Julian Brigstocke | Cardiff University (original) (raw)

Papers by Julian Brigstocke

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers

Within emerging fields of research focusing on neuro‐urbanism, neuro‐geographies, and biosocialit... more Within emerging fields of research focusing on neuro‐urbanism, neuro‐geographies, and biosociality, which experiment with using emerging mobile biosensor methods, few if any have used them to research socio‐spatial life in communities that suffer high levels of violence and other socio‐spatial injustices. Extending non‐representational accounts of the body, emotions, and affect, this paper discusses an experimental geography–neuroscience collaboration, working in a favela of Rio de Janeiro to explore the embodied urban emotions and affects of violently bordered urban communities. Emphasising non‐representational, corporeal spatial practices in a study of women living in Brazil's favelas, we use electrodermal activity biosensors to propose a novel methodological and analytical approach that focuses on forms of affective debilitation and resilience. Theoretically, we draw on biopolitical theory and border theory to propose a method that avoids oppositions between biopolitical and ...

The Sociological Review

This article offers a creative disjunctive feminist analysis of affective rhythms within a comple... more This article offers a creative disjunctive feminist analysis of affective rhythms within a complexly bordered complex of favelas in Rio de Janeiro. It explores the gendered atmospheric constitution of authority in the favela’s violent border spaces, arguing that authority is partly embodied through a channelling of attention. Attention is conceptualised as involving not just conscious intentions, perceptions and emotions, but also non-conscious rhythms of autonomous affective self-regulation. The article is structured through a tripartite disjunctive form that expresses the bordering of city, body and experience. Drawing on qualitative interview data, quantitative electrodermal activity physiological data and creative writing, the article dwells with the materiality of words and the forms of affects to express material and physiological aspects of emotion and affect in journeys around the internal border-spaces of the city. Adapting the modernist tradition of ‘stream of consciousnes...

Social Theory & Health, 2015

Health inequalities research has shown a growing interest in participatory ways of working. Howev... more Health inequalities research has shown a growing interest in participatory ways of working. However, the theoretical ideas underpinning mainstream approaches to participation remain underexplored. This article contributes to theorising participatory practice for the kind of egalitarian politics to which many of those focused on reducing health inequalities are committed. First, we argue that the ambitions of participatory practice should be concentrated on 'overcoming alienation', rather than 'attaining freedom from power'. An overemphasis on negative freedom may help to explain a worrying confluence between participatory democracy and neo-liberal marketization agendaswe look instead to traditions of participatory practice that emphasize positive freedom and capacities for collaboration. Second, we discuss some such perspectives though consideration of critical pedagogy, but highlighting the role of materialised relations of authority, spaces, objects and encounters. Third, we explore the relationship between objectivity and alienation, arguing that participatory politics, against alienation, can look to reclaim objectivity for participatory, lively, practice. We then seek to show that participatory practice can play a role in creating common knowledge and culture, and in fostering a sense of public ownership over objective knowledge and institutions concerned with health. We conclude by asking what this looks like in practice, drawing some 'rules of thumb' for participatory practice in health inequalities research from existing inspiring examples.

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2023

Within emerging fields of research focusing on neuro-urbanism, neuro-geographies, and biosocialit... more Within emerging fields of research focusing on neuro-urbanism, neuro-geographies, and biosociality, which experiment with using emerging mobile biosensor methods, few if any have used them to research socio-spatial life in communities that suffer high levels of violence and other socio-spatial injustices. Extending non-representational accounts of the body, emotions, and affect, this paper discusses an experimental geography-neuroscience collaboration, working in a favela of Rio de Janeiro to explore the embodied urban emotions and affects of violently bordered urban communities. Emphasising non-representational, corporeal spatial practices in a study of women living in Brazil's favelas, we use electrodermal activity biosensors to propose a novel methodological and analytical approach that focuses on forms of affective debilitation and resilience. Theoretically, we draw on biopolitical theory and border theory to propose a method that avoids oppositions between biopolitical and necropolitical accounts of borders. The aim of the research, conducted in June 2016, is to understand levels of affective debilitation or resilience among women living in the Maré Complex of favelas in Rio de Janeiro. Using a wearable biosensor, we took measures of electrodermal activity of eight women as they undertook one of their routine, everyday journeys within the favela. We also conducted an hour-long qualitative interview with each participant. We find that for all our participants, navigating the favela's violent border spaces subjects their bodies to very high levels of affective and cognitive demand. While some women responded to this with stress reactions that created acute levels of affective debilitation, others responded very strongly, showing exceptionally high levels of affective resilience. Our research highlights the affective labour required of women to co-construct urban borders, and emphasizes their agency and forms of everyday resistance in shaping the favela's affective atmospheres. Combined biosensing (electrodermal activity/galvanic skin response) data and interview data reveal that women living in the favela experience high levels of

Sociological Review, 2022

This article offers a creative disjunctive feminist analysis of affective rhythms within a comple... more This article offers a creative disjunctive feminist analysis of affective rhythms within a complexly bordered complex of favelas in Rio de Janeiro. It explores the gendered atmospheric constitution of authority in the favela's violent border spaces, arguing that authority is partly embodied through a channelling of attention. Attention is conceptualised as involving not just conscious intentions, perceptions and emotions, but also non-conscious rhythms of autonomous affective self-regulation. The article is structured through a tripartite disjunctive form that expresses the bordering of city, body and experience. Drawing on qualitative interview data, quantitative electrodermal activity physiological data and creative writing, the article dwells with the materiality of words and the forms of affects to express material and physiological aspects of emotion and affect in journeys around the internal border-spaces of the city. Adapting the modernist tradition of 'stream of 1106515S OR0010.

cultural geographies

by virtue of a shared concern with corvid life, each chapter seeps into and enlivens others. In t... more by virtue of a shared concern with corvid life, each chapter seeps into and enlivens others. In this spirit, the work is punctuated by short vignettes elaborating particular corvid behaviours – including stealing, cooperating and gifting – which both thicken the figure of the ‘crow’, while emphasising the difference that abounds within and between such creatures. While the nature and expression of corvid agency remains open to debate, uncertainty need not necessitate taking epistemological shelter amidst mechanical representations of the nonhuman. As van Dooren argues, uncertainty can be an invitation to speculate on the possibility that corvids are more interesting than we currently appreciate. Ultimately, The Wake of Crows is about asking a key question of contemporary multispecies ecologies: ‘what else is possible?’ (p. 162). This question encapsulates van Dooren’s ‘restless’ ethical praxis, in which ‘the good must be carefully crafted, in the multiple, again and again’ (p. 13). The intention is not to resolve disputes but instead advocate for ongoing, situated and careful attention to human–animal relations as they occur, and with an eye to the alternative, more liveable arrangements that might be nurtured. And yet, such a focus does not ignore that, in each empirical situation, decisions must be made soon if lives (and worlds) are to continue or be (re) made. A profound tension – between the desire not to advocate a way forward in each case to instead abound in its complexity; and the urgency of the situation facing crows (and others) – haunts the book. Yet, it is clear that the fraught work of making provisional, liveable worlds cannot proceed without the kind of attentiveness practiced by van Dooren here. A range of possible worlds begin to take shape precisely because of the stories he tells. Here, geographers and others might take on the task of exploring how such acts of worlding can (and do) occur in the wake of other human–nonhuman relationships. Ben Garlick School of Humanities, York St John University, UK

Progress in Human Geography, 2021

We propose a geography that pluralizes the sites, practices and politics of authority. We defend ... more We propose a geography that pluralizes the sites, practices and politics of authority. We defend an approach that tracks less perceptible forms of authority emerging through everyday micropolitics and experimental practices. In contrast to dominant definitions of authority as institutionalized legitimate power, we define authority as a relation of guidance emerging from recognition of inequalities in access to truth, experience or objectivity. Analysing four intersecting areas of authority (algorithmic, experiential, expert and participatory authority), we propose analyses grounded in political aesthetics that trace authority's affective force, and its role in disclosing and contesting the common.

