Writing urban life: stories of waste and cities

In this talk, Colin Mcfarlane will reflect on recent work on urban fragments and urban waste to pose the question ‘how do we write differently about urban life?’ Mcfarlane will examine how different conceptual positions, writing strategies, and political commitments might shape how we understand and represent urban life, including some of the possibilities, challenges, blind-spots, and questions that remain.

The Informal Cities Working Group is promoted by the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture (CiSSC) from Concordia University and this event is co-organized by Concordia Ethnography Lab.

The Informal Cities Working Group brings together faculty and students from anthropology, geography, history, political science, and sociology, to generate an interdisciplinary understanding of the role of the informal in the survival and development of the built and the lived city in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Agenda

12 – 1:30 pm:      Writing urban life: stories of waste and cities with Colin Mcfarlane
2 – 3 pm:             Working session