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Ranu Basu

York University, Geography, Faculty Member
ABSTRACT Questions of “integration” are normatively assumed to promote particular ideals of the multicultural city and lead to a “settlement” culture that bodes well with the hegemonic majority. This paper, however, questions the concept... more
ABSTRACT Questions of “integration” are normatively assumed to promote particular ideals of the multicultural city and lead to a “settlement” culture that bodes well with the hegemonic majority. This paper, however, questions the concept from an alternative perspective – that is, it aims to explore how “integration” is imagined and understood by displaced migrants through the contextual specificities of multiple and peripheral “public spaces” – defined in this paper as the everyday practices of integrative multiplicity. Exploring these questions in Scarborough, a post-war primarily ethno-racialized suburb of Toronto, the unique experiences of migrants, many who have faced histories of trauma and violence suggest that the settlement experience is not devoid of anxiety and pain. Memories of places and communities left behind, sometimes never to be returned to, harness a longing and deeper need for home-making often spilling into the public realm. Understanding public space and its inherent conceptual and political complexity as defined, used, and valued by recent migrants, allows integration to be understood through the dynamics of power relations. The findings reveal how recent migrants not only understand and use the city but also how they reflect upon and envision the city-building process, through their own individual subjectivities of inclusion/place-making and exclusion/displacement. Through such complex spaces of encounter, civic engagement and grounded experiences, the participants frame Scarborough in multiple and metaphorical forms: from a City of Refuge and Peace; City of Memory, Desire, and Imagination; City of Multifariousness; to a City of Civic Engagement and Fluid Resistance. This stands in stark contrast from how the city is framed in dominant discourse and the unsettling debates on how to reform it.
School spaces are imbued with meaning and foster sensibilities of justice, belonging, and identity from an early beginning. Aside from the educational mandate of schools, they are places where the exercise of neighborhood integration and... more
School spaces are imbued with meaning and foster sensibilities of justice, belonging, and identity from an early beginning. Aside from the educational mandate of schools, they are places where the exercise of neighborhood integration and the fostering of civil society are explored. In multicultural societies, publicly funded schools are also institutional places where state ideologies of social cohesion are apparent.
In an idealdemocratic society, publicly funded schools serve many purposes. Aside from its educational mandate, schools are places for neighbourhood integration, social capital formation and the fostering of civil society. For newly... more
In an idealdemocratic society, publicly funded schools serve many purposes. Aside from its educational mandate, schools are places for neighbourhood integration, social capital formation and the fostering of civil society. For newly arrived immigrants, especially those with young children, schools are important sites of settlement experiences. During the past near decade, however, rapid restructuring of the public education system in Ontario has led to many changes in these ideals. Within the landscape of this wider transformation, this article critically explores how different forms of social capital are produced in schools and accessed by recent immigrants. Based on a spatial-network framework developed earlier this article examines not only how immigrants participate in the daily life of their local institutions; but whether these links are powerful enough to translate into purposeful political effects as well. The outcomes that arise from this neighbourhood-based exercise are crucial in reflecting on a larger ethical question – how do states determine who is and who is not entitled to membership in society?
... Ranu Basu a pages 481-492. ... Esta frustración, que no es rara en regímenes cada vez más apegados a controlarlo todo y adversos a tomar riesgos, requerirá que los investigadores se las ingenien para obtener un repertorio alternativo... more
... Ranu Basu a pages 481-492. ... Esta frustración, que no es rara en regímenes cada vez más apegados a controlarlo todo y adversos a tomar riesgos, requerirá que los investigadores se las ingenien para obtener un repertorio alternativo de habilidades y modos de ver las cosas. ...
ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to construct a locality-based model of collective action useful for planners in understanding why collective action of any kind arises within the geographical boundaries of a residential terrain and... more
ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to construct a locality-based model of collective action useful for planners in understanding why collective action of any kind arises within the geographical boundaries of a residential terrain and how this in turn affects discretionary components of public service provision. The model is based on the premise that collective action is the cause and consequence of the local externality itself, the perceived needs of the residents, and the underlying power structure or the capacity to organize. The model is then tested in a case study that explores the conditions that led to locally initiated school-based care in 114 public elementary schools in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada. Policy implications and recommendations for action are presented.
Institutional spaces like schools provide opportunities for language preservation. They also help redefine integration in community-defined ways. However, many schools offer some resources in the way of ESL classes, but very few... more
Institutional spaces like schools provide opportunities for language preservation. They also help redefine integration in community-defined ways. However, many schools offer some resources in the way of ESL classes, but very few international language classes.York's Knowledge Mobilization Unit provides services and funding for faculty, graduate students, and community organizations seeking to maximize the impact of academic research and expertise on public policy, social programming, and professional practice. It is supported by SSHRC and CIHR grants, and by the Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation. kmbunit@yorku.ca www.researchimpact.c
The spaces of refuge are an intricate tapestry woven across the globe. As of 2016, there are 65.3 million people displaced worldwide which include 21.3 million refugees and further 10 million stateless people (UNHCR 2016). The question of... more
The spaces of refuge are an intricate tapestry woven across the globe. As of 2016, there are 65.3 million people displaced worldwide which include 21.3 million refugees and further 10 million stateless people (UNHCR 2016). The question of transnational borders, justice and human rights are increasingly contested terrains that States must contend with in increasingly complex ways. What then constitutes spaces of refuge in the twenty-first century? What is its institutional basis and socio-political form? Camps, as a space of temporary to long term refuge, hosts many refugees such as Dadaab in Kenya, Zataari camp in Jordan or Mae La in Thailand. In this chapter, however we examine the urban as an intermediary space of refuge. The urban is often a place of convergence for displaced migrants due to the opportunity structures it provides. From Istanbul to Accra, Kolkata to Jordan, 60% of refugees are noted to reside in cities, the Global South often hosting the largest number of refugees. In this chapter, we conceptually and empirically explore two contrasting cities—Istanbul and Kolkata. In 2016, Turkey was noted as the largest host country of refugees under UNHCR’s mandate in the world. Turkey hosted 2.5 million Syrian refugees and over 250,000 refugees of other nationalities mostly living in cities. Similarly, India has historically hosted the largest number of refugees after partition. More recently as of June 2014, India was home to 198,665 refugees. The urban provides a habitat conducive for displaced populations: the infrastructure necessary for shelter and day to day living; informal economy allowing varying livelihoods; the anonymity of living in largely populated cities provides a safeguard against deportation; and the freedom to live outside a camp environment affords a certain kind of flexibility. Yet the challenges in a complex world of poverty, violence and insecurity make the struggle of survival a complicated process of daily negotiations. Using the examples of Istanbul and Kolkata we argue that such contradictions necessitate that we rethink cities of the twenty-first century through the lens of transnational justice and refuge.
This paper explores the possibilities of discovering, sharing, and transforming school-community linkages through proactive outreach programs that are of particular relevance to public elementary schools catering to a large refugee and... more
This paper explores the possibilities of discovering, sharing, and transforming school-community linkages through proactive outreach programs that are of particular relevance to public elementary schools catering to a large refugee and immigrant population. The authors argue that community-school linkages, as currently understood and discussed in the literature, are primarily focused on unidirectional relations, but certainly have the potential of furthering the particular needs of these children and their families in more productive ways. A wealth of untapped opportunities and creative capacities exist in the community that provide the potential for ‘bridging and bonding’ social capital where the response is sensitive to power relations that can arise from hegemonic interactions. School-community linkages are crucial for displaced communities further isolated and stigmatized in underserved and deprived pockets of the city. These are particularly evident in Toronto’s post-war suburbs, such as Scarborough, where the concentration of neighbourhood poverty is well documented, but where the energy and creativity in the production of its social and cultural landscape, and the commitment of its citizens, are less noted. Based on an outreach workshop held in one such school, the potential of a sustainable emancipatory school-community framework is explored. Cet article porte sur les possibilités de découvrir, partager et transformer les liens entre l’école et la communauté par le biais de programmes de communication proactifs qui soient particulièrement pertinents pour les établissements élémentaires publics recevant une large population d’immigrés et de réfugiés. Les auteurs affirment que ces liens, tels qu’ils sont actuellement compris et étudiés dans les publications universitaires, sont avant tout focalisés sur des relations unidimensionnelles, mais qu’ils pourraient certainement servir les besoins particuliers des enfants et de leurs familles de manière plus productive. Dans ces communautés, une abondance d'occasions inexploitées et de capacités créatives sont susceptibles de procurer un capital social «affectif et relationnel», là où il y a une réponse réceptive aux relations de pouvoir qui peuvent naître d'interactions hégémoniques. Les liens école-communauté sont cruciaux pour les populations encore plus isolées et stigmatisées, déplacées dans des secteurs non desservis et défavorisés de la ville. Ceci est particulièrement évident dans les banlieues d’après-guerre de Toronto, telles que Scarborough où la concentration de quartiers pauvres est bien documentée, mais où l’énergie et la créativité dans l’éclosion de son paysage social et culturel et l’engagement des citoyens ne sont pas autant pris en note. Un atelier de communication qui a eu lieu dans une de ces écoles, a permis d’explorer le rôle potentiel d’un cadre école-communauté émancipateur durable.
