Urban Peripheries in Berkeley

Today, the periphery is an area simultaneously excluded from and included in the city. The city outskirts have become containers for the problems that the urban centre can't assimilate, but they are also often the refuge of the upper-classes looking to improve their standard of living far from the contaminations of traditional historic city centres. Far from the usual clichès of marginalisation and violence, the periphery is often the site for artistic creation and experimentation with new forms of understanding and experiencing democracy. This intensification of cultural life on the city outskirts and the emergence of social protest movements and claims for improved living conditions seem to indicate that the future of cities will increasingly played out in their peripheries. This debate will go to the heart of the many ambivalent aspects of peripheral areas on a global scale.

This conference are the continuation of the previous debates Urban Cracks. Segregation and Counterculture in Brazil (2006) and Urban Peripheries (2007).

 Directed by: Teresa Caldeira, professor of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley