Description

The enormous transformations of the built environment and the enhanced possibilities of consumption that have marked even the most marginal of the world’s cities should not detract from acknowledging just how dependent the majority of the urban residents in the so-called South are on constantly putting together some workable form of income and inhabitation. The makeshift character of much of what this majority does is quite literally make + shift. Whatever they come up with rarely is firmly institutionalized into a fixed set of practices, locales or organizational forms. This doesn’t mean that relationships and economic activities do not endure, that people do not find themselves rooted in the same place and set of affiliations over a long period of time. Rather, these stabilities inhere from a constant recalibration of edges, boundaries, and interfaces. Whatever appears to be stable largely depends upon its participation is a series of changing relationships with other activities, personnel, and sites. Whatever is made then shifts in terms of its availability to specific uses and users, as well as its exposure to new potentials and vulnerabilities.

A light lunch will be provided, please register by clicking on the link below.