Monika Streule

Dekoloniale Perspektiven auf Territorialisierung rücken derzeit zunehmend ins Zentrum der kritischen Geographie. Lateinamerikanische Auseinandersetzungen und Begriffsbestimmungen, die sich aus indigenen, afro-lateinamerikanischen und feministischen Bewegungen ableiten, prägen die Debatte und lenken den Blick auf soziale Ungleichheit und Differenz.

Unser Beitrag nimmt Urbanisierung und ein relationales Verständnis von Territorium als Ausgangspunkt, um Territorialisierung als gesellschaftlichen Prozess zu verstehen. Dabei diskutieren wir die aktuelle Relevanz eines solchen relationalen sozioterritorialen Ansatzes für die Geographie mit Blick auf die empirische Forschung und urbane Theoriebildung. Gerade in der englisch- und deutschsprachigen Politischen Geographie werden De- und Reterritorialisierung oft als staatliches Handeln gerahmt. Auch die hier vorgeschlagenen dekolonialen Perspektiven interessieren sich für die räumliche Dimension von Machtverhältnissen, stellen dabei jedoch vor allem nichtstaatliche Aushandlungsprozesse und urbane Alltagspraktiken in den Mittelpunkt.

Ziel des Beitrags ist es, die epistemologische und empirische Bedeutung eines relationalen sozioterritorialen Ansatzes für eine post- und dekoloniale bzw. dezentrierte Wissensproduktion in den Stadt- und Raumwissenschaften herauszuarbeiten. Der Einsatz sozioterritorialer Konzepte in einer kritischen Stadtforschung fordert zudem eine sorgfältige Situierung von Begriffen sowie Auseinandersetzung mit ihrem jeweiligen historischen Gepäck.

Schwarz, Anke und Monika Streule (2023) Von Territorium zu Territorio: Land, Allmende und soziale Kämpfe in Mexiko-Stadt. In: Bauriedl, Sybille und Inken Carstensen-Egwuom (Hg.) Geographien der Kolonialität. Geschichten globaler Ungleichheitsverhältnisse der Gegenwart. transcript: Bielefeld, 269–285.

Recorridos explorativos and entrevistas en movimiento are two complementary strategies that sets ethnography in motion. Together they form the basis of a specific methodological design of mobile ethnography that draws on well-established qualitative strategies and adapts them to study large and heterogeneous urban territories. Framed as such, mobile ethnography is a systematic and situated – and at the same time inventive and comparative – strategy to empirically study urbanisation, and possibly useful to analyse other current multi-sited and multi-scalar socio-spatial transformations more in general. Such a mode of inquiry invites anthropologists to further decentralise methodological perspectives, particularly by encouraging more collaborative ways of knowledge production.

Streule, Monika (2023) How to set ethnography in motion. In: Sánchez Criado, Tomás and Adolfo Estalella (eds.) An ethnographic inventory. Field devices for anthropological inquiry. New York: Routledge, 133–142.

Urban extractivism is an emergent concept increasingly discussed within Latin America-based scholarship but less known in anglophone urban geography. The devastating social and environmental impact of large-scale natural resource extraction, usually accompanied and driven by infrastructure megaprojects, is the main domain to which activists and scholars are currently applying the concept of extractivism. However, extractivism-related accumulation also applies to urban contexts, as for instance, scholars argue using this lens to analyze the production of exclusive urban territories in central Buenos Aires. In this contribution, I suggest to broaden the concept of urban extractivism to address pressing challenges of urban transformations in the peripheries of Mexico City, particularly concerning urban infrastructure megaprojects and Indigenous socio-territorial movements that advocate for a more sustainable use of natural resources. Critical reflection on the extractivism of knowledge reveals the need for more collaborative research methods in urban geography and beyond.

Streule, Monika (2023) Urban extractivism. Contesting megaprojects in Mexico City, rethinking urban values, Urban Geography 44.1, 262–271. DOI: 10.1080/02723638.2022.2146931

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This article compares how state-initiated mass housing urbanization has contributed to processes of peripheralization in three very different historical and geopolitical settings: in Paris from the 1950s to the 1990s in Hong Kong from the 1950s to 2010s and in Mexico City from the 1990s to the 2010s. We understand mass housing urbanization as large-scale industrial housing production based on the intervention of state actors into the urbanization process which leads to the strategic re-organization of urban territories. In this comparison across space and time we focus particularly on how, when and to what degree this urbanization process leads to the peripheralization of settlements and entire neighbourhoods over the course of several decades. This long-term perspective allows us to evaluate not only the decisive turns and ruptures within governmental rationales but also the continuities and contradictions of their territorial effects. Finally, we develop a taxonomy of different modalities of peripheralization that might serve as a conceptual tool for further urban research.

Kockelkorn, Anne, Schmid, Christian, Streule, Monika, Wong, Kit Ping (2023) Peripheralization through mass housing urbanization in Hong Kong, Mexico City, and Paris, Planning Perspectives 38.3, 603–641. DOI: 10.1080/02665433.2022.2126997

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