Call for papers for Special Issue: ‘Poly-periphery’ and the ‘peripheral turn’ in urban studies

Call for papers for Special Issue: ‘Poly-periphery’ and the ‘peripheral turn’ in urban studies

Coordination: Matthew A. Richmond (University of Newcastle), Patrícia Maria de Jesus (Federal University of ABC) and Jean Legroux (Paulista State University)

Deadline for submission: March 31, 2024

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From the mid-20th century onwards, urban peripheries in Latin America and other regions of the Global South came to be seen as spaces of extreme poverty and total state absence: as urban containers of a veritable “surplus humanity” (Davis, 2006). Far from reflecting this imagined homogeneity, today's peripheries show increasing diversity and complexity across multiple dimensions, such as landscapes, types of housing, culture, identities, policies, practices, experiences, and spatial representations. Many urban peripheries have seen trends of incremental physical consolidation over time with the arrival of urban infrastructures, services, and public and private services, albeit varying in terms of speed and quality (Caldeira, 2017). Meanwhile, many argue that the center–periphery model itself is being reconfigured via the emergence of a “fragmentary” urban logic (Navez-Bouchanine, 2002; Prévôt-Schapira, 2001), rendering the dualistic model increasingly “obsolete” as an analytical prism of the urban (Dumont, 2017).

In the context of these changes, a starting assumption of many today is not of the socio-spatial homogeneity of these areas, but of their heterogeneity. Alongside the complexification and rapid transformations of peripheral territories, this is generating discussion around the notion of a “poly-periphery”.

In Latin America, this shift is not a mere coincidence, nor an academic fad. It reflects real historical transformations, since the redemocratization of several countries in the region in the 1980s and 1990s, and, in particular, strong economic growth and the ascendancy of progressive governments in the 2000s and early 2010s.

These conditions led to an accelerated expansion of social policies and increased consumption among the popular classes, with visible impacts in urban peripheries. Meanwhile, national and local governments and real estate agents have developed urban projects aimed at the peripheries, producing new real estate products aimed at the consumption of goods and services, as well as investments in infrastructure and transport networks. These impacts have been socially and spatially uneven. While high-end, gated residential spaces have increasingly appeared in traditionally poor areas (Romo, 2015), the peripheries have also seen new housing developments aimed at different social and income groups, built by the private sector or by popular housing programs, or often by both together (Corrêa; Barros, 2021).

A t the same time, “hyper-peripheries” (Torres; Marques, 2001) or “peripheries of the periphery” (Cruz; Legroux, 2023), informal settlements and precarious occupations continue to form, housing the poorest, who remain excluded from public policies and housing finance.

Lindón and Mendoza (2015, p. 39) seek to capture this heterogeneity, calling the current peripheries ‘Alephian’ (referring to Jorge Luís Borges’ apocryphal expression) as “the place that contains all places”. In this way, the peripheries seem to explain the urban as a whole, while the socio-spatial heterogeneity of the peripheries seems to have become a new consensus among urban researchers.

However, this emphasis on heterogeneity produces certain risks. It can serve to conceal the marginalization that a large part of the peripheral population continues to face, and even distract from the stark socioeconomic and racial homogeneity of elite neighborhoods, as has been argued by D'Andrea (2021). Furthermore, the expansion of important infrastructures, services and social policies in peripheries on the one hand, and the socioeconomic mobility of part of their populations on the other, can also divert political debates away from demands for more structural, sustainable and collective improvements.

In addition to empirical transformations in peripheries, a related debate revolves around changes in the way peripheries are represented. For a long time, their collective marginalization in relation to the central areas was not only socioeconomic, but also epistemological: their residents were considered as objects of urban research and not as a source of social, cultural and political production; and much less of theorization about their own social and urban reality. However, in recent years, the discourse around urban peripheries has changed significantly, both within the academy and via new affirmations of peripheral pride and definitions of what the periphery is by ‘peripheral subjects’ themselves (D’Andrea, 2022).

Today, some propose that the field of urban studies (including in the Global North and the Anglosphere) has undergone a “peripheral turn” (Ren, 2017). Keil (2017) argues that the unprecedented and varied outward, (sub)urban expansion of cities, in both Global North and South, means that there is a need to rethink urban theory “from the outside in”. Ren (2021), speaking from the Asian context, argues that a “peripheral turn” is already underway, as academics pay more attention not only to urban peripheries, but also to the “peripheries of theory” and their own practices and methodologies in urban research. Indeed, decolonial theoretical perspectives and participatory and engaged forms of research have never been more prominent in the centers of urban knowledge production, at least at the discursive level. However, there are reasons to question both the degree and nature of this “turn”, and its potential to truly allow voices from the peripheries to speak for themselves.

