East Asia Workshop: Politics, Economy and Society Presents

 

Governing on the Edge: State and Informal Housing in China and Brazil

 

Yue Zhang

Associate Professor

Department of Political Science

University of Illinois at Chicago

 

4:30-6pm, Tuesday

November 4, 2014

Pick Lounge, 5828 South University Ave.

 

Abstract

More than half of the world’s population lives in cities today and most of this expansion has occurred in urban centers of the Global South. One of the most important and common characteristics of urban growth in southern metropolises is the development of informal housing that falls outside of government control or regulation. The phenomenon of urban informality not only challenges our notion of what constitutes a city but also provides a unique lens to interrogate property ownership and state-society relations. Drawing from her ongoing book project, Yue Zhang will discuss the production and governance of informal housing settlements in China and Brazil. The study demonstrates that informality must be understood not as the object of state regulation but rather as produced by the state itself. In contrast to the standard dichotomy between the formal and the informal, the study reveals the differentiation within informality. Different types of informal mobilization and informal politics in China and Brazil have shaped the urban land regime in various ways, eventually creating different forms of informal housing.

 

Workshop website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/eastasia/

Student coordinator: Wen Xie (wxie@uchicago.edu)

Faculty sponsors: Dali Yang, Dingxin Zhao and Zheng Michael Song

 

This presentation is sponsored by the Council on Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences and Center for East Asian Studies. Persons with disabilities who believe they may need assistance please contact the student coordinator in advance.