Overview

To see like a city, rather than seeing like a state, is the key to understanding modern politics. In this book, Magnusson draws from theorists such as Weber, Wirth, Hayek, Jacobs, Sennett, and Foucault to articulate some of the ideas that we need to make sense of the city as a form of political order. Locally and globally, the city exists by virtue of complicated patterns of government and self-government, prompted by proximate diversity. A multiplicity of authorities in different registers is typical. Sovereignty, although often claimed, is infinitely deferred. What emerges by virtue of self-organization is not susceptible to control by any central authority, and so we are impelled to engage politically in a world that does not match our expectations of sovereignty. How then are we are to engage realistically and creatively? We have to begin from where we are if we are to understand the possibilities. Building on traditions of political and urban theory in order to advance a new interpretation of the role of cities/urbanism in contemporary political life, this work will be of great interest to scholars of political theory and urban theory, international relations theory and international relations.

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9780415782418

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Reviews

This text is a significant and innovative attempt to formulate a truly urban outlook. The Politics of Urbanism is an unusual, compelling book. It is clearly written, well researched, and advances a provocative rethinking of the relationship of the state and the city to politics. Although we may need to do more work before we can redeem the historic promise of Left urbanism and find the beach beneath the pavement, this book will bring us part of the way. - Chuck Morse, Stir Magazine, December 2012

There are few political thinkers writing today who can bear the burden of breadth that an aesthetically sensitive mode of political theorizing demands. Michael Shapiro is exemplary amongst them. In The Time of the City , Shapiro's bold bricolages take center stage by re-energizing our lethargic political methodologies and infusing them with a perspicuous attention to the aesthetic modes of association and dissociation in democratic life. This is not simply a work that anyone interested in film, urban politics, race studies, and cultural and democratic theory must read; it is a book they will want to read over and over again. Davide Panagia, Co-Editor, Theory & Event and Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies, Trent University, Canada a Starting with his brilliant insights on Berlin's new status as the cultural capital of Western Europe, Shapiro masterfully cuts across conventional disciplinary boundaries and reflects on diverse artistic genres as he exposes his readers to the crucial global-local dynamics of the contemporary urban experience. Manfred B. Steger, Professor of Global Studies and Director of the Globalism Research Centre Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia a Film is becoming 'for real' as its techniques are transferred into the city and the city becomes understood through its techniques. Shapiro understands this complex inter-play as a way of rethinking the political and method at one and the same time, thereby producing a new means of studying film and the city and an indispensable book for urbanists, political scientists, and scholars of film. Nigel Thrift, Vice-Chancellor, Warwick University, UK a As attuned to the spatial as it is to the temporal, and as theoretically sophisticated as it is politically relevant, this is a powerful and intriguing meditation on cities of the page, the screen and the moment. Stuart Elden, Professor of Political Geography, Durham University, UK

Author Information

Warren Magnusson is Professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Victoria, Canada

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