The growing research on public security policy in the context of urban crime and insecurity large... more The growing research on public security policy in the context of urban crime and insecurity largely re-flects a shifting paradigm towards a new culture of control. At the same time, research has rarely asso-ciated descriptive studies about the emergence of insecurities with discourses, policies and measures that aim at the production of greater urban security. This paper seeks to address this comparison through exploring the interwovenness of security practices and arrangements in everyday life. Drawing on the theory of social practices and the interaction of agencies and structures – institutions, policies and discourses at different scales – we argue that there is a mutual interrelation between public and private security policies on the one hand and the space-related everyday practices of urban middle-class residents on the other hand. Taking two districts located in the city of São Paulo as examples, the paper presents the results of 70 qualitative interviews with inhabitants concerning the nexus of doings and sayings in everyday practices in the context of different (in-)security production processes. We discuss how these security practices emerge as the grounding concept of shifting public security and neighbourhood at the local level. Thus, the main purpose of the paper is to theoretically overcome the conceptual dualism of reading sociality in public and private (in-)security by putting social practices theory empirically into practice.
The paper discusses pivotal questions of housing and housing policy after decades of liberalisati... more The paper discusses pivotal questions of housing and housing policy after decades of liberalisation, deregulation and privatisation in urban (housing) politics. The focus is on European metropolises, where the impacts of these long-term processes together with the consequences of current financialisation processes have led to the dispossession of poorer urban social groups and to widespread discontentedness of both lower and middle-income groups. Protests and the rise of more or less powerful social movements, e. g. in Spanish and German big cities, criticising particularly urban housing politics, have resulted in a gradual rethinking of social responsibility and in the soft implementation of new (or recycled) instruments in favour of limiting capitalist interests. The discussion reviews the fundamental thoughts of housing-related urban development from critical perspective, proposes conceptual frameworks for further studies that take structural as well as agency concepts into account, debates how to tackle contentious processes of eviction and dispossession, and presents initial approaches of re-possession in the light of new housing politics.
The megacity Guangzhou in the South-Chinese Pearl River Delta is one of the most economically dyn... more The megacity Guangzhou in the South-Chinese Pearl River Delta is one of the most economically dynamic and rapidly urbanizing areas in the world and meanwhile home to some 15 million people. The urban growth, which also includes various spatial structural changes in the city center as well as in the peri-urban area, has created severe deterioration of water quality within the last 30 years.
The growing research on public security policy in the context of urban crime and insecurity large... more The growing research on public security policy in the context of urban crime and insecurity largely re-flects a shifting paradigm towards a new culture of control. At the same time, research has rarely asso-ciated descriptive studies about the emergence of insecurities with discourses, policies and measures that aim at the production of greater urban security. This paper seeks to address this comparison through exploring the interwovenness of security practices and arrangements in everyday life. Drawing on the theory of social practices and the interaction of agencies and structures – institutions, policies and discourses at different scales – we argue that there is a mutual interrelation between public and private security policies on the one hand and the space-related everyday practices of urban middle-class residents on the other hand. Taking two districts located in the city of São Paulo as examples, the paper presents the results of 70 qualitative interviews with inhabitants concerning the nexus of doings and sayings in everyday practices in the context of different (in-)security production processes. We discuss how these security practices emerge as the grounding concept of shifting public security and neighbourhood at the local level. Thus, the main purpose of the paper is to theoretically overcome the conceptual dualism of reading sociality in public and private (in-)security by putting social practices theory empirically into practice.
The paper discusses pivotal questions of housing and housing policy after decades of liberalisati... more The paper discusses pivotal questions of housing and housing policy after decades of liberalisation, deregulation and privatisation in urban (housing) politics. The focus is on European metropolises, where the impacts of these long-term processes together with the consequences of current financialisation processes have led to the dispossession of poorer urban social groups and to widespread discontentedness of both lower and middle-income groups. Protests and the rise of more or less powerful social movements, e. g. in Spanish and German big cities, criticising particularly urban housing politics, have resulted in a gradual rethinking of social responsibility and in the soft implementation of new (or recycled) instruments in favour of limiting capitalist interests. The discussion reviews the fundamental thoughts of housing-related urban development from critical perspective, proposes conceptual frameworks for further studies that take structural as well as agency concepts into account, debates how to tackle contentious processes of eviction and dispossession, and presents initial approaches of re-possession in the light of new housing politics.
The megacity Guangzhou in the South-Chinese Pearl River Delta is one of the most economically dyn... more The megacity Guangzhou in the South-Chinese Pearl River Delta is one of the most economically dynamic and rapidly urbanizing areas in the world and meanwhile home to some 15 million people. The urban growth, which also includes various spatial structural changes in the city center as well as in the peri-urban area, has created severe deterioration of water quality within the last 30 years.
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Papers by Rainer Wehrhahn