Wounded Cities: Destruction and Reconstruction in a Globalized World

334 Pages·2004·1.06 MB·English

by  Jane Schneider

Wounded Cities

Wounded Cities
Destruction and Reconstruction in
a Globalized World
Edited by
Jane Schneider and Ida Susser

Oxford•New York
First published in 2003 by
Berg
Editorial offices:
1st Floor, Angel Court, 81 St Clements Street, Oxford OX4 1AW, UK
838 Broadway, Third Floor, New York, NY 10003–4812, USA
© Jane Schneider and Ida Susser 2003
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form
or by any means without the written permission of Berg.
Berg is an imprint of Oxford International Publishers Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 1859736831(Cloth)
ISBN 1859736882(Paper)
Typeset by JS Typesetting Ltd, Wellingborough, Northants.
Printed in the United Kingdom by Biddles Ltd, Guildford and King’s Lynn.
www.bergpublishers.com
Contents
List of Figures vii
List of Contributors ix
Acknowledgments xv
1 Wounded Cities: Destruction and Reconstruction in a
Globalized World
Ida Susser and Jane Schneider 1
2 The City as a Body Politic
David Harvey 25
PartI The Degradation of Urban Life
3 The Depreciation of Life During Mexico City’s Transition
into “the Crisis”
Claudio Lomnitz 47
4 International Commodity Markets, Local Land Markets
and Class Conflict in a Provincial Mexican City
Carol J. Meyers 71

5 Rethinking Infrastructure: Siberian Cities and the Great
Freeze of January 2001
Caroline Humphrey 91
PartII Crises of Crime and Criminalization
6 How Kingston was Wounded
Donald Robotham 111
–v–
Contents
7 Wounded Medellín: Narcotics Traffic against a
Background of Industrial Decline
Mary Roldán 129
8 Global Justice in the Postindustrial City: Urban Activism
Beyond the Global-local Split
Jeff Maskovsky 149
9 After Drugs and the “War on Drugs”: Reclaiming the
Power to Make History in Harlem, New York
Leith Mullings 173
PartIII Rapid, Inconsistent Expansion
10 Bangkok, The Bubble City
Ara Wilson 203
11 Contemporary Ho Chi Minh City in Numerous
Contradictions: Reform Policy, Foreign Capital and the
Working Class
Suhong Chae 227
PartIV Reconstruction and Recovery
12 Belfast: Urban Space, “Policing” and Sectarian
Polarization
Dominic Bryan 251
13 “Healing the Wounds of the War”: Placing the
War-displaced in Postwar Beirut

Aseel Sawalha 271
14 Wounded Palermo
Jane Schneider and Peter Schneider 291
Epilogue: Baghdad, 2003
Jane Schneider and Ida Susser 311
–vi–
Figures
1.1 Trillium Sellers, We Will Not Forget. 20
2.1 Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People. Reunion
des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, New York. 30
2.2 Honoré Daumier, The Republic. Reunion des Musées
Nationaux/Art Resource, New York. 31
3.1 Posada, Carnivalized death as an icon of national identity. 53
3.2 Quesada, Caricature of disrespected citizens. 55
3.3 Naranjo, Skull representing extreme poverty and
emaciation. 64
7.1 San Pedro Cemetery, Medellín. Tombs of youth killed in
the 1990s, covered with notes from girlfriends and family
members, soccer stickers, and other offerings. Photograph
by Mary Roldán. 143
10.1 Amazing Thailand campaign: map of central Bangkok.
Photograph by Ara Wilson. 215
10.2 Amazing Thailand campaign: Cyber Café. Photograph by
Ara Wilson. 216
10.3 “I.M.F Time.” One of many signs invoking the three
English letters. 217
11.1 Teddy bear factory, Export Processing Zone, Ho Chi
Minh City. Photograph by Suhong Chae. 234
12.1 Security barrier, Springfield Road, West Belfast.
Photograp h courtesy of Neil Jarman. 258
12.2 “Peace Wall,” North Belfast. Photograph courtesy of
Neil Jarman. 260
14.1 Precarious buildings, historic center. Photograph by
Jane Schneider. 293
14.2 Demonstration to “save 500 jobs; this too is to struggle
against the Mafia.” Photograph by Jane Schneider. 303
–vii–

