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Habitable Air: Urban Inequality in the Time of Climate Change

Project description

Understanding the relationship between urban inequality, politics and the climate

What political life can environmentally precarious communities take on in emerging orders of climate governance? The EU-funded HAUITCC project aims to shed light on this by investigating how the urban poor come to take on political roles and practice climate politics today, at a time where climate science is now a vital part of modern governance. The project's work will contribute to the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals for sustainable cities and on climate action as well as to the full-length book 'Habitable Air: Urban Inequality in the Time of Climate Change'.

Objective

"The project examines how the urban poor, living in the shadows of jointly-owned petrochemical companies, manage the cultural and corporeal effects of chemical air pollution. A Marie Skodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship will allow me to complete the research for my full-length book project, Habitable Air: Urban Inequality in the Time of Climate Change. The project asks: What political life is possible for and created by the worlds most environmentally precarious communities in emerging orders of climate governance? Modern democratic theory rests on the foundational principle that all citizens have an equal share in political life. In contemporary South Africa, the United States, and Germany, legacies of colonialism and racial segregation, along with neoliberalism and climate change, test that very foundation. I approach political life as not merely defined by the laws, policies, and decisions of state-sanctioned agents, but by everyday practices among ordinary citizens and their interactions with the environment. Drawing from over a decade of ethnographic research in interconnected petrochemical hubs of South Africa and Louisianas cancer alley, and expanding to a new field site in Germany, my project offers a critical examination of how the urban poor, living on the precarious margins, come to inhabit political roles and practice climate politics in twenty-first century liberal democracies, especially as climate science becomes increasingly integral to contemporary governance. The projects innovation is to examine the under-analyzed relationship between three interrelated phenomena: the amplification of political divisions in major democracies; the rapid growth of urban inequality; and the increasing impact of pollution and global warming. By studying in interconnected global petrochemical hotspots, ""Habitable Air"" will contribute new knowledge about U.N. SDG #11 on sustainable cities and #13 on climate action.
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Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

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Keywords

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) H2020-MSCA-IF-2020

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Coordinator

UNIVERSITE PARIS CITE
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 196 707,84
Address
85 BD SAINT GERMAIN
75006 PARIS
France

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Region
Ile-de-France Ile-de-France Paris
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 196 707,84
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