Critical Geographies of Policy reading group
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Other questions: emccann [at] sfu [dot] ca
Next Meeting: Friday February 26 (1st anniversary!), SFU Harbour Centre, Rm. 1500, 3-5pm.
Readings:
Wells, Katie. "Policyfailing: The Case of Public Property Disposal in Washington, DC." ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 13.3 (2014): 473-494.
Akers, Joshua M. "Making markets: Think tank legislation and private property in Detroit." Urban Geography 34.8 (2013): 1070-1095.
Meeting monthly since February 2015, this group welcomes anyone with an intellectual interest in policy and policy-making and who is willing to be pretty broad in conceiving of those terms.
Our general approach to policy resonates with that of Merje Kuus in her book Geopolitics and Expertise (2014, 39): “… policy [can be approached] as the fundamental organizing and productive principle of modern societies. … [P]ublic policies … [are] technologies of power that do not simply serve public interests but also produce these very interests. Policies do not merely regulate existing relationships; they create new relationships, objects of analysis, and frameworks of meaning.” She continues, “This [understanding] departs from the broadly positivist approach according to which there are objective entities called policies that are produced for rational consideration of facts to solve knowable problems. … Missing from [the positivist approach] is an empirical investigation of the individuals who actually make policy … an open-ended and ambiguous practice that pivots on flexibly interpretable objectives and mutates as it travels.”
The reading group, like Kuus, is interested in policy from a generally critical perspective – one that balances critique of how the world is and how we understand it with a commitment to generating ideas that better explain it and maybe even aid in changing it for the better.
Most of us are geographers and most of the readings will have a geographical element to them. But this is an interdisciplinary group and geography is an interdisciplinary discipline. So it’s important for us to look broadly for readings that help us understand policy. We don’t limit ourselves to work from the discipline of geography. But we limit ourselves to literatures that build on critical social theory perspectives of one form or another.
Logistics
Anyone interested is welcome, as long as you read the readings and come prepared to contribute, of course.
The group will meet on the last Friday of the month, 3pm-5pm, at SFU Harbour Centre.
We will read two article length items (or their equivalent) for each meeting.
The readings will be nominated by a member of the group who will circulate the references via the email list, ideally at least 3 weeks before the meeting in which they will be discussed.
Generally, they’ll be new works – ones published in the last two years.
At that meeting, the nominator will provide a brief introduction to get the conversation started.
The group includes undergraduates, graduate students, and post-grads. Most are Geography graduate students from SFU and UBC but those from other disciplines are welcome.
The reading group will work well if we all approach it with a willingness to engage in open and respectful discussion. We subscribe to the following principles: We should be welcoming to all. Each of us has the opportunity to refine our own understanding of the material, help others think issues through, and to practice valuable analytic and communication skills. We, listen more than you talk, we don’t hog the floor when you are speaking, and we don’t interrupt or disparage others.
Past Readings (reverse chronology)
January 2016
Shaw, K. (2015). The intelligent woman's guide to the urban question. City, 19(6), 781-800.
Roy, A. (2015 (Online First)). Who's Afraid of Postcolonial Theory?. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research.DOI: 10.1111/1468-2427.12274
December 2015
No meeting.
November 2015
Robinson, J. (2013). "Arriving at" urban policies / the urban: Traces of elsewhere in making city futures. In Soderstrom, O. et al, eds. Critical Mobilities. New York: Routledge. Ch. 1.
Robinson, J. (2015). Thinking cities through elsewhere Comparative tactics for a more global urban studies. Progress in Human Geography. Available in the journal's OnlineFirst section.
October 2015
Tom Baker & Cristina Temenos eds. 2015. Urban policy mobilities: Moving forward. Special debates & Developments section of the International Journal of Urban & Regional Research:
Tom Baker and Cristina Temenos. Urban Policy Mobilities Research: Introduction to a Debate.
Eugene McCann and Kevin Ward. Thinking Through Dualisms in Urban Policy Mobilities.
Jennifer Robinson. ‘Arriving At’ Urban Policies: The Topological Spaces of Urban Policy Mobility.
Ian R. Cook. Policy Mobilities and Interdisciplinary Engagement.
Merje Kuus. For Slow Research.
Cristina Temenos and Tom Baker. Enriching Urban Policy Mobilities Research.
September 2015
Newman, J. (2014). Governing the present: activism, neoliberalism, and the problem of power and consent. Critical Policy Studies, 8(2), 133-147.
Routledge, P., & Derickson, K. D. (2015). Situated solidarities and the practice of scholar-activism. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 33(3), 391-407.
August 2015
Jamie Peck & Nik Theodore (2015) Fast Policy. University of Minnesota Press. Selections: Introduction; Part 1; Ch 5; Ch 8; Conclusion.
July 2015 No meeting.
June 2015
Sengers, F., & Raven, R. (2015). Toward a spatial perspective on niche development: The case of Bus Rapid Transit. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2210422414000926
Affolderbach, J., & Schulz, C. (2015). Mobile transitions: Exploring synergies for urban sustainability research. Urban Studies. DOI: 10.1177/0042098015583784
May 2015
Roy, P. 2015. Collaborative planning - A neoliberal strategy? A study of the Atlanta BeltLine. Cities, 43, 59-68.
Rosol, M. 2014. On resistance in the post-political city: conduct and counter-conduct in Vancouver. Space and Polity, 18, 70-84.
Apr 2015 No meeting -- AAG.
Mar 2015
Kitchin, R., Lauriault, T. P., & McArdle, G. (2015). Knowing and governing cities through urban indicators, city benchmarking and real-time dashboards. Regional Studies, Regional Science, 2(1), 6–28.
Prince, R. (2014). Calculative cultural expertise? Consultants and politics in the UK cultural sector. Sociology, 48(4), 747–762.
Feb 2015
Faulconbridge, J. (2015). Mobilising sustainable building assessment models: agents, strategies and local effects. Area. (Online First)
Wood, A. (2014). Learning through policy tourism: circulating bus rapid transit from South America to South Africa. Environment and Planning A, 46(11), 2654-2669.