[Reader-list] [Announcements] CFP: Dissent and Cultural Resistance in Asian Cities

[Melissa Butcher]

Dissent and Cultural Resistance in Asian Cities


Melissa Butcher & Selvaraj Velayutham (editors)

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

Since Asia’s economic boom in the 1990s, major cities in the region  
have undergone unprecedented transformation. From Beijing to Hanoi,  
Kuala Lumpur to Jakarta and Singapore to Chennai, Asian cities are  
bustling with movement and activity, vying for global city status.  
The growth of these cities, their role and interconnectedness with  
the rest of the world and distinctive characteristics, have been well  
documented from an historical and empirical standpoint by many  
theorists in the field. These works inform us of processes of urban  
change arising as a consequence of converging global capital,  
technology and labour flows, and their impact on the built  
environment. However, the ways in which people living in Asian cities  
respond to this changing milieu in their daily lives has received  
little scholarly attention. What counter narratives can be told about  
these emerging world cities? That is, what kinds of strategies or  
practices have people developed to demonstrate their dissent or to  
resist the transformative dynamics of the city.

This book seeks to critically engage with the urban experiences of  
dissent and emergent resistance against the disjunctive global and  
local flows that converge and intersect in Asia’s fastest growing  
cities. Rather than constructing occupants of the city as victims of  
globalisation or urbanisation, the book will present ways in which  
people are using everyday strategies that are embedded in cultural  
practice, to challenge dominant socio-economic and political forces  
impacting on these urban spaces. Taking the city as a site of  
contestation and a stage where social conflicts are played out,  
essays will highlight the connections between power and resistance;  
how the spatiality and the built environment of the city generates  
conflict; how protagonists use the cityscape to stage their everyday  
and public dissent; and the nature and impact of resistance.

Contributing essays are invited that explore the conditions,  
strategies, and outcomes of such dissent and forms of cultural  
resistance, grounded in an event or project in a particular Asian  
city. Essays will deal with, but are not limited to, the following  
themes:

Counter narratives and re-imagining the city;
Urban planning, neighbourhoods and the creation of community;
Urban development, ghetto-isation and gentrification;
Power and politics in the urban arena;
Grassroots activism and social movements;
Gender, class and the politics of identity;
Transgressive spaces and places.

Research papers employing qualitative methods (ethnography, in-depth  
interviews, focus groups, narrative analysis) are preferred.

Please send a proposed title and a 500-word abstract by 31 January  
2007 to:

Melissa Butcher: melissa.butcher at mq.edu.au
Selvaraj Velayutham: selvaraj.velayutham at scmp.mq.edu.au

Accepted contributions (7,000 words) will need to be completed by  
August 2007.

We are in discussion with a number of potential publishers in the  
field. Please contact the editors for more information.
  
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