Colin Marx | University College London (original) (raw)
Papers by Colin Marx
In this thesis I show how narrow representations of 'the economy' in urban poverty discou... more In this thesis I show how narrow representations of 'the economy' in urban poverty discourses and practices have channelled the attention of academics and policy makers in particular ways as they have attempted to address urban poverty. I explore representations of the relationship between poverty and economic growth by these groups to show how dominant urban poverty discourses and practices tend, at best, to place poor people in the informal economy or at worst, outside of the economies of cities. One reason for this is traced to poverty studies' understanding of poor people as independent units undertaking survivalist activities or livelihoods. However, thinking of poor people as making up dispersed sets of networks connected into a diverse economy opens up new spatial imaginations of the city and new possibilities for policies aimed at achieving social justice. Drawing on the example of the city of Durban, South Africa, I explore how thinking about poor people's a...
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2018
A spatial confluence of urban informal settlement and HIV and Aids in sub-Saharan Africa provides... more A spatial confluence of urban informal settlement and HIV and Aids in sub-Saharan Africa provides a unique opportunity to challenge inadequate state responses to both phenomena. UN-Habitat (2011) estimates 62% of Africans in sub-Saharan Africa live in informal settlement. 28% of people living with HIV and AIDS live in just 14 cities in southern and eastern Africa equating to 15% of the global epidemic and 29.1% of the total estimated number of new HIV infections take place in informal settlements (van Renterghem and Jackson 2009). Inadequate responses to either phenomenon are traced to a calculation that (neoliberal) macro-economic stability is more critical to maintaining national wealth than adequately resolving problems faced by poor women and men in informal settlements in epidemics. This paper explores how this confluence offers ways of developing alternatives to the current urban imaginaries of informal settlements and epidemics that inform such problematic policy calculations.
In this introduction to the special issue ‘Transcending (in)formal urbanism’ we outline the impor... more In this introduction to the special issue ‘Transcending (in)formal urbanism’ we outline the important place that informal urbanism has acquired in urban theorising, and an agenda to further this standing towards an even more explicit role in defining how we research cities. We note how informality has frequently been perceived as the formal’s ‘other’ implying a necessary ‘othering’ of informality that creates dualisms between formal and informal, a localised informal and a globalising formal, or an informal resistance and a formal neoliberal control, that this special issue seeks to challenge. The introduction, and the issue, aim to prompt a dialogue across a diversity of disciplinary approaches still rarely in communication, with the goal of going beyond (‘transcending’) the othering of informality for the benefit of a more inclusive urban theory contribution. The introduction suggests three related steps that could help with transcending dualisms in the understanding of informalit...
The City in Urban Poverty, 2015
Foreword Jennifer Robinson Preface Charlotte Lemanski and Colin Marx Introduction Charlotte Leman... more Foreword Jennifer Robinson Preface Charlotte Lemanski and Colin Marx Introduction Charlotte Lemanski and Colin Marx 1. Poverty and 'the city Susan Parnell 2. Women in cities: prosperity or poverty? A need for multidimensional and multispatial analysis Sylvia Chant and Kerwin Datu 3. Space and capabilities: approaching informal settlement upgrading through a capability perspective Alexandre Apsan Frediani 4. Constructing informality and ordinary places: A place-making approach to urban informal settlements Melanie Lombard 5. Constructing spatialized knowledge on urban poverty: (multiple) dimensions, mapping spaces of deprivations, and claim-making processes in urban governance Isa Baud 6. Refugees and Urban Poverty: A Historical View from Calcutta Romola Sanyal 7. Expanding the 'Room For Manoeuvre': Community-Led Finance in Mumbai, India Caren Levy 8. Where the street has no name: reflections on legality and spatiality of vending Amlanjyoti Goswami 9. Gangs, guns and the city: urban policy in dangerous places Gareth Jones and Dennis Rodgers Policy Reflection Ellen Wratten and Charlotte Heath Conclusion Charlotte Lemanski and Colin Marx
International Planning Studies
Urban Studies
How do Anglophone urban scholars know urban informalities? This article reviews three dominant wa... more How do Anglophone urban scholars know urban informalities? This article reviews three dominant ways of knowing urban informality, noting that, despite the profoundly rich insights they each provide, two critiques of the overall concept endure. These are that the concept is often imprecise, and that the contribution to knowing ‘the urban’ more generally remains clearly circumscribed to the ‘urban non-west’. In our view, these limitations curtail the possibilities of sharpening our understanding of the relationship to inequalities and injustices. We work with these critiques, suggesting that they represent two sides of the same problem, associated with binaries. In doing so, we build on the existing emphasis on practices and work across the three dominant ways of knowing urban informalities. This reveals that binaries are not held together magically and transparently so that each is the mirror opposite. Instead, the difference is constituted through unnamed aspects of common denominat...
