EVERYDAY PRACTICES OF SOLIDARITY. Relational Learning Under Conditions of Multiple Crises

We depart from both an interest in urban social movements and in collectively and spatially organising our lives in ways that battle the implications of the conditions that multiple crises have on everyday urban life. While we share an interest in the everyday and practices of solidarity, we do not want to fall into the trap of romanticising the potentialities of such spaces and practices against the backdrop of structural inequalities and current politics of austerity as well as rising nationalisms. Hence, we invite for a dialogue between research on urban inequalities as well as precarious conditions of everyday reproduction of urban life and studies of emancipatory practices of solidarity and the spaces in which those (can) emerge.


STREAM 1) Centring crisis of social reproduction: temporalities, politics, effects
In what ways can we speak of a set of interrelated multiple crises?
What conceptualizations allow us to centre social reproduction in our analyses of crises?
What can we see through the lens of our respective conceptions of crises?
Can we speak of a ‘more than temporary crisis’ and thus detach the idea of crisis as momentary rupture but rather centre crisis as a condition?
In what was has austerity as politics and subsequent policies of crisis normalized in various contexts in different ways?
In what ways are the possible effects of crises unevenly (spatially) distributed and thus reinforce existing inequalities?
(relating to the second thematic cluster): Impacts of the (more than temporary and multiple) crises on the social reproduction of everyday life in the city.


STREAM 2) Everyday practices of solidarity: potentialities, restraints, protagonists and spatialities
How do people organize urban everyday life and their daily reproduction at times of multiple crises?
(and further:) What are the possibilities for overcoming forms of individualised precariousness towards resistant collective spaces and practices?
(or even:) What are the potentialities and restraints of practices of solidarity in this context?
In what ways can everyday practices of solidarity contribute to a struggle against rising inequalities and urban precarity while also functioning as an opposition to growing right wing/nationalist populism?
Who is doing the daily work within everyday spaces of solidarity? How is this work done and which spaces are created in/ or facilitate the process?
How can seemingly detached fields of struggle be connected and thus allow for relational solidarities to evolve?


STREAM 3) Research practices: engaged, multi-sited, relational
For this stream we would like to learn from your experiences of doing research in the fields of daily struggles, urban precarity and practices of resistance and their spatialities. We welcome reports from the field, stories about problems and surprises, failures and crisis and the lessons you have learnt from all of these. In what ways were or are you engaged with your field of research? How does it affect you and how do you affect your field? Are you working alongside social movements? In which spaces do you research and what is your position in them?

 

During the second part of the workshop we want to build on what we have shared during the short individual inputs and collective discussions in order to come to terms with terminologies. As an interdisciplinary group and inspired by research from various contexts we will make space to work together on crucial terms and concepts. Hence, we also invite you to bring critical and provocative discussions of the key elements that make up the guiding questions formulated above.

 

CONFIRMED PARTICIPANTS

Panagiotis Bourlessas, Monia Cappuccini, Kallia Fysaraki, Rebekka Keuß, Jenny Künkel, Mona Mahall, Vasiliki Makrygianni, Maja Momic, Ines Morales, Evangelia Mori, Antonis Papangelopoulos & Dimitrios Loupetis, Valeria Raimondi, Moritz Rinn, Dimitra Spanou, Stavros Stavrides, Sarah Uhlmann, Anne Vogelpohl, Kathrin Wildner, Sebastian Zetzl

WORKSHOP ORGANISERS

Nina Fraeser, Monika Grubbauer, Eva Kuschinski, Ronja Lührs and Maja Momic