Workshop 1
Thessaloniki
26, 27 May 2022
The politics of infrastructure and
emancipatory political Infrastructures
Venue
The workshop will take place in person at the premises of the School of Architecture of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
Intro
The first workshop of the Seminar Series “Re-thinking the spatial politics of global urbanization processes: the contested relationalities of port cities past and present”, is titled “Re-thinking the spatial politics of global urbanization processes: the contested relationalities of port cities past and present” and will take place in Thessaloniki, Greece on 26 & 27 May 2022. The workshop will foreground the spatial politics of infrastructure as a key terrain through which global urbanization processes are being shaped and contested by multiple actors at multiple scales. The event will situate port-cities as key nodes in infrastructure politics that enable global flows and animate the forces of capital and ‘empire’ and explore how the exclusionary ordering of the urban is contested through multi-ethnic encounters, solidarities and political infrastructures.
Program
DAY 1 Thursday 26/5
9:15-9:30 Coffee
9:30 - 10:00 Welcome - Introduction
Matina Kapsali (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) & Lazaros Karaliotas (University of Glasgow)
10:00-12:00 Planetary Logistics
Chua, Charmaine (UC Santa Barbara, USA) The Logistics Counter-revolution: Decolonial Struggle and the Transpacific political economy of just-in-time circulation
Hannah Schling (University of Glasgow, UK) Just-in-time social reproduction: the logistics of labour in a dormitory labour regime.
Chair: Lazaros Karaliotas
12:00 - 13:00 Lunch break
13:00 - 15:00 Infrastructural networks and (in)security
Bhardwaj, Atul (Independent Scholar, Columnist for the Economic and Political Weekly, India) Emerging Coastal Security Architecture in India: More than a Decade After 26/11 Mumbai terrorist attacks
Davies, Andy (University of Liverpool, UK) Port cities as counter-imperial space: Tuticorin and Tinnevelly 1906-1908
Chair: Dave Featherstone
15:00 - 15:15 Coffee Break
15:15 - 17:30 Port-spaces and contested memories
Dimitriadis, Sotirios (Temple University, USA) Contested pasts: Ottoman heritage and Thessaloniki’s port
Mais, Christos (University of Thessaly, Greece) Between Class & Nation: labour politics and the port of Thessaloniki during the Interwar
Evangelia Athanassiou and Maria Karagianni (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece) Global connections and missing links: a tale of the yet-to-come transformation of Thessaloniki’s port area
Chair: Matina Kapsali
18:00 Field Visit 1: Thessaloniki’s contested memories
(Guided Tour from Aristotle University to the Port)
DAY 2 Friday 27/5
9:15-9:30 Coffee Break
9:30 - 11:30 Infrastructure, Finance, Politics
Apostolopoulou, Elia (Cambridge University, UK) Silk Road Urbanization: Cities, infrastructure-led development and global inequality
Ward, Callum (UCL, UK) Contradictions of Financial Capital Switching: Reading the Corporate Leverage Crisis through The Port of Liverpool’s Whole Business Securitization
Chair: Maria Karagianni
11:30 - 11:45 Coffee Break
11:45: - 13:45 Urban Political Infrastructures
Roussos, Kostis (Essex University, UK) Radical democracy, the commons and everyday struggles during the Greek crisis
Kapsali, Matina (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece) Infrastructures of care & social reproduction amidst Thessaloniki’s crises
Chair: Lazaros Karaliotas
13:45 - 14:45 Lunch break
14:45 - 16:45 Sea and Solidaties
Kosmatopoulos, Nikolas (American University Beirut, Lebanon ) The Anticolonial Ship: Floating affective infrastructures from Gaza to Chiapas through Piraeus
Featherstone, Dave (University of Glasgow, UK) Maritime Solidarities
Chair: Andy Davies
18:00 - 20:00 Field Visit 2: Building Infrastructures of Solidarity
( Guided Tour VIOME, occupied and self-managed factory)
Roundtable Discussion