Future Practices of Citizenship in Asia and the West: Care of the Self (Volume III)

Future Practices of Citizenship in Asia and the West investigates some of the greatest challenges facing society in the twenty-first century, including the struggle for rights and recognition by indigenous peoples, women, migrants, and the young, as well as the dampening effects some government responses to COVID-19 have had on artistic freedom and citizen participation. The ill effects of digitisation on citizenship, however, are tempered by some more positive approaches from grass-roots activities. Perhaps the most acute challenge facing the world today is climate change, an issue that can be both positive and negative, depending on how we respond to it. All the papers in this book share a people-centred approach based around Michel Foucault’s Care of the Self.

Gregory Bracken is Assistant Professor of Spatial Planning and Strategy at TU Delft and one of the co-founders of Footprint, the journal dedicated to architecture theory. From 2009 to 2015 he was a Research Fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) Leiden where he co-founded the Urban Knowledge Network Asia (UKNA). His publications include The Shanghai Alleyway House: A Vanishing Urban Vernacular (2013), Asian Cities: Colonial to Global (2015), Contemporary Practices of Citizenship in Asia and the West (2020), and Ancient and Modern Practices of Citizenship in Asia and the West (2019). Paul Rabé is Academic Coordinator of the Cities Cluster at the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS), Leiden as well as overall coordinator of the Urban Knowledge Network Asia (UKNA) and the River Cities Network: Engaging with Waterways in the Anthropocene (RCN). Paul is also series editor of Amsterdam University Press’s Asian Cities Book Series, and is Lead Expert in Urban Land Governance at the Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS), Erasmus University Rotterdam, where he is also joint coordinator of the Urban Environment, Sustainability, and Climate Change academic track. A political scientist by training, with a doctoral degree (2009) in policy, planning and development from the University of Southern California’s Sol Price School of Public Policy, Paul has over 25 years of experience in advisory work, capacity development, research, and teaching on urban policy topics, focused on urban land governance and the intersection of land (use) and the management of water and water bodies in urban and peri-urban areas. Nurul Azreen Azlan is an NUS Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore (NUS). Her academic focus leans towards the politics of space, where she is predominantly interested in the availability of space for people to participate in public life. As such, she is interested in how and why spaces and infrastructure are produced and governed in relation to politics, the impact of privatisation of public goods, and how historical processes, particularly colonisation, has shaped the resultant built environment and spatial practices. At NUS, she is researching the socio-spatial impact of land reclamation in Malaysia. She is currently on sabbatical leave from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia.