Kenny Cupers
Biographic Data
| ID | 227213 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kenny Cupers |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kenny |
| FAMILY NAME | Cupers |
| SIGNATURE | CUPERS K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Basel |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0042-1959 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 32 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Making mainland
Anticipation by redress
Critical scholarship has interpreted ongoing mega-projects of infrastructural expansion in Africa through the lens of colonialism. Deepening this scholarship, the article questions analytical models of global coloniality or colonial continuity. To avoid reductive accounts of the ways individuals and collectives engage mega-infrastructure projects, the article proposes an alternative model of historically informed analysis, more attentive to the c…
How urban Africa challenges the coloniality of infrastructure
Recent scholarship has foregrounded the role of global infrastructure in the endurance and reproduction of colonial relations of power at the heart of capitalism. This issue advances this perspective by interrogating how urban Africa challenges the coloniality of infrastructure. It argues against the deductive tendency of coloniality as a global framework. In doing so, it articulates three standpoints. First, that grounding analyses of infrastruc…
How can Africa’s urban majority reframe sustainability agendas
Reporting from ongoing research and planning with low-income residents in Nairobi, Lagos and Johannesburg, this field note discusses infrastructure-led sustainability transitions that are in progress, probable and possible from the perspective of Africa’s politically marginalized urban majority. Its authors probe to what extent efforts to advance more sustainable urban futures in African cities can foster climate justice – not only in terms of re…
Elsewheres of the Unbuilt
Pipelines and refineries, hydropower dams, and solar and wind power projects feeding into emerging transnational energy networks make up the thrust of a new push for infrastructural expansion in the global South. This article argues that understanding the effects of this expansion requires attending to the multiple elsewheres of transnational energy projects in various states of realization. By this we mean accounting for the ways in which these …
Architectural Expertise and the Coloniality of Knowledge
The structure of this interview will be in three parts. We will start with an introduction to some of your main ideas, particularly as articulated in your book Decolonization, Development and Knowledge in Africa. Then we will focus on how these ideas affect our understanding of architecture, and finally we will explore their repercussions for the writing of architectural history. PART 1 Kenny CupersI had initially asked you to be part of the conf…
Human Territoriality and the Downfall of Public Housing
This article examines theories of human territoriality and their historical role in the demise of public housing in Western Europe and North America between the 1960s and the 1980s. The neglect and privatization of the public housing stock and the withdrawal of the state in direct provision in this period are often subsumed under the category of neoliberalism. This article unpacks this narrative by focusing on the intersection between architectur…
Mapping and Making Community in the Postwar European City
This article examines how midcentury European sociologists, planners, and architects mapped the existing city to build future communities. The neighborhood unit concept spread globally in the first half of the twentieth century. In Europe, its deployment was supported not just by modernist planning principles but by sociological abstractions of community life. Current scholarship emphasizes how these modernist principles were contested by sociolo…
The Social Project
The Social Project: Housing Postwar France demonstrates how several bodies of knowledge – architectural, sociological, technological, and bureaucratic – shaped postwar modernism and the making of contemporary urban France. In less than three decades after WWII, France evolved from a largely rural country with an insufficient and outdated housing stock to a highly modernized urban nation. The book traces how this evolution resulted from an unprece…
The expertise of participation
This article analyses the advent of participation in French planning as the historical touchstone of a larger shift in urban thinking. It investigates how the interactions between inhabitants, developers, state officials and social scientific experts in the production of large-scale modern housing areas and new towns helped bring about user participation as a category of action and discourse. The article argues that the transformation of inhabita…
Governing through nature
Focusing on youth camp development in Germany and the United States during the interwar period, this article argues not only that such camps played a crucial role in the ways in which national societies dealt with their youth, but also that their history forces us to rethink relations between place-making, nationhood, and modern governing. First, the article addresses the historiography of youth movements in relation to current debates about spat…
Towards a Nomadic Geography
This article investigates the concept of the public sphere as a specific way of reading the city. In the light of current ambiguities of the urban condition, it poses the question of whether the concept does still, in fact, generate a solid geography for understanding the urban landscape. It explores the history and concept of the liberal public sphere, uncovers its rigid regime of identity formation in space, and problematizes its performative d…
Governing through nature
Focusing on youth camp development in Germany and the United States during the interwar period, this article argues not only that such camps played a crucial role in the ways in which national societies dealt with their youth, but also that their history forces us to rethink relations between place-making, nationhood, and modern governing. First, the article addresses the historiography of youth movements in relation to current debates about spat…
Anticipation by redress
Critical scholarship has interpreted ongoing mega-projects of infrastructural expansion in Africa through the lens of colonialism. Deepening this scholarship, the article questions analytical models of global coloniality or colonial continuity. To avoid reductive accounts of the ways individuals and collectives engage mega-infrastructure projects, the article proposes an alternative model of historically informed analysis, more attentive to the c…
How urban Africa challenges the coloniality of infrastructure
Recent scholarship has foregrounded the role of global infrastructure in the endurance and reproduction of colonial relations of power at the heart of capitalism. This issue advances this perspective by interrogating how urban Africa challenges the coloniality of infrastructure. It argues against the deductive tendency of coloniality as a global framework. In doing so, it articulates three standpoints. First, that grounding analyses of infrastruc…
How can Africa’s urban majority reframe sustainability agendas
Reporting from ongoing research and planning with low-income residents in Nairobi, Lagos and Johannesburg, this field note discusses infrastructure-led sustainability transitions that are in progress, probable and possible from the perspective of Africa’s politically marginalized urban majority. Its authors probe to what extent efforts to advance more sustainable urban futures in African cities can foster climate justice – not only in terms of re…
