Austin Zeiderman
Biographic Data
| ID | 640907 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Austin Zeiderman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Austin |
| FAMILY NAME | Zeiderman |
| SIGNATURE | ZEIDERMAN A |
| AFFILIATIONS | London School of Economics and Political Science |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3694-3719 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 175 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Urban futures: Idealization, capitalization, securitization
This article offers an analytical reflection on how urban futures have been imagined throughout history and into the present. Considering this question at a global scale, it examines the place of urbanization within the development of the modern/colonial order, accounting for the imagined futures that have supported this world-historical process. Three thematic sections—idealization, capitalization, and securitization—frame the discussion. Captur…
In the wake of logistics: Situated afterlives of race and labour on the Magdalena River
Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted aboard a cargo boat on Colombia's Magdalena River, and on historical accounts of fluvial transport, this article examines the racial formations on which logistics depends. Logistics is organized around flows at the heart of capitalist modernity, which are made possible by labour regimes whose racial underpinnings have both persisted and changed over time. Tracking continuities and divergences in riverboat…
Concrete Peace: Building Security through Infrastructure in Colombia
Public and scholarly debates in Colombia have often framed the work required to achieve peace as la construcción del posconflicto, or "the construction of the post-conflict." This focuses attention on the imperative to build the legal and bureaucratic institutions necessary for transcending a half-century of violence and ensuring a stable and lasting transition. At the same time, this framing also encapsulates the work of building post-conflict C…
Beyond the Enclave of Urban Theory
This essay offers a methodological intervention into conceptual debates in urban studies. Despite significant analytical and political differences across an otherwise heterodox field of inquiry, these debates have been overly confined to a theoretical register. In this essay, I propose an alternative, inspired by Stuart Hall, which focuses on the concrete work accomplished by our key concepts in specific historical conjunctures. I make this argum…
The Fabric of Space: Water, Modernity and the Urban Imagination
Matthew Gandy. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2014. x and 368 pp., notes, bibliography, index. $30.00 cloth (ISBN 978-0-2620-2825-7); $21.00 electronic (ISBN 9780-2623-2175-4)
Submergence: Precarious Politics in Colombia's Future Port‐City
This article examines popular politics under precarious conditions in the rapidly expanding port‐city of Buenaventura on Colombia's Pacific coast. It begins by identifying the intersecting economic, ecological, and political forces contributing to the precarity of life in Buenaventura's intertidal zone. Focusing on conflicts over land in the waterfront settlements of Bajamar (meaning “low‐tide”), it then describes the efforts of Afro‐Colombian se…
Adaptive Publics: Building Climate Constituencies in Bogotá
This essay foregrounds the political constituencies assembling around the problem of climate change in cities. Recent experiments in urban climate governance in Bogotá, Colombia, are shown to challenge liberal democratic notions of the "public" by linking a redistributive economic agenda to the technical project of adaptation. An analysis of interventions aimed at building social infrastructure throughout the city's hydrological systems reveals h…
Prognosis past: The temporal politics of disaster in Colombia
In this paper, I explore a prognostic modality of environmental politics I callrisk in retrospect. I do so by examining conflicts that are not just over the ability of state science to know and govern the future, but also its failure to have been able to do so in the past. I begin by discussing the 2009 earthquake that hit the Italian city of L'Aquila and then turn to a similar case in Colombia, both of which reflect the constitutive relationship…
Ten. Spaces of Uncertainty: Governing Urban Environmental Hazards - Austin Zeiderman
While uncertainty has long preoccupied attempts to plan, build, and govern cities, urbanists now assume that it has become a fundamental feature of the global urban condition. With the widespread notion that we now live in turbulent times—economically, politically, and ecologically—uncertainty has become normalized within urban theory, policy, and practice. As a result, urbanists now grapple with the challenge of reacting to varying degrees, as w…
Uncertainty and Urban Life
This essay examines the influence of uncertainty on how contemporary cities are planned, built, governed, and inhabited. This influence is demonstrated through the analysis of various domains of urban planning and governance (disaster, security, energy, and transportation) across four cities of the global South (Bogotá, Karachi, Accra, and Johannesburg). In each city, uncertainty is produced by historical conditions and productive of future possi…