Urban Studies
In this introduction to the special issue ‘Transcending (in)formal urbanism’ we outline the impor... more In this introduction to the special issue ‘Transcending (in)formal urbanism’ we outline the important place that informal urbanism has acquired in urban theorising, and an agenda to further this standing towards an even more explicit role in defining how we research cities. We note how informality has frequently been perceived as the formal’s ‘other’ implying a necessary ‘othering’ of informality that creates dualisms between formal and informal, a localised informal and a globalising formal, or an informal resistance and a formal neoliberal control, that this special issue seeks to challenge. The introduction, and the issue, aim to prompt a dialogue across a diversity of disciplinary approaches still rarely in communication, with the goal of going beyond (‘transcending’) the othering of informality for the benefit of a more inclusive urban theory contribution. The introduction suggests three related steps that could help with transcending dualisms in the understanding of informalit...
Urban Studies
Social conflict can be mobilised to achieve progressive and/or regressive change. Focusing on urb... more Social conflict can be mobilised to achieve progressive and/or regressive change. Focusing on urban land conflicts that relate to property rights, I examine how a common way of understanding this type of urban land conflict has an effect of glossing over conflict that emerges because of the property rights themselves as well as only legitimating certain types of conflict as worthy of activism and scholarly engagement. Using the example of Thokoza, a largely residential area outside of Johannesburg, I juxtapose two different analyses in order to clarify the additional value of also thinking about conflict caused by property rights themselves that emerges from the second analysis.
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 00220388 2013 766717, Jun 1, 2013
In Smith a and Stenning a and Willis K Social Justice and Neoliberalism Zed Books London, 2008
Journal of Development Studies, 2013
Health & place, 2012
Over the last two decades, HIV and AIDS have been framed as a "global problem". In the ... more Over the last two decades, HIV and AIDS have been framed as a "global problem". In the process, transnational advocacy networks have emerged as important actors, and particular places are recognised as key nodes in global HIV and AIDS governance. Using the example of London, UK, this paper examines how these networks are involved in local articulations of global governance and reveals that 'global' processes are inflected by the locations through which networks are routed. The example suggests the need for further analysis of the geographies through which HIV and AIDS is reconfiguring power relations at a variety of spatial scales.
Department of Geography, The Open University, Milton Keynes, 2006
Introduction ....................................................................................... more Introduction ......................................................................................................1 Literatures.................... ........................................................................... ... ... This report identifies some of the ways that literatures on social movements, development/NGOs, civil society connect and/or talk passed each other. It also identifies methodological issues. ... Before beginning however, the book by Hein Marais (2005) offers an up to date and nuanced account of HIV and AIDS in South Africa. Marais offers a far more complex account of HIV and AIDS than does Barnett and Whiteside ...
Thinking Beyond Sectors for Sustainable Development, 2015
In this thesis I show how narrow representations of 'the economy' in urban poverty discou... more In this thesis I show how narrow representations of 'the economy' in urban poverty discourses and practices have channelled the attention of academics and policy makers in particular ways as they have attempted to address urban poverty. I explore representations of the relationship between poverty and economic growth by these groups to show how dominant urban poverty discourses and practices tend, at best, to place poor people in the informal economy or at worst, outside of the economies of cities. One reason for this is traced to poverty studies' understanding of poor people as independent units undertaking survivalist activities or livelihoods. However, thinking of poor people as making up dispersed sets of networks connected into a diverse economy opens up new spatial imaginations of the city and new possibilities for policies aimed at achieving social justice. Drawing on the example of the city of Durban, South Africa, I explore how thinking about poor people's a...
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2018
A spatial confluence of urban informal settlement and HIV and Aids in sub-Saharan Africa provides... more A spatial confluence of urban informal settlement and HIV and Aids in sub-Saharan Africa provides a unique opportunity to challenge inadequate state responses to both phenomena. UN-Habitat (2011) estimates 62% of Africans in sub-Saharan Africa live in informal settlement. 28% of people living with HIV and AIDS live in just 14 cities in southern and eastern Africa equating to 15% of the global epidemic and 29.1% of the total estimated number of new HIV infections take place in informal settlements (van Renterghem and Jackson 2009). Inadequate responses to either phenomenon are traced to a calculation that (neoliberal) macro-economic stability is more critical to maintaining national wealth than adequately resolving problems faced by poor women and men in informal settlements in epidemics. This paper explores how this confluence offers ways of developing alternatives to the current urban imaginaries of informal settlements and epidemics that inform such problematic policy calculations.
In this introduction to the special issue ‘Transcending (in)formal urbanism’ we outline the impor... more In this introduction to the special issue ‘Transcending (in)formal urbanism’ we outline the important place that informal urbanism has acquired in urban theorising, and an agenda to further this standing towards an even more explicit role in defining how we research cities. We note how informality has frequently been perceived as the formal’s ‘other’ implying a necessary ‘othering’ of informality that creates dualisms between formal and informal, a localised informal and a globalising formal, or an informal resistance and a formal neoliberal control, that this special issue seeks to challenge. The introduction, and the issue, aim to prompt a dialogue across a diversity of disciplinary approaches still rarely in communication, with the goal of going beyond (‘transcending’) the othering of informality for the benefit of a more inclusive urban theory contribution. The introduction suggests three related steps that could help with transcending dualisms in the understanding of informalit...
