At the Limits of Urban Theory: racial banishment in the contemporary city [Audio]

Speaker(s): Professor Ananya Roy | In cities around the world, especially in the United States, processes of socio-spatial restructuring continue to unfold. Often understood as neoliberal urbanism and often identified through concepts such as gentrification, these processes entail the displacement of subaltern classes to the far edges of urban life. In this talk, Ananya Roy argues that it is necessary to analyse such transformations through a theorisation of racial capitalism. In particular, she draws on research conducted by scholars and social movements in Los Angeles to delineate processes of racial banishment. In doing so, Roy argues that the standard conceptual repertoire of urban studies is ill-equipped to study such processes. In particular, influential explanations that invoke neoliberalisation often miss the long histories of dispossession and disposability that are being remade in the contemporary city. Put another way, she makes the case for how urban studies must contend wi