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Ecotones: Encounters,Crossings, and Communities2015-2020CFP Ecotones #7:&#160;Reconfiguring, Repurposing the City: Urban Ecotones in the Global Southin partnership with EMMA (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3),Praxiling (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3 and CNRS), DIRE (Université deLa Réunion), and La Maison Française d’Oxfordhttps://emma.www.univ-montp3.fr/fr/valorisation-partenariats/programmes-européens-et-internationaux/ecotonesVenue: University of Cape Town, Cape Town, SouthAfricaDates: October 29-31, 2020 Languages: English, French Deadline forsubmitting proposals: 15 January 2020&#160; Notification of acceptance: 1 March 2020After conferences at UniversitéPaul-Valéry Montpellier 3, Université de Poitiers and Université de La Réunion(France, 2015, 2016 and 2018), at the Centre for the Study of Social Sciencesof Calcutta (Kolkata, India, 2018), Manhattanville College (NY, USA, 2019) andConcordia University (Montreal, Canada, 2019), this international scientificevent at UCT will be the 7th opus of this conference cycle.An “ecotone” initially designates atransitional area between two ecosystems, for example between land and sea. The“Ecotones” programme (2015-2020) is a cycle of conferences which aims to borrowthis term traditionally used in geography and ecology and to broaden theconcept by applying it to other disciplines in the social sciences and thehumanities. An “ecotone” can thus also be understood as a cultural space ofencounters, conflicts, and renewal between several communities. Thisinterdisciplinary conference will focus more specifically on colonial andpostcolonial cities as “ecotonal” dialectics between places and nonplaces(Augé).Cities can be imagined as estuaries madeof the sedimentation of drifting populations over a long period of time. Theyare powerful matrices of aggregation and segregation transforming andtransformed by people coming from various horizons. As permanently renewed movingsites of uniting differences (Lefebvre), cities are lived experience andconstantly defined by their margins. Perhaps more than other spaces, theyempower people’s identities and generate shared social references, yet indifferent and unequal ways. Cities of the South often include affluentpopulations living in distant suburbs and gated communities while subalterns mayremain captive in city centres. Conversely, cities of the North tend to expellower and middle class at their margins while estate price in their core canonly be afforded by wealthier populations. In that regard, cities are“situated”, endowed with thick historical and environmental forces shaping thepopulations living in their confines. But cities are also hubs connected withlong-distance elsewheres. They are privileged sites of disjunctive flows in theglobal cultural economy (Appadurai), crossroads of a strikingly new interactivesystem of real and imagined topographies. And while growing postcolonial citiesare privileged loci for the emergence and negotiation of new identities,increasing transnational mobility and migratory movements turn even smallerurban geographies into complex “contact zones” (Pratt): sites of both fruitfulentanglements and novel forms of segregation.Whether “global” or “glocal”, cities arethus part and parcel of wider archipelagos, including archipelagos of memoryand the imagination. In that regard, cities can also be “nonplaces” in whichpeople come and go anonymously, suspended in a permanent state of transit. The frontwindows of “exotic” groceries, shops, and restaurants contribute to thetransformation of multicultural city spaces; they open onto hybrid public locationsand visually indicate the presence of diaspora businesses supported byinternational networks. Yet, although transitory and often anonymous, nonplaces“accept the inevitability of protracted sojourns of strangers”, on conditionhowever that these passing or temporary people are conceded a mere physicalpresence and have their “idiosyncratic subjectivities” erased (Bauman); for indeed,no symbolic expression of history and identity, no significant social relationsemerge from nonplaces. In today’s urban configurations, they are neverthelessnot entirely devoid of meaning, in opposition to “empty spaces” (Kociatkiewicz&#38; Kostera), the waste-products of architectural projects and the forgottenfringes of urbanist vision, which are not prohibited, but “inaccessible becauseof their invisibility”. Besides, in the context of global centre-periphery relationships,urban identities are increasingly shaped by phenomena of creolization, withmultiple forms of cultural continuums and their inherent dynamic ambiguities(Hannerz). Beyond the old colonial and now postcolonial Western “metropoles”,South American megalopolises and Asian global cities, where one can locateforms of “alternative