Future Practices of Citizenship in Asia and the West - Care of the Self (Volume III)

Book Outline

This book looks at some of the biggest challenges facing society in the twenty-first century. With research conducted in Asia and the West, we see struggles for rights and recognition by indigenous peoples, women, migrants, and the young, as well as the dangerous effects some government responses to COVID-19 have had on artistic freedoms and citizen participation. Digitisation is shown to be a double-edged sword, with some ill effects of corporate control countered by more positive, bottom-up endeavours by people in their everyday lives. One of the biggest challenges facing the world today is undoubtedly the issue of sustainability. This is also something of a double-edged sword because, in trying to prevent some of its worst effects, governments sometimes use it as a way to increase control over citizens.

What unites all twelve of the papers in this volume is their people-centred approach. Based on Michel Foucault’s concept of the Care of the Self, this acts as a thread connecting the different research endeavours so that we see that even though there are societal challenges in the twenty-first century, by working together as citizens, we can overcome them.

Editors

Gregory Bracken is Assistant Professor of Spatial Planning and Strategy at the TU Delft and one of the co-founders of Footprint, the journal dedicated to architecture theory. From 2009 to 2015, he was a Research Fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS), Leiden, where he co-founded the Urban Knowledge Network Asia (UKNA). His publications include The Shanghai Alleyway House: A Vanishing Urban Vernacular (2013), Asian Cities: Colonial to Global (2015), Ancient and Modern Practices of Citizenship in Asia and the West (2019), Contemporary Practices of Citizenship in Asia and the West (2020) and Future Practices of Citizenship in Asia and the West (2025).

Nurul Azreen Azlan is a Lecturer in Architecture and Urbanism at Manchester School of Architecture (MSA). After graduating as a Part II architect from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia and spending some time in practice, she pursued a master’s in urban design at the Bartlett, UCL. She completed her PhD at the TU Delft, where she wrote a dissertation on the spaces of protest in post-colonial Kuala Lumpur (2018). Post-PhD, she taught and researched architecture and urban design at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (2018-2022). Before joining MSA, she was an NUS Fellow at the Asia Research Institute (ARI), National University of Singapore, under the NUS Southeast Asia Fellows Programme.

Paul Rabé is the Academic Coordinator of the Cities Cluster at the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS), Leiden, as well as the overall coordinator of the Urban Knowledge Network Asia (UKNA) and the River Cities Network: Engaging with Waterways in the Anthropocene (RCN). Paul is also the series editor of Amsterdam University Press’s Asian Cities Book Series and is the Lead Expert in Urban Land Governance at the Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS), Erasmus University Rotterdam, where he is also joint coordinator of the Urban Environment, Sustainability, and Climate Change academic track. A political scientist by training with a doctoral degree (2009) in policy, planning, and development from the University of Southern California’s Sol Price School of Public Policy, Paul has over 25 years of experience in advisory work, capacity development, research, and teaching on urban policy topics, focused on urban land governance and the intersection of land (use) and the management of water and water bodies in urban and peri-urban areas.

Registration

You can attend this book launch online or in person in the ASCL seminar room 0.31, Herta Mohr building, Leiden.

A lunch will be served to in-person attendees who register by 26 October. Registration is required as seating is limited. Please use the web form on this page.