9-10.30: Welcome and Opening Presentations
Why think post-socialism with/from elsewhere?
Tauri Tuvikene, Tallinn University
Drawing on the presenter's earlier elaborations and debates in the fields, the talk presents two perspectives. Firstly, it advocates for a comparative ethos that openly engages in comparisons across often assumed differences. To succeed in valuing the diversity of urban processes, comparative strategies should enable openness and avoid rigid, predefined categories. Hence, comparison via statements that could hold across contexts might be a way forward. Secondly, the talk scrutinises how cities in Eastern Europe enter the field of urban studies. While critiques of "post-socialism" are prominent and various lines of urban analysis are proposed, which is reasonable considering the diversity of cities and the need for openness in analysis, the talk highlights some of the values of utilising a post-socialist lens: contemporary developments mark significant shifts but also interesting continuities (and anti-continuities) with phenomena from the Soviet years. Particularly, the meaning of individual freedom (as anti-state and hence post-socialist) but also continuities of spaces (socialist housing, infrastructures). The relations with past are complex, e.g., potential sustainability of socialist infrastructures (less use of resources) happened for different reasons than "sustainability" but yet accord with some contemporary ideas of sustainability. That opens up interesting questions of how to relate to the past, especially to the contentious past. Finally, some reflections on the particular challenge of learning between African and Eastern European cities and stateness are proposed.
New cities, new states? ‘Rising Africa’, State formation and urban change
Didier Péclard (University of Geneva)
With the end of the Washington consensus, the State has made a spectacular comeback in Africa. After decades of structural adjustment policies that drastically limited the possibility for public investments, it is (again?) considered as a (potential) driver of political, economic and social development. This paradigm shift took place in a context where, driven by skyrocketing prices of raw materials, African economies have gone through an unprecedented decade of rapid economic growth, changing the image of the continent from ‘hopeless’ to a new frontier of global capitalism, as expressed by the ‘Africa Rising’ discourse. While this discourse has been – rightly – criticized for being shallow and disconnected with the economic realities of the continent, it has also had palpable effects on the ground. These changes are arguably most visible in urban Africa, where new (mostly foreign) investments have supported the creation of new cities that should stand as a tangible sign of Africa’s new role in the world (Diamniado in Senegal, Akon Atlantic City in Nigeria, Luanda Sul in Angola, among others).
I propose to take this context as an entry point to address two important dimensions of dynamics of state formation in Africa. Firstly, I will recall how the historiography of the State in Africa has been dominated an ‘epistemology of absence’, i.e. normative perspectives which tend to analyse states not for what they are, but for what they fail to be in comparison to their Western counterparts, and how this has blurred our understanding of state formation on the ground. Secondly, the ‘Africa rising’ context lays bare a central dynamic in the history of state formation on the continent, namely that the exercise of power is linked to political leaders’ capacity to draw on the rents of their dependency on the outside world, what Bayart has called ‘extraversion’. Is the ‘return’ of the State in Africa just a new iteration of the dynamics of extraversion, or a first step towards a new configuration?
11.00 -13.00: Comparing Africa and Eastern Europe
CEE & SSA: How collective trauma shapes local communities, hampering development and sustainability
Stefan Cibian (Făgăraș Research Institute)
While Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) are far apart in geographic terms, multiple interconnections link these two regions, making them speak to each other. These interconnections are rarely explored as neither of the two regions is central to global processes of knowledge production. However, one can argue that by exploring dynamics among peripheral regions, new insights into systemic transformations can be gained, in addition to the in-depth understanding of the explored contexts. SSA and CEE share histories of oppression intertwined with similar manifestations of political power and economic transformation. Colonialism, imperialism, and totalitarianism, followed by periods of democratization, have shaped both regions in fundamental ways, leaving behind trauma and dysfunctionality. The aim of this presentation is to explore in parallel the impacts of abusive political power on local communities and urban spaces, in order to decipher the methodologies of oppression and control and their consequences.