Theorizing the Politicizing City

This introductory symposium article develops a framework for an urban political reading and a theorization of urban uprisings. We argue that there is a need to foreground the notion of the urban political as central to the theoretical and practical demands of urban research today. First, we revisit critical urban theory in light of recent urban insurrections and point out a lack of sustained theoretical engagement with the political. Second, based on this critique, we argue for what we call a ‘re‐centring of the urban political' to rethink urban theory in ways that consider the city as a site of political encounter, interruption and experimentation, even when, or perhaps especially when, these ways fall outside institutional forms or lack the organizational form or legitimacy of social movements. Thus, we attempt to place politics at the heart of radical urban political theory and practice today in order to make sense of urban subjects, events and claims that elude established government practices and institutionalized structures.     

Insurgent Building: Emerging Spatial Politics in the Bedouin–State Conflict in Israel

In the conflict between Bedouin representatives and government authorities in the southern Israeli Negev, the term ‘insurgent building’ refers to the construction of buildings erected in the full expectation that they will be demolished by the Israeli police shortly thereafter. This article analyses how insurgent building is employed as a spatial practice by emerging political actors to claim contested Bedouin landownership. Importantly, insurgent building relies on the ability of media and advocacy organizations to mobilize behind the issue. Most of the relevant scholarship takes the interpretative categories advanced by these actors at face value. Following anthropological debates regarding objectification and categorization, I examine the context of a specific case of insurgent building. Emerging political actors who employ insurgent building often rely on predefined ethnic categories and clear‐cut people–state polarities. This case demonstrates the need for a more differentiated understanding of multilayered local dynamics than the one offered by mainstream linear interpretations. At a more abstract level, political actors contribute to the reproduction of the very categories against which they mobilize.     

Building Innovation Excellence of World Class: The Cluster as an Instrument of Spatial Governance in the European Union

European spatial governance is becoming an intriguing mix of ideas from the economic, political and cultural spheres. This article asserts that, in the EU's spatial planning, the cluster is increasingly part of a hybrid spatial politics, here named the ‘cluster gaze’, based on the interplay of innovation‐oriented political rationality and spatial governance. To study this process, the article provides an empirical investigation into selected EU documentation. The investigation is based on two perspectives. First, the cluster is analysed as a mediating instrument to stimulate and rescale transnational market developments in the EU. Second, the cluster is studied as an instrument of spatial management — one that builds on a business managerial ethos and endorses a specific hierarchical spatial imaginary and a cluster evidence base to assess the productivity and efficiency of European clusters. Both of these perspectives pave the way for a European ‘politics of cluster excellence’ that is about the constant sharpening of cluster practices, continuous evaluation and ranking, and the enhancement of cluster performance to rise from the ‘European league’ towards the ‘world class’.     

Can feminist thought make economics more objective?

Feminist research is often perceived to be less objective than conventional research on the grounds that the latter is value-neutral and the former is not. This essay shows that a major problem with the familiar standards for maximizing objectivity that permit such a conclusion is that they are too weak. They have no resources for detecting widespread cultural assumptions, values and interests, such as the androcentric ones to which feminist work draws attention. Good method works by identifying cultural values that differ between researchers or research communities. However, since androcentric values are often culture-wide, something more rigorous than only conventional good methods evidently are needed for researchers to be able to identify them.Thus feminist research does not introduce political assumptions, values and interests into research fields that are otherwise value-neutral; it identifies the ones that are already there. Rejecting the debilitating relativist stance usually seen as the only alternative to conventional standards for maximizing objectivity, feminist thought increases the objectivity of research. This essay reviews recent arguments in both conventional and feminist philosophy and history that support this analysis, and shows how it leads to the construction of stronger standards of objectivity than the conventional only “weak objectivity” that is dependent upon the neutrality ideal. Paradoxical though it may appear, “strong objectivity” requires the kind of conscientious socially situated production of knowledge characteristic of feminist work in economics.     

传统思想政治工作对构建和谐社会的问题分析

当前,我国正处于经济发展的关键期,随着时代的变迁、改革的深化、经济体制的转变、和谐社会目标的提出,经济社会生活中的一些深层次矛盾和长期积累的问题日益显现出来,面对新形势、新任务,只有不断加强和改进传统思想政治工作,从根本上认识到存在的认识误区和薄弱环节,才能把构建社会主义和谐社会的伟大事业推向前进。     

提升高职院校思想政治理论课教育实效性研究

本文通过分析当前高职院校思想政治理论课教育存在的问题,提出提升高职院校思想政治理论课教育的建议,以提高其课教育效果,做好高职院校这方面课教育工作。     

挖掘地方历史文化资源，增进高职思政课教学有效性——以广州为例

地方历史文化资源对高职思想政治理论课建设具有重要价值。广州拥有丰富的近现代史资源、爱国名人文化、平实厚重、敢为人先的岭南传统文化等。对此加以开发，使之融入课堂、建设实践教学基地，开展有针对性的主题活动，是增进高职思政课教学有效性的有益途径。     

思想政治工作在纠纷调解中的策略探析

发挥好思想政治工作在纠纷调解中的作用,要着力提高调解工作队伍的思想政治素质,着眼于发挥好思想政治工作的作用,努力注意贯彻好长期抓、细致抓、反复帮的原则,遵循好循序渐进规律。     

Be Berlin! Governing the City through Freedom

In this article, I examine how contemporary Berlin is governed, with a particular focus on the production of urban space. My points of reference are the term ‘government’ (as employed by Foucault) and the field of governmentality studies (where it is applied empirically). Based on a critical discourse and dispositive analysis of the city's current urban development policy, I propose that urban governance in Berlin may be analysed through the lens of three central dispositives: the dispositive of governing through citizenship; the dispositive of the creative city; and the dispositive of the social city. I discuss the characteristics of these dispositives of urban governance, drawing on a number of examples taken from the discipline of urban space production in order to look specifically at the aims and objectives of governance, its subjects and the ways it manifests itself. In conclusion, I suggest that the new forms of governance based on empowerment and cooperation have by no means replaced disciplinary technologies of governance, but are rather embedded within them.