Urbicide: The Politics of Urban Destruction By Martin Coward

Experiences of Urban Militarism: Spatial Stigma, Ruins and Everyday Life

“…Studies in urban geopolitics have compellingly demonstrated that cities are key targets of political‐military projects. These projects radically alter—fortify, ‘splinter’, fragment or destroy—the urban environment and they inflect existing structures of marginality and inequality within it (Graham and Marvin, ; Graham, ; ; Coaffee, ; Campbell et al , ; Coward, ). While generally interested in understanding human relationships with the urban or the built environment, urban sociologists have so far showed little interest in the spatial impact of militarism on everyday life.…”

“…An expanded sociology of spatial stigma attentive to emotions and connecting urban marginalities to broader histories of urban conflict and warfare can be put into fruitful dialogue with emerging conversations in urban geopolitics about the militarized city ‘as both a political‐spatial imaginary and a lived reality’ (Jaffe, ). As mentioned above, the main perspective on urban militarism within urban geopolitics has identified ‘the killing of cities’ (Campbell et al , ) or ‘urbicide’ (Coward, ) as a distinct form of political violence. As David Campbell, Stephen Graham and Daniel Bertrand Monk () write, ‘urbicide is a particular formation of purposive violence where urbanity is the strategic object of violence’.…”

“…As David Campbell, Stephen Graham and Daniel Bertrand Monk () write, ‘urbicide is a particular formation of purposive violence where urbanity is the strategic object of violence’. Martin Coward (; ) offers a narrower definition of ‘urbicide’ centred on the targeting of buildings rather than the broader connection between cities, militarization and war. He argues that ‘there is a particular relationship between buildings and heterogeneity’ (Coward, : 129): buildings are ‘a physical surface in relation to which economies of meaning are formed and sustained’ and, ‘as buildings generate many different meanings’, they ‘provide a visible indication of the presence of plural communities within the city’.…”

“…Martin Coward (; ) offers a narrower definition of ‘urbicide’ centred on the targeting of buildings rather than the broader connection between cities, militarization and war. He argues that ‘there is a particular relationship between buildings and heterogeneity’ (Coward, : 129): buildings are ‘a physical surface in relation to which economies of meaning are formed and sustained’ and, ‘as buildings generate many different meanings’, they ‘provide a visible indication of the presence of plural communities within the city’. The military destruction of buildings is directed against this ‘heterogeneity’ of ways of life and meanings.…”

Resilience, Critical Infrastructure, and Molecular Security: The Excess of “Life” in Biopolitics1

“…While such treatments of discourse have thus existed for quite some time, only recently have ideas about how to incorporate materiality in discursive studies of politics become popular. A small but growing number of theorists in political anthropology (Navaro‐Yashin 2009), political philosophy (Bennett 2004, 2010; Braun and Whatmore 2010; Coole and Frost 2010), and IR (Coward 2009; Aradau 2010; Duffield 2011; Walker and Cooper 2011) have argued for the incorporation of nonlinguistic phenomena in political analysis generally. This work stresses that materiality exists —as a force, a spatial arrangement, an element in relations of power, and an object of knowledge.…”