Fragmenting Cities: The State, Territorial Stigmatization and Urban Marginality

Beskrivelse

In the talk we had the opportunity to expand and discuss our theory and model of 'the state as nested fields' which helps us generate empirical research on the on going right tilting of political space across major democracies around the globe from Denmark, Italy and Portugal to the US, Brazil and India. We contest that this right tilting should be the result of the weaponization of language and the spread of fake news etc. (these are important factor but not driving dynamics). Rather we must comprehend the resent political developments as part of (long-term) struggles over the state - not toward a neoliberal doing away with the state (even when some harbor these wishes) - but toward a radical reorganization of the state where the state and state power is turned against those sectors of the state which (re)produce and underpin public goods, care and social solidarity. What we term hashtag#policy_schizophrenia. A key part of this is the Fragmentation of the state, itself, the fragmentation of the city and the fragmentation of social collectives. Somewhat counter intuitively these fragmentations does not mean less state because governing fragmented societies requires massive resources and state power and a massive labor of legitimization but of a radically different kind than that of welfare states. This we believe is an amble diagnosis of our troubled times but one which need be empirically researched, corrected, qualified and further developed and here our friends at Porto was of tremendous help to forward this agenda. 🙏

Periode	28 maj 2025
Sted for afholdelse	University of Porto, Portugal
Grad af anerkendelse	International