Theoretical Approaches to Urban Temporalities

Presentation

This workshop seeks to examine how temporalities shape key dimensions of contemporary urban experience, particularly in contexts of rapid urbanisation. Temporalities are understood as relational experiences of engagement with time, both individual and collective. They are neither universal nor homogeneous, but contingent and heterogeneous, produced within specific contexts.

We start from the premise that societies are increasingly confronted with temporal diversity, generating distinctive configurations in which frictions and dissonances emerge, often along pre-existing class divides. Temporalities reflect power dynamics operating at different scales and shape individual experiences of time, which are also informed by the intentionality and agency of social actors.

Drawing on empirical cases, the contributions will address three main dimensions. First, the spatial configurations of urban development: how speed and slowness, as well as long-term histories and projections of the future, influence urban form and planning. Second, working conditions: how work—whether informal or formal, paid or unpaid—relates to the meanings and uses of time. Finally, urban subjectivities: through an intersectional perspective, how differentiated temporal experiences shape the dynamics and rhythms of urban life.

Programme

9:00–9:30 am: Welcoming the participants

9:30–9:45 am: Introduction to the workshop
Loraine Kennedy, CESAH-EHESS Paris, S. Shakthi, University of Amsterdam and Min Tang, Tongji University, Shanghai

9:45-10:15 am: Inhabiting and contesting non-linear temporality in the urban: The case of Maputo
Bjørn Bertelsen, University of Bergen, Norway 

10:15-10:45 am: Walking in Hong Kong and Taipei: Quiet subjectivities in the rhythmic temporalities of everyday life
Julie Ren, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands

10:45-11:15 am: Coffee/tea break

11:15-11:45 am: Waiting for the sea, anticipating the future. Timescapes of fishing communities in South India between everyday rhythms and unequal futurities
Nicolas Bautès, University Paul Valéry Montpellier, France

11:45-12:15 pm: Perpetual Promises, Provisional Protections: Time and Materiality in State–Resident Encounters in Recife’s Hillside Periphery
Amélie Renz, Wageningen University, Netherlands

12:15-12:45 pm: Meantime Matters: Repair Ecologies and the Politics of Possibility Along Nairobi's Rivers
Tatiana A. Thieme, University College London, UK

1:00-2:00 pm: Lunch break

2:00-2:30 pm: Repair Politics: Struggles over housing, infrastructure, and vacancy in São Paulo
Nate Millington, Manchester University, United Kingdom

2:30-3:00 pm: Planning and peripheral time: Urban development in the margins
Martijn Koster, Wageningen University, Netherlands

3:00-3:30 pm: Rethinking Urban Enclaving: On Temporal Politics and Experiences of remaking Yangshupu, Shanghai
Min Tang, Tongji University, Shanghai, China

3:30-4:00 pm: Coffee/tea break

4:00 -5:30 pm: Round table discussion with invited guests and participants

5: 30-6:00 pm: Next steps (organisers and speakers)

Practical information

Study day organised by Loraine Kennedy, CNRS Research Director at CESAH-CNRS-EHESS, with the support of the Paris Institute for Advanced Study, GIS Asie, CESAH-CNRS-EHESS, and the University of Amsterdam.

This event will be held at the IEA Paris and will take place in a small, private setting (restricted access). To participate or obtain further details, please contact the organizers. Contact: loraine.kennedy@ehess.fr