Journal of Political Power, Apr 30, 2013

/terms-andconditions esp. Part II. Intellectual property and access and license types, § 11. (c) ... more /terms-andconditions esp. Part II. Intellectual property and access and license types, § 11. (c) Open Access Content The use of Taylor & Francis Open articles and Taylor & Francis Open Select articles for commercial purposes is strictly prohibited. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

GeoHumanities, 2021

Sand is a key material foundation of modern cities. In Hong Kong, a city founded in British merca... more Sand is a key material foundation of modern cities. In Hong Kong, a city founded in British mercantile imperialism, the extraction of sand needed for construction and reclamation projects has always been tied up with violent dispossession. Experimenting with the forms and poetics of postcolonial and new materialist critical theory, and thinking with sand’s distinctive materialities and forms of drift, this paper develops a speculative critique of Hong Kong’s sandy infrastructure. Hong Kong’s colonial and postcolonial authority is legitimized by a continual process of surfacing and resurfacing, claiming and reclaiming. By evoking the process of saltation, one of sand’s distinctive mechanisms of movement, the paper uncovers utopian potential in sand’s unsettled qualities, searching for a new ethics of ground-down grounds.

Social & Cultural Geography, 2020

How is it possible to resist with authority? This article explores the role of humour and laughte... more How is it possible to resist with authority? This article explores the role of humour and laughter in contesting authoritative knowledge and discourse. Bringing Michel Foucault’saccountof‘parrhesia’,orcourageoustruth-telling,intoconversationwith geographies of humour, laughter, and authority, the paper explores affective, non-representational modes of truth telling in early anarchist spatial culture. Focusing on an anarchist cabaret in 1890s Paris which humorously parodied the forced labour camps to which anarchists had been deported after the 1871 Paris Commune, as well as on the grotesque laughter of an executed anarchist’s severed head, the paper develops a new theorisation of how satire, parody, irony and the grotesque were deployed in militant truth-telling to articulate a new aesthetics of revolutionary authority.

Journal of Geography in Higher Education , 2020

Authority is one of the most problematic and ambiguous concepts in social and educational theory.... more Authority is one of the most problematic and ambiguous concepts in social and educational theory. Authority is a relation that is based on disparities of knowledge, expertise or experience. Drawing on teaching observations and interviews with undergraduate students and lecturers about their experiences of large-group teaching, I argue that in contrast to lecturers’ focus on professional authority and expertise, many students respond most strongly to experiential forms of authority in lectures. In other words, there is a disparity between students’ and educators’ conceptions of pedagogic authority. Through a discussion of a teaching intervention aiming to playfully experiment with authority relations in the lecture theatre, the paper contributes to a conceptualization of an emancipatory and experimental politics of educational authority, one where students are challenged, not only to think independently, but to see their own existence – the grounds for their actions – as an important intellectual problem to engage with. This requires moving beyond the dominant Weberian ideal types of educational authority (traditional, rational-legal, charismatic, and charismatic-intellectual) towards a fuller understanding of experiential forms of authority.

SAGE Research Methods Foundations, 2019

This entry discusses methdologies for researching affect. Affect has emerged since the turn of th... more This entry discusses methdologies for researching affect. Affect has emerged since the turn of the 21st century as a key concern across the social sciences and humanities. This entry provides an overview of some of the responses to the methodological challenges of researching affect. It is not possible to provide here an exhaustive overview of all the approaches that have been taken in the study of affect. Instead,
three notable, yet diverse, responses are picked out for discussion. First, the study of affect through ethnographic methods—and specifically embodied or autoethnographic work—is discussed. Next, the use of
various technologies for recording and sensing affects is introduced. Finally, a range of more experimental approaches which mix artistic dispositions with social science research practices are flagged. These sections do not provide a step-by-step “how to” when it comes to researching affect. Rather, they suggest what might be done in light of developments around affect in terms of the sort of disposition towards research practice

Health, 2018

Through two case studies, the Hearing Voices Movement and Stepping Out Theatre Company, we demons... more Through two case studies, the Hearing Voices Movement and Stepping Out Theatre Company, we demonstrate how successful participatory organisations can be seen as ‘engines of alternative objectivity’ rather than as the subjective other to objective, biomedical science. With the term ‘alternative objectivity’, we point to collectivisations of experience that are different to biomedical science but are nonetheless forms of objectivity. Taking inspiration from feminist theory, science studies and sociology of culture, we argue that participatory mental health organisations generate their own forms of objectivity through novel modes of collectivising experience. The Hearing Voices Movement cultivates an ‘activist science’ that generates an alternative objective knowledge through a commitment to experimentation, controlling, testing, recording and sharing experience. Stepping Out distinguishes itself from drama therapy by cultivating an alternative objective culture through its embrace of high production values, material culture, aesthetic standards. A crucial aspect of participatory practice is overcoming alienation, enabling people to get outside of themselves, encounter material worlds and join forces with others.

