Urban Culture in Global Perspective

Catalog description

Today, a majority of the world's population live in urban areas. All the largest cities in the world are located in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The 21st century is the urban century, and urban life is predominantly located in the Global South. This course will explore new urban cultures, identities, spatial practices and forms of urban power, imagination and fantasy across the world, mainly in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The readings are drawn from anthropology, geography, history and other disciplines. The course will critically examine to what extent the classical urban sociology and anthropology of Western industrial cities and urban cultures can help us understand the many new forms of urban sociality, imagination and political order one finds in the megapolises such as Sao Paolo, Cairo, Mumbai, Jakarta or Johannesburg, and in many new provincial cities across the world. Students will be encouraged to draw comparisons across continents and cultures but also look at urban cultures in their historical context and particularity. The overall thrust of the course will be to make students aware of cities and urban forms as diverse, multi-layered and driven by dynamics that cannot be easily derived from the trajectories of urban development in North America and Europe.