This program in which several members of Inverses take part (Nicolas Bautès, Sébastien Jacquot and Marie Morelle) aims to discuss the organisation of illegal and informal activities (drug and cars’ traffic, street mechanics, street fooding, ambulant activities) in the urban peripheries of Paris, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro).
It studies the way people justify their activities and try to maintain it. It analyzes the practices and discourses ofthe institutions (and their agents) in charge of the repression, categorization, and sometimes formalization, of those activities, in order to maintain an urban order.
Finally, the program discusses the urban reconfigurations that occure in various contemporary economical and political contexts, and develops comparisons as part of its methodological approach, in order to break down the barriers of urban studies.

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Radio program on France Culture on “Peru after in the elections: a complex situation”, with the intervention of Alexis Sierra. The program is available here (in French).

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Publication of « Jakarta, une capitale sous contrôle ? » by J.Tadié, in R.Madinier (ed.), Indonésie contemporaine, Paris and Bangkok: Les Indes savantes and Irasec, 2016, p.97-110.

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J.Tadié, « Nuits américaines à Manille. Centres d’appels et nouveaux quartiers nocturnes », Sociétés politiques comparées, 38, jan.-avr. 2016.

This article analyses the dynamics of night-time neighbourhoods in Manila, in the context of the translation of Business Process Outsourcing activities (mainly call centres) in the city at night. Mainly at the service of the US market, these centres operate out of time, as they are beyond the usual rhythms of the metropolis. They blur the frontiers between night and day. This paper thus questions the relationships between night, cities and new economic sectors. A first part analyses the attempts to dissociate the nocturnal biases from the activity; before showing how the night was domesticated. A last part analyses how despite these efforts, the night remains influential, not only on the rhythms and work conditions, but also on the representations associated to the night workers.

Article available here (in French)

 

 

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This workshop is organised within the CoST seminars (Social Construction and Politics of Territories) of the CITERES Research unit in Tours. It proposes a discussion of the main results of the INVERSES research program. With the participation of Sébastien Jacquot (Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, EA EIREST, INVERSES), Fabrizio Maccaglia (Université François Rabelais, UMR CITERES, INVERSES) and Marie Morelle (Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, UMR PRODIG, INVERSES). The discussion is moderated by Joël Cabalion (Université François Rabelais, UMR CITERES) and Valérie Cohen (Université François Rabelais, UMR CITERES).

The poster of the workshop is available here.

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Lecture by Marie Morelle, at the Labex Dynamite workshop “Pour une approche croisée des quartiers populaires”, February 25th, 2016. For more details see here.

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“Political Informality and the Production of Urban Space. How to conceive informality in the cities of the developed countries with urban theories originating from the Global South?”

Paper given at the conference “Champ libre? City and regional planning confronted with theoretical frames”

See the program of the conference here

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For those who were not able to attend all the debates of the Festival, the complete proceedings are now online.

The Festival « The Other Side of Cities » took place from October 16th to 21st, 2014 at La Clef Theater in Paris. It was part of one of the results of the Inverses program. It proposed a journey behind the scenes of cities, of how they are administered and how their residents intervene. From the point of view of both the inhabitants, their representatives and the governments, it showed how cities are constructed by hidden moves and movements that structure the city organisation on a daily basis. Across different continents, this festival showed intrigues, arrangements, manoeuvres and resistance in an urban context. Presenting fictions and documentaries, it offered a broad reflection on the role of power, alliance and conflict in hidden, not always visible, urban arenas.

We wish to thank Fabien Langeau for the transcripts and have a special thought for Matthieu Giroud who dramatically left us.

Proceedings (in French):

– « The Other Side of the City », October 16 2014, presented by Fabrizio Maccaglia and Jérôme Tadié.

– « Negotiating Laws and Rules », October 17 2014, presented by Sébastien Jacquot and Marie Morelle with Tommaso Vitale, Camille Dugrand and Arnaud Zajtman.

– « Occupying and Resisting », October 20 2014, presented by Nicolas Bautès, Sébastien Jacquot and Alexis Sierra with Agnès Deboulet, Matthieu Giroud and Jean-Michel Rodrigo.

– « Police Practices and the Criminal World », October 21 2014, presented by Nicolas Bautès and Jean Rivelois with Angelina Peralva and Laurent Gayer.

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Conference given by N.Bautès at the University of Oslo, November 30th, 2015

Abstract:

From the presentation of a research itinerary which involve extensive investigations in several popular neighborhoods of India and Brazil, my contribution will focus on different issues of urban politics, starting from some illustrations of urban projects included in urban (cultural) policies, following by addressing to social mobilization emerging to confront such exclusive politics. Social mobilizations are here understood both as collective work and politics of resistance, that include a specific work for and on space in the way to confront and address objectives shared by political society (Chatterjee, 2003).

Mobilizing cases studies in popular neighborhoods of Mumbai (India) and Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), I will try to draw the challenge of the construction of a research that involve crisscrossed perspectives. As other recent works, my standpoint conveys a major statement: the persistency and the rapid increase, in metropolises located both in North and South, of urban renewal projects. Urban renewal is defined through its demolition and eviction components, they being land expropriation or housing evictions. Our main argument emphasizes the importance of urban removal processes in some of the most dynamic metropolises on a demographic and economics level, as well as in metropolises wishing to change their image in order to increase their international attractivity. This process does renew older forms of voluntarist intervention on urban fabrics that were legitimated till the end of the 80’s by the argument to fight against insalubrity. Elaborated around this statement, our research led us to analyze the backdrop of conflictive social and political processes observed in the field of such urban neoliberal projects. Presenting the evolution of our research, we will focus on the new forms of so-call creative resistance movements using art to support protests and demands by city-dwellers, and on the ways how, in which ways and to what extend, social mobilization “from the slum” are contributing to urban politics. This way of approaching politics in the city makes then a wide place for the understanding of the main features and the perspectives of a subaltern urbanism, that will be analysed focussing on the challenges of a comparative approach.

 

Click here for the flyer

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Our colleague Matthieu Giroud accepted to take part in one of the debates of “The Other Side of the City” film festival, on Monday, October 20th, 2014. We post here the transcript of the debates that he had edited (in French), as well as a recording of his intervention. He was commenting on Qian men qian. A Disappearance Foretold (Dans les décombres), directed by Olivier Meys (2008) and Villa El Salvador. Les bâtisseurs du désert, directed by Marina Paugam and Jean-Michel Rodrigo (2009).

Transcript of the debates (in French)

Recording (in French)

The proceedings of the evening are still available here (in French)

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