CityReads | How Should We Conduct the Southern Urban Critique?

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How Should We Conduct the Southern Urban Critique?

Global South as a relationally-constructed location, and as a concept-metaphor.

Lawhon M, Truelove Y. Disambiguating the southern urban critique: Propositions, pathways and possibilities for a more global urban studies. Urban Studies. 2020;57(1):3-20.

Source：

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0042098019829412

https://www.urbanstudiesonline.com/resources/resource/latest-urban-studies-news-170521/

In mid-May of this year, the journal Urban Studies announced to award the Best Article of 2020 to "Disambiguating the southern urban critique: Propositions, pathways and possibilities for a more global urban studies".

Urban studies has increasingly focused on the study of cities in the global South, although the meaning of the term remains ambiguous, uncertain, and subject to differences and disagreements even among scholars advocating for the study of cities in the Global South. This paper first reviews the origins of critical studies of southern cities and summarizes its basic ideas in three iterations: that Southern cities are empirically distinct; that Euro-American hegemony has replaced diverse intellectual traditions; and that postcolonialism requires a critical examination of research practices. The paper then proposes four propositions and three pathways based on the sources of Southern urban critique to explore the possibility of moving toward a more global urban studies.

The southern urban critique

The study of cities in the global south has a long history (predating the term 'global south'). There is also an extensive literature specifically using postcolonial theory to study cities, which is similarly foundational for our wider concerns. In this article, our focus is a more recent move in urban studies: we use the phrase 'the southern urban critique' to describe studies that use ‘the south’ as a basis from which to examine urban research and theory-making.

There are two rather distinct uses in the wider literature of the southern urban critique: as a relationally-constructed location, and as a concept-metaphor.

Robinson's mid- 2000s engagements as instrumental in instigating an arguably overdue conversation about the relationships between cities in the north and south and urban theory. The southern urban critique is based on the assertion that urban theory has been developed from a limited number of urban cases in the north, and that this has problematically resulted in a tendency towards universalizing theory that fails to adequately explain global urban diversity and specifically cities in the global south.

Scholars of southern cities participating in 'international' conversations in urban studies have been required to frame their analyses through this literature (which are often explained as exceptions to the northern norm), rather than develop new points of entry. Robinson (2006) explains the gap between northern and southern cities as primarily rooted in different disciplinary attention: while northern cities contribute to and are understood through urban theory, southern cities are largely examined through conceptual frames from development studies. Her proposal is to allow for 'ordinary cities' (such as, but not limited to, global south cities) to encounter and contribute to urban theory.

The southern urban critique has instigated renewed scholarly attention to southern cities and placed the south and theory-making more explicitly into urban analyses. Robinson and Roy (2016) describe such 'investigations into global urbanism' as:

"a heterodox field of inquiry which, in the last decade or so, has been tremendously enriched by lively debate, a proliferation of paradigms, and experimentation with various methodologies . [such studies] experiment with new possibilities for a more global urban studies, to work with but also press at the limits of extant urban theorization and method and at the same time to explore the potential to start with some entirely different resources and places."

From this heterodoxy has emerged new concepts and theorisations regarding informality (Roy, 2009), speculative urbanism (Goldman, 2011), multiplicities of governance regimes (Schindler, 2014), people as infrastructure (Simone, 2004), grey space (Yiftachel, 2009) and peripheral urbanism (Caldeira, 2017), to name just a few.

Four propositions in the southern urban critique

Proposition 1: Speaking from the south is an argument against (all/northern) theory and in favor of particularism and empiricism

Proposition one holds that the reason why the criticism of southern cities came into being is that from the perspective of southern cities, it is an argument against (all/northern) theory and in favor of  particularism and empiricism. However, it is actually a misreading of the criticism of southern cities. Scholars who study southern cities have been criticized for paying too much attention to data or "objectivism", but empirical research is not the logical end of researchers. The reason why southern cities are difficult to theorize is due to the constraints of knowledge and system: because southern cities are not well known to the public in the world, it is necessary to spend more time to introduce the basic situation of southern cities, which has higher requirements for scholars and capital investment. However, due to the huge inequality of global resources, the number of scholars working in southern institutions is limited, and the investment of funds and time is also limited.  As a result, most areas in the south of the world are still lack of research, and therefore lack of representation in international academic forums. more empirics are needed not as an endpoint, but as the basis for deep understanding, context-based analysis and more rigorous theorization. However, it is worth noting that the criticism of southern cities does not completely negate the northern theory, and many authors even use the views of northern scholars to develop their own arguments.

