Joanna Kusiak | University of Cambridge (original) (raw)

Books by Joanna Kusiak

Policy Papers Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, 2021

The whole world is looking at Berlin with awe: in Art. 15 of the German Basic Law, Berliners have... more The whole world is looking at Berlin with awe: in Art. 15 of the German Basic Law, Berliners have found a democratic, affordable, and lawful way to solve the housing crisis. After a year-long delay, the Berlin Senate has confirmed that the referendum on socializing housing stock proposed by a civic initiative called Deutsche Wohnen & Co. Enteignen is legally permissible. Now that socialization has been officially declared both legally and politically possible, the corporate real-es- tate lobby will try its best to misrepresent it as economically harmful and “authoritarian” in spirit. Indeed, the reverse is true. Socialization is a procedure in the best legal tradition of democratic Germany, enabling sustainable housing reforms and saving public money. It provides a valuable model for managing all kinds of public resources in the era of post-COVID-19 economic insecurity. If we all unite in the effort to collect nearly 200,000 signatures for a referendum on socializing housing, we can take Berlin from being “poor but sexy” to being “sexy, smart, and sustainable”.

Na początku tej książki jest chaos. Chaos jako sama Warszawa, czyli pełna problemów przestrzeń mi... more Na początku tej książki jest chaos. Chaos jako sama Warszawa, czyli pełna problemów przestrzeń miejska, oraz „chaos” jako słowo-klucz, którego używamy, by ją krytykować. Demaskując pojęcie „chaosu” jako ideologiczny wytrych, a nawet rodzaj teorii spiskowej, autorka analizuje systemowe porządki, które skrywają się za pozornym chaosem Warszawy: od logiki przestrzennej globalizacji po nieudane projekty reform, od upadku kooperatyw ogrodniczych na Białołęce po kredyty we frankach i lokalny szowinizm, od przedwojennej „akcji terenowej” Starzyńskiego po legalistyczne fikcje reprywatyzacji. Czy warszawski chaos przestrzenny jest rzeczywiście „ustawowo zaprogramowany”? Co miało pierwotnie powstać w miejscu osiedla Derby na Białołęce? Kto nam ukradł konflikt o własność? Książka ta jest nie tylko systemową analizą najistotniejszych procesów, które ukształtowały przestrzeń Warszawy po 1990 roku. Jest również autoanalizą nas samych jako miejskiej wspólnoty, która – żyjąc w mieście – interpretuje jego przemiany.

Warsaw is one of the most dynamically developing cities in Europe, and its rich history has marke... more Warsaw is one of the most dynamically developing cities in Europe, and its rich history has marked it as an epicenter of many modes of urbanism: Tzarist, modernist, socialist, and—in the past two decades—aggressively neoliberal. Focusing on Warsaw after 1990, this volume explores the interplay between Warsaw’s past urban identities and the intense urban change of the ’90s and ’00s. Chasing Warsaw departs from the typical narratives of post-socialist cities in Eastern Europe by contextualizing Warsaw’s unique transformation in terms of both global change and the shifting geographies of centrality and marginality in contemporary Poland.

Papers by Joanna Kusiak

Autoportret, 2023

Jeszcze wszystko możemy stworzyć JOANNĄ KUSIAK ROZMAWIA Z JESZCZE WSZYSTKO MOŻEMY STWORZYĆ NATALI... more Jeszcze wszystko możemy stworzyć JOANNĄ KUSIAK ROZMAWIA Z JESZCZE WSZYSTKO MOŻEMY STWORZYĆ NATALIA RACZKOWSKA: W artykule Comparative urbanism for hope and healing: Urbicide and the dilemmas of reconstruction in postwar Syria and Poland 1 (Urbanistyka porównawcza jako źródło nadziei i ukojenia. Miastobójstwo i dylematy rekonstrukcji w powojennych Syrii i Polsce), napisanym wspólnie z syryjskim badaczem Ammarem Azzouzem, porusza pani temat działania mimo wszechogarniającej destrukcji. Skąd w ludziach zdolność do przeciwstawienia się beznadziejnym-wydawałoby się-okolicznościom? JOANNA KUSIAK: Zacznę może od wyjaśnienia, dlaczego napisaliśmy ten artykuł, bo jest ono dla mnie ważne. Nie powstałby, gdybym nie poznała Ammara. Poszłam na wykład, na którym Ammar, jeszcze jako doktorant, opowiadał o Homs,

Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Jan 20, 2021

Radical Housing Journal

In June 2022, a group of activists, students, and scholars gathered in Barcelona for the 8th annu... more In June 2022, a group of activists, students, and scholars gathered in Barcelona for the 8th annual International Geographies of Justice Summer Institute (IGJ), Housing Justice in Unequal Cities, co-sponsored by Antipode and the UCLA Institute on Inequality and Democracy. IGJ attendees included people from within movement and activist spaces, academics, and non-profit organizations who share the common vision of working toward housing justice. This article features a collective conversation that took place with IGJ attendees who participated in a public panel discussion attended by activists, community members, and people interested in hearing from local and international panelists about the state and direction of the housing justice movements in Glasgow, Berlin, New York, and Barcelona respectively. Thematically, the conversation held among IGJ attendees to produce the following manuscript focused on the broad and interconnected pillars of housing injustice that repeatedly arose in...

Kultura i Spoleczenstwo, Jun 1, 2013

Area, 2021

This paper proposes Critical Legal Engineering [CLE] as a new methodology for legal-geographic ac... more This paper proposes Critical Legal Engineering [CLE] as a new methodology for legal-geographic action research. While legal geography is on the rise, geographers rarely participate in legal or judicial process, and when they do – for example as court expert witnesses – they merely respond to the preestablished agendas of the legal system. I argue that legal geographers’ knowledge on the nature of law and its relations with society is a source of power that could allow them to set legal agendas and pluralize legal discussions. CLE assumes that legal geographers can put forward technical legal arguments, thus using law’s own tools to implement normative agendas implied in critical research. However, CLE demands a dialectical attitude that preserves the contradiction between political ends and legal technology – while pursuing both of them at the same time. As I show, CLE can realize critical agendas in three ways. First, it coopts the legitimacy provided by the legal system, lending it to the agendas that are otherwise perceived as ‘too radical’. Second, elevated by the law these radical agendas may gain greater power to influence political-economic realities even before the legal outcomes are decided. Finally, CLE draws out of ‘technical’ legal discussions into the heat of the public debate, thus politicizing the law. Having developed this methodological proposition in the course of my research on urban movements, I illustrate it with the strategy of Berlin’s campaign Deutsche Wohnen & Co. Enteignen [DWE] which has crafted a legal argumentation based on Art. 15 of the German Constitution to pursue remunicipalizion (or de-privatizaton) of housing.

Area, 2021

This paper proposes Critical Legal Engineering [CLE] as a new methodology for legal-geographic ac... more This paper proposes Critical Legal Engineering [CLE] as a new methodology for legal-geographic action research. While legal geography is on the rise, geographers rarely participate in legal or judicial process, and when they do – for example as court expert witnesses – they merely respond to the preestablished agendas of the legal system. I argue that legal geographers’ knowledge on the nature of law and its relations with society is a source of power that could allow them to set legal agendas and pluralize legal discussions. CLE assumes that legal geographers can put forward technical legal arguments, thus using law’s own tools to implement normative agendas implied in critical research. However, CLE demands a dialectical attitude that preserves the contradiction between political ends and legal technology – while pursuing both of them at the same time. As I show, CLE can realize critical agendas in three ways. First, it coopts the legitimacy provided by the legal system, lending it to the agendas that are otherwise perceived as ‘too radical’. Second, elevated by the law these radical agendas may gain greater power to influence political-economic realities even before the legal outcomes are decided. Finally, CLE draws out of ‘technical’ legal discussions into the heat of the public debate, thus politicizing the law. Having developed this methodological proposition in the course of my research on urban movements, I illustrate it with the strategy of Berlin’s campaign Deutsche Wohnen & Co. Enteignen [DWE] which has crafted a legal argumentation based on Art. 15 of the German Constitution to pursue remunicipalizion (or de-privatizaton) of housing.

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2019

Please download here: https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12827 or contact me at jk726@cam.ac.uk ... more Please download here:
https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12827
or contact me at jk726@cam.ac.uk and I will send you the full paper.