The City in Urban Poverty, 2015
Foreword Jennifer Robinson Preface Charlotte Lemanski and Colin Marx Introduction Charlotte Leman... more Foreword Jennifer Robinson Preface Charlotte Lemanski and Colin Marx Introduction Charlotte Lemanski and Colin Marx 1. Poverty and 'the city Susan Parnell 2. Women in cities: prosperity or poverty? A need for multidimensional and multispatial analysis Sylvia Chant and Kerwin Datu 3. Space and capabilities: approaching informal settlement upgrading through a capability perspective Alexandre Apsan Frediani 4. Constructing informality and ordinary places: A place-making approach to urban informal settlements Melanie Lombard 5. Constructing spatialized knowledge on urban poverty: (multiple) dimensions, mapping spaces of deprivations, and claim-making processes in urban governance Isa Baud 6. Refugees and Urban Poverty: A Historical View from Calcutta Romola Sanyal 7. Expanding the 'Room For Manoeuvre': Community-Led Finance in Mumbai, India Caren Levy 8. Where the street has no name: reflections on legality and spatiality of vending Amlanjyoti Goswami 9. Gangs, guns and the city: urban policy in dangerous places Gareth Jones and Dennis Rodgers Policy Reflection Ellen Wratten and Charlotte Heath Conclusion Charlotte Lemanski and Colin Marx
International Planning Studies
Urban Studies
How do Anglophone urban scholars know urban informalities? This article reviews three dominant wa... more How do Anglophone urban scholars know urban informalities? This article reviews three dominant ways of knowing urban informality, noting that, despite the profoundly rich insights they each provide, two critiques of the overall concept endure. These are that the concept is often imprecise, and that the contribution to knowing ‘the urban’ more generally remains clearly circumscribed to the ‘urban non-west’. In our view, these limitations curtail the possibilities of sharpening our understanding of the relationship to inequalities and injustices. We work with these critiques, suggesting that they represent two sides of the same problem, associated with binaries. In doing so, we build on the existing emphasis on practices and work across the three dominant ways of knowing urban informalities. This reveals that binaries are not held together magically and transparently so that each is the mirror opposite. Instead, the difference is constituted through unnamed aspects of common denominat...
Urban Studies
In this introduction to the special issue ‘Transcending (in)formal urbanism’ we outline the impor... more In this introduction to the special issue ‘Transcending (in)formal urbanism’ we outline the important place that informal urbanism has acquired in urban theorising, and an agenda to further this standing towards an even more explicit role in defining how we research cities. We note how informality has frequently been perceived as the formal’s ‘other’ implying a necessary ‘othering’ of informality that creates dualisms between formal and informal, a localised informal and a globalising formal, or an informal resistance and a formal neoliberal control, that this special issue seeks to challenge. The introduction, and the issue, aim to prompt a dialogue across a diversity of disciplinary approaches still rarely in communication, with the goal of going beyond (‘transcending’) the othering of informality for the benefit of a more inclusive urban theory contribution. The introduction suggests three related steps that could help with transcending dualisms in the understanding of informalit...
Urban Studies
Social conflict can be mobilised to achieve progressive and/or regressive change. Focusing on urb... more Social conflict can be mobilised to achieve progressive and/or regressive change. Focusing on urban land conflicts that relate to property rights, I examine how a common way of understanding this type of urban land conflict has an effect of glossing over conflict that emerges because of the property rights themselves as well as only legitimating certain types of conflict as worthy of activism and scholarly engagement. Using the example of Thokoza, a largely residential area outside of Johannesburg, I juxtapose two different analyses in order to clarify the additional value of also thinking about conflict caused by property rights themselves that emerges from the second analysis.
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 00220388 2013 766717, Jun 1, 2013
In Smith a and Stenning a and Willis K Social Justice and Neoliberalism Zed Books London, 2008
Journal of Development Studies, 2013
Health & place, 2012
Over the last two decades, HIV and AIDS have been framed as a "global problem". In the ... more Over the last two decades, HIV and AIDS have been framed as a "global problem". In the process, transnational advocacy networks have emerged as important actors, and particular places are recognised as key nodes in global HIV and AIDS governance. Using the example of London, UK, this paper examines how these networks are involved in local articulations of global governance and reveals that 'global' processes are inflected by the locations through which networks are routed. The example suggests the need for further analysis of the geographies through which HIV and AIDS is reconfiguring power relations at a variety of spatial scales.
Department of Geography, The Open University, Milton Keynes, 2006
Introduction ....................................................................................... more Introduction ......................................................................................................1 Literatures.................... ........................................................................... ... ... This report identifies some of the ways that literatures on social movements, development/NGOs, civil society connect and/or talk passed each other. It also identifies methodological issues. ... Before beginning however, the book by Hein Marais (2005) offers an up to date and nuanced account of HIV and AIDS in South Africa. Marais offers a far more complex account of HIV and AIDS than does Barnett and Whiteside ...
Thinking Beyond Sectors for Sustainable Development, 2015