Seminar Cities are back in town
Sciences Po, Webinar, Compulsory registration
This session presents the main findings of the recently published book: Youth Urban Worlds. Both theoretically informed and empirically rich, Youth Urban Worlds explores how urban cultures affect political action amongst youth. It argues that urban cultures challenge the very meaning and contours of the political process. Departing from ethnographic data, the authors delve into the perspectives and knowledges of racialized youth, urban farmers, and « voluntary risk takers, » like dumpster divers, building climbers, and student protestors. In this book, Julie-Anne Boudreau and Joëlle Rondeau theorize that aesthetics are an increasingly crucial form of political action in the contemporary urban setting and explain the impact of aesthetics on the political. Youth Urban Worlds examines the centrality of fun, warmth, aesthetics, and embodiment to these youth’s experience of being in the world and explains how youth are able to practically and concretely impact the political process through the performance of risky and disruptive behavior.
Speakers
Julie-Anne Boudreau, Senior Researcher, Instituto de Geografia of the Universidad nacional autónoma de México
Julie-Anne Boudreau is Doctor of Urban Planning from the School of Public Policy and Social Research of the University of California at Los Angeles. She held the Canada Research Chair in urbanity, insecurity, and political action from 2005-2015 at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) in Montreal, where she founded TRYSPACES, an international research group exploring youth transgressive practices and their impact of urban governance (www.tryspaces.org). Her research focuses on youth practices and political action in cities like Montreal and Mexico City. Her most recent book is entitled Global Urban Politics: Informalization of the State (Polity Press, 2017).
Joëlle Rondeau, Doctoral researcher, Trent University 
Joëlle Rondeau holds a master’s degree in Urban Studies from the Institut national de la recherche scientifique in Montreal. She has worked at the interface of collaborative research and sustainable urban food system planning in Montreal for several years before deciding to pursue a doctoral degree in Indigenous Studies at Trent University in Nogojiwanong-Peterborough. Her research interests focus on the complexities of urban political mediations and the transformative resurgence of Indigenous sovereignties in now-urbanized territories. Youth Urban Worlds: Aesthetic Political Action in Montreal is her first book publication.
Discussion
Anastasiya Halauniova, Doctoral researcher, University of Amsterdam
For more information: citiesarebackintown@sciencespo.fr