Urban Violence

Reviews / Votes

A breathtaking reworking of violence, in its heterogeneous and specific expressions, as a constitutive force of reified urban fabrics, the materialization of the imaginaries of secure lives, and a fraught modality of contestation over future trajectories. -- AbdouMaliq Simone, University of Sheffield This is a hugely impressive and thought-provoking piece of work that constitutes a major intervention on urban violence. Wide-ranging, erudite, and original in scope and nature, it draws on both multi-lingual and multi-disciplinary literatures from across the Global North and South to put forward an innovative theoretical approach re-articulating the genealogical relations between violence, security, and urbanisation, at the heart of which is the novel notion of 'urban atmospheric violence'. This key analytical lens captures the 'turbulent' relationality of the ontological, epistemological, and ethical dimensions of urban violence, and fundamentally challenges the conceptual reductionism of most existing analyses, thereby offering a fresh and stimulating answer to the perennially thorny question of 'what is urban violence?' -- Dennis Rodgers, Geneva Graduate Institute, Switzerland A theoretical tour-de-force taking inspiration from vital materialism, postcolonial and queer theory as well as (post)structuralism and political economy approaches. The authors offer a comprehensive overview of theorisations of violence, the urban, and security before making a compelling case for a reconceptualization of urban violence vis-a-vis a notion of security as care. This is an inspiring book about urban violence that is as much about theory as about politics and ethics. I cannot recommend it highly enough! -- Katharina Karcher, University of Birmingham