The neoliberal university requires high productivity in compressed time frames. Though the neoliberal transformation of the university is well documented, the isolating effects and embodied work conditions of such increasing demands are... more
The neoliberal university requires high productivity in compressed time frames. Though the neoliberal transformation of the university is well documented, the isolating effects and embodied work conditions of such increasing demands are too rarely discussed. In this article, we develop a feminist ethics of care that challenges these working conditions. Our politics foreground collective action and the contention that good scholarship requires time to think, write, read, research, analyze, edit, organize, and resist the growing administrative and professional demands that disrupt these crucial processes of intellectual growth and personal freedom. This collectively written article explores alternatives to the fast-paced, metric-oriented neoliberal university through a slow-moving conversation on ways to slow down and claim time for slow scholarship and collective action informed by feminist politics. We examine temporal regimes of the neoliberal university and their embodied effects....
The paper considers how the logic of settler colonialism, the active and ongoing dispossession of Indigenous peoples, shapes scholarship on migration, race and citizenship in Canada. It draws on the insights of settler colonial theory and... more
The paper considers how the logic of settler colonialism, the active and ongoing dispossession of Indigenous peoples, shapes scholarship on migration, race and citizenship in Canada. It draws on the insights of settler colonial theory and critiques of methodological nationalism to do so. The concept of differential inclusion and assemblages methodology are proposed as a way to understand the relationship between Indigeneity and migration in a settler colonial context. The paper develops this conceptual proposal through an analysis of a single place over time: Scarborough, Ontario. Authors present portraits of Scarborough, Ontario, Canada to understand how migration and Indigenous sovereignty are narrated and regulated in convergent and divergent ways. Together, the portraits examine historical stories, media discourses, photography and map archives, fieldwork and interviews connected to Scarborough. They reveal how the differential inclusion of migrant, racialized and Indigenous peo...
ABSTRACT Questions of “integration” are normatively assumed to promote particular ideals of the multicultural city and lead to a “settlement” culture that bodes well with the hegemonic majority. This paper, however, questions the concept... more
ABSTRACT Questions of “integration” are normatively assumed to promote particular ideals of the multicultural city and lead to a “settlement” culture that bodes well with the hegemonic majority. This paper, however, questions the concept from an alternative perspective – that is, it aims to explore how “integration” is imagined and understood by displaced migrants through the contextual specificities of multiple and peripheral “public spaces” – defined in this paper as the everyday practices of integrative multiplicity. Exploring these questions in Scarborough, a post-war primarily ethno-racialized suburb of Toronto, the unique experiences of migrants, many who have faced histories of trauma and violence suggest that the settlement experience is not devoid of anxiety and pain. Memories of places and communities left behind, sometimes never to be returned to, harness a longing and deeper need for home-making often spilling into the public realm. Understanding public space and its inherent conceptual and political complexity as defined, used, and valued by recent migrants, allows integration to be understood through the dynamics of power relations. The findings reveal how recent migrants not only understand and use the city but also how they reflect upon and envision the city-building process, through their own individual subjectivities of inclusion/place-making and exclusion/displacement. Through such complex spaces of encounter, civic engagement and grounded experiences, the participants frame Scarborough in multiple and metaphorical forms: from a City of Refuge and Peace; City of Memory, Desire, and Imagination; City of Multifariousness; to a City of Civic Engagement and Fluid Resistance. This stands in stark contrast from how the city is framed in dominant discourse and the unsettling debates on how to reform it.
The neoliberal university requires high productivity in compressed time frames. Though the neoliberal transformation of the university is well documented, the isolating effects and embodied work conditions of such increasing demands are... more
The neoliberal university requires high productivity in compressed time frames. Though the neoliberal transformation of the university is well documented, the isolating effects and embodied work conditions of such increasing demands are too rarely discussed. In this article, we develop a feminist ethics of care that challenges these working conditions. Our politics foreground collective action and the contention that good scholarship requires time: to think, write, read, research, analyze, edit, organize, and resist the growing administrative and professional demands that disrupt these crucial processes of intellectual growth and personal freedom. This collectively written article explores alternatives to the fast-paced, metric-oriented neoliberal university through a slow- moving conversation on ways to slow down and claim time for slow scholarship and collective action informed by feminist politics. We examine temporal regimes of the neoliberal university and their embodied effect...