Among the 'extra-economic means' that facilitate primitive accumulation, or accumulation by dispossession, the law plays a prominent role. But works on neoliberal urban restructuring rarely engage with concrete legal technologies. Analysing judicial property restitution ('reprivatization') in Warsaw, this article grasps the machine of accumulation by dispossession at a moment of faltering and exposes the distinctive legal technologies behind its troubleshooting. It makes three contributions to critical urban studies. First, it demonstrates how judicial systems can steal political conflicts that obstruct the cycle of accumulation by dispossession. It thus introduces the notion of 'judicial robbery', a non-legislated expropriation of common property through judicial engineering that simultaneously deprives the public of political agency. Second, it shows that seemingly neutral legal technicalities, usually sheltered from political debate, can become a key locus of urban politics. Third, it examines the agency, scope and spatial patterns of 'dispossession by restitution', the term I use for a locally specific form of accumulation by dispossession in Warsaw. Lastly, I raise the question of political struggle against primitive accumulation. Is the judicial robbery reversible? If we can reclaim property, can we also reclaim political conflicts that have been stolen by the law?

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2019

Delving into the nexus between the state and informality, this paper discusses the informality of... more Delving into the nexus between the state and informality, this paper discusses the informality of the legal and judicial systems. Produced by structurally powerful actors, this kind of informality is not so much legitimized by the law, but concealed within the very process of legitimization. To capture how legal engineering welds formalized laws with informal translations, I look at judicial outcomes that, while formally legal, are socially delegitimized and perceived as legal corruption. After analysing the contested judicial outcomes of Warsaw’s ‘reprivatization’ process (property restitution), I define the mechanism of legal corruption as rules‐lawyering, by which I mean an attempt to gain legal advantage by obsessively sticking to the written laws, while deliberately desecrating its spirit. I describe three of its mechanisms: appropriation, redefinition and fraud laundering. Finally, in my preliminary vivisection of the recent and ongoing process of delegalizing the legal corruption that has been part of the reprivatization process, all the allied concepts of this forum come together to demonstrate the essential inseparability of informality and state.

Urban Development Issues, Oct 10, 2019

Standpunkte Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, 2020

Die Welt blickt mal wieder auf Berlin: In Artikel 15 des deutschen Grundgesetzes haben die Berlin... more Die Welt blickt mal wieder auf Berlin: In Artikel 15 des deutschen Grundgesetzes haben die Berliner*innen eine demokra- tische, bezahlbare und gesetzeskonforme Lösung für die Wohnungskrise gefunden. Mit einem Jahr Verzögerung hat der Berliner Senat bestätigt, dass das von der Bürgerinitiative «Deutsche Wohnen & Co enteignen» gestartete Volksbegehren zur Vergesellschaftung Berliner Wohnungsbestände rechtlich zulässig ist. Nachdem das Vorhaben somit für gesetzmä- ßig und politisch machbar erklärt worden ist, wird die Lobby der Immobilienkonzerne nun alles daransetzen, es als wirt- schaftsschädigend darzustellen, und ihm vorwerfen, es sei von «autoritärem» Geist.

DIE ZEIT , 2022

Ich denke über die Grenzen des kritischen Denkens nach. Unser akademisches Wissen ist heute so um... more Ich denke über die Grenzen des kritischen Denkens nach. Unser akademisches Wissen ist heute so umfassend wie nie, wir wissen mehr denn je über unsere Probleme, ob es um den Klimawandel geht, die Wohnungskrise oder die wachsende soziale Ungleichheit. Aber gleichzeitig ist all dieses kritische Wissen weitgehend folgenlos. Der Geist der Kritik wirkt oft wie gelähmt. Der Kapitalismus hingegen ist beweglich. Er handelt, indem er von seinen Kritikern lernt, und zeigt, was schon Karl Marx gepriesen [https://www.zeit.de/2018/18/karl-marx-200jahre-analyse-kapitalismus] hat: dass er ein revolutionäres und höchst innovatives Potenzial hat. Er kooptiert einfach Ideen. Die Idee der Revolution wird übernommen, um aus einem Getränk Geld zu machen, oder die Idee des Teilens wird eingesetzt, um profitabel Schlafgelegenheiten zu verkaufen. Mich interessiert nun, ob man vom Gegner, dem Kapitalismus, diese Fähigkeit des kreativen Umlernens übernehmen kann, ohne die eigenen Werte der Gleichheit und der Verteilungsgerechtigkeit aufzugeben. Was heißt das für mich als Stadtforscherin? Ich habe über Warschau promoviert: Die von den Deutschen im Krieg zerstörte Stadt [

Across Theory and Practice: Thinking Through Urban Research, 2018

Kwartalnik Naukowy Studia Regionalne I Lokalne, 2014

Anthropology & Materialism, 2013

Matthew Gandy, BJ Nilsen, "The Acoustic City", Apr 2014

Anthropology & Materialism, 1 (2013), Oct 15, 2013

In his methodology as well as his political thought Benjamin remains faithful to the principle to... more In his methodology as well as his political thought Benjamin remains faithful to the principle to proceed “always radically, never consistently”. Therefore, the greatest challenge for a contemporary city researcher inspired by Benjamin is to operationalise his materialist methodology. Benjamin’s anthropological materialism cannot be reached within the fixed limits of any discipline, but rather places itself “on the crossroads of magic and positivism” (Adorno); the dialectical image is not a tool of his methodology but its culminating point where positivism turns to magic. To reach this point, Benjamin conducts perceptive and
Striking Dialectical Sparks from the Stones of our Cities 18
Anthropology & Materialism, 1 | 2013
analytical experiments that can be treated as dialectical études, exercises in seeing. The paper examines some of these techniques, exploring their philosophical context and testing them on a contemporary example: the Ernst-Thälmann-Monument in Berlin.

Chasing Warsaw: Socio-Material Dynamics of Urban Change since 1990, Oct 9, 2012

Policy Papers Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, 2021

The whole world is looking at Berlin with awe: in Art. 15 of the German Basic Law, Berliners have... more The whole world is looking at Berlin with awe: in Art. 15 of the German Basic Law, Berliners have found a democratic, affordable, and lawful way to solve the housing crisis. After a year-long delay, the Berlin Senate has confirmed that the referendum on socializing housing stock proposed by a civic initiative called Deutsche Wohnen & Co. Enteignen is legally permissible. Now that socialization has been officially declared both legally and politically possible, the corporate real-es- tate lobby will try its best to misrepresent it as economically harmful and “authoritarian” in spirit. Indeed, the reverse is true. Socialization is a procedure in the best legal tradition of democratic Germany, enabling sustainable housing reforms and saving public money. It provides a valuable model for managing all kinds of public resources in the era of post-COVID-19 economic insecurity. If we all unite in the effort to collect nearly 200,000 signatures for a referendum on socializing housing, we can take Berlin from being “poor but sexy” to being “sexy, smart, and sustainable”.

Na początku tej książki jest chaos. Chaos jako sama Warszawa, czyli pełna problemów przestrzeń mi... more Na początku tej książki jest chaos. Chaos jako sama Warszawa, czyli pełna problemów przestrzeń miejska, oraz „chaos” jako słowo-klucz, którego używamy, by ją krytykować. Demaskując pojęcie „chaosu” jako ideologiczny wytrych, a nawet rodzaj teorii spiskowej, autorka analizuje systemowe porządki, które skrywają się za pozornym chaosem Warszawy: od logiki przestrzennej globalizacji po nieudane projekty reform, od upadku kooperatyw ogrodniczych na Białołęce po kredyty we frankach i lokalny szowinizm, od przedwojennej „akcji terenowej” Starzyńskiego po legalistyczne fikcje reprywatyzacji. Czy warszawski chaos przestrzenny jest rzeczywiście „ustawowo zaprogramowany”? Co miało pierwotnie powstać w miejscu osiedla Derby na Białołęce? Kto nam ukradł konflikt o własność? Książka ta jest nie tylko systemową analizą najistotniejszych procesów, które ukształtowały przestrzeń Warszawy po 1990 roku. Jest również autoanalizą nas samych jako miejskiej wspólnoty, która – żyjąc w mieście – interpretuje jego przemiany.

Warsaw is one of the most dynamically developing cities in Europe, and its rich history has marke... more Warsaw is one of the most dynamically developing cities in Europe, and its rich history has marked it as an epicenter of many modes of urbanism: Tzarist, modernist, socialist, and—in the past two decades—aggressively neoliberal. Focusing on Warsaw after 1990, this volume explores the interplay between Warsaw’s past urban identities and the intense urban change of the ’90s and ’00s. Chasing Warsaw departs from the typical narratives of post-socialist cities in Eastern Europe by contextualizing Warsaw’s unique transformation in terms of both global change and the shifting geographies of centrality and marginality in contemporary Poland.

