Infrastructure and Emergency Powers Workshop

May 12, 2017 5:30pm

Buell Hall 300S, Columbia GSAPP

On Friday, May 12th, 2017, the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture hosted a workshop on "Infrastructure and Emergency Powers" as a part of its research project "Power: Infrastructure in America." As one initial line of inquiry, the Buell Center was interested in the way that infrastructural crises, often associated with economic distress and dispossession, articulate with the suspension of democratic institutions, as in the use of “emergency managers” in Flint, Detroit, and other municipalities. The closed-door workshop was organized to discuss key issues across disciplines, as well as intellectual and institutional strategies for studying these processes and drawing greater public attention to their implications. 

Participants included Stephen Collier (International Affairs, New School, co-editor, Limn), Molly Cunningham (PhD candidate, Anthropology, University of Chicago), Lucas Owen Kirkpatrick (Urban Sociology, Southern Methodist University), Louise Seamster (Postdoctoral Fellow, Sociology, University of Tennessee), and Jason Stanley (Philosophy, Yale University).