Proposition 2: The south is empirically different

At their core, critiques of northern urban theory based on empirical difference found in the literature have scholarly parallels throughout the social sciences. It is that this proposition does not, in itself, challenge the ontology of any conventional approaches to urban studies. When made alone, this proposition calls for better theorization derived inductively from southern cases to better articulate and explain  the southern  urban condition.  We find this to be a necessary but not sufficient claim and argue that the southern urban critique is strongest when concerns about empirical differences are paired with a deeper critique of the production of knowledge.

Proposition 3: The south has had different intellectual traditions

Intellectual traditions from else-where in and outside the academy are central to expanding our understanding of the world. For example, much recent EuroAmerican social science bears resemblance to non-Western thinking. However, despite concerns about the production of knowledge, none of these authors argue for a pluralisation of knowledge as the endpoint. The authors writing in this vein reject relativism, and believe that research on and from the south can lead to better understandings within and across sites. Intellectual traditions from elsewhere should neither exist in parallel with nor be simply subsumed into existing theory. Instead, new ideas, themes, connections and approaches ought to be interwoven (displacing or changing some existing ideas) to produce new, cosmopolitan understandings.

For example, the strength of dependency theory in Latin America has shaped the type of Marxism deployed by urbanists: dependency-based theorizations by Latin American urbanists can be explained in part because of the politics and geography of knowledge production rather than because Latin American  cities are necessarily more enrolled in relations of dependency than others. Here, the south is again largely framed as a relationally- constructed location which shapes places and theorizations of them; this iteration calls for deeper understandings relationally generated in, through and from these sites.

These two propositions alone – based on empiricism and alternative traditions – are unlikely to radically alter the status quo.

Proposition 4: Researchers need to deconstruct their assumptions with regard to southern (and all) cities

This iteration is based on 'deep postcolonial theory', a strand of postcolonial theory that insists that colonial relations and rationalities are deeply embedded in the present. So researchers need to deconstruct their assumptions about southern cities. From this point of view, the paper questions Proposition 2 and proposition 3, and holds that scholars' criticism of southern cities should not simply focus on experience or knowledge tradition, but on researchers' own world outlook and data. Here, "south" appears as a "concept metaphor", which can be used to express the particularity of all knowledge theories, thus becoming an analytical strategy.

Transcending north–south binaries, the focus of unlearning must not simply be on the who or where of theory but on the assumptions embedded in it.

Pathways of urban studies after the southern urban critique

First, southern urbanism is and ought to be studied as a distinct phenomenon. In this mode, the study of southern cities will become a unique field. In the process of research, we mainly investigate the southern cities based on the difference of experience, and do not exclude the analysis of the relationship between the north and the south, such as the analysis of colonialism and dependence.

Second, the southern urban critique is an ontological position against universality and asserting the subjectivity and locatedness of all theory. In this expression, "south" is regarded as the source of more extensive criticism of knowledge production. It is not a special proposition, nor does it negate the binary opposition between universality and particularity, but lies in the middle space between them. In this regard, urban scholars are actively seeking a more rigorous understanding of this concept, such as developing middle-level theory or studying diversity at different scales.

Third, the southern urban critique is a tactical argument to decenter urban theory. Having done so, now we ought to work towards general urban theory based on a world of cities. In this mode of urban studies, theorization that generalizes and explains widely across empirical differences is both possible and useful; even when developed from place, theory can be un-located. The point of theorization is to explain, and relate, across difference. The southern urban critique is necessary because southern cities are understudied, and northern theory needs to be provincialized.

To conclude , the global south' is best understood as a time-limited concept-metaphor which has particular resonance in our contemporary world, but one that we anticipate eventually becoming less salient for our understanding of the world. We are simultaneously of the position that the concept- metaphor of the south is, at present,  of  tactical analytical and political utility in the project of change knowledge production.

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