Cities and the political imagination

an article by Rivke Jaffe (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands) published in The Sociological Review Volume 66 Issue 6 (November 2018)

Abstract

How can we recognize the political in the city?

How might urban scholars engage with forms of urban politics outside of established sites of research such as those associated with representative democracy or collective mobilizations?

This article suggests that new perspectives on urban politics might be enabled through reinvigorated connections between the social sciences and humanities, and by combining long-term urban ethnography and cultural analysis. Reading forms of creative expression in relation to power struggles in and over urban space can direct our attention towards negotiations of authority and political belonging that are often overlooked within urban studies.

The article explores the possibilities of such an approach by focusing on the idea of the political imagination as socially and materially embedded in urban landscapes. Expressive culture generates both analytical and normative frames, guiding everyday understandings of how urban power works, where and in whose hands it is concentrated, and whether we see this as just or unjust.

Such frames can legitimize or delegitimize specific distributions of urban resources and risks, and can normalize or denaturalize specific structures of decision-making.

Through a discussion of popular music and visual culture, the article considers how everyday practices both feed into, and are informed by, imaginations of urban rule and political belonging.

Full text (PDF 14pp)

---