The essays in this volume are the product of a new ‘research practicum‘ course in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the Graduate Institute in Geneva. They build on the debates on ‘Urban Morphology and violence’ to reflect on the associations between cities – their political orders and disorders – and outcomes ranging from occupation and resistance to marginalisation and containment. These texts foreshadow the possibility of centring – and challenging – the urban in our understanding of contemporary conflict, violence and peace. They are a first step in opening up a research agenda for a more textured analysis of spatial, geographical and temporal dynamics within the city in relation to violence, and, therefore, the mobilisation of spatial, temporal and visual modes of analysis. The promise is to make visible the varied roles of urban morphologies – adding to the debate on cities in and as sites of conflict.
© Chappatte in NZZ am Sonntag, Zurich www.chappatte.com
We currently face a baffling paradox. While since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 a seemingly inexorable process of globalisation has been foreshadowing a peaceful and frontierless world, the number of walls across the world has been rising at a steady pace. Liberal and open societies buttressed by trade, international law and technological progress were supposed to implacably contribute to the erosion of frontiers and walls between nations. However, in a context of surging populist discourses, securitarian anxieties and identitarian politics as well as concomitant flows of migration alimented by climate change, conflict and poverty, nations have recently started to barricade themselves behind new walls.
-
I
Whither Cosmopolis: Yearning for Closure in Times of Uncertainty
Reading time: 5 min -
1
A Contagious Craze for Walls
Reading time: 2 min -
2
The “Great Wall” of America: Historical Opportunities
Reading time: 3 min -
3
Between Security and Apartheid: Cinematic Representations of the West Bank Wall
Reading time: 4 min -
4
Battle of Identities at the India-Bangladesh Border
Reading time: 5 min -
5
Turkey and the Middle-East: From Imperial Temptation to National Closure
Reading time: 4 min -
6
Combating Terrorism on the Somalian Border: The Improbable Kenyan Dream?
Reading time: 5 min -
7
Korea: Comfortable Wall, Uncomfortable Peace
Reading time: 4 min