Ways of seeing: Bauman on strangerhood & the aesthetics of urban research

RC21 Leeds : September 11-13, 2017

Rethinking Urban Global Justice: An international academic conference for critical urban studies

Image: Rodanthi Tzanelli 2014 

Open Session 11:15 – 12:45 / Exhibition Hall:

Liquid Cities? Exploring Zygmunt Bauman’s Contribution to Urban Studies.

Distinguished social theorist and longtime Professor of Sociology at University of Leeds, Zygmunt Bauman passed away aged 91 earlier this year.

The founding director of University of Leeds Bauman Institute, Mark Davis leads a discussion with colleagues (Adrian Favell, Thomas Campbell, Dariusz Brzeziński and Rodanthi Tzanelli) from the School of Sociology and Social Policy about Bauman’s legacy to the field.

Link to presentation by Rodanthi Tzanelli

Ways of seeing: Bauman on strangerhood & the aesthetics of urban research

13 September 2017

Abstract

Bauman’s legacy in urban studies has a distinctive political flair that connects to his critique of the ways urban strangers (tourists, migrants, vagabonds and pilgrims) become socially positioned, ‘interpellated’ or represented by various constituencies and groups (including researchers).

I argue that his reference to ways of seeing as political tools does not compromise his analysis of liquid urbanism as an aesthetic project, but works politics and aesthetics into a distinctive proposition on the ‘right to the city’ for all. This proposition forms (in the tradition of Simmel’s sociology), a moral basis for which cognitive and affective ambivalences function as epistemological tools.