GeoHumanities, 2016

This experimental photo essay responds to a growing foreboding that the future has been occupied,... more This experimental photo essay responds to a growing foreboding that the future has been occupied, colonized, or destroyed. It is a methodological experiment with attunement and futurity, aiming not to reattune to authentic forms of temporality or to rediscover lost forms of imagination and memory, but to make creative use of our temporal misattunements and disconnections. Drawing on research in a postindustrial neighbourhood of Cardiff, the essay dwells on the new temporalities that might emerge from an inertia of time.

This introduction to the themed section on attunement explores the varied practices, politics, an... more This introduction to the themed section on attunement explores the varied practices, politics, and aesthetics of attuning to more-than-human voices, temporalities, and material processes. What happens when we attempt to attune ourselves to forms of agency that do not possess a conventionally recognized voice to be amplified? What new intersections among research, invention, and political agency might emerge when voices have to be assembled rather than merely amplified, and when new methods of listening need to be invented? The concept of attunement speaks to subtle, affective modulations in the relations between different bodies. We describe four broad traditions of scholarship that render differently the concept of attunement. First is the Kantian sense of attunement as a harmonious and playful mediation between the human faculties of imagination and understanding. Second, attunement can be seen as a preconscious way in which we find ourselves disposed, or tuned, to our environment. Third, attunement can be conceived of as a form of embodied relationality and interconnectedness that capacitates individual empathy and grounds the possibility of coproduction. Finally, attunement to vastly different spatiotemporal scales can be seen as strange, uncanny, and uncertain—transient achievements that bring us into contact with lost futures, haunted presents, and even different versions of ourselves. The contributions we have drawn together explore the concept of attunement in relation to themes that include technology, aesthetics, human–animal relations, class, landscape, feminist, political, and postcolonial theory.

Social Theory and Health, 2015

Health inequalities research has shown a growing interest in participatory ways of working. Howev... more Health inequalities research has shown a growing interest in participatory ways of working. However, the theoretical ideas underpinning mainstream approaches to participation remain underexplored. This article contributes to theorising participatory
practice for the kind of egalitarian politics to which many of those focused on reducing health inequalities are committed. First, we argue that the ambitions of participatory practice should be concentrated on ‘overcoming alienation’, rather than ‘attaining freedom from
power’. An over-emphasis on negative freedom may help to explain a worrying confluence between participatory democracy and neo-liberal marketization agendas – we look instead to traditions of participatory practice that emphasize positive freedom and capacities for
collaboration. Second, we discuss some such perspectives though consideration of critical pedagogy, but highlighting the role of materialised relations of authority, spaces, objects
and encounters. Third, we explore the relationship between objectivity and alienation, arguing that participatory politics, against alienation, can look to reclaim objectivity for participatory, lively, practice. We then seek to show that participatory practice can play a role in creating common knowledge and culture, and in fostering a sense of public ownership over
objective knowledge and institutions concerned with health. We conclude by asking what this looks like in practice, drawing some ‘rules of thumb’ for participatory practice in health inequalities research from existing inspiring examples.

Journal of Political Power, 2013

This article develops an account of the aesthetic structure of ‘immanent’, non-foundational forms... more This article develops an account of the aesthetic structure of ‘immanent’, non-foundational forms of authority. It argues for the need to develop a positive account of decentralized authority as an important constitutive form of social bond. Through a genealogical reading of the cultural experiments of the artistic community of late nineteenth century Montmartre, it builds an analysis of the affective and perceptual structures of immanent authority. Authority, it argues, operates across three axes of experience: amplitude, gravity and distance. Although the artistic experiments and cultural politics of fin-de-siècle Montmartre were politically naive, they offer an illuminating lens through which to view the emerging experiential structures of authority in the twentieth century.

Journal of Political Power, 2013

The papers in this special issue approach the question of authority in ways that that take into a... more The papers in this special issue approach the question of authority in ways that that take into account three key attributes of authority. Authority, we argue, is plural, positive and experiential.