Living dangerously: Biopolitics and urban citizenship in Bogotá, Colombia
What happens when the rights of urban citizens are reconfigured by the biopolitical imperative to protect life from threats? I examine such situations by focusing on how the emergence of risk as a technique of government shapes urban politics in Bogotá, Colombia. Investigating the frames of political engagement within which claims for recognition, inclusion, and entitlement are made, I argue that it is within the domain of biopolitical security t…
On Shaky Ground: The Making of Risk in Bogotá
How does risk become a technique for governing the future of cities and urban life? Using genealogical and ethnographic methods, this paper tracks the emergence of risk management in Bogotá, Colombia, from its initial institutionalization to its ongoing implementation in governmental practice. Its specific focus is the invention of the 'zone of high risk' in Bogotá and the everyday work performed by the officials responsible for determining the l…
Risk, Rights and Resettlement: Biopolitical Dispossession in Bogot?, Columbia
Antropología y ciudad: Hacia Un Análisis Crítico E Histórico
Departing from a theoretical discussion of the relationship between anthropology and the city, we problematize the foundations of both urban and anthropological studies. Rather than viewing the city as a stable and universal category, we emphasize the possibilities anthropology has to approach cities as products of historically-situated social practices. We illustrate this proposal by focusing on urbanistic projects in the city of Bogotá during t…
Ruralizing the City: The Great Migration and Environmental Rehabilitation in Baltimore, Maryland
This article examines the discursive and material presence of the “rural” in the “urban,” relating it to the historical and contemporary production of African American culture and identity. By using the case of the Great Migration, it discusses how African Americans negotiated and shaped their urban surroundings and formed individual and collective identities by drawing on their rural, southern histories. It then suggests the relevance of these b…
Schizophrenia and the Slum: Notes on Touring Favelas in Rio de Janeiro
The Practice and Politics of Global Fieldwork: Keynotes from James Ferguson and Anna Tsing
Uncertainty and Urban Life
This essay examines the influence of uncertainty on how contemporary cities are planned, built, governed, and inhabited. This influence is demonstrated through the analysis of various domains of urban planning and governance (disaster, security, energy, and transportation) across four cities of the global South (Bogotá, Karachi, Accra, and Johannesburg). In each city, uncertainty is produced by historical conditions and productive of future possi…
Living dangerously: Biopolitics and urban citizenship in Bogotá, Colombia
What happens when the rights of urban citizens are reconfigured by the biopolitical imperative to protect life from threats? I examine such situations by focusing on how the emergence of risk as a technique of government shapes urban politics in Bogotá, Colombia. Investigating the frames of political engagement within which claims for recognition, inclusion, and entitlement are made, I argue that it is within the domain of biopolitical security t…
Submergence: Precarious Politics in Colombia's Future Port‐City
This article examines popular politics under precarious conditions in the rapidly expanding port‐city of Buenaventura on Colombia's Pacific coast. It begins by identifying the intersecting economic, ecological, and political forces contributing to the precarity of life in Buenaventura's intertidal zone. Focusing on conflicts over land in the waterfront settlements of Bajamar (meaning “low‐tide”), it then describes the efforts of Afro‐Colombian se…
In the wake of logistics: Situated afterlives of race and labour on the Magdalena River
Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted aboard a cargo boat on Colombia's Magdalena River, and on historical accounts of fluvial transport, this article examines the racial formations on which logistics depends. Logistics is organized around flows at the heart of capitalist modernity, which are made possible by labour regimes whose racial underpinnings have both persisted and changed over time. Tracking continuities and divergences in riverboat…
Beyond the Enclave of Urban Theory
This essay offers a methodological intervention into conceptual debates in urban studies. Despite significant analytical and political differences across an otherwise heterodox field of inquiry, these debates have been overly confined to a theoretical register. In this essay, I propose an alternative, inspired by Stuart Hall, which focuses on the concrete work accomplished by our key concepts in specific historical conjunctures. I make this argum…
On Shaky Ground: The Making of Risk in Bogotá
