The Urban Studies Research Cluster presents:
Ananya Roy – “Slumdog Cities: The Politics of Subaltern Urbanism”
The study of megacities in the global South has come to be dominated by two contrasting paradigms: an apocalyptic vision of a “planet of slums” and a populist vision of entrepreneurial “shadow cities.” This talk will critically examine such paradigms, calling into question the ways in which “subaltern urbanism” is currently framed. Drawing on postcolonial theory, it will present an alternative framework for the understanding of urbanism in the global South and make the case for new geographies of theory.
Bio: Ananya Roy is a leading scholar in comparative urban studies and international development. She is Professor of City and Regional Planning at U.C. Berkeley, and also serves as Education Director of the Blum Center for Developing Economies and as co-Director of the Global Metropolitan Studies Center at Berkeley. Roy is author of numerous books, including: City Requiem, Calcutta: Gender and the Politics of Poverty (2003), co-editor of Urban Informality: Transnational Perspectives from the Middle East, South Asia, and Latin America (2004), and co-editor (with Aihwa Ong) of the forthcoming Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global.
Seminar co-sponsored by the Departments of Sociology, Feminist Studies, and Colleges 9 & 10.