Autoportret, 2023

Jeszcze wszystko możemy stworzyć JOANNĄ KUSIAK ROZMAWIA Z JESZCZE WSZYSTKO MOŻEMY STWORZYĆ NATALI... more Jeszcze wszystko możemy stworzyć JOANNĄ KUSIAK ROZMAWIA Z JESZCZE WSZYSTKO MOŻEMY STWORZYĆ NATALIA RACZKOWSKA: W artykule Comparative urbanism for hope and healing: Urbicide and the dilemmas of reconstruction in postwar Syria and Poland 1 (Urbanistyka porównawcza jako źródło nadziei i ukojenia. Miastobójstwo i dylematy rekonstrukcji w powojennych Syrii i Polsce), napisanym wspólnie z syryjskim badaczem Ammarem Azzouzem, porusza pani temat działania mimo wszechogarniającej destrukcji. Skąd w ludziach zdolność do przeciwstawienia się beznadziejnym-wydawałoby się-okolicznościom? JOANNA KUSIAK: Zacznę może od wyjaśnienia, dlaczego napisaliśmy ten artykuł, bo jest ono dla mnie ważne. Nie powstałby, gdybym nie poznała Ammara. Poszłam na wykład, na którym Ammar, jeszcze jako doktorant, opowiadał o Homs,

Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Jan 20, 2021

Radical Housing Journal

In June 2022, a group of activists, students, and scholars gathered in Barcelona for the 8th annu... more In June 2022, a group of activists, students, and scholars gathered in Barcelona for the 8th annual International Geographies of Justice Summer Institute (IGJ), Housing Justice in Unequal Cities, co-sponsored by Antipode and the UCLA Institute on Inequality and Democracy. IGJ attendees included people from within movement and activist spaces, academics, and non-profit organizations who share the common vision of working toward housing justice. This article features a collective conversation that took place with IGJ attendees who participated in a public panel discussion attended by activists, community members, and people interested in hearing from local and international panelists about the state and direction of the housing justice movements in Glasgow, Berlin, New York, and Barcelona respectively. Thematically, the conversation held among IGJ attendees to produce the following manuscript focused on the broad and interconnected pillars of housing injustice that repeatedly arose in...

Kultura i Spoleczenstwo, Jun 1, 2013

Area, 2021

This paper proposes Critical Legal Engineering [CLE] as a new methodology for legal-geographic ac... more This paper proposes Critical Legal Engineering [CLE] as a new methodology for legal-geographic action research. While legal geography is on the rise, geographers rarely participate in legal or judicial process, and when they do – for example as court expert witnesses – they merely respond to the preestablished agendas of the legal system. I argue that legal geographers’ knowledge on the nature of law and its relations with society is a source of power that could allow them to set legal agendas and pluralize legal discussions. CLE assumes that legal geographers can put forward technical legal arguments, thus using law’s own tools to implement normative agendas implied in critical research. However, CLE demands a dialectical attitude that preserves the contradiction between political ends and legal technology – while pursuing both of them at the same time. As I show, CLE can realize critical agendas in three ways. First, it coopts the legitimacy provided by the legal system, lending it to the agendas that are otherwise perceived as ‘too radical’. Second, elevated by the law these radical agendas may gain greater power to influence political-economic realities even before the legal outcomes are decided. Finally, CLE draws out of ‘technical’ legal discussions into the heat of the public debate, thus politicizing the law. Having developed this methodological proposition in the course of my research on urban movements, I illustrate it with the strategy of Berlin’s campaign Deutsche Wohnen & Co. Enteignen [DWE] which has crafted a legal argumentation based on Art. 15 of the German Constitution to pursue remunicipalizion (or de-privatizaton) of housing.

Area, 2021

This paper proposes Critical Legal Engineering [CLE] as a new methodology for legal-geographic ac... more This paper proposes Critical Legal Engineering [CLE] as a new methodology for legal-geographic action research. While legal geography is on the rise, geographers rarely participate in legal or judicial process, and when they do – for example as court expert witnesses – they merely respond to the preestablished agendas of the legal system. I argue that legal geographers’ knowledge on the nature of law and its relations with society is a source of power that could allow them to set legal agendas and pluralize legal discussions. CLE assumes that legal geographers can put forward technical legal arguments, thus using law’s own tools to implement normative agendas implied in critical research. However, CLE demands a dialectical attitude that preserves the contradiction between political ends and legal technology – while pursuing both of them at the same time. As I show, CLE can realize critical agendas in three ways. First, it coopts the legitimacy provided by the legal system, lending it to the agendas that are otherwise perceived as ‘too radical’. Second, elevated by the law these radical agendas may gain greater power to influence political-economic realities even before the legal outcomes are decided. Finally, CLE draws out of ‘technical’ legal discussions into the heat of the public debate, thus politicizing the law. Having developed this methodological proposition in the course of my research on urban movements, I illustrate it with the strategy of Berlin’s campaign Deutsche Wohnen & Co. Enteignen [DWE] which has crafted a legal argumentation based on Art. 15 of the German Constitution to pursue remunicipalizion (or de-privatizaton) of housing.

