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Youth Urban Worlds: Aesthetic Political Action in Montreal grapples with the interaction between urban environments and cultures and the political process. Authors Boudreau and Rondeau argue persuasively that urban cultures challenge the very meaning and contours of the political process. With ethnographies delving into the perspectives and knowledges of racialized youth, urban farmers, and "voluntary risk takers," like dumpster divers, building climbers, and student protestors,
Youth Urban Worlds theorizes aesthetics as an increasingly crucial form of political action in the contemporary urban setting.
This interdisciplinary work, weaving together aspects of philosophy, critical geography, political sociology, urban anthropology, urban studies, and cultural studies, examines the centrality of fun, warmth, aesthetics, and embodiment to these youth's experiences of being in the world. Aesthetics serves as the predominant lens through which the lived reality of the subjects of the book is understood. It also explains how youth are able to practically and concretely impact the political process through the performance of risky and disruptive behavior. Moving from a contemporary history of urban Montreal from 1960, to an ethnographic description of the realities of urban youth in that city today,
Youth Urban Worlds describes and explains the impact of aesthetics on the political.
List of contents
List of Figures vii
Series Editors' Preface x
Preface xi
Introduction: Voices From Montreal 2 Space-Time-Affect: The Urban Logic of Political Action 5
Acting Aesthetically: Political Gestures, Political Acts, and Political Action 10
Youth Urban Worlds 21
The Global Urban Political Moment of the 2010s: Youthfulness in Action 26
Montreal in a World of Cities 29
A Methodological Note 31
The Organization of the Book 34
Notes 36
1 Montreal and the Urban Moment 38 Montreal's PoliticöSensuous Feel 41
Montreal's Place in the Global Urban Cultures of the 1960s and 1970s 49
Changing Relations to Time 52
Changing Relations to Space 54
Conclusion 61
Notes 64
2 The Urban Political World of Racialized Youth: Moving Through and Being Moved By Saint¿Michel and Little Burgundy 69 Moving Through Saint¿Michel and Little Burgundy with an Epistemology of Blackness 75
Being Moved: Representations and Affective Aesthetic Relations 88
Racialization: Disembodied Profiling Entangled With Embodied Racist Encounters 94
Conclusion 98
Notes 101
3 The Urban Political World of Student Strikers 107 Becoming a Striker: Pregnant Moments 'Breaking the Real' 110
Walking the City: Space During and After the Strike 117
The Political Effects of Seduction and Provocation 123
Conclusion 133
Notes 135
4 The Urban Political World of Urban Farmers: 'It's Not Just Growing Food, It's a Lot More Than That' 143 Embodied Experiences of the Spatialities and Circulation of Food Commodities in the City 150
The Urban Logic of Action of Urban Agriculture Practices 157
Seduction and Attraction in the Garden 161
Conclusion 164
Notes 165
5 The Urban Political World of 'Risk¿Takers': Provocative Choreographic Power 169 The Risk¿Management Context 171
Urban Dancers and Diviners: Choreographic Power as Political Action 172
Voluntary Risk¿Takers? Fear and Youth Politics 177
Collective Edgework: Distributed Agency Through Provocation and Seduction 186
Conclusion 192
Notes 193
Conclusion 198 Forms of Aesthetic Politics Influenced by Youthfulness and Contemporary Conditions of Urbanity 201
Montreal in a World of Cities 206
Note 207
References 208
Index 220
About the author
Julie-Anne Boudreau holds a Doctorate in Urban Planning from the University of California in Los Angeles. She is Professor at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique in Montreal, where she held the Canada Research Chair in urbanity, insecurity, and political action from 2005-2015.
Joëlle Rondeau holds a master's degree in Urban Studies from the National Institute of Scientific Research in Montreal. She is pursuing a doctoral degree in Indigenous Studies at Trent University, focusing on the urban food transformation and the resurgence of Indigenous foodways and governance systems.