Contributors
Dominic Bryan
Dr. Dominic Bryan is a lecturer at the Institute of Irish Studies at Queens
University in Belfast. He has published widely on the use of symbols and
rituals in Irish politics including a book Orange Parades: The Politics of
Ritual, Tradition and Control (Pluto Press, 2000). His present project,
funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, “Representing a
new Northern Ireland,” looks at the use of political symbols through the
peace process.
Suhong Chae
Suhong Chae (recent graduate, Ph.D. Program, C.U.N.Y.) has been
studying factory workers’ class identity in the developing countries of
Asia. In 1990–1, he studied a labor movement in an industrial complex
located in a suburban area of Seoul and wrote a thesis, “Poong-Mul (a
Korean Traditional Music Genre) and the Formative Process of Working
Class Identity”. In 1998–2000, he also conducted fieldwork in a multi-
national textile factory in a suburban area of Ho Chi Minh City. His
dissertation is on the Vietnamese factory worker’s class consciousness and
resistance in the context of reform (Doi Moi) policy.
David Harvey
David Harvey is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the City
University of New York Graduate Center. Previously he was Professor of
Geography at the Johns Hopkins University and Halford Mackinder
Professor of Geography at Oxford University. He is a recipient of several
awards for outstanding work in geography, most recently the Patron’s
Medal from the Royal Geographical Society, the French Vautrin Lud
Prize, and the Centenary Medal from the Royal Scottish Geographical
Society. Among his many books exploring themes of importance to urban
development are Social Justice and the City; Consciousness and the
Urban Experience; The Urbanization of Capital; The Condition of Post-
modernity; and Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography.
–ix–
Contributors
Caroline Humphrey
Caroline Humphrey is Professor of Asian Anthropology at the University
of Cambridge, U.K. and a Fellow King’s College, Cambridge. She has
worked since 1966 in Asian parts of Russia, Mongolia, Inner Mongolia
(China), India and Nepal. Among her publications are Karl Marx Col-
lective: Economy, Society and Religion in a Siberian Collective Farm
(1983); Barter, Exchange and Value (ed., with S. Hugh-Jones, 1992); The
Archetypal Actions of Ritual (with J. Laidlaw, 1994); Shamans and Elders
(1996); Marx Went Away, but Karl Stayed Behind (1998); The End of
Nomadism? Society, State and the Environment in Inner Asia (with D.
Sneath, 1999); The Unmaking of Soviet Life (2002).
Claudio Lomnitz
Claudio Lomnitz is an anthropologist who has worked extensively on
culture and politics in Mexico. His areas of theoretical interest include
cultural geography, history and anthropology, and political anthropology.
Lomnitz is author of several books in English and Spanish, including
Evolución de una sociedad rural (1982); Exits from the Labyrinth: Culture
and Ideology in Mexican National Space (1992); and Deep Mexico, Silent
Mexico: An Anthropology of Nationalism (2001) and is Professor of
History and Anthropology at the University of Chicago.
Jeff Maskovsky
Jeff Maskovsky is Assistant Professor of Urban Studies at Queens College,
C.U.N.Y. He is editor (with J. Goode) of New Poverty Studies: The
Ethnography of Power, Politics and Impoverished People in the United
States (2001), and is currently at work on a book on poverty and grassroots
activism in post-industrial Philadelphia.

Carol Meyers
Carol Meyers has 20 years of research experience in Mexico and the U.S.
She has participated in a wide array of projects that include an inter-
national comparative study of citizen participation in government, a study
of community-based alternative housing construction, a comparative
study of the impact of Head Start programs, and studies of home health
care, and multi-cultural/bilingual education programs. At present she is
writing a doctoral dissertation based on her work in Xalapa, Mexico, and
is Coordinator of Program Evaluation and Research at the Women’s
Housing and Economic Development Corporation in New York.
–x–