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2019

Please download here: https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12827 or contact me at jk726@cam.ac.uk ... more Please download here:
https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12827
or contact me at jk726@cam.ac.uk and I will send you the full paper.

Among the 'extra-economic means' that facilitate primitive accumulation, or accumulation by dispossession, the law plays a prominent role. But works on neoliberal urban restructuring rarely engage with concrete legal technologies. Analysing judicial property restitution ('reprivatization') in Warsaw, this article grasps the machine of accumulation by dispossession at a moment of faltering and exposes the distinctive legal technologies behind its troubleshooting. It makes three contributions to critical urban studies. First, it demonstrates how judicial systems can steal political conflicts that obstruct the cycle of accumulation by dispossession. It thus introduces the notion of 'judicial robbery', a non-legislated expropriation of common property through judicial engineering that simultaneously deprives the public of political agency. Second, it shows that seemingly neutral legal technicalities, usually sheltered from political debate, can become a key locus of urban politics. Third, it examines the agency, scope and spatial patterns of 'dispossession by restitution', the term I use for a locally specific form of accumulation by dispossession in Warsaw. Lastly, I raise the question of political struggle against primitive accumulation. Is the judicial robbery reversible? If we can reclaim property, can we also reclaim political conflicts that have been stolen by the law?

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2019

Delving into the nexus between the state and informality, this paper discusses the informality of... more Delving into the nexus between the state and informality, this paper discusses the informality of the legal and judicial systems. Produced by structurally powerful actors, this kind of informality is not so much legitimized by the law, but concealed within the very process of legitimization. To capture how legal engineering welds formalized laws with informal translations, I look at judicial outcomes that, while formally legal, are socially delegitimized and perceived as legal corruption. After analysing the contested judicial outcomes of Warsaw’s ‘reprivatization’ process (property restitution), I define the mechanism of legal corruption as rules‐lawyering, by which I mean an attempt to gain legal advantage by obsessively sticking to the written laws, while deliberately desecrating its spirit. I describe three of its mechanisms: appropriation, redefinition and fraud laundering. Finally, in my preliminary vivisection of the recent and ongoing process of delegalizing the legal corruption that has been part of the reprivatization process, all the allied concepts of this forum come together to demonstrate the essential inseparability of informality and state.

Urban Development Issues, Oct 10, 2019

Standpunkte Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, 2020

Die Welt blickt mal wieder auf Berlin: In Artikel 15 des deutschen Grundgesetzes haben die Berlin... more Die Welt blickt mal wieder auf Berlin: In Artikel 15 des deutschen Grundgesetzes haben die Berliner*innen eine demokra- tische, bezahlbare und gesetzeskonforme Lösung für die Wohnungskrise gefunden. Mit einem Jahr Verzögerung hat der Berliner Senat bestätigt, dass das von der Bürgerinitiative «Deutsche Wohnen & Co enteignen» gestartete Volksbegehren zur Vergesellschaftung Berliner Wohnungsbestände rechtlich zulässig ist. Nachdem das Vorhaben somit für gesetzmä- ßig und politisch machbar erklärt worden ist, wird die Lobby der Immobilienkonzerne nun alles daransetzen, es als wirt- schaftsschädigend darzustellen, und ihm vorwerfen, es sei von «autoritärem» Geist.

