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E-book Architectures of Resistance : Negotiating Borders Through Spatial Practices

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Penilaian

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On March 1, 2020, Greece closed its borders, denying refugees the right to seek political asylum, a reaction to Turkey’s decision to strategically refuse its role as gatekeeper to the European Union. A few weeks later, Italy, France, Belgium, and Spain closed their borders as the global COVID-19 pandemic spread. China had already closed its borders a few weeks earlier and other countries quickly followed suit.1 As planes were grounded, the stark reality of immobility was revealed to a global class accustomed to frictionless travel across the planet. On a more intimate scale, innumerable citizens, from New Zealand to Brazil, were confined to their homes, with some needing an official permit to simply go out for a walk or to buy food. Invisible boundaries prolif-erated in public space with the call to maintain a 1.5 meter distance between people to guard against the spread of the respiratory virus. As nationwide lockdowns became the norm, they revealed discrepancies between white-col-lar workers able to carry on working and earning from the comfort of their homes and frontline workers and laborers who were required to be present physically in their places of work. Such untenable aspects of lockdowns were perhaps more apparent in the global South, where most people rely on daily wages, as well as in those countries that chose to implement restrictions in specific neighborhoods and regions, producing internal divisions that rein-forced labor, class, and wealth disparities.In the midst of the pandemic’s first wave, the US administration an-nounced that international students enrolled in the country’s universities for the 2020–2021 academic year would be deported. With the excuse that Skype, Zoom, Teams, and myriad other online platforms connect people digitally around the globe, the United States attempted to reinforce discriminatory pol-icies against foreigners. The decision was rescinded just a week after its announcement—due to the strong reaction from the academic world—but it revealed clearly how advances in digital technology are often mobilized to re-inforce borders rather than diminish them, contra the false promise of globali-zation.2 The excuse of the virus raised new administrative borders, while the more traditional barrier at the US-Mexico border remained firmly in place, built to a height of thirty feet, a dimension that has been described as “ensur-ing” any intruder’s death in case of a fall.2020 and 2021 reminded us—cruelly so—that borders at whatever scale, from the geopolitical to the most intimate, are not as gentle or as figurative as our seemingly progressive societies wish or choose to believe. What might be the role of architecture, or spatial practices more broadly, within such a con-text? Architecture as discipline and profession is often complicit in construct-ing borders, as the enthusiastic participation in the competition for former president Donald Trump’s border wall so aptly demonstrated.3 Yet, architec-ture is also capable of resisting borders through its speculative and proposi-tional potential, mobilized in spatial investigations and design interventions. As the short and admittedly perspectival account above shows us, borders are slippery things—they can be anything and everything—and one of the difficul-ties in approaching the topic of borders is that there is no one definition of the concept. This book does not seek to describe what a border is; neither does it collate the many ways that borders exclude, separate, and detain. Instead, we have chosen to discuss borders through the forms and practices of resistance we see to such acts. This is a political choice, as much as it is an academic one, and we invite the reader to delve into the many already existing excellent re-sources on the workings of borders.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

720.4 FOR a

Penerbit

Belgium : Leuven University Press., 2024

Deskripsi Fisik

287 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9789461665522

Klasifikasi

720.4

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

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Subjek

Special Topics of Architecture

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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