04.10.2018

Internationale Konferenz "Diversity, Threat, and Morality in Urban Spaces"

Vom 10. bis 12. Oktober veranstaltet das Teilprojekt E06 in Tübingen eine internationale Konferenz mit Forscherinnen und Forschern aus 11 Nationen

Das Teilprojekt E06 "Bedrohung und Diversität im urbanen Kontext. Ein länderübergreifender Vergleich von ethnisch heterogenen und ungleichen Stadtteilen" (bearbeitet von Damian Martinez und Moritz Fischer, Leitung: Boris Nieswand) veranstaltet von Mittwoch, 10. bis Freitag, 12. Oktober eine internationale Konferenz zum Thema "Diversity, Threat, and Morality in Urban Spaces". Weitere Informationen erhalten Sie im Konferenz-Flyer.

Konferenz-Abstract

The recent turn to urban ethnography in migration and diversity studies has provided new insights into questions of conviviality and boundary-making processes in diversified urban settings. However, less emphasis has been put on the effects of morality and threat dynamics as facilitators of local divide or cohesion. With the aim of filling this gap, this conference examines the interconnections between discourses of threat, power and morality in contexts where diversity meets inequality.

Diversity is not conceived as ethnic heterogeneity but as configuration of multiple social differences. Threat is understood as a social and emotional dynamic affecting broader social spheres and changing how individuals or groups move in urban spaces, which aspects of urban conviviality they focus on, and how they create ethnic, social, or moral boundaries.

Threat often operates by means of moralization, understood as an emotionalizing idiom referring to the inherent vulnerability of human co- existence. Threat discourses build on social imaginaries such as ideas of ‘the good life’, community, public order, security, or prosperity. Seeing these normative and imaginary aspects of conviviality endangered may evoke emotions of fear, contempt, or anger. When (moral) threat dynamics intensify, it becomes more difficult for social actors to remain in a neutral position, to keep up crosscutting ties, to focus on positive or neutral aspects of urban conviviality and to pretend to be sympathetic for those they consider as ‘others’. Moral problematization can reinforce, but also contest boundaries based on other categories like class, ethnicity, gender, life-style, sexual orientation, residency, or political opinion.

Although some moral views are shared across groups, places and times, moralities are at the same time fragmented and contested. It is of special empirical interest to understand how heterogeneous moralities play out within and/or across diverse settings. Often, established and powerful groups control the ideas of what being a ‘good member’ of a local community means. In contrast, newcomers tend to be constructed as (moral) outsiders. However, the hegemony of established groups can be challenged and alternative ideas of a ‘good life’ and ‘good social relationships’ can be introduced. But who is and who isn’t in the position to challenge established moralities remains an empirical question.

Programm

Wednesday, 10/10/2018

18.15 KEYNOTE IDiversity, Threat and

Morality in Urban Spaces

Boris Nieswand (Tübingen)20.00 Conference Dinner

Thursday, 10/11/2018

9.00 From Squatter to Informal Settler: Moral Problematization in the Crisis of a Shantytown Demolition in Manila

Tomonori Ishioka (Sapporo)

9.35 Different Spaces, Unsafe Spaces: Diversity, Order and Threat in the “Musholman Paras” of

Kolkata

Anasua Chatterjee (Delhi)

10.10 Proximate Encounters: Fear and Public Policy in Rio de Janeiro’s Favelas

Katharina Blank (New York) 10.45 Coffee Break

11.15 Community and Conviviality: Moral Imaginaries of Local Cohabitation in a

Diverse and Unequal Neighborhood

Moritz Fischer (Tübingen)

11.50 Urban Divisions: Performing Activism, Contesting Belonging and Problematizing

Moral Authority.

Damián Omar Martínez (Tübingen) 12.25 Lunch

14.00 Weaving the Net of Morality: Towards a Post Durkheimian Account of Urban Threat Dynamics

Arne Dressler (Koblenz)

14.35 Single Female Tenants in South Delhi: Gender, Class, and Morality in a Globalizing City

Lucie Bernroider (Heidelberg) 15.10 Coffee Break

15.30 Disappointed Expectations and Broken Promises: Morality and Threat in Local Residents’ and Urban Planners’ Responses to the Installation of an Asylum Seekers Reception Center

Maria Schiller (Wien)

16.05 “Good” Koreans and “Bad” Mexicans: Undocumented Immigrant Morality and Threat in Activist Los Angeles
Elisabeth Clark Rubio (Irvine)

16.40 Coffee Break 17.00 KEYNOTE II

Theorizing collective identity in an era of social divisionShana Cohen (Cambridge)

18.00 General Discussion 18.45 Dinner
Friday, 10/12/2018

9.00 Moral Boundaries in an Opaque Class Structure: Self-Understandings of Young Technical Workers and Sociocultural Professionals
Linus Westheuser (Firenze)

9.35 Moral Norms, Shared Spaces and Mediators: Solving Conflicts in a National Front Municipality
Noemi Casati (Paris)

10.45 Coffee Break
11.15 Who We Are and What We Do: A Typology of

Gentrifiers' Agency

Merav Kaddar (Jerusalem)

11.50 How to Park a Car Properly? Normativity and Power of Social Practices in Polish Neighborhoods
Karol Kurnicki (Warwick)

12.25 Moral Geographies and Conviviality in CataloniaMartin Lundsteen (Barcelona)

13.00 Final Discussion 13.30 End of Conference