后殖民郊区的治理

Governing the Postcolonial Suburbs

本文关注发展中国家大城市边缘的郊区治理,认为边缘区的特征之一,即是贫民窟和郊区并存。这种空间特性并非意味着国家权力的局限或失控,或可理解为国家权力的另一种表现形式,其内涵是地域空间的弹性和城市的非正规性。本文还讨论了不同类型的政治生活形式及其空间差异,换言之,发生在城市边缘的郊区政治。由此,本文指出,后殖民郊区的理论化,关键并不在于曾被殖民的历史背景,而是由空间、社会和国家等加以标示区别。

This essay examines suburban governance by paying attention to the metropolitan edges of cities in the global South. It argues that these edges must be understood as variegated landscapes, where slum and suburb exist in simultaneity. Such spatialities do not indicate the limits or failures of the state but rather suggest a distinctive form of state power, which can be conceptualized as territorialized flexibility, or urban informality. The essay also analyzes the forms of political life and dissent engendered in such spaces, in other words, the politics of the suburban periphery. In doing so, the essay points to a theorization of postcolonial suburbs not as a historical condition in formerly colonized societies but instead as a critique of the stable categories of space, society, and state through which urbanism is understood and theorized.