American Anthropological Association (AAA) Annual Meeting: PRAXIS, Nov 20–23, 2024, Tampa (Florida)
Lamia Mellal and Lore Janssens participated in the American Anthropological Association 2024 annual meeting entitled PRAXIS in Tampa (20-23 November). Lamia and Lore organized a panel entitled "Re/imagining Global Cartographies of Urban Space and In/security: Decentering Urban Theory-Making and Anthropological Praxis". The aim was to draw on their respective fieldwork in Marseille and Brussels to develop a more global critical reflection on the securitization of urban spaces. The transnational panel brought together researchers working on Caracas in Venezuela, Srinagar in Kashmir, and Medellín in Colombia.
Abstract below
Urban anthropologists have studied how the social production of urban space (Lefebvre 1974) is driven by interconnected, multiple and often contradictory actors and logics at the local, national and global levels. While cities have historically been key sites for governments to experiment with security practices and strategies, we are currently witnessing an increasing securitization of space linked to ongoing colonial projects and globalized capitalist development, as well as the management of deepening social inequalities based on class, race/ethnicity, gender, age, and so on. This panel aims to reflect on the nexus between the production of urban space and pervasive logics of securitization in a variety of geographical locations: Caracas in Venezuela, Srinagar in Kashmir, Marseille in France, Medellín in Colombia, and Brussels in Belgium. Bringing together these diverse case studies illustrates how contested forms of place-making shape and are shaped by urban transformations driven by securitization logics. We observe these logics across the globe, while recognizing that they are tied to local and national historical processes. Although these cities are not usually central to theory-making in urban studies and urban anthropology, we believe they are important for thinking about urban space and security and thus contribute to decentering theory-making and anthropological praxis. By juxtaposing them, we aim to tease out the imperial connections between seemingly disparate urban contexts, while also paying attention to localized processes such as touristification and developmentalism in settler colonialist settings such as Kashmir, touristification coupled with crime management in Colombia, as well as the management of inequality, migration, and Islam in post/colonial Western Europe, and state-led urban land redistribution alongside grassroots housing activism in Venezuela. Collectively, the papers unpack the spatial practices through which urban spaces are imagined, designed and reimagined, by which actors, and how these spatial practices are tied to notions of in/security; the intersubjectivities that are formed within these urban transformations; and the contesting forms of place-making, in/security, and narratives of belonging that emerge as a product of such transformations and the ongoing and global securitization of urban space.
Lamia: In my presentation, I developed what is emerging as an important axis of my doctoral research: the link between the securitization of school infrastructures in the northern districts of Marseille and the institutional production of an identitarian threat. Indeed, I have shown how the bunkerization (to use the expression of one of the headmasters) of these schools serves to spatially and symbolically reinforce the division between "them" and "us," between the dangerous space of the neighborhood and the sanctuaire (expression used by politicians) of the school. My interviews with members of the schools reveal how the neighborhood is perceived as a hostile space, while for the pupils it's the inside of the school that is perceived as unsafe in the sense that they are monitored, controlled, and potentially reported to the police if they are suspected of being "radicalized".
These few days in Tampa were very intense and stimulating in terms of meeting and sharing. Coming from a non-anthropological background (master’s degree in history and political science) and attending the AAA for the first time, I really felt immersed in the backstage of the discipline, the reflexive dimension: how and why anthropologists do what they do. Also, the focus on PRAXIS and Dr. Jonnetta Cole's presentation, which made a strong impression on me, evoked the responsibility of researchers and anthropology to document and produce counter-narratives with the marginalized populations we work with. This resonated with me because that's what I was trying to do in my own research, working with pupils from the northern districts of Marseille. My aim was to conceive my research as a form of intervention aimed at creating the conditions for the expression of these pupils, who are constructed as a threat, and to observe what these kinds of participatory research device can allow us to collectively experience and produce. In my case, supporting the pupils in a context where their voices are silenced by the institution allowed us to temporarily overcome self-censorship and collectively recognize their legitimacy to express themselves and produce knowledge.
In a panel entitled "Critical Perspectives on Gaza from the Journal for the Anthropology of North America," scholars discussed the silencing of voices that speak out against U.S. policies in the ongoing genocide in Gaza and how the sharing of poetry produced by the people of Gaza has been a means of narrating and sharing those realities that dominant discourses seek to deny.
