Urban Theory Seminar: The Agrarian Question

Abstract

Under 21st-century extended urbanisation, architecture and spatial practices are increasingly intertwined with agrarian concerns. This course delves into the intersections of urbanisation, architecture, and the agrarian question, covering historical land enclosure, plantations, and primitive accumulation, as well as contemporary urban agriculture and green initiatives.

Objective

Through this course, participants will cultivate a critical understanding of the agrarian question, its political economy, and urbanisation in agrarian territories. Active engagement with recommended literature is expected, encouraging participants to present, discuss, and debate key concepts in urban and environmental humanities. The seminar aims to: 1. Foster a critical understanding of agrarian concepts, ecology, environmental humanities, and extended urbanization. 2. Enhance participants' skills in reading, presenting, and debating academic texts. 3. Inspire ideas and build a theoretical basis for architectural and urban design practices in agrarian territories.

Content

The introductory sessions will look at the contemporary agrarian question in the era of planetary urbanisation in the fields of planning, architecture, and landscape studies. Each thematic session will include recommended readings, podcasts, or lectures communicated at the beginning of the semester. Participants will present short group presentations based on these materials, followed by moderated discussions. Sessions: (1-3) 28.02 Planetary Urbanisation and the 21st century Agrarian Question With neoliberal urbanisation, climate and economic uncertainties, wars, and conflicts disrupting agrarian livelihoods and landscapes, as well as global food chains, the agrarian question is gaining renewed relevance in urban studies and its associated disciplines. Recent research on ‘extended urbanisation,’ illustrates how peasant and pastoral livelihoods are being eroded due to the “enclosure of land away from social purposes in favor of privatised, exclusionary, and profit-driven modes of appropriation. whether for resource extraction, agribusiness, logistics functions, or other purposes” (Brenner & Schmid, 2015,167). The agrarian and the urban question are thus closely intertwined and mutually constitutive. Dispersed across a single day, this seminar’s first three sessions seek to solidify the understanding of the agrarian question and space among the participants. The first session will survey the agrarian question from its history to the present. The second session will focus on the reading and discussion of two recent texts on material incompletion and rewilding amidst urbanisation of agrarian landscapes. The last session would consist of a promenade in the city where the participants will experience parts of Zurich through the agrarian question. Lead Nitin Bathla (4) 13.03 Session 4: More-than-human agrarianisms This session will explore the ‘more-than-human’ ecology of agriculture. How soils are made and unmade, how assuming a more-than-human lens can allow us to see and imagine landscapes otherwise. Lead Luke Harris (5) 20.03 Food and the agrarian question: food sovereignty, hunger, and the future of food. This session will explore the concept of agroecology which has been proposed as a solution to the intersectional food, climate, and biodiversity crisis. Lead Nancy Couling (6) 27.03. Urban and regenerative agriculture – community led land/scape restoration. This session explores community-led landscape restoration in territories of extended urbaniaation. Lead Stefan Laxness (7) 3.04. Peripheralisation and the Politics of Land and Nature This session surveys how social struggles and dispossessions occur beneath images of rural and bucolic mountainous regions. Socio-ecological ruptures, land dispossessions and the enclosure of commons and agricultural land outline a broader process of peripheralisation. Lead Metaxia Markaki (8) 10.04. Renewable Energy Expansion in Agrarian Landscapes This session explores the drivers and implications of agrarian landscape transformations and the role of renewable energy production, such as solar energy & bioenergy, within them. Lead Naomi Hanakata (9) 8.05. Plantation Technologies This session explores the global operationalisation of both the olive trees and palm oil, their plantation technologies, and the potential “minor” practices of resilience emerging within these contexts. Lead Hans Hortig & Juan Villalón Hernando (10) 15.05. Metabolism and the Production of Nature This session will explore the historical and contemporary geographies of primary production with an emphasis on the food-energy nexus and the socio-metabolic relations between cities and their “operational landscapes”. Lead Nikos Katsikis (11) 22.05: Concluding Discussion Lead C. Schmid

Resources