EARCAG - Andy Merrifield on The Shadow Citizenry and Planetary Urbanisation
Channel: Hong Kong Critical Geography Group
Date: 2016-12-13

｜Dr. Andy Merrifield
Andy Merrifield is an urban theorist who received his PhD in geography from University of Oxford. Prior to being an independent scholar, he taught in universities in the United Kingdom and the United States for years. Drawing heavily on the work of Henri Lefebvre, Andy is an expert in urbanism and social theory and has published widely, including The New Urban Question (2014) and The Politics of the Encounter: Urban Theory and Protest under Planetary Urbanization (2013).

｜The Shadow Citizenry and Planetary Urbanisation
In 1989, Henri Lefebvre said that the right to the city is nothing more than a “revolutionary conception of citizenship.” This ideal of citizenship lies inside and beyond any passport rubber-stamped by an institution of a nation-state. It’s a citizenship involving a more spectral and clandestine passport, expressive of a citizenry yet to assert itself, yet to fly its flag. I will call this passport a SHADOW PASSPORT, the identity documents and travel papers of a SHADOW CITIZENRY. Shadow citizens are a minority that is increasingly a majority, a new majority: if anything, shadows citizens are the new norm, the new global default position. They’re the periphery in the core, the core of the periphery. So many people have been pushed off-limits that it’s extended the limit of limits, created an even larger social space for the concept of citizenship, for a new citizenship yet to be made sovereign. This lecture will put a fresh spin on Lefebvre’s right to the city thesis. It will explore the possibilities of democratic citizenship under planetary urbanisation.

The 8th Meeting of East Asian Regional Conference in Alternative Geography
RADICALISM IN THEORY AND PRACTICE
6th - 8th December 2016 in Hong Kong

http://geog.hkbu.edu.hk/earcag/
earcag@hkbu.edu.hk

｜ORGANISER
Department of Geography, Hong Kong Baptist University

｜SPONSORS
Research Committee, Hong Kong Baptist University
Globalisation and Social Justice across East Asia (LSK/14-15/P05)
Urban Research Plaza, Osaka City University
Human Geography: A NEW RADICAL JOURNAL

｜CO-SPONSOR
Hong Kong Critical Geography Group

http://www.hkcgg.net/