Provincial Cosmopolitanism? The Limits of Urban Research with Borrowed Tools

Theories and concepts travel widely in a transnationally interconnected world. Such travels allow us to test the limits of their general validity and to undertake comparative research. Yet theories do not travel in random ways, since they usually follow the geographical structure of the prevailing academic division of labour, moving from a core of conceptual-theoretical production to a periphery that is assumed to be a ‘recipient’ of theories, ideas, and models. Segregation, gentrification, and socio-spatial polarization are mid-range concepts whose travels from core regions of the Anglophone world to various other contexts have significant unintended consequences—influencing local research agendas as well as local political agendas based on the often unwittingly arrogant presumption of a worldwide validity.

In this presentation, Thomas Maloutas will analyze the experience of deploying these concepts to undertake empirical research in Athens, an archetypical urban setting for peripheral, Southern Europe. The experience offers compelling empirical evidence that contradicts theoretical expectations, and raises fundamental questions about the hidden contextual limits of concepts derived from the Anglophone core.