Research Interests:
The spaces of refuge are an intricate tapestry woven across the globe. As of 2016, there are 65.3 million people displaced worldwide which include 21.3 million refugees and further 10 million stateless people (UNHCR 2016). The question of... more
The spaces of refuge are an intricate tapestry woven across the globe. As of 2016, there are 65.3 million people displaced worldwide which include 21.3 million refugees and further 10 million stateless people (UNHCR 2016). The question of transnational borders, justice and human rights are increasingly contested terrains that States must contend with in increasingly complex ways. What then constitutes spaces of refuge in the twenty-first century? What is its institutional basis and socio-political form? Camps, as a space of temporary to long term refuge, hosts many refugees such as Dadaab in Kenya, Zataari camp in Jordan or Mae La in Thailand. In this chapter, however we examine the urban as an intermediary space of refuge. The urban is often a place of convergence for displaced migrants due to the opportunity structures it provides. From Istanbul to Accra, Kolkata to Jordan, 60% of refugees are noted to reside in cities, the Global South often hosting the largest number of refugees. In this chapter, we conceptually and empirically explore two contrasting cities—Istanbul and Kolkata. In 2016, Turkey was noted as the largest host country of refugees under UNHCR’s mandate in the world. Turkey hosted 2.5 million Syrian refugees and over 250,000 refugees of other nationalities mostly living in cities. Similarly, India has historically hosted the largest number of refugees after partition. More recently as of June 2014, India was home to 198,665 refugees. The urban provides a habitat conducive for displaced populations: the infrastructure necessary for shelter and day to day living; informal economy allowing varying livelihoods; the anonymity of living in largely populated cities provides a safeguard against deportation; and the freedom to live outside a camp environment affords a certain kind of flexibility. Yet the challenges in a complex world of poverty, violence and insecurity make the struggle of survival a complicated process of daily negotiations. Using the examples of Istanbul and Kolkata we argue that such contradictions necessitate that we rethink cities of the twenty-first century through the lens of transnational justice and refuge.
The spaces of refuge are an intricate tapestry woven across the globe. As of 2016, there are 65.3 million people displaced worldwide which include 21.3 million refugees and further 10 million stateless people (UNHCR 2016). The question of... more
The spaces of refuge are an intricate tapestry woven across the globe. As of 2016, there are 65.3 million people displaced worldwide which include 21.3 million refugees and further 10 million stateless people (UNHCR 2016). The question of transnational borders, justice and human rights are increasingly contested terrains that States must contend with in increasingly complex ways. What then constitutes spaces of refuge in the twenty-first century? What is its institutional basis and socio-political form? Camps, as a space of temporary to long term refuge, hosts many refugees such as Dadaab in Kenya, Zataari camp in Jordan or Mae La in Thailand. In this chapter, however we examine the urban as an intermediary space of refuge. The urban is often a place of convergence for displaced migrants due to the opportunity structures it provides. From Istanbul to Accra, Kolkata to Jordan, 60% of refugees are noted to reside in cities, the Global South often hosting the largest number of refugees...
The multiple dimensions of urbanity can be examined and understood through the creative agency of children who redefine and mold cities. Despite the many barriers that children face in negotiating city spaces, particularly those in... more
The multiple dimensions of urbanity can be examined and understood through the creative agency of children who redefine and mold cities. Despite the many barriers that children face in negotiating city spaces, particularly those in vulnerable and marginal situations, we argue that children express an active citizenship through their playful everyday lives. Framing children’s geographies within a governmentality framework, we demonstrate through two case studies that children are able to renegotiate power relationships within city spaces in exciting new ways. The multiple, layered, and textured dynamics of a city are brought into full view that often escapes rational planning exercises. By means of the case studies of New York newspaper sellers at the turn of the twentieth century and child panhandlers in Fatehpur Sikri, we argue and theorize for a new city–child-scape that is less formidable and democratically engaging. This new landscape bridges the difference through the sameness of humanity, emotion, and possibilities.
Human services, like housing, education, employment and settlement services, are vital for social and economic integration. These services taken together can be thought of as the soft infrastructure of a city or region. The increasing... more
Human services, like housing, education, employment and settlement services, are vital for social and economic integration. These services taken together can be thought of as the soft infrastructure of a city or region. The increasing suburbanization of the Greater Toronto Area has led to a rise in demand for these services out of the downtown area where human services were traditionally and are still primarily located. There are some groups that are seen as in greater need of social services in order to facilitate social connections and maintain a good quality of life. The researchers have identified three groups with important needs: seniors, newcomers to Canada, and persons with low incomes.