Theory, Culture & Society, 2013

In The Use of Pleasure, Michel Foucault suggests that it is possible to read Walter Benjamin’s wr... more In The Use of Pleasure, Michel Foucault suggests that it is possible to read Walter
Benjamin’s writings on Baudelaire as a contribution to a genealogy of ethics. This
article experiments with reading Benjamin in this way. It shows that a distinctive
analysis of each of the four elements of Foucauldian ethics (ethical substance, mode
of subjectivation, ethical practice and telos) can be found in Benjamin’s work on
Baudelaire and the Paris arcades. Specifically, the article makes the case for reading
Benjamin in terms of his valuable contribution to understandings of the role played by
art in modern forms of ‘parrhesia’, or courageous truth-telling. However, whereas
Foucault’s notion of ‘arts of living’ focuses on challenging actual relations of power,
Benjamin’s focuses on activating potential forms of power. In this way, Benjamin’s
ethical framework tests the limits of Foucault’s conceptualization of the government
of self and others.

Cultural Geographies, 2012

Humour was at the core of the spatial imaginary of the emerging French avant-garde of the 1880s. ... more Humour was at the core of the spatial imaginary of the emerging French avant-garde of the 1880s. But what was the specific role of different forms of humour in their attempts to re-imagine urban place and community? In this article I develop a non-representational historical geography of the aesthetics of place in fin-de-siècle Montmartre. The article analyses how Montmartre artists used humour in order to inject new life and vitality into the urban environment. The ambivalence of humour made it a powerful device through which to experiment with creating a novel experience of place and stylizing an affirmative urban ethos. Two modes of humour in particular were predominant: irony and pantomime buffoonery. Through irony, they attempted to create an experience of place that encompassed the contradictory and fugitive nature of the modern city. In buffoonery, they found a way of affirming the city’s potential at the same time as remaining alive to its suffering and violence. In combination, this urban ethos can be theorized as a form of ‘affirmative pessimism’.

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers

The Sociological Review

Social Theory & Health, 2015

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2023

Sociological Review, 2022

This article offers a creative disjunctive feminist analysis of affective rhythms within a comple... more This article offers a creative disjunctive feminist analysis of affective rhythms within a complexly bordered complex of favelas in Rio de Janeiro. It explores the gendered atmospheric constitution of authority in the favela's violent border spaces, arguing that authority is partly embodied through a channelling of attention. Attention is conceptualised as involving not just conscious intentions, perceptions and emotions, but also non-conscious rhythms of autonomous affective self-regulation. The article is structured through a tripartite disjunctive form that expresses the bordering of city, body and experience. Drawing on qualitative interview data, quantitative electrodermal activity physiological data and creative writing, the article dwells with the materiality of words and the forms of affects to express material and physiological aspects of emotion and affect in journeys around the internal border-spaces of the city. Adapting the modernist tradition of 'stream of 1106515S OR0010.

cultural geographies

Progress in Human Geography, 2021

Journal of Political Power, Apr 30, 2013

GeoHumanities, 2021

Social & Cultural Geography, 2020

Journal of Geography in Higher Education , 2020

SAGE Research Methods Foundations, 2019

Health, 2018

GeoHumanities, 2016

Social Theory and Health, 2015

Health inequalities research has shown a growing interest in participatory ways of working. Howev... more Health inequalities research has shown a growing interest in participatory ways of working. However, the theoretical ideas underpinning mainstream approaches to participation remain underexplored. This article contributes to theorising participatory
practice for the kind of egalitarian politics to which many of those focused on reducing health inequalities are committed. First, we argue that the ambitions of participatory practice should be concentrated on ‘overcoming alienation’, rather than ‘attaining freedom from
power’. An over-emphasis on negative freedom may help to explain a worrying confluence between participatory democracy and neo-liberal marketization agendas – we look instead to traditions of participatory practice that emphasize positive freedom and capacities for
collaboration. Second, we discuss some such perspectives though consideration of critical pedagogy, but highlighting the role of materialised relations of authority, spaces, objects
and encounters. Third, we explore the relationship between objectivity and alienation, arguing that participatory politics, against alienation, can look to reclaim objectivity for participatory, lively, practice. We then seek to show that participatory practice can play a role in creating common knowledge and culture, and in fostering a sense of public ownership over
objective knowledge and institutions concerned with health. We conclude by asking what this looks like in practice, drawing some ‘rules of thumb’ for participatory practice in health inequalities research from existing inspiring examples.