Mapping and Making Community in the Postwar European City
This article examines how midcentury European sociologists, planners, and architects mapped the existing city to build future communities. The neighborhood unit concept spread globally in the first half of the twentieth century. In Europe, its deployment was supported not just by modernist planning principles but by sociological abstractions of community life. Current scholarship emphasizes how these modernist principles were contested by sociolo…
Elsewheres of the Unbuilt
Pipelines and refineries, hydropower dams, and solar and wind power projects feeding into emerging transnational energy networks make up the thrust of a new push for infrastructural expansion in the global South. This article argues that understanding the effects of this expansion requires attending to the multiple elsewheres of transnational energy projects in various states of realization. By this we mean accounting for the ways in which these …
Human Territoriality and the Downfall of Public Housing
This article examines theories of human territoriality and their historical role in the demise of public housing in Western Europe and North America between the 1960s and the 1980s. The neglect and privatization of the public housing stock and the withdrawal of the state in direct provision in this period are often subsumed under the category of neoliberalism. This article unpacks this narrative by focusing on the intersection between architectur…
Towards a Nomadic Geography
This article investigates the concept of the public sphere as a specific way of reading the city. In the light of current ambiguities of the urban condition, it poses the question of whether the concept does still, in fact, generate a solid geography for understanding the urban landscape. It explores the history and concept of the liberal public sphere, uncovers its rigid regime of identity formation in space, and problematizes its performative d…
Towards a Nomadic Geography
This article investigates the concept of the public sphere as a specific way of reading the city. In the light of current ambiguities of the urban condition, it poses the question of whether the concept does still, in fact, generate a solid geography for understanding the urban landscape. It explores the history and concept of the liberal public sphere, uncovers its rigid regime of identity formation in space, and problematizes its performative d…
Governing through nature
Focusing on youth camp development in Germany and the United States during the interwar period, this article argues not only that such camps played a crucial role in the ways in which national societies dealt with their youth, but also that their history forces us to rethink relations between place-making, nationhood, and modern governing. First, the article addresses the historiography of youth movements in relation to current debates about spat…
The expertise of participation
This article analyses the advent of participation in French planning as the historical touchstone of a larger shift in urban thinking. It investigates how the interactions between inhabitants, developers, state officials and social scientific experts in the production of large-scale modern housing areas and new towns helped bring about user participation as a category of action and discourse. The article argues that the transformation of inhabita…
The Social Project
The Social Project: Housing Postwar France demonstrates how several bodies of knowledge – architectural, sociological, technological, and bureaucratic – shaped postwar modernism and the making of contemporary urban France. In less than three decades after WWII, France evolved from a largely rural country with an insufficient and outdated housing stock to a highly modernized urban nation. The book traces how this evolution resulted from an unprece…
Mapping and Making Community in the Postwar European City
This article examines how midcentury European sociologists, planners, and architects mapped the existing city to build future communities. The neighborhood unit concept spread globally in the first half of the twentieth century. In Europe, its deployment was supported not just by modernist planning principles but by sociological abstractions of community life. Current scholarship emphasizes how these modernist principles were contested by sociolo…
Human Territoriality and the Downfall of Public Housing
This article examines theories of human territoriality and their historical role in the demise of public housing in Western Europe and North America between the 1960s and the 1980s. The neglect and privatization of the public housing stock and the withdrawal of the state in direct provision in this period are often subsumed under the category of neoliberalism. This article unpacks this narrative by focusing on the intersection between architectur…
Architectural Expertise and the Coloniality of Knowledge
The structure of this interview will be in three parts. We will start with an introduction to some of your main ideas, particularly as articulated in your book Decolonization, Development and Knowledge in Africa. Then we will focus on how these ideas affect our understanding of architecture, and finally we will explore their repercussions for the writing of architectural history. PART 1 Kenny CupersI had initially asked you to be part of the conf…
How can Africa’s urban majority reframe sustainability agendas
Reporting from ongoing research and planning with low-income residents in Nairobi, Lagos and Johannesburg, this field note discusses infrastructure-led sustainability transitions that are in progress, probable and possible from the perspective of Africa’s politically marginalized urban majority. Its authors probe to what extent efforts to advance more sustainable urban futures in African cities can foster climate justice – not only in terms of re…
Elsewheres of the Unbuilt
Pipelines and refineries, hydropower dams, and solar and wind power projects feeding into emerging transnational energy networks make up the thrust of a new push for infrastructural expansion in the global South. This article argues that understanding the effects of this expansion requires attending to the multiple elsewheres of transnational energy projects in various states of realization. By this we mean accounting for the ways in which these …
Making mainland
Anticipation by redress
Critical scholarship has interpreted ongoing mega-projects of infrastructural expansion in Africa through the lens of colonialism. Deepening this scholarship, the article questions analytical models of global coloniality or colonial continuity. To avoid reductive accounts of the ways individuals and collectives engage mega-infrastructure projects, the article proposes an alternative model of historically informed analysis, more attentive to the c…
How urban Africa challenges the coloniality of infrastructure
Recent scholarship has foregrounded the role of global infrastructure in the endurance and reproduction of colonial relations of power at the heart of capitalism. This issue advances this perspective by interrogating how urban Africa challenges the coloniality of infrastructure. It argues against the deductive tendency of coloniality as a global framework. In doing so, it articulates three standpoints. First, that grounding analyses of infrastruc…
Political science (10 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Engineering (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Economics (5 works) · Civil engineering (4 works) · History (4 works) · Politics (4 works) · Law (3 works) · Political economy (3 works)