Cities at War

Published by Columbia University Press 2020

Cities at War

Global Insecurity and Urban Resistance

Edited by: Mary Kaldor and Saskia Sassen

https://doi.org/10.7312/kald18538

Overview
Contents

About this book

Mary Kaldor and Saskia Sassen assemble an international team of scholars to examine cities as sites of contemporary warfare and insecurity. They develop new insight into how cities and their residents encounter instability and conflict, as well as the ways in which urban forms provide possibilities for countering violence.

Author information

Mary Kaldor is professor of global governance and director of the Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit in the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics. She is the coeditor of The Quest for Security: Protection Without Protectionism and the Challenge for Global Governance (Columbia, 2013, with Joseph Stiglitz) and the author of New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era (2012, third edition) and Global Security Cultures (2018) among other works.

Saskia Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and a member of the Committee for Global Thought at Columbia University. She is the author of many books, including Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy (2014), The Global City (2001, second edition), and Cities in a World Economy (2018, fifth edition).

Reviews

Martin Shaw, author of Genocide and International Relations: Changing Patterns in the Transitions of the Late Modern World:
Cities at War places important questions about how contemporary wars are affecting cities on the intellectual map via a well-chosen collection of case studies that convey the variety of urban experiences of warfare, violence, and avoidance of violence in the twenty-first century. This effective study offers a rich contribution to the field.

Alex de Waal, World Peace Foundation:
Thinking about war is too often trapped by the idea of a 'battlefield'—literally an open space in which social geographies are suspended for the duration of an armed contest. In this innovative volume, Mary Kaldor and Saskia Sassen fuse the paradigms of 'new war' and 'urban capabilities' to illuminate how urbanization transforms the conduct of war, societal survival during war, and resistance to war.

Rt. Hon. Clare Short:
Urbanization is spreading and conflict in urban areas changes the nature of war. Urbanists, peacekeepers, and military strategists should read this book. There are positive and negative lessons to be learned.

Jo Beall, London School of Economics and Political Science:
Sobering but with seams of hope, Cities at War brings together a state-of-the-art collection providing rich analysis of diverse contemporary cities embattled by insecurity, not just as urban theaters of violence or sites of broader conflicts but rather as places of human hankering and ingenious inventiveness and where cities themselves 'talk back.'

Craig Calhoun, Arizona State University and the London School of Economics:
Conflict, armed violence, and military interventions are brutal facts of life in cities throughout the world. While some commentators proclaim that cities can take up governance where states fail, or even that mayors might rule the world, reality is more complex. This book is a crucial guide to the reality of urban insecurity—and urban capabilities to cope with insecurity. Its cases come mainly from less rich countries with more or less manifest wars—but the issues considered matter everywhere.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction: Global Insecurity and Urban Capabilities Mary Kaldor and Saskia Sassen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Bamako, Mali: Danger and the Divided Geography of International Intervention Ruben Andersson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	25
2. Kabul: Bridging the Gap Between the State and the People Florian Weigand Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	53
3. Baghdad: War and Insecurity in the City Ali Ali Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	78
4. A Tale of Two Cities: Ciudad Juárez, El Paso, and Insecurity at the U.S.–Mexico Border Mary Martin Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	103
5. Responding to, or Perpetuating, Urban Insecurity? Enclave-Making in Karachi Sobia Ahmad Kaker Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	133
6. Violent Conflict and Urbanization in Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo: The City as a Safe Haven Karen Büscher Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	160
7. Navigating Security in Bogotá Johannes Rieken, Efraín García-Sánchez and Daniel Bear Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	184
8. “On the Margins of All Margins”: Explaining (In)Security in Novi Pazar, Serbia Vesna Bojicic-Dzelilovic Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	201
Conclusion: Spaces for Tactical Urbanism Saskia Sassen and Mary Kaldor Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	227
Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	233
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	237

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;

eBook

Published: April 20, 2020
ISBN: 9780231546133