Sophie Watson

Bio: Sophie Watson is an academic researcher from Open University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Public space & Multiculturalism. The author has an hindex of 20, co-authored 70 publications receiving 2868 citations. Previous affiliations of Sophie Watson include University of East London & University of Sydney.

Urban Political Ecology, Justice and the Politics of Scale (Reprint)

Abstract: This and the subsequent papers in this special issue set out the contours of Marxian urban political ecology and call for greater research attention to a neglected field of critical research that, given its political importance, requires urgent attention. Notwithstanding the important contributions of other critical perspectives on urban ecology, Marxist urban political ecology provides an integrated and relational approach that helps untangle the interconnected economic, political, social and ecological processes that together go to form highly uneven and deeply unjust urban landscapes. Because the power-laden socioecological relations that shape the formation of urban environments constantly shift between groups of actors and scales, historical-geographical insights into these ever-changing urban configurations are necessary for the sake of considering the future of radical political-ecological urban strategies. The social production of urban environments is gaining recognition within radical and historical-materialist geography. The political programme, then, of urban political ecology is to enhance the democratic content of socioenvironmental construction by identifying the strategies through which a more equitable distribution of social power and a more inclusive mode of environmental production can be achieved.

In the Nature of Cities: Urban Political Ecology and the Politics of Urban Metabolism

Abstract: Forward David Harvey Part 1 The Production of Urban Natures and Urban Political Ecology 1. Introduction Erik Swyngedouw, Nik Heynen and Maria Kaika 2. Sylvan City: The social production of urban nature Eliza Darling and Neil Smith 3. Urbanizing Political Ecology: A perspective from Toronto Roger Keil and Julie-Anne Bourdreau Part 2: Urban Metabolisms 4. Circulations and Metabolism: Hybrid natures and cyborg cities Erik Swyngedouw 5. The Desire to Metabolize Nature Stuart Oliver 6. Cyborg Urbanization: Water, urban infrastructure and the modern city Matthew Gandy 7. Monuments, Medians and Metabolims: Contradictions inherent to the appropriation of Avenida De La Reforma's built environment for consumption Nik Heynen 8 Clogging up the City: The metabolism of fat in bodies, sewers and cities Simon Marvin and Will Medd 9. Urban Metabolism as Target: Contemporary war as forced demodernisation Stephen Graham Part 3: The Ecology of Urban Politics 10. Transnational Alliances and Global Politics: New geographies of urban environmental justice struggles David N Pellow 11. Constructing Scarcity and Sensationalising Water Politics: 170 days that shook Athens Maria Kaika 12. Dead Spaces in the City of Extremes: Observations from the great Chicago heat wave Eric Klinenberg 13. Reconnecting with the Means of Existence in Durban Alex Loftus 14. Looking at the Public/Private Water Debate in South Africa Through the Prism of an Urban Political Ecology Framework Laila Smith 15. Turfgrass Subjects: The political economy of suburban lawn monoculture Paul Robbins 16. At the Edge: Fragmented ecologies in Philadelphia Alec Brownlow Conclusions and the Way Forward Erik Swyngedouw, Nik Heynen and Maria Kaika

The Magic of the Marketplace: Sociality in a Neglected Public Space:

Abstract: This study explores the potentiality of markets as public space where multiple forms of sociality are enacted. Research was conducted in eight UK markets. The research revealed that markets represe...

City Publics: The (Dis)Enchantments of Urban Encounters

Abstract: Some cities have grown into mega cities and some into uncontrolled sprawl; others have seen their centres decline with populations moving to the suburbs In such times, questions of the public realm and public space in cities warrant even greater attention than previously received Concerned with the borders and boundaries, constraints and limits on accepting, acknowledging and celebrating difference in public, Sophie Watson, through ethnographic studies, interrogates how difference is negotiated and performed Focusing on spaces where to outside observers tension is relatively absent or invisible, Watson also reveals how the boundaries between the public and private are being negotiated and redrawn, and how public and private spaces are mutually constitutive Through her investigation of the more ordinary and less dramatic forms of encounter and contestation in the city, Watson is able to conceive of an urban public realm and urban public space that is heterogeneous and potentially progressive With numerous photographs and drawings City Publics not only throws new light on encounters with others in public space, but also destabilises dominant, sometimes simplistic, universalized accounts and helps us re-imagine urban public space as a site of potentiality, difference, and enchanted encounters

In a Different Voice. Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Cambridge, MA (Harvard University Press) 1982.

Abstract: Introduction 1. Woman's Place in Man's Life Cycle 2. Images of Relationship 3. Concepts of Self and Morality 4. Crisis and Transition 5. Women's Rights and Women's Judgment 6. Visions of Maturity References Index of Study Participants General Index

The Production of Space

Abstract: ‘The Production of Space’, in: Frans Jacobi, Imagine, Space Poetry, Copenhagen, 1996, unpaginated.

Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community

Abstract: The present historical moment may seem a particularly inopportune time to review Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam's latest exploration of civic decline in America. After all, the outpouring of volunteerism, solidarity, patriotism, and self-sacrifice displayed by Americans in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks appears to fly in the face of Putnam's central argument: that \"social capital\" -defined as \"social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them\" (p. 19)'has declined to dangerously low levels in America over the last three decades. However, Putnam is not fazed in the least by the recent effusion of solidarity. Quite the contrary, he sees in it the potential to \"reverse what has been a 30to 40-year steady decline in most measures of connectedness or community.\"' As an example of how the current \"war on terrorism\" could generate a durable civic renewal, Putnam points to the burst in civic practices that occurred during and after World War II, which he says \"permanently marked\" the generation that lived through it and had a \"terrific effect on American public life over the last half-century.\" 3 If Americans can follow this example and channel their current civic