How does risk become a technique for governing the future of cities and urban life? Using genealogical and ethnographic methods, this paper tracks the emergence of risk management in Bogotá, Colombia, from its initial institutionalization to its ongoing implementation in governmental practice. Its specific focus is the invention of the 'zone of high risk' in Bogotá and the everyday work performed by the officials responsible for determining the l…
Prognosis past: The temporal politics of disaster in Colombia
In this paper, I explore a prognostic modality of environmental politics I callrisk in retrospect. I do so by examining conflicts that are not just over the ability of state science to know and govern the future, but also its failure to have been able to do so in the past. I begin by discussing the 2009 earthquake that hit the Italian city of L'Aquila and then turn to a similar case in Colombia, both of which reflect the constitutive relationship…
Adaptive Publics: Building Climate Constituencies in Bogotá
This essay foregrounds the political constituencies assembling around the problem of climate change in cities. Recent experiments in urban climate governance in Bogotá, Colombia, are shown to challenge liberal democratic notions of the "public" by linking a redistributive economic agenda to the technical project of adaptation. An analysis of interventions aimed at building social infrastructure throughout the city's hydrological systems reveals h…
Urban futures: Idealization, capitalization, securitization
This article offers an analytical reflection on how urban futures have been imagined throughout history and into the present. Considering this question at a global scale, it examines the place of urbanization within the development of the modern/colonial order, accounting for the imagined futures that have supported this world-historical process. Three thematic sections—idealization, capitalization, and securitization—frame the discussion. Captur…
Concrete Peace: Building Security through Infrastructure in Colombia
Public and scholarly debates in Colombia have often framed the work required to achieve peace as la construcción del posconflicto, or "the construction of the post-conflict." This focuses attention on the imperative to build the legal and bureaucratic institutions necessary for transcending a half-century of violence and ensuring a stable and lasting transition. At the same time, this framing also encapsulates the work of building post-conflict C…
Antropología y ciudad: Hacia Un Análisis Crítico E Histórico
Departing from a theoretical discussion of the relationship between anthropology and the city, we problematize the foundations of both urban and anthropological studies. Rather than viewing the city as a stable and universal category, we emphasize the possibilities anthropology has to approach cities as products of historically-situated social practices. We illustrate this proposal by focusing on urbanistic projects in the city of Bogotá during t…
Schizophrenia and the Slum: Notes on Touring Favelas in Rio de Janeiro
Ruralizing the City: The Great Migration and Environmental Rehabilitation in Baltimore, Maryland
This article examines the discursive and material presence of the “rural” in the “urban,” relating it to the historical and contemporary production of African American culture and identity. By using the case of the Great Migration, it discusses how African Americans negotiated and shaped their urban surroundings and formed individual and collective identities by drawing on their rural, southern histories. It then suggests the relevance of these b…
Schizophrenia and the Slum: Notes on Touring Favelas in Rio de Janeiro
The Practice and Politics of Global Fieldwork: Keynotes from James Ferguson and Anna Tsing
Risk, Rights and Resettlement: Biopolitical Dispossession in Bogot?, Columbia
Antropología y ciudad: Hacia Un Análisis Crítico E Histórico
Departing from a theoretical discussion of the relationship between anthropology and the city, we problematize the foundations of both urban and anthropological studies. Rather than viewing the city as a stable and universal category, we emphasize the possibilities anthropology has to approach cities as products of historically-situated social practices. We illustrate this proposal by focusing on urbanistic projects in the city of Bogotá during t…
On Shaky Ground: The Making of Risk in Bogotá
How does risk become a technique for governing the future of cities and urban life? Using genealogical and ethnographic methods, this paper tracks the emergence of risk management in Bogotá, Colombia, from its initial institutionalization to its ongoing implementation in governmental practice. Its specific focus is the invention of the 'zone of high risk' in Bogotá and the everyday work performed by the officials responsible for determining the l…
Living dangerously: Biopolitics and urban citizenship in Bogotá, Colombia
What happens when the rights of urban citizens are reconfigured by the biopolitical imperative to protect life from threats? I examine such situations by focusing on how the emergence of risk as a technique of government shapes urban politics in Bogotá, Colombia. Investigating the frames of political engagement within which claims for recognition, inclusion, and entitlement are made, I argue that it is within the domain of biopolitical security t…
