A new special issue of Global Challenges presents eight essays produced as part of a “research practicum” entitled “Urban Morphology & Violence”. This master’s course was offered by Professor Ravi Bhavnani, with the assistance of Ximena Osorio Garate from the Department of Political Science and International Relations. Ximena explains here the context of this publication.
What is the purpose and originality of a “research practicum”?
The research practicum guides students from the inception of an idea or research question related to the course topic, to the development of a research paper, and in the case of our course, to the publication of a special issue in Global Challenges. As such, students get guidance from the professor and the teaching assistance throughout the semester as they develop their own research project, and by the end of the course, students are expected to have produced a high-quality, publishable paper. Given the small size of the class, students can benefit from the close engagement of the professor and assistant with their research project, as well as from their peers in class discussions and presentations. In the research practicum, students are encouraged to put their research skills into practice, with lectures complementing an in-depth and theoretical understanding of a given topic.
“Urban Morphology & Violence” explores the associations between cities – their political orders and disorders – and outcomes ranging from occupation and resistance to marginalisation and containment. Can you explain?
Cities are often the stages of conflict and political violence. As conflicts are often redirected to population centres, and social, political, and economic inequalities continue to deepen, “Urban Morphology & Violence” draws attention to how the city – its scale, shape, architecture, urban design, and population organisation – mediates social and political conflict. The premise is that urban spaces are not the neutral backgrounds or settings of violence, but that violence in the city takes particular forms in relation to urban formations. The essays in this special issue explore this relation, showing, for example, how urban design can become a site of authoritarian power, using it for the prevention of popular demonstrations; or how asylum and refugee housing policies create invisible yet very real borders preventing refugees and asylum seekers from accessing essential services, and thus reinforcing their marginalisation.
Can you briefly present some findings we can discover in this issue?
The research essays in the special issue are incredibly diverse, leading to distinct findings that reveal the potential of research on urban morphologies to understand violence. For instance, Emna Ines Fayala finds that while Israeli urban policy in Jerusalem has been used as a tool of apartheid to expropriate Palestinian land and dispossess the Palestinian population, Palestinians continue to use the city space as a site of agency, and even resistance, as they claim their “right to necessity” through informal urban planning. Focusing on Boko Haram, usually considered a rural insurgency, Adam Talsma shows us that broadening our understanding of the urban to include “planetary urbanisation” reveals how urban extensions are, in fact, central to Boko Haram’s ideology and exercise of violence. Finally, Zachary Fesen finds that Hezbollah’s hybrid role in providing social services in Beirut’s al-Dahiyeh neighbourhood, supplanting the state, in combination to its cultivation of a “resistance society”, has been crucial to building strong societal support in the neighbourhood.
This research practicum was indeed a real experience for the students, as confirmed by Joshua Hellinger: “Coming from an interdisciplinary background, I found the analysis of violence and conflict in urban spheres from above, through satellite images, incredibly exciting. Thinking of violence on a vertical scale gave me a different understanding of the extreme power hierarchies between those who control the skies and the targeted populations on the ground. This verticality traces back to the arrival of air forces in the 19th and 20th centuries and is still present through drone warfare in many conflict zones today. At the same time, the vertical angle also provides new opportunities for humanitarian scholarship. As high-resolution satellite imagery becomes more and more available, a field for novel studies on both conflict prevention and analysis opens up, which I am very excited to continue working on in my upcoming projects!”
Here are other comments for Chiara Valenti: “With a background in Gender Studies, I was aware of how a city’s urban morphology affects different bodies. However, it was my work with third-sector organisations managing Milan’s refugee reception system that revealed the full impact of the city’s structure on those who rely on the system. Milan’s urban morphology interacts with the asylum-seeking bureaucracy to create temporal uncertainty, trapping individuals in limbo. This sparked my interest in researching the topic further. Through Professor Bhavnani’s class, I gained insight into urban morphology and violence studies, and collaborating with other students expanded my perspective on the diverse violence produced by urban morphologies. Writing for this issue improved my GIS skills and serves as a preface to my master’s thesis, which will delve deeper into the topic and give voice to Milan’s reception system beneficiaries and operators through maps and a documentary.”
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How to cite:
Bhavnani, Ravi, and Ximena Osorio Garate, eds. “Urban Morphology & Violence.” Global Challenges, Special Issue no. 2 (March 2023). https://globalchallenges.ch/issue/special_2/.
Banner image: part of a cartoon by © Chappatte in The New York Times, www.chappatte.com.