Violence in the City: Actors, Forms and Dynamics of Urban Violence

This section addresses violence as an urban phenomenon. It looks into violence that occurs in the city and at the violence that is of the city, thus caused or shaped by it. The section explores forms, actors and dynamics of urban violence. Violence is conceptualised as bodily practice and embodied experience. Urban wars, violent demonstrations, terrorist attacks, domestic violence – contemporary forms of urban violence – nonetheless circumscribe quite different practices and experiences. Additionally, a rising gap between rich and poor manifests itself in urban segregations along class, ethnic or religious lines but also in processes of gentrification and the global rise of (violent) evictions and displacements. Millions of people across the globe are currently forced to leave their homes either because of direct violence or because they can no longer afford to pay rents or mortgages, let alone to access basic services. These and other forms of urban violence and insecurity, so our starting point, are directly embedded in the global political economy, shaped by its fluctuations and crisis. This section draws attention to the different direct and indirect forms of urban violence, its actors, dynamics and causes. It invites papers that explore the micro-politics of violence: motives, tactics and strategies that inform urban actors of violence. We also invite papers that look into macro-politics: how global structures cause and inform urban violence and with which effects. Empirical papers, with case-studies or in comparative perspectives, and conceptual and theoretical papers on violence in the city are welcome.