Signora Enrica, one of two old Sicilian sisters who used to own an old-fashion Italian Bakery.
Lidia K.C. Manzo 