[DEBATE] : CCS Seminar: Björn Surborg on Johannesburg extractive industries, Monday, 12:30-2

[Patrick Bond]

http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs

Join us at the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society for
a seminar on "Contesting Johannesburg's extractive industries"

Speaker: Björn Surborg, University of British Columbia
Date: Monday, 25 May
Time: 12:30-2pm
Venue: CCS/SDS seminar room, Memorial Tower Building Room F208

University of KwaZulu-Natal Howard College Campus

Queries: poonenh at ukzn.ac.za or 031-260-3195

World City Research has been criticised for its hierarchical, static and
western centric approach as well as a neglect of some of the important
interactions between scales of governance. I am intending to undertake a
case study of Johannesburg, South Africa, that traces the city's
connections to a variety of other places to which it is closely tied.
These places will not be limited to the so called Global Cities but
include the urban and the rural, east and west, global south and north.
The study thus does not attempt to construct one global network of world
cities, but a network that has as a specific starting point,
Johannesburg, and is centred around this place. This specific
sub-network is part of a globally diffused and decentralised network of
networks, of which powerful world cities are a part, but by no means the
only one. Extractive industries are an elementary ingredient of the
world economy and a major industry for many countries in the global
south. Using the primary sector for the analysis is thus also an attempt
to return to the origins of world city research in world systems theory,
which means an analysis of globally uneven exchanges, an aspect which
has seemingly disappeared from contemporary world city research. The
research will be constructed around two central question: 1) How is the
city of Johannesburg integrated into the world economy through the
resource sector and what are the primary connections to other places? 2)
How do individual and institutional actors in the city of Johannesburg
work to articulate and strengthen these linkages?

Björn Surborg is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Geography,
University of British Columbia. His research interests are located 
somewhere around the intersection between urban and regional studies and 
development studies. While he focused in his previous work on the 
development of the internet in Vietnam, his attention has shifted more 
recently to a critical review of Johanesburg's position in the world 
economy. He is currently deputy editor of the journal City - analysis of 
urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action.