KHAS Core Global Issues Talks: Prof. Don Mitchell

Kadir Has University Core Program is hosting Prof. Don Mitchell from Uppsala University. Prof. Mitchell is renowned for his studies in critical geography, and his research topics include the cultural and political economy of landscape, social theory, labor,u00a0Marxism, andu00a0geographies of power and marginalization. Mitchellu2019s talk, entitled u201cMean Streets Metastasized: Homelessness and Public Space after the Urban Revolution,u201d will take place on March 30th at 17:30 at Kadir Has Universityu2019s Fener Hall. Dr. u00d6zlem Aslan from the Core Program will act as a discussant in the event.

In his talk, Mitchell will show how the very meanness of contemporary streets and public spaces (as evidenced in the United States by the violent control and expulsion of homeless people) is a function of the ways capital circulation and accumulation have become primarilyu00a0urban, that is, reliant on circulation and accumulation in and through the built environment. Public space is both a limit and a necessity to this new mode of accumulation u2013 and so are homeless (and other marginally-housed) people. Mitchell will suggest that the meanness of the streets does not operate by some psychosocial logic, but a political-economic one, and the implications are profound even for those of us who are comfortably housed. Though examples that will draw on his research from the United States, he will show that many of his theoretical arguments are adaptable to other contexts.u00a0Mitchellu2019s booku00a0The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Spaceu00a0is translated into Turkish by Ayru0131ntu0131 Publishing House.