"Territorialities of Sovereignty: Deconstructing the Spatial Correlates of Conflict"

Abstract: This presentation seeks to problematize the notion of sovereignty, asking questions about the territorial scales under which ethno-national conflict has materialized historically, and considering the possibility that nature and intensity of conflict is a function of territorial scale and how sovereignty and other forms of governing power manifest in physical space. After theorizing the territorial dynamics of conflict, and the ways that competing sovereignties affect those processes, I examine a range of spatial interventions that have been shown to enable or constrain pathways towards violence reduction.

Biography: Diane E. Davis is the Charles Dyer Norton Professor Regional Planning and Urbanism at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where she is currently Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design. Her research interests include the politics of urban development policy, socio-spatial practice in conflict cities, the relations between urbanization and economic development, and comparative urban development. With a special interest in Latin America, she has explored topics ranging from historic preservation and informality to urban social movements and policing. Her books include and Cities and Sovereignty: Identity Conflicts in the Urban Realm (2011), Discipline and Development: Middle Classes and Prosperity in East Asia and Latin America (2004), and Urban Leviathan: Mexico City in the Twentieth Century (1994). More re-cently, she has turned her attention to sovereignty at the urban scale, examining the ways that contemporary challenges of climate change, migration, and violence transform governance practices. Davis is a member of the Executive Committee of Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and the Chair of the Faculty Committee on Mexico at Harvard’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.