... Ranu Basu a pages 481-492. ... Esta frustración, que no es rara en regímenes cada vez más apegados a controlarlo todo y adversos a tomar riesgos, requerirá que los investigadores se las ingenien para obtener un repertorio alternativo... more
... Ranu Basu a pages 481-492. ... Esta frustración, que no es rara en regímenes cada vez más apegados a controlarlo todo y adversos a tomar riesgos, requerirá que los investigadores se las ingenien para obtener un repertorio alternativo de habilidades y modos de ver las cosas. ...
School spaces are imbued with meaning and foster sensibilities of justice, belonging, and identity from an early beginning. Aside from the educational mandate of schools, they are places where the exercise of neighborhood integration and... more
School spaces are imbued with meaning and foster sensibilities of justice, belonging, and identity from an early beginning. Aside from the educational mandate of schools, they are places where the exercise of neighborhood integration and the fostering of civil society are explored. In multicultural societies, publicly funded schools are also institutional places where state ideologies of social cohesion are apparent.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Schools, colleges, and universities are vibrant human communities, instruments of public policy, and powerful political symbols involving, at one point or another, most members of society (Manzer 1994). They serve as a central mechanism... more
Schools, colleges, and universities are vibrant human communities, instruments of public policy, and powerful political symbols involving, at one point or another, most members of society (Manzer 1994). They serve as a central mechanism for transmitting cultural knowledge and skilling future generations, as key sites of neighbourhood integration, in social capital formation, and in the development of civil society (Basu 2004a). Education is a central institution through which governing rationalities are materialized, creating educational spaces and land-scapes of educational disparities observable at various scales within nations, regions, communities, and schools (Apple 2001a; Basu 2004b; Hay 2004). As it is in schools, colleges, and universities that future generations are formed into the citizenry imagined in powerful political and economic ideologies, jurisdictional disputes over who controls education and the function it serves have been central aspects of educational politics (Bale and Knopp 2012). Education remains a key site for ideological contestation and for resistance to regimes of control even, and especially, as neoliberal reforms and the introduction of new technologies are transforming the spaces, subjectivities, and power relations of education (Apple 2001b; Giroux 2001, 2002). For all these reasons, educational spaces are rich subjects of critical geographical analysis (Basu 2010). In this collection we place particular emphasis on what geographic analysis can contribute to understanding the dynamic of difference in contemporary schools. Geographical analysis necessarily includes critical social analysis: race, class, and gender are not fixed identities but ongoing social productions; the multi-scalar spaces in which such social production takes place are vitally important to understanding how our societies work and, most importantly, how we might improve our social processes, especially for the most marginalized in our society. As critical scholars of education have long argued, schools are sites of cultural and social reproduction that legitimize broader social stratifications. As Marxist critics have suggested, schools discipline students for the workforce and inculcate dominant class structures, norms, and values (Bowles and Gintis 1976; Apple 2004). The streamlining of the production of knowledge into professional, vocational, and technical programs signals the differential subjection of students into deeply spatially structured roles within capitalist regimes, while the spatial segregation and redlining of schools further perpetuates inequalities (Dippo and James 2011; Harris and Mercier 2000; Robinson 2001, 2010). Similarly, the imposition of exclusionary spatial practices of a colonial system of education based on an idealized white norm have contributed to demoralizing and marginalizing Indigenous and racialized communities (Miller 1996; Kelm 1998; Milloy 1999; Lewis 2001; Harris 2002; Schick 2002; McCreary 2011). However, classrooms re-main sites of challenge and possibility.
The multiple dimensions of urbanity can be examined and understood through the creative agency of children who redefine and mold cities. Despite the many barriers that children face in negotiating city spaces, particularly those in... more
The multiple dimensions of urbanity can be examined and understood through the creative agency of children who redefine and mold cities. Despite the many barriers that children face in negotiating city spaces, particularly those in vulnerable and marginal situations, we argue that children express an active citizenship through their playful everyday lives. Framing children’s geographies within a governmentality framework, we demonstrate through two case studies that children are able to renegotiate power relationships within city spaces in exciting new ways. The multiple, layered, and textured dynamics of a city are brought into full view that often escapes rational planning exercises. By means of the case studies of New York newspaper sellers at the turn of the twentieth century and child panhandlers in Fatehpur Sikri, we argue and theorize for a new city–child-scape that is less formidable and democratically engaging. This new landscape bridges the difference through the sameness of humanity, emotion, and possibilities.