DIE ZEIT , 2022

Ich denke über die Grenzen des kritischen Denkens nach. Unser akademisches Wissen ist heute so um... more Ich denke über die Grenzen des kritischen Denkens nach. Unser akademisches Wissen ist heute so umfassend wie nie, wir wissen mehr denn je über unsere Probleme, ob es um den Klimawandel geht, die Wohnungskrise oder die wachsende soziale Ungleichheit. Aber gleichzeitig ist all dieses kritische Wissen weitgehend folgenlos. Der Geist der Kritik wirkt oft wie gelähmt. Der Kapitalismus hingegen ist beweglich. Er handelt, indem er von seinen Kritikern lernt, und zeigt, was schon Karl Marx gepriesen [https://www.zeit.de/2018/18/karl-marx-200jahre-analyse-kapitalismus] hat: dass er ein revolutionäres und höchst innovatives Potenzial hat. Er kooptiert einfach Ideen. Die Idee der Revolution wird übernommen, um aus einem Getränk Geld zu machen, oder die Idee des Teilens wird eingesetzt, um profitabel Schlafgelegenheiten zu verkaufen. Mich interessiert nun, ob man vom Gegner, dem Kapitalismus, diese Fähigkeit des kreativen Umlernens übernehmen kann, ohne die eigenen Werte der Gleichheit und der Verteilungsgerechtigkeit aufzugeben. Was heißt das für mich als Stadtforscherin? Ich habe über Warschau promoviert: Die von den Deutschen im Krieg zerstörte Stadt [

Across Theory and Practice: Thinking Through Urban Research, 2018

Kwartalnik Naukowy Studia Regionalne I Lokalne, 2014

Anthropology & Materialism, 2013

Matthew Gandy, BJ Nilsen, "The Acoustic City", Apr 2014

Anthropology & Materialism, 1 (2013), Oct 15, 2013

In his methodology as well as his political thought Benjamin remains faithful to the principle to... more In his methodology as well as his political thought Benjamin remains faithful to the principle to proceed “always radically, never consistently”. Therefore, the greatest challenge for a contemporary city researcher inspired by Benjamin is to operationalise his materialist methodology. Benjamin’s anthropological materialism cannot be reached within the fixed limits of any discipline, but rather places itself “on the crossroads of magic and positivism” (Adorno); the dialectical image is not a tool of his methodology but its culminating point where positivism turns to magic. To reach this point, Benjamin conducts perceptive and
Striking Dialectical Sparks from the Stones of our Cities 18
Anthropology & Materialism, 1 | 2013
analytical experiments that can be treated as dialectical études, exercises in seeing. The paper examines some of these techniques, exploring their philosophical context and testing them on a contemporary example: the Ernst-Thälmann-Monument in Berlin.

Chasing Warsaw: Socio-Material Dynamics of Urban Change since 1990, Oct 9, 2012

Chasing Warsaw. Socio-Material Dynamics of Urban Change after 1990., Oct 9, 2012

Anthropology & Materialism, 2 (2014)

The big-scale transformation of land property regimes in cities of Central and Eastern Europe aft... more The big-scale transformation of land property regimes in cities of Central and Eastern Europe after 1990 has been surprisingly neglected by critical urban scholars. Yet, an idiosyncratic regime of the production of space in Poland offers us a lens through which to look at Central and Eastern Europe’s semi-peripheral, variegated capitalism. This talk will chart the field of force relations between processes of global accumulation and locally developed forms of “political capitalism,” providing a brief overview of the new forms of land value speculation, as well as of the predatory system of “dispossession by restitution” that has developed in Poland from the 1990s on.

Warsaw: The Orders of Chaos As Kiril Stanilov once noted, chaos is a zeitgeist of post-social... more Warsaw: The Orders of Chaos

As Kiril Stanilov once noted, chaos is a zeitgeist of post-socialist transformation. Indeed, in the urban discourses after 1989 chaos became a notorious word, ever returning in daily conversations, press commentaries and academic papers. However, “chaos” as a theoretical concept not necessarily belongs to a modernist dichotomy of order/disorder. As an academic non-notion, chaos is rather a post-modern chameleonic word which, to stick to the Hegelian language, has its cunning. This cunning makes certain kinds of systemic violence appear accidental rather than generated by the system itself. The key to understand it is the difference between (i) “chaos” as a term used in public and political discourse, (ii) chaos as a structural condition of power relations between distinct pockets of order and (iii) chaos as a creative force of bottom-up insurgency of citizen reinventing the framework of vernacular urban life.

Using the examples from contemporary Warsaw, I will scrutinize the use of the term “chaos” in Poland and single out its particular contexts, functions and political uses. The aim is to show what distinct social phenomena and power relations are hidden beneath the superficial impression of chaos and how a “chaotic mode of domination” is being created and recreated against “chaotic insurgency” of urban citizen. Referring to the preceding speakers and their research in the cities of Global South, I want to open the debate how the experience of Eastern Europe may be relevant to contemporary urban debate, hitherto mostly focused on the North-South axis.

This is my translation of a poem "Widokówka z tego świata" into English