Call for Papers for Méditerranée Journal
Symbolic and Political Production of Space in Capital Cities in the Middle East and Muslim World
Our special issue will focus on capital cities in countries which have authoritarian politics in different levels. We argue that, in the age of the nation-state, it is first and foremost the political and cultural functions which distinguish capitals from other cities by linking urban space to the national imaginary. The scientific literature is focusing on the fixed staging of political power in political geography and geopolitics and less has been said on the dynamics between the political regime and the fabrication of the city and lived and perceived lives in these cities (Morelle and Planel, 2018; Planel, 2015). Each national capital has a story reproducing a revised version of the national history. Architecture and landscape are then modelled and staged to show the weight of the new political power. They don’t only provide visual and spatial means of legitimation for a political regime or elite, but also as a genuine act of constituting political reality. In this case, a special attention will be given to the evolution of perceptions of urban aesthetics via architecture and design in different periods and political powers and how these perceptions affect the city, its population, and the image of country.
In this issue, we are planning to focus on the capitals of Muslim countries to propose a comparative perspective on the influence of similar aspects like the symbolic power of religion and the potential conflicts on the production of public spaces between various political ideologies and movements.
The issue has 3 main research themes:
- the symbolic and political production of capital cities through the prism of power and political ideologies
- the influence of global urban networks and the circulation of international models in the urban development of capital cities
- forms of antagonism between the spaces designed and the spaces experienced: the various strategies of resistance and adaptation of the inhabitants and the alternative forms of appropriating space.
We focus mostly on capital cities with political disruptions at some level which have transformed the perception of capital city’s image as the mirror of political regimes. After regime changes and political rupture like revolution or coup d’état, policy makers took up new directions of planning and urbanism in these cities. In some cases, like Ankara and Astana, the capital has even changed after the political change and new urban spaces have been created in order to reflect the symbols of political power. For example, Ankara became the mirror of Republic erasing the Ottoman memory and then the AKP government under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s presidency attempts to impose a neo-ottoman style in the architecture for wiping off early republican era’s style. Astana reflects the will of policy makers to erase the spatial footprints of Soviet era to promote Turco-Islamic roots of the country.
Urban spaces are often reconfigured by political clashes between rival groups with distinct political, cultural and religious beliefs, and politics seek to translate these political divisions into physical structures and order of the city. The objective of the panel will be to study firstly the capital building process as the image of nation and political regime and then to show the backdoor struggles and divergences between different actors in the symbolic construction of space via capital cities.
For more information, please visit https://journals.openedition.org/mediterranee/14573

OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Gülçin Erdi (9 septembre 2023). Call for Papers for Méditerranée Journal. ANR SPACEPOL. Consulté le 17 mars 2025 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/uiu6