• Deadline: ? 20 th December 2024.
  – Select the section « Urban studies » on ECAS web page: https://guarant.eu/ecasconference2025/call-for-papers/index.php?coo=1
  – And select the panel « Urban Contestation and Belonging : activism inside and outside the (local) State »
• Contacts: BUIRE Chloe (LAM) (chloe.buire @ cnrs.fr)  et Sylvia CROESE (UCI/WITS)

Short description:

This panel questions how the centralization of urban politics is being contested and how inclusive forms of urban belonging are being claimed in African cities. Through ethnographic and transnational case-studies, we aim to contribute to a redefinition of activism both inside and outside the State.

Abstract:

Many African regimes can be described as highly centralized or even autocratic and have used their far reaching legal powers to maintain or regain political control over the continent’s growing cities. Although the Arab Spring of 2011 boosted a literature on popular politics and bottom-up resistance, the various ways in which city governments and their leaders have been contested remain largely overlooked. This panel invites contributions that examine how urban dwellers, but also local officials at various levels of city administrations, have sought to call for the democratization of urban government in order to secure more inclusive ways of urban belonging. Beyond the established focus on ‘street politics’, what other spaces are used to contest the centralization of urban politics? Contributions could focus on strategies such as recourses to judiciary powers, social media campaigns, citizen-led monitoring of city budget and expenditure, or local electoral observation. We also welcome analyses of the discourses and debates that are used and produced in the process and the (local, international or diasporic) actors involved in supporting such initiatives. Transnational case studies could help to identify how these forms of claim making have (or have not) found ways to connect across different city spaces within and beyond Africa. Last, but not least, we invite theoretical reflections on the distinction / articulation between social movements and bureaucratic or governmental activism within local municipalities. Taken together, these contributions will eventually question activism both inside and outside the (local) State.