Research Interests:
The neoliberal university requires high productivity in compressed time frames. Though the neoliberal transformation of the university is well documented, the isolating effects and embodied work conditions of such increasing demands are... more
The neoliberal university requires high productivity in compressed time frames. Though the neoliberal transformation of the university is well documented, the isolating effects and embodied work conditions of such increasing demands are too rarely discussed. In this article, we develop a feminist ethics of care that challenges these working conditions. Our politics foreground collective action and the contention that good scholarship requires time: to think, write, read, research, analyze, edit, organize, and resist the growing administrative and professional demands that disrupt these crucial processes of intellectual growth and personal freedom. This collectively written article explores alternatives to the fast-paced, metric-oriented neoliberal university through a slow-moving conversation on ways to slow down and claim time for slow scholarship and collective action informed by feminist politics. We examine temporal regimes of the neoliberal university and their embodied effects. We then consider strategies for slowing scholarship with the objective of contributing to the slow scholarship movement. This slowing down represents both a commitment to good scholarship, teaching, and service and a collective feminist ethics of care that challenges the accelerated time and elitism of the neoliberal university. Above all, we argue in favor of the slow scholarship movement and contribute some resistance strategies that foreground collaborative, collective, communal ways forward.
Research Interests:
School spaces are imbued with meaning and foster sensibilities of justice, belonging, and identity from an early beginning. Aside from the educational mandate of schools, they are places where the exercise of neighborhood integration and... more
School spaces are imbued with meaning and foster sensibilities of justice, belonging, and identity from an early beginning. Aside from the educational mandate of schools, they are places where the exercise of neighborhood integration and the fostering of civil society are explored. In multicultural societies, publicly funded schools are also institutional places where state ideologies of social cohesion are apparent.
... In Ontario, since the early 1990s, neoliberal principles of individualism, privatisation, and decentrali-sation have become evident in public sector planning and regulation. ... If so, what evidence of neighbourhood-by-neighbour-hood... more
... In Ontario, since the early 1990s, neoliberal principles of individualism, privatisation, and decentrali-sation have become evident in public sector planning and regulation. ... If so, what evidence of neighbourhood-by-neighbour-hood variations exists in terms of civic involvement? ...
In 1997, the Ontario Provincial Government, through the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) introduced mandatory standardized testing for grades three and six in Public Elementary Schools as the beginning of a process of... more
In 1997, the Ontario Provincial Government, through the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) introduced mandatory standardized testing for grades three and six in Public Elementary Schools as the beginning of a process of public accountability and excellence in education. Proponents for this method of evaluation argued that such procedures were valuable to teachers, schools and the community at large
Distilling the different ways that neoliberal regimes have impacted the governance of public policy and planning is as much a political maneuvering exercise as it is a scholarly endeavor. The process of empirical research that attempts to... more
Distilling the different ways that neoliberal regimes have impacted the governance of public policy and planning is as much a political maneuvering exercise as it is a scholarly endeavor. The process of empirical research that attempts to uncover such impacts is from the very beginning fraught with numerous problems: sifting through rhetorical ambiguities, dealing with agenda-makers and data gatekeepers, and

And 5 more

To unsettle means to disturb, unnerve, and upset, but could also mean to offer pause for thinking otherwise about an issue, or an idea. This catalogue seeks to explore and unsettle the site of Scarborough, (part of Toronto, ON Canada)... more
To unsettle means to disturb, unnerve, and upset, but could also mean to offer pause for thinking otherwise about an issue, or an idea. This catalogue seeks to explore and unsettle the site of Scarborough, (part of Toronto, ON Canada) offering subtle and not so subtle gestures of reversal, of questioning, of disturbance, inviting readers to pause and think about the space and place they occupy. The exhibition was a culmination of a longer project that artists participated in, involving The Guild Park and Gardens in Scarborough where the artists completed a number of site-specific interventions during the early summer 2017, and a followup exhibition at Doris McCarthy. This catalogue is a record of those events, while it also provides some historical and contemporary socio-political background to which the works responded.

Participating Artists: Lori Blondeau, Duorama (Ed Johnson & Paul Couillard) Basil AlZeri, Terrance Houle, Lisa Myers.

Writers: Elwood Jimmy, Ranu Basu, Shawn Micallef and Bojana Videkanic.