Our proposal in this Special Issue is to interrogate and debate, in Brazil and beyond, the dimensions and limits of: (1) the heterogeneity of urban peripheries today and the validity of the notion of “polyperiphery”; and (2) the “peripheral turn” in urban research. We invite submissions that articulate these two propositions in a theoretical and/or empirical way. In the case of empirical contributions, it is essential that the texts engage with these arguments and seek to present broad findings, rather than just presenting case studies from research conducted in peripheral areas.

Papers are welcome that address following sub-themes:

1) Qualitative or quantitative analysis of social and spatial heterogeneity in the periphery and between different urban peripheries, whether in the same city, in different cities, or at other scales (eg. between metropolitan regions and medium-sized cities, between cities in different countries, in border regions, etc.).

2) Historical analyses of particular urban peripher(ies), exploring how and why they became more socially and spatially heterogeneous over time, or not.

3) Analysis of the intellectual history of research on urban peripheries, and how academic approaches to these territories have or have not evolved.

4) Dialogue with contemporary urban theory in different contexts and the different ways in which it constructs the urban periphery.

5) Analysis of how peripheral residents and subjects understand and relate to the growing heterogeneity of the peripheries and/or the peripheral turn and seek to produce their own knowledge about these spaces.

Researchers from different disciplines with an interest in the topic addressed by this Special Issue are invited to submit original contributions that address the themes and approaches set out here. Texts may be submitted in Portuguese, Spanish or English.

Editorial guidelines for the preparation and presentation of manuscripts are those of RBEUR and may be found via the link: https://rbeur.anpur.org.br/rbeur/about/submissions.

Articles for this Dossier must be sent through the RBEUR website by March 31, 2024.

References

CALDEIRA, T. Peripheral urbanization: Autoconstruction, transversal logics, and politics in cities of the global south. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, v. 35, n. 1, 2017, p. 3–20.

CORRÊA, B; BARROS, S. Trajetórias econômicas e espaciais do grupo MRV: reescalonamento e produção do espaço. Sociedade e Território, Natal, v. 33, n. 3, set/dez de 2021, p. 7-25. 

CRUZ, T.;  LEGROUX, J. Estigma territorial e diferenciações socioespaciais da/na periferia: o caso do Pimentas (Guarulhos-SP). Revista Terra Livre, v. 2, n. 59, 2023, p. 396-435. 

D’ANDREA, T. 40 Ideias de Periferia. São Paulo: Dandara Editora, 2021.

D’ANDREA, T. A formação das sujeitas e dos sujeitos periféricos: cultura e política na periferia de São Paulo. São Paulo: Dandara Editora, 1. Ed. 288 p, 2022.

DAVIS, M. Planet of Slums. London & New York: Verso, 2006.

DUMONT, G.F. Territoire: le modèle “centre-périphérie” désuet. Outre terre, v.2, n. 51, 2017, p. 64-79.

KEIL, R. Suburban Planet: Making the World Urban From the Outside in. Cambridge: Polity, 2017.

LINDÓN, A.; MENDOZA, C.  Miradas alephianas de la periferia metropolitana. In: LINDÓN, A.; MENDOZA, C. (orgs) La Periferia Metropolitana: Entre la Ciudad Prometida y un Lugar para Habitar en la Ciudad de México. Ciudad de México: Gedisa, 2015.

NAVEZ-BOUCHANINE, F. (Dir). La fragmentation en question: des villes entre fragmentation spatiale et fragmentation sociale?. Paris: L’Harmattan, 410 p, 2002. 

REN, X.  ‘The peripheral turn in global urban studies: Theory, evidence, sites’, South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, 26, 2021, p. 1-8.

PRÉVÔT-SCHAPIRA, M. Fragmentación espacial y social: conceptos y realidades. Perfiles latinoamericanos, Revista de la Sede Académica de México de la Facultad latino-americana de Ciencias Sociales, 2001. https://doi.org/10.3406/bagf.2005.2481

TORRES, H. G.; MARQUES, E. C. Q.  Reflexões sobre a hiperperiferia: Novas e velhas faces da pobreza no entorno municipal, Revista Brasileira de Estudos Urbanos e Regionais, v. 49, n. 4, 2001, p. 49-70.