Journal of Political Power, 2013

Theory, Culture & Society, 2013

Cultural Geographies, 2012

Connected Communities Foundation Series, 2018

This booklet explores the practice and philosophy of ‘more-than-human research’ which seeks to bu... more This booklet explores the practice and philosophy of ‘more-than-human
research’ which seeks to build collaborative research with non-human/
more-than-human others. It discusses its philosophical foundations
in pragmatism, ecofeminism and indigenous knowledge traditions and
identify some of the theoretical and practical challenges that are raised
when researchers from humanist traditions begin to explore how to
‘give voice’ to non-human others. In the review, they consider how
researchers might expand their ‘repertoires of listening’ and address
the ethical challenges of such research. To ground their analysis, they
discuss the work of the Listening to Voices Project as well as accounts
of researcher-animal partnerships and projects that draw on Mayan
cosmology as a means of working with sustainable forestry in Guatemala.

ISBN: 9780957588219, 2017

We live in times of social, mental and environmental crisis. Can we learn to listen better to voi... more We live in times of social, mental and environmental crisis. Can we learn to listen better to voices that escape the usual registers of meaning? Can doing so help us address these multiple ecological crises? The contributions to this book search for more sustainable, creative, and empowering relationships with the nonhuman and more-than-human world. The extensively illustrated collection of essays, stories, songs, drawings, and colour photographs explores creative ways of listening with the materials, energies and vitality of non-human life. Drawing on poetry, political activism, art, and academic research, the essays search for new ways of inhabiting a damaged world.

Across the globe, political movements opposing privatisation, enclosures, and other spatial contr... more Across the globe, political movements opposing privatisation, enclosures, and other spatial controls are coalescing towards the idea of the ‘commons’. As a result, struggles over the commons and common life are now coming to the forefront of both political activism and scholarly enquiry. This book advances academic debates concerning the spatialities of the commons and draws out the diverse materialities, temporalities, and experiences of practices of commoning.

Part one, "Materialising the Commons" focuses on the performance of new geographical imaginations in spatial and material practices of commoning. Part two, "Spaces of Commoning", explores the importance of the turn from ‘commons’ to ‘commoning’, bringing together chapters focusing on the "doing" of commons, and how spaces, materials, bodies and abstract flows are intertwined in these complex and excessive processes. Part three, "An Expanded Commons", explores the broader registers and spaces in which the concept of the commons is at stake and highlights how and where the commons can open new areas of action and research. Part four, "The Capture of the Commons", questions the particular interdependence of ‘the commons’ and ‘enclosure’ assumed within commons literature framed by the concept of neoliberalism.

Providing a comprehensive introduction to the diverse ways in which ideas of the commons are being conceptualised and enacted both throughout the social sciences and in practical action, this book foregrounds the commons as an arena for political thought and sets an agenda for future research.

ISBN: 9781138250772, 2014

Could the vitality of embodied experience create a foundation for a new form of revolutionary aut... more Could the vitality of embodied experience create a foundation for a new form of revolutionary authority? The Life of the City is a bold and innovative reassessment of the early urban avant-garde movements that sought to re-imagine and reinvent the experiential life of the city. Constructing a ground-breaking theoretical analysis of the relationships between biological life, urban culture, and modern forms of biopolitical ’experiential authority’, Julian Brigstocke traces the failed attempts of Parisian radicals to turn the ’crisis of authority’ in late nineteenth-century Paris into an opportunity to invent new forms of urban commons. The most comprehensive account to date of the spatial politics of the literary, artistic and anarchist groups that settled in the Montmartre area of Paris after the suppression of the 1871 Paris Commune, The Life of the City analyses the reasons why laughter emerged as the unlikely tool through which Parisian bohemians attempted to forge a new, non-representational biopolitics of sensation. Ranging from the carnivalesque performances of artistic cabarets such as the Chat Noir to the laughing violence of anarchist terrorism, The Life of the City is a timely analysis of the birth of a carnivalesque politics that remains highly influential in contemporary urban movements.

ISBN: 9780957588202, 2013

This collection of short, accessible essays proposes a new theoretical agenda for participatory d... more This collection of short, accessible essays proposes a new
theoretical agenda for participatory democracy. Calls
for increased participation are becoming ubiquitous
throughout social life, from politics to community
engagement, and from the arts to education. These demands
raise important problems and trouble many dominant
assumptions about the nature of democratic practice in the
21st century.

