The power of pragmatism

This book aims to understand the ‘painful truths’ of gendered violence in the city and how women challenge it through resistance and creative practices. Drawing on an extensive body of collaborative research with women in the favelas of Maré in Rio de Janeiro and among Brazilian migrants in London, it conceives gendered urban violence as multidimensional, multiscalar and deeply embedded within structural and intersectional power relations. The book develops a ‘translocational gendered urban violence framework’ that foregrounds transnational connections across symbolic and literal borders. The framework emphasises the need to move beyond individual interpretations of gendered violence in cities towards one that acknowledges structural, symbolic and infrastructural violence. It also incorporates the need for an embodied approach that can be captured through engagement with the arts and arts-based methods as well as resistance practices. The book outlines a ‘translocational feminist tracing methodological framework’ that captures transnational dialogue and knowledge production, drawing on a feminist epistemological approach based on collaboration, co-design and engagement beyond the academy. In centring the painful truths of gendered urban violence as revealed by women, the book contributes to a range of debates that include acknowledging such violence as direct and indirect ranging from the body to the global, as well as the need to recognise urban violence as deeply gendered in intersectional ways. Finally, it suggests that creative engagements and arts-based approaches are crucial for understanding and resisting gendered urban violence and in generating empathetic transformation.

The machinic city investigates the role of performance art to help us reflect on contemporary urban living, as human and machine agency become increasingly intermingled and digital media is overlaid onto the urban fabric. This is illustrated by several case studies on performance art interventions from artists such as Blast Theory, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Rimini Protokoll, which draw from a rich history of avant-garde art movements to create spaces for deliberation and reflection on urban life and to speculate on its future. As cities are increasingly controlled by autonomous processes mediated by technical machines, the performative potential of the aesthetic machine is analysed, as it assembles with media, Capitalist, human and urban machines. The aesthetic machine of performance art in urban space is analysed through its different – design, city and technology actants. This unveils the unpredictable nature and emerging potential of performance art as it unfolds in the machinic city, which consists of assemblages of efficient and not-so-efficient machines. The machinic city pays particular attention to participation, describing how digitally mediated performance art interventions in urban space foreground different modes of subjectivity emerging from human and machine hybrids. This highlights the importance of dissensus as a constitutive factor of urban life and as a means of countering machinist determinism in present and future conceptualisations of city life.

Urban transformations and public health in the emergent city examines how urban health and wellbeing are shaped by migration, mobility, racism, sanitation and gender. Adopting a global focus, spanning Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America, the essays in this volume bring together a wide selection of voices that explore the interface between social, medical and natural sciences. This interdisciplinary approach, moving beyond traditional approaches to urban research, offers a unique perspective on today’s cities and the challenges they face. Edited by Professor Michael Keith and Dr Andreza Aruska de Souza Santos, this volume also features contributions from leading thinkers on cities in Brazil, China, South Africa and the United Kingdom. This geographic diversity is matched by the breadth of their different fields, from mental health and gendered violence to sanitation and food systems. Together, they present a complex yet connected vision of a ‘new biopolitics’ in today’s metropolis, one that requires an innovative approach to urban scholarship regardless of geography or discipline. This volume, featuring chapters from a number of renowned authors including the former deputy mayor of Rio de Janeiro Luiz Eduardo Soares, is an important resource for anyone seeking to better understand the dynamics of urban change. With its focus on the everyday realities of urban living, from health services to public transport, it contains valuable lessons for academics, policy makers and practitioners alike.