Ten. Spaces of Uncertainty: Governing Urban Environmental Hazards - Austin Zeiderman
While uncertainty has long preoccupied attempts to plan, build, and govern cities, urbanists now assume that it has become a fundamental feature of the global urban condition. With the widespread notion that we now live in turbulent times—economically, politically, and ecologically—uncertainty has become normalized within urban theory, policy, and practice. As a result, urbanists now grapple with the challenge of reacting to varying degrees, as w…
Uncertainty and Urban Life
This essay examines the influence of uncertainty on how contemporary cities are planned, built, governed, and inhabited. This influence is demonstrated through the analysis of various domains of urban planning and governance (disaster, security, energy, and transportation) across four cities of the global South (Bogotá, Karachi, Accra, and Johannesburg). In each city, uncertainty is produced by historical conditions and productive of future possi…
The Fabric of Space: Water, Modernity and the Urban Imagination
Matthew Gandy. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2014. x and 368 pp., notes, bibliography, index. $30.00 cloth (ISBN 978-0-2620-2825-7); $21.00 electronic (ISBN 9780-2623-2175-4)
Submergence: Precarious Politics in Colombia's Future Port‐City
This article examines popular politics under precarious conditions in the rapidly expanding port‐city of Buenaventura on Colombia's Pacific coast. It begins by identifying the intersecting economic, ecological, and political forces contributing to the precarity of life in Buenaventura's intertidal zone. Focusing on conflicts over land in the waterfront settlements of Bajamar (meaning “low‐tide”), it then describes the efforts of Afro‐Colombian se…
Adaptive Publics: Building Climate Constituencies in Bogotá
This essay foregrounds the political constituencies assembling around the problem of climate change in cities. Recent experiments in urban climate governance in Bogotá, Colombia, are shown to challenge liberal democratic notions of the "public" by linking a redistributive economic agenda to the technical project of adaptation. An analysis of interventions aimed at building social infrastructure throughout the city's hydrological systems reveals h…
Prognosis past: The temporal politics of disaster in Colombia
In this paper, I explore a prognostic modality of environmental politics I callrisk in retrospect. I do so by examining conflicts that are not just over the ability of state science to know and govern the future, but also its failure to have been able to do so in the past. I begin by discussing the 2009 earthquake that hit the Italian city of L'Aquila and then turn to a similar case in Colombia, both of which reflect the constitutive relationship…
Beyond the Enclave of Urban Theory
This essay offers a methodological intervention into conceptual debates in urban studies. Despite significant analytical and political differences across an otherwise heterodox field of inquiry, these debates have been overly confined to a theoretical register. In this essay, I propose an alternative, inspired by Stuart Hall, which focuses on the concrete work accomplished by our key concepts in specific historical conjunctures. I make this argum…
Concrete Peace: Building Security through Infrastructure in Colombia
Public and scholarly debates in Colombia have often framed the work required to achieve peace as la construcción del posconflicto, or "the construction of the post-conflict." This focuses attention on the imperative to build the legal and bureaucratic institutions necessary for transcending a half-century of violence and ensuring a stable and lasting transition. At the same time, this framing also encapsulates the work of building post-conflict C…
In the wake of logistics: Situated afterlives of race and labour on the Magdalena River
Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted aboard a cargo boat on Colombia's Magdalena River, and on historical accounts of fluvial transport, this article examines the racial formations on which logistics depends. Logistics is organized around flows at the heart of capitalist modernity, which are made possible by labour regimes whose racial underpinnings have both persisted and changed over time. Tracking continuities and divergences in riverboat…
Urban futures: Idealization, capitalization, securitization
This article offers an analytical reflection on how urban futures have been imagined throughout history and into the present. Considering this question at a global scale, it examines the place of urbanization within the development of the modern/colonial order, accounting for the imagined futures that have supported this world-historical process. Three thematic sections—idealization, capitalization, and securitization—frame the discussion. Captur…
Sociology (15 works) · Political science (14 works) · Law (11 works) · Politics (9 works) · Water Governance and Infrastructure (8 works) · Geography (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Economics (6 works) · Gender Studies (5 works) · Social science (5 works)