cosmopolitanism” (Mayaram), many African cities epitomizethe urban revolution in the Global South over the last two decades. Examplescomprise Cairo, Lagos, Dakar, and notably Johannesburg, the polycentric“elusive metropolis” (Nuttall &#38; Mbembe), but also Cape Town whose complexmulti-ethnic and multi-cultural configurations harbour many ecotonal mechanismswhich contribute to the emergence and negotiation of original modes of (global)citizenship.These circulations do not, however, prevent cities from falling (back)into – or reproducing and consolidating – new “identity traps” (Agier), in thesense of socially and racially based negation of certain subjectivities. Withrising security concerns in many cities, this can be seen with the replacementof frontiers by walls, which are indeed the “negation of the frontier” (Agier)in that they deny the reciprocal recognition of self and other, and whichcontribute to new forms of precariousness (Butler) in urban settings.Therefore, in spite of – and because of – globalization and increasing mixing,people (re)create pockets of homogeneity and new forms of urban “heterotopias”(Foucault), “spaces of the other” that have “the power to juxtapose in one realplace many spaces and locations which are by themselves incompatible”.Importantly, urban imaginaries and the world’s major cities, notablyport cities, are now heavily affected by the climate crisis and itsconsequences. In The Great Derangement:Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2016), Amitav Ghosh explores howcoastal cities from Mumbai and Kolkata to New York and New Orleans representconcentrations of great risk and vulnerability in a future of climacticinstability, increased storm activity and sea level rise. Tracing how theestablishment of major ports on the coastlines of the world was often aconsequence of 18th-century imperialism and trade networks, he speculates aboutthe “managed retreat from vulnerable locations” that many major urban centreswill need to undergo in the coming century. More broadly, what will the climatecrisis mean for the 21st-century city? And how mightecological and environmental change unravel the technocratic confidence andcarbon-based economy that informed the urban imaginary of 20th-century,modernist city planning?&#160; Eventually, cities not only produce culture, butculture re-produces cities. Literature, film and other forms of artisticrepresentation possess myriad ways of conveying and negotiating a “cartographicimaginary” (Westphal) where urban identities, their challenges andpredicaments, become major signifiers, locations for debating our currentliving-together and imagining the future. Particularly, in the wake of thelarger spatial turn and other disciplinary reconfigurations (e.g. the ethicalturn, the social turn), literary representations and the arts are not onlyinformed by or reflections of our urban ecotones, but contribute to inform andshape their contours.Following up on Ecotones #6 at ConcordiaUniversity in October 2019 focused on “Post/Colonial Ports: Place and Nonplace”,Ecotones #7 will review, revise and revisit such notions as place and “nonplace”.Other concepts such as “espace lisse” and “espace strié” (smooth spacevs striated space, Deleuzeand Guattari), or “heterotopia”(Foucault) may also be useful in the context of the urban ecotone,reflecting upon the urban space as shaped by movement and events, imaginariesand affects more than by fixed bearings and measurable objects, as moreintensive than extensive. We will be particularly interested in examining themultiple ways spaces are de/formed, reconfigured and repurposed, be it foreconomic, social, industrial and financial aims, or artistic and creative ones,homogeneously or heterogeneously.We seek papers from a broad range ofdisciplines in the humanities and the social sciences that engage with thesemultiple formations of ecotone spaces within colonial and postcolonial cities,past and present. We encourage proposals on topics such as (but not limitedto):Cities as assemblages of environmental, historical and political forces shaping      populations and social relations;Cities as areas where districts, zones, and neighbourhoods are reconfigured and repurposed; where abandoned spaces are taken over and readapted for different uses      (with what impact, cost, meaning etc.);Cities as sites of mobilizations, confrontation and solidarity between local and migrant      populations;Urban spaces as sites of hyper-invisibility or hyper-visibility;Cities as spaces where the non-urban and the rural encroaches on the urban, the non-human on the human, etc.;Cities as sites of cultural confluence and continuum in the context of global centre-periphery relationships;Cities as nodal points in wider networks (regional, national, global);Cities as a confluence of heterotopias;Urban geographies as shaped by – and shaping – imagination, language, the