One assumption, however, remains largely unquestioned:
that authentic democratic participation is solely a problem of
transferring power to marginalized groups. The researchers,
activists and practitioners who contribute to this provocative
book, by contrast, make the case for a parallel project: the
democratization of authority. The craft of democracy – the
struggle for common life – requires inventing new ways of
creating authority and objectivity amongst silenced voices,
truths and experiences.

Sandscapes: Writing the British Seaside, 2020

We do not only encounter sandscapes in beaches, deserts, and playgrounds, but in all the diverse ... more We do not only encounter sandscapes in beaches, deserts, and playgrounds, but in all the diverse spaces that make use of sand for construction, land reclamation, road building, fossil fuel extraction, and much else. The sand we use to build our cities does not come from nowhere. It has a story to tell. This chapter works with sand’s primary form of drift, saltation—a movement in short hops, leaps, and jumps—to explore how sand connects diverse places, issues, and power relations. Sand drifts across spaces, times, and scales. It is equally at home in land, water, and air. It forms an archive of pulverised stones and fragmented stories. It exists in sandscapes that are as varied and mixed as sand itself. We drift across multiple sandy archives, from the seaside town of Deal, to the neighbouring Goodwin Sands, into African winds, deep time, and sand conflicts in colonial Hong Kong. The chapter asks whether thinking with sand, and thinking as a sandy being, might help us reach our way towards a planetary ethic that welcomes the Earth into our experience of self, and encourage a new thinking from the shoreline.

Valuing the Impact of Collaborative Research: Theory, Methods and Tools, 2017

When we ask 'what is the legacy of a project?', the response necessarily implies a values judgeme... more When we ask 'what is the legacy of a project?', the response necessarily implies a values judgement, but such values are often implicit. In this work, we explore ways of conceptualizing and evaluating legacies of community-university collaborations by starting from values: specifically the human values of those individuals and organisations involved in each collaborative project. Through a carefully developed process of making the values present in collaborative project teams explicit, we have identified multiple legacies, as seen through the new values lens. Repeating this process with project partners separately revealed further legacies of the project, linked but defined by different values perspectives.

Space, Power and the Commons: The Struggle for Alternative Futures, 2016

This chapter, taking as its starting point the widespread calls within the Occupy movement to ‘oc... more This chapter, taking as its starting point the widespread calls within the Occupy movement to ‘occupy the future’, examines some ways in which time can be analysed and practised as a form of commons. Developing a theory of temporal commons, the chapter explores the aesthetic figures through which time and the future are represented in posters, artworks and advertisements that campaign for future justice. In particular, it analyses the figure of ‘future generations’ in discourses concerning the temporal commons. In contrast to attempts to represent future generations in the present, thus rendering them calculable and knowable, the chapter argues that the promise of the call to ‘occupy the future’ does not lie in techniques for rendering the future co-present, but instead comes from an attunement to forms of ‘time without me’.

Space, Power and the Commons: The Struggle for Alternative Futures, 2015

Urban Research and Practice, 2012

Cultural Geographies , 2012

Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2010

is, one where power is sovereign and can be exchanged like a commodity, Foucault was able to famo... more is, one where power is sovereign and can be exchanged like a commodity, Foucault was able to famously reverse Clausewitz's proposition to say that politics is the continuation of war by other means. For the editors, therefore, what is going on here is not only political economy but security, defense of society, issues of knowledge of the functioning of the disposition of things and people across the governed territory, population, and finally, security and war. Perhaps understandably in the context of today the book focuses on the war on terror more than Foucault's race war. But the former phrase was, after all, unknown to Foucault, and as Ladelle McWhorter (2009) has shown in a book that deserves to be read alongside this one, an understanding of racism requires also an analysis of sexual oppression. With the exception of Bigo and possibly Fassi, it also says relatively little about territorial strategies. Indeed, Dillon sees biopolitics as security of populations, rather than governance of territory. But does this mean that geography drops out altogether? Strategies of security are internally focused with great effort along the walls of the protected zones. Racism and sexism are experienced differently in different spatial settings. People are`sorted' differentially. Readers will perhaps have to work hard to benefit from a reading of this book, despite its timely topic.