Cities and the authoritarian turn

What do we see differently when we look at today’s authoritarian turn through the lens of the city?

As authoritarian politics accelerate, cities — historically key arenas of contestation and control — are becoming ever more central to how these struggles unfold. Urban actors often advance alternative, cosmopolitan visions that diverge from nationalist agendas, yet cities can also fuel far right mobilisation rooted in fear and exclusion.

This webinar, co-hosted by the Political Geography Research Group and the Urban Geography Research Group, brings together political and urban geographers to reflect on how cities counter, mediate, or navigate authoritarian politics.

Panellists will explore how national–urban power relations are being rescaled; to what extent cities function as terrains of (ethno)nationalist, neoliberal, and far right projects; and how the conditions to develop urban alternatives are shifting.

The event invites us to consider what an urban lens reveals (or obscures) about contemporary authoritarian resurgence, and how it might refine political and urban geography’s conceptual and methodological tools.

Speakers

• Jonathan Rock Rokem (Faculty of Politics, International Relations, Sociology, and Anthropology, Northeastern University London)
• Zita Seichter (Department of Social Sciences, University of Hamburg)
• Johann Braun (Institute of Human Geography, Goethe University Frankfurt)
• Ayşegül Can (Institute for Regional Studies, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology)

Booking information

• Advance booking for this event is required. In order to book you will need an account on our website. If you already have an account you will be prompted to log in when you click 'book now'. Please create an account if you do not have one yet (you do not need to be a member of the Society to create an account).
• This event will be held on Zoom and joining instructions will be included in your confirmation email.

If you have any questions or require assistance with your booking, please email events@rgs.org