arts and      literature;The urban ecotone as a new “geocritical” topos within fictional and non-fictional forms of      representation;Cities as nodal points of the tension between processes of creolization and      (re)homogenization, of integrative and differentialist topographies;Fringes, informal spaces and in-between locations that (co)fashion the urban ecotone; Cities as generators of ideological formations, identity projects and conceptual tools (“Cosmopolis”, “Zéropolis”, “Afropolis”, etc.);Cities as “discursive matrices” for sociolinguistic dynamics and creativities, and/or sites of polyglossic encounters between native and non-native speakers;Cities and environmental crisis: ecological degradation, climate change and the urban as site of waste, air pollution, toxicity and “slow violence” (Nixon).References:Agier, Michel, La condition cosmopolite: L’anthropologie àl’épreuve du piège identitaire. Paris: La Découverte, 2013.Appadurai, Arjun. Modernityat Large: Cultural dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 1996.Augé, Marc. Non-Lieux&#160;:Introduction à une anthropologie de la surmodernité. Paris: Seuil, 1992.Bauman, Zygmunt. LiquidModernity. Cambridge: Polity, 2000. Bégout, Bruce. Zéropolis. L'expérience de Las Vegas, Paris:Allia, 2002.Butler, Judith. Precarious life. The Powers of Mourning andViolence. London: Verso, 2004.Deleuze, Michel &#38; Félix Guattari. Mille plateaux&#160;: capitalisme et schizophrénie.Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1980; A Thousand Plateaus:Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans.&#160;Brian Massumi, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988.Foucault, Michel. ‘Des espaces autres’ [1967], in Dits et écrits II, 1976–1988. Paris: Gallimard, 2001: 1571-81.Ghosh, Amitav.&#160;The Great Derangement: ClimateChange and the Unthinkable. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2016.Hannerz, Ulf. Transnational Connections: Culture, People,Places. London &#38; New York: Routledge, 1996.Kociatkiewicz, Jerzy&#38; Monika Kostera, “The anthropology of empty space.” Qualitative Sociology 1, 1999: 37-50.Lefebvre, Henri. La révolution urbaine. Paris: Gallimard, 1970.Mayaram, Shail (ed.). The Other Global City. London &#38; NewYork: Routledge, 2009.Nixon, Rob.&#160;Slow Violence and theEnvironmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press,2011.Nuttall Sarah &#38;Achille Mbembe (ed.). Johannesburg: TheElusive Metropolis. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2008.Oldfield, Sophie &#38;Susan Parnell (ed.). The Routledge Handbook on Cities of the Global South.London &#38; New York: Routledge, 2014.Pieterse, Edgar. City Futures. Confronting the Crisis ofUrban Development. London &#38; New York: Zed Books, 2008.“Postcolonial Cities:Africa”. Moving Worlds. A journal oftranscultural writings 5.1, 2005.Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing andTransculturation.&#160; London &#38; NewYork: Routledge, 1992.Roy, Ananya. “Slumdog cities: Rethinkingsubaltern urbanism.”&#160;International journal of urbanand regional research 35.2, 2011: 223-238.Westphal, Bertrand. La géocritique. Réel, fiction, espace.Paris: Minuit, 2007.&#160;Weinvite contributors to upload their proposals (a 250-­word abstract,title, author’s name, a 150-word bio, and contact information) to the conferencewebsite:https://ecotones.submittable.com/submit/150853/ecotones-7-university-of-cape-townEachpresentation will be 20 minutes (followed by discussion time). A selection ofpapers will be considered for publication at the conclusion of the series ofEcotones events.OrganizingCommittee: &#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; A/Prof Markus Arnold, University of CapeTown&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Dr Hedley Twidle, Universityof Cape TownScientificCommittee:&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; A/Prof Markus Arnold, University of CapeTown&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Dr Shari Daya, University of Cape Town&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Prof Corinne Duboin, Université de La Réunion&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Dr Divine Fuh, University of Cape Town &#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; DrNomusa Makhubu, University of Cape Town&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; A/Prof Arnaud Richard, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Dr Anna Selmeczi, University of Cape Town&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Dr Hedley Twidle, University of Cape Town&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; A/Prof Sandra Young,University of Cape TownEcotones programme coordinators: A/Prof Judith Misrahi-Barak, Université Paul-Valéry MontpellierProf Thomas Lacroix, La Maison Française d’OxfordProf Maggi Morehouse, Coastal Carolina University 