Soziologische Dimensionen des Raums | Anna Steigemann

In this research seminar we will explore the city and its social life empirically. This means we will leave the class room, our computers, and books, and go ‘on the ground’ in different spaces in and around the city – depending on your own research interests and questions around questions of ‘lived and practiced diversity’. The main site for our empirical explorations will be Maximiliansstraße in Regensburg.

We will dive into the relationship between space - as socially constructed and as physical-material manifestation of social power relations and socialities  - and the so-called built environment. In your own empirical research projects, you will develop your own research questions, your individual research designs, which we will collectively underpin with and link back to more literature-based research and theoretical concepts around relevant social topics for the highly diverse urban life in the city of the 21st century. Aside from diversity and increased migration, these could be, for instance, questions about racism, drugs and the city, gentrification, social in/exclusion, gender and the city.

We will also engage with urban policy papers and the agenda and rationalities of selected urban and regional policymakers, local institutions, but also civil society actors, initiatives and organizations, who face the often complex challenges to meet the needs the diversifying Regensburg population. 

With this, the empirical research seminar provides an introduction to the study of contemporary spatial and social life and diversities for interdisciplinary Area Studies – with the case study of Regensburg. We start with an exploration of the conceptual framework for key urban and spatial studies topics as well as of their empirical dimensions. How can we explore (or ‘measure’?) social inequality, diversification, gender relations or racism in Regensburg with qualitative social research methods?

Cities and urban areas are contested spaces. They are spaces with powerful coalitions of interests, but also many voiceless and poor urban dwellers. Local politicians, city managers, residents, private entrepreneurs: whose interests determine and stimulate place making and how our cities transform? Who makes our cities, who ‘owns’ them, who governs them? In other words, what are the multi-scalar spatial politics and governance processes around these processes - particularly in times of increased social and ethnic diversities and translocal processes?

This interactive lecture deals with cities in the global South and North, their actors, their practices and motivations, their contexts, networks, and strategies, as well as with the underlying processes and the regulating instruments (institutions) that determine decisions in cities on a range of issues: housing, migration, urban social life, development, social and technical infrastructure, but also their histories and their service provision. 

In this context, the interactive lecture explores different central themes. First, it examines the social life of cities in terms of past and present migration phases and increased diversities. Who makes a city and for whom and why, what are the spatial dimensions of these practices and processes?

Second, the interactive lecture then reviews urban governance concepts and theories that explain and offer models how different actors come together in managing common affairs and fuse their resources in cities. This also includes multi-scalar administrative and institutional aspects of local self-governance and the re-distribution of political and fiscal authority between levels of government and between government, the private sector and residents and their organized interest groups.

Third, the lecture introduces further key concepts and different approaches relevant for contemporary urban social life, governance and the analysis of spatial politics in metropoles with their eventually very different urbanization patterns and trends.
These include diversity, migration and the city, social and ethnic segregation and their governance, informality, and comparative urbanism. Through the students’ presentations, the lecture also offers the possibility to critically reflect on the origins of such concepts and their applicability across contexts of the global South and North – in and beyond Europe.

This hands-on workshop is an experiment, an open platform, a discussion space, where PhD candidates can address in a ‘safer space’ all kinds of challenges during ‘doing a PhD’. I am not your supervisor, I am there to help you to improve the theoretical and empirical parts of your PhD, with my expertise as a sociologist and spatial researcher. In addition, the workshop aims to (re-) introduce you to different multi-scalar and multi-perspective approaches to writing an Area Studies dissertation. Based on the doctoral candidates’ projects, the seminar will bring together different disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives while introducing the participants to eventually new, more social science focused and multi-scalar techniques for collecting, interpreting, and analyzing qualitative data and information. With this, the doctoral candidates can reflect on and discuss their wider methodological approaches and data collection across the different Area Studies disciplines and with wider academic and non-academic audiences. This is why the seminar requires the doctoral candidates to prepare and share their current state and particularly the current fieldwork and data collection challenges in advance (deadline April 10 2024, see requirements above). In the workshop, PhD candidates are asked to give a short concise presentation of their project. This will allow us to zoom in and collectively discuss your individual approaches, your research and eventually field work plans, discuss existing and potentially emerging ethical issues around, for instance, doorkeepers, sampling, field work interaction with your research partners, but also all kinds of practical, theoretical, and empirical challenges, as well as how to protect and use sensitive data and information for your further work, and last but not least, next strategic and analytic steps

Cities as Places of Lived Diversity? Empirical Research Seminar

In this research seminar we will explore the city and its social life empirically. This means we will leave the class room, our computers, and books, and go ‘on the ground’ in different spaces in and around the city – depending on your own research interests and questions around questions of ‘lived and practiced diversity’. 

