Ethnographies of Mass Transportation in a Globalized World
May 26, 2016, 9:00 AM to May 27, 2016, 1:00 PM EDT
Off-Campus Location, CIRHUS, Dean's Conference Room, 2nd Floor, 4 Washington Square North, New York, NY
This is a two-day workshop, being held at New York University, and is open to the public. It is supported by the NYU provost’s global initiatives program and organized by Stéphane Tonnelat (Associate Research Faculty at CNRS and NYU) and Rashmi Sadana (Assistant Professor, George Mason University), who is being supported by a Faculty Research Grant from George Mason's Center of Global Studies for this project.
It will be held at the Center for International Research in the Humanities and Social Science (CIRHUS) at NYU. Address: 4 Washington Square North, NY, NY 10003 Contact: Stéphane Tonnelat: st2451@nyu.edu and Rashmi Sadana: rsadana@gmu.edu. Please rsvp to: valerie.dubois@nyu.edu by May 24, 2016.
Workshop Description
As urban populations the world over are growing, more and more cities are building subways, tramways and bus lines, creating new transport landscapes, connecting and sectioning off new kinds of territories, and creating new forms and expressions of the political. Urban dwellers meanwhile are being segregated and mixed in previously unknown ways, often under the guises of modernity, progress, and citizenship.
This workshop will gather scholars who are researching and writing about mass transit systems (especially subways/metros, bus/Bus Rapid Transit, light rail, trams) as a way to conceptualize "the urban" and critically explore issues such as development, sustainability, mobility, urban design, public space, technology, and infrastructure. Scholars will present research conducted in the mass transit networks of cities as diverse as Taipei, Seoul, Moscow, Tehran, Santiago, Stockholm, Chicago, New York City, Tokyo, New Delhi, Yogyakarta (Indonesia), Bogota and Hawassa (Ethiopia).
Workshop Schedule
Day 1: Thursday, May 26th
9:00-9:30 Breakfast
9:30-9:50 Opening Remarks: Why ethnographies of mass transit?
Stéphane Tonnelat, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique / New York University
Rashmi Sadana, George Mason University
9:50-10:50 Planning Metropolitan Identities
Jessamyn Abel, Pennsylvania State University
“Urban Space and Metropolitan Identity in the Bullet Train City”
Anru Lee, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY
“Space, Mobility, and Identity: The Politics and Poetics of Urban Mass Transit Systems in Taiwan”
11:00-12:30 Informality and Infrastructural Upgrade
Sheri Gibbings, Wilfred Laurier University
Joshua Barker, University of Toronto
Emily Hertzman, University of Toronto
“The Politics of Public Transportation: Deterritorialization and Reterritorialization
of City Buses in an Indonesian City”
Eric Goldwyn, Columbia University
“Hear Me Honk”, the dollar vans in New York City
Daniel Mains, University of Oklahoma
“Governing the Bajaj: Technology, Markets and the State in Urban Ethiopia”
12:30-2:00 Lunch
2:00-3:30 Infrastructural Racism
Alfredo Huante, University of Southern California
“The Gold Line Eastside Extension: Rail as Racial Projects in a Los Angeles Barrio”
Gwendolyn Purifoye, Kent State University at Stark
“Unequal Spaces: Reproducing Inequalities Through Public Transit”
Megan Sheehan, Lehigh University
“Mobile Constraint: Migrant Experiences of the Metro and Racialized Urban Contention in Santiago, Chile”
3:45-4:45 Politics and Publics
Laura Cesafsky, University of Minnesota
“Radical Pragmatism: Transportation and Political Subjectivation in Bogotá, Colombia”
Mina Saidi Sharouz, Observatoire Urbain de Teheran
“Daily Life in Tehran’s Subway: Fitting In and Taking Place”
4:45-5:15 General Discussion of First Day’s Papers
7 PM Dinner, location to be announced
Day 2: Friday, May 27th
9:00-9:30 Breakfast
9:30-10:30 Users, Machines, and Systems
Mike Benediktsson, Hunter College, CUNY
“Counting on Courtesy: Normative Infrastructure on an Overcrowded Transit System”
Jenny Lindbald, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm
“Metro Gates in the Making: Negotiating Fare and Flow in Stockholm Public Transportation”
10:45-11:45 Technology and Modernity
Samuel Collins, Towson University
“All Aboard the Quantum Train: Connecting Self, Space and Time in Seoul’s Subway”
Oksana Zaporozhets, Higher School of Economics, Moscow
“The Subway: Sensing the Age of an Urban Technology”
12:00-1:00 Wrap-Up, Concluding Comments + Open Discussion
Rashmi Sadana
Stéphane Tonnelat
1:00-2:00 Lunch
2:30 PM Departure for Tour on the New York City Subway 7 Train
Meet at the entrance to 4 Washington Square North
