The CEM seminar will be based on the author's latest book, Cities of Power (London, Verso, 2017), a global study of capital cities, from Paris of the Revolution to 21st Century Astana (in Kazakhstan). The event will be hold in the Department of Political Science of the University of São Paulo.

About the book: In this brilliant, very original survey of the politics and meanings of urban landscapes, leading sociologist Göran Therborn offers a tour of the world’s major capital cities, showing how they have been shaped by national, popular, and global forces. Their stories begin with the emergence of various kinds of nation-state, each with its own special capital city problematic. In turn, radical shifts of power have impacted on these cities’ development, in popular urban reforms or movements of protest and resistance; in the rise and fall of fascism and military dictatorships; and the coming and going of Communism. Therborn also analyzes global moments of urban formation, of historical globalized nationalism, as well as the cities of current global image capitalism and their variations of skyscraping, gating, and displays of novelty.

Through a global, historical lens, and with a thematic range extending from the mutations of modernist architecture to the contemporary return of urban revolutions, Therborn questions received assumptions about the source, manifestations, and reach of urban power, combining perspectives on politics, sociology, urban planning, architecture, and urban iconography. He argues that, at a time when they seem to be moving apart, there is a strong link between the city and the nation-state, and that the current globalization of cities is largely driven by the global aspirations of politicians as well as those of national and local capital.

With its unique systematic overview, from Washington, D.C. and revolutionary Paris to the flamboyant twenty- first-century capital Astana in Kazakhstan, its wealth of urban observations from all the populated continents, and its sharp and multi-faceted analyses, Cities of Power forces us to rethink our urban future, as well as our historically shaped present.

The seminar was attended by CEM researchers and graduate students from various local and national and international courses and universities enriching the discussion session. 

About the lecturer: Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Cambridge, UK, Affiliated Professor of Sociology at Linnaeus University, Sweden.  Former co-Director of the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences at Uppsala, former Professor of Sociology at Gothenburg University, Sweden, former Professor of Political Science at the Catholic University Nijmegen, Netherlands.

He has worked in and on all the populated continents of the world. His works have been published in at least twenty-four languages. He is also a civic intellectual, with a lifetime commitment to universal freedom and equality, a supporter  of anti-imperialist and egalitarian social movements, as well as a writer of and on Marxist and Radical theory.  Since his retirement from Cambridge in 2010 he lives at Ljungbyholm, in southeast Sweden. He is married with two children, Thomas Therborn and the poetess and critic Anna Hallberg.