We will dive into the relationship between space - as socially constructed and as physical-material manifestation of social power relations and socialities  - and the so-called built environment. In your own empirical research projects, you will develop your own research questions, your individual research designs, which we will collectively underpin with and link back to more literature-based research and theoretical concepts around relevant social topics for the highly diverse urban life in the city of the 21^st century. Aside from diversity and increased migration, these could be, for instance, questions about racism, drugs and the city, gentrification, social in/exclusion, gender and the city. 

We will also engage with local, federal and national urban policy papers and the agenda and rationalities of selected urban and regional policymakers, local institutions, but also civil society actors, initiatives and organizations, who face the often complex challenges to meet the needs the diversifying Regensburg population. 

With this, the empirical research seminar provides an introduction to the study of contemporary spatial and social life and diversities for interdisciplinary Area Studies – with the case study of Regensburg. We start with an exploration of the conceptual framework for key urban and spatial studies topics as well as of their empirical dimensions. How can we explore (or ‘measure’?) social inequality, diversification, gender relations or racism in Regensburg with qualitative social research methods? 

Last but not least, the empirical research in Regensburg is a collaborative one: we will co-produce the knowledge in transdisciplinary ways with your selected local actors on the local social life and spaces - with a focus on concrete spaces, their actors and practices and how they have transformed the respective selected urban area. 

Please be prepared to spend a lot of time outdoors in the city, the morning sessions usually take place in our classroom, the afternoon sessions are most often reserved for your self-organized field work in the city.

In this research seminar we will explore the city and its urban (?) social life empirically. This means we will leave the classroom, our computers, and books, and go ‘on the ground’ in different spaces in and around the city. Where we go depends on your own research interests and questions.
We will dive into the relationship between space – as socially constructed and as physical-material manifestation of social power relations and socialities – and the so-called built environment. In your research projects, you will develop your own questions, based on your interests and positionalities, research design and methods, which we will collectively underpin and link back to more literature-based research and theoretical concepts around relevant social topics for urban life. These are, for instance, diversity and increased migration, racism, drugs and the city, gentrification, social exclusion, and gender and the city.
We will also engage with policy papers and the agenda and rationalities of selected urban and regional policymakers, local institutions, as well as civil society actors, initiatives and organizations, who face often complex challenges to meet the needs of the diversifying Regensburg population.
This empirical research seminar provides above all an introduction to the study of contemporary spatial and social life and diversities for interdisciplinary Area Studies – through a case study of Regensburg. We start with an exploration of the conceptual framework for key urban and spatial studies topics as well as those applicable to their empirical dimensions. How can we explore (or ‘measure’?) social inequality, diversification, gender relations or racism in Regensburg using qualitative social research methods?
Last but not least, the empirical research in Regensburg is collaborative: we will co-produce knowledge in transdisciplinary ways with your selected local actors involved in the local social life and spaces - with a focus on concrete spaces, their actors and practices and how they have transformed the respective selected urban area.

 By the end of the second decade of the 21st century, cities and urban spaces in Europe and beyond are not "planned" or “developed” as planned before. The major global developments of the recent years, such as increasing social and spatial inequality, the global financial crisis, environmental destruction, an immense urban population growth, and growing poverty increasingly shape urban life and urbanization. At the same time, our cities are also the local arenas for local negotiation and management of these global processes and challenges. It is mostly the bigger metropolitan areas in which social trends, political interventions, and technological innovation originate, all of which can also provide opportunities for improving human living conditions. In this context, the study of cities and urban spaces must navigate between these political, economic, and social challenges and opportunities and increasingly develop new (inter- and transdisciplinary) approaches and an understanding that consider urban and spatial development not as isolated and hermetically sealed off from other disciplines, but rather as a complex, multidisciplinary, highly dynamic, globally informed and locally situated process. 

The interactive introduction lecture therefore provides a systematic overview of current social and urban trends, global dependencies and relevant developments in international urbanization processes. The various approaches to social and urban science discussed in the interactive lecture will illustrate the complex interaction and the new understanding of roles and interplay of political, economic, planning and civil society actors and their influence on the making of urban spaces. On the basis of central themes for urban transformation, such as informality, diversity, governance, migration and participation, current concepts and debates as well as their relevance for the study of the urban and space are presented. The lecture focuses on the development of growing cities in Africa, America, Europe and Asia, but also allows through side views into small and medium-sized cities and partly more rural areas.

