Bungacast

/474/ Urban Power in a Planet of Slums ft. Ben Bradlow

On cities and the politics of development.

[For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast]

Ben Bradlow, assistant professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton, talks to Alex about his book Urban Power: Democracy and Inequality in São Paulo and Johannesburg.

• If our future is urban – and it is – why is it different to what we imagined?

• Are Johannesburg and São Paulo representative of what is going on in cities?

• How did democratic promise and neoliberal disappointment go together in the 1990s, through to today?

• What has been the role of social movements (e.g. for housing) in transforming cities and municipal government?

• Is the radical right in the global North and South fundamentally different? What is the urban dimension?

• What does China's lead in industries like electric vehicles mean for countries like Brazil?

• Is industrial upgrading possible under post-neoliberalism?

Links:

• Urban Power: Democracy and Inequality in São Paulo and Johannesburg, Benjamin Bradlow, Princeton UP

• A processual framework for understanding the rise of the populist right: the case of Brazil (2013–2018), Tomás Gold and Benjamin Bradlow, Social Forces

• Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation, Peter Evans, Princeton UP

/453/ Reading Club: Place 1 - Simmel/Berman

On the maelstrom of the metropolis.

[Full episode only available to subscribers. Join at patreon.com/bungacast]

We kick of the 2024/25 syllabus with the first theme, The Future of Place, asking, is politics possible without a sense of place. We discuss Georg Simmel's short essay "Metropolis and Mental Life" and Marshall Berman's All That Is Solid Melts into Air (chapter 5, on New York).

• How does Simmel relate the metropolitan condition to a historical passage from the 18th century to the 19th?

• Is city life intellectual and blasé, versus small town emotionality?

• Is narcissism built into modernity? Is there an aristocratic individualist revolt in evidence today?

• Do we need places to hang out in before we can do political organising?

• Are we nostalgic for top-down modernisation?

Readings:

• "Metropolis and Mental Life"

• All That Is Solid Melts into Air (chapter 5, on New York)

/399/ From ADHD to Let Me Be (Emotion Sickness, pt III) [sample]

On the withdrawal from hyperpolitics and hypermodernity.

 

[Patreon Exclusive]

 

What comes after a decade of populism? Alex Hochuli talks through his new essay in Damage, issue 2. This is episode is the third part of our Emotion Sickness series on the politics of feelings. Click here for part 1 and part 2.

• If we are disengaging from politics, what is the associated feeling - resentment or resignation?

• Why are our times "hypermodern" – and why is this exhausting?

• What can the examples of the 'great resignation', 15-minute cities, and postliberalism all tell us about the ways people are withdrawing from modernity?

• Why do we need to decelerate to save modernity?

• How might we gain control of time?

This episode is in partnership with Damage. Bungacast subscribers ($7+) automatically get a digital subscription to the magazine. Go to patreon.com/bungacast.

 

Links:

• From ADHD to Let Me Be: Taking Control of Time, Alex Hochuli, Damage

• Damage issue 2: "Deinstitutionalized" (subscribe for Alex's essay + more)
• /365/ It’s So Over (Again) ft. Ryan Zickgraf (see also the links in show notes)
• Hypermodern Times, Gilles Lipovetsky
• Social Acceleration, Hartmut Rosa
• Scorched Earth, Jonathan Crary

/113/ Globoville ft. Richard Williams

On global cities. 

Global cities flaunt themselves to global capital and are shaped by it. They are self-conscious and eager to transmit 'globalness'. But why? And how has the city under globalisation been reshaped? What is the role of money and power - not to mention sex and culture? And does the sameyness of global cities now mean that medium and small cities are where we should be looking for cultural and political change? 

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/109/ Bunga Goes Ballard ft. Simon Sellars

On Applied Ballardianism.

Is it J.G. Ballard's world? Bunga talks Ballard with Simon Sellars, author of a new book on the great British sci-fi novelist J.G. Ballard. Urban decay, social breakdown, consumerism as social control and the Interzone. 

Opening passage is taken from Ballard's 2000 novel 'Super-Cannes'. 

Reading:

Applied Ballardianism, Simon Sellars, Urbanomic 

Subscribe: patreon.com/BungaCast

/78/ CaliBunga: Tech, Drugs & Capitalist Soul, Pt. 3

In part three, we move from the Californian Ideology to talk about the Californian reality: class, suburbs and social mobility. We meet up with Joel Kotkin to discuss the new Californian class structure and the end of the Californian dream. Also, more bar chat, as friend of the podcast, Tim Abrahams, joins us to chat about the idea of LA, Californian urbanism and mobility. 

#CaliBunga is a special multipart series on the Californian Ideology: the seemingly paradoxical hybrid of New Left and New Right ideas - the synthesis of hippies with yuppies, all tied together with the promise that technology might liberate us.

Thanks to UC Irvine School of Humanities for sponsoring this series.

Readings:

• The New Class Conflict, Joel Kotkin
• Californian Feudalism, Joel Kotkin