LRCCS Noon Lecture Series | Land, Housing, Air: Deciphering Urban Governance in China and India

This talk is part of a book project that comparatively examines how cities in China and India have become strategic terrains for the remaking of citizen rights. The book is based on historical-comparative analyses and ethnographic fieldwork on land grabs, slum evictions, and clean-air campaigns in five urban regions in China and India (Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Beijing, and Guangzhou). 

 

Xuefei Ren (Associate Professor of Sociology and Global Urban Studies) is a comparative urbanist whose work focuses on urban development, governance, architecture, and the built environment in global perspective. She is the author two award-winning books--"Building Globalization: Transnational Architecture Production in Urban China" (2011) and "Urban China" (2013). She is also the lead editor of "Globalizing Cities Reader" (2017, Routledge). Currently she is working on a number of new projects, including a book comparing urban governance and citizen rights in China and India, a photo-documentary of Detroit and China’s rust-belt cities, and a series of comparative articles examining informal settlements, mega-events, and spectacles in cities in Brazil, China, and India. In 2016-2017, she is a Frederick Burkhardt residential fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies. Ren received her PhD in Sociology from the University of Chicago.