Cities and urban areas are contested spaces. They are spaces with powerful coalitions of interests, but also voiceless poor urban dwellers. Local politicians, city managers, private entrepreneurs, residents: whose interests determine and stimulate place making and urban development? In other words, who makes our cities, who ‘owns’ them, who governs them? In other words, what are the (spatial) politics and governance processes around these processes - particularly in times of increased social and ethnic diversities and translocal processes?

This seminar deals with cities in the so-called global South and North, their actors, their contexts, their motivations, networks, and strategies, as well as with the underlying processes and the regulating instruments (institutions) that determine decisions in cities on a range of issues in times of increased diversities: housing, land development, social and technical infrastructure, but also their histories and their service provision.  

In this context, the seminar explores different central themes. First, it examines the social life of cities in terms of past and present migration phases and increased diversities. Who makes a city and for whom and why? We will review top-down and more official urban and integration policies as well as more bottom-up self made modes of urban and social transformation. In a second step, the seminar then reviews urban governance concepts and theories that explain and offer models how different actors come together in managing common affairs and fuse their resources in cities. This also includes administrative and institutional aspects of local self-governance and the re-distribution of political and fiscal authority between levels of government and between government, the private sector and residents and their organized interest groups. 

Further, the seminar introduces a range of key concepts and different approaches relevant for contemporary urban governance and the analysis of spatial politics in metropoles with eventually very different urbanization patterns and trends. These include concepts of and approaches to diversity, migration and the city, social and ethnic segregation and their governance, informality, and comparative urbanism. The seminar offers the possibility to critically reflect on the origins of such concepts and their applicability across contexts of the global South and North – in and beyond Europe.

In addition, the seminar will zoom in on concepts and strategies of participation as well as their prerequisites (such as social capital) aiming to involve residents and promote ‘governance from below’. It also introduces as a practical example the framework for social capital in strategies of area-based initiatives in Europe. 

Diversity, Migration and the City

European cities today are more diverse than ever before. New migration and mobility processes, increasing socio-economic inequalities, spatial segregation, and a growing diversity of identities and lifestyles are among the contributing factors. Urban and regional policymakers, local institutions, but also civil society initiatives and organizations face numerous and often complex challenges to meet the needs of Europe’s increasingly diverse population. 

Simultaneously ‘diversity’ has become one of the main guiding principles and policy ideals for local politics and planning over the last years. And as such, “it constitutes an antithesis to previous orientations …, in which segregation of homogeneous districts was the governing orthodoxy” (Susan Fainstein, 2005). However, it remains unclear, whether diversity refers to distinct spatial units or structures and what is commonly understood as diversity: Does diversity describe a distinct ethnic or social structure? Or, when we talk about diversity, do we mean a concrete spatial use, offer, mix, or certain kind of qualities, or is it a built structure itself? ‘Diversity’ is often also used as a new euphemism for social mixing policies and the promotion of specific demographics, and thus became a driver for gentrification processes in many cities. 

Hence, this class provides an introduction to the study of contemporary urban (and partly regional) diversities for Area Studies. We start with an exploration of the conceptual framework as well as of its theoretical, practical, reception, and application contexts. Since diversity has very different meanings in the social and spatial science literature, we thereby make use of spatial and area studies’ interdisciplinary nature and draw on findings and arguments from sociological, cultural studies, geographical, and planning literature. In detail, we will discuss how European cities benefit from diversity/increased diversities and how they address (the different) diversity/-ies in their local policies and place making strategies, eg. how they frame refugee migration and what services and support they provide to newcomers. In the (post-)migration society, what are old and new practices and infrastructures that enable and support the settlement and integration process of all kinds of newcomers? How are new diversities negotiated on the ground, also between different social groups? What are the new spatial patterns of these diversities (eg. queering the city approaches or solidary city/sanctuary city movements and strategies)?  

We will work with the central hypothesis that diversity is an asset, particularly in the 21^st century as the century where migration and new mobilities are the norm. Hence, we will also look at how diversity affects social cohesion, social mobility, and economic performance, but also old and new lines of solidarity in the respective regions. In addition, the seminar participants will look at the historical, social, political, and economic forces that shape everyday life in so-called diverse places. This is complemented by critical explorations on the different forms and (contested) notions of ‘identity’, ‘community’ and ‘belonging’, also by means of own empirical socio-spatial observations: Students will work on selected case cities in groups, empirically exploring the political, social, cultural and economic dimension of local diversities, their actors, spaces (as partly also spatial infrastructures) and practices.