Youth Urban Worlds Aesthetic Political Action in Montreal

Both theoretically informed and empirically rich, Youth Urban Worlds explores how urban cultures affect political action amongst youth.

• Argues that urban cultures challenge the very meaning and contours of the political process
• Includes ethnographies, delving into the perspectives and knowledges of racialized youth, urban farmers, and “voluntary risk takers,” like dumpster divers, building climbers, and student protestors
• Theorizes that aesthetics are an increasingly crucial form of political action in the contemporary urban setting and explains the impact of aesthetics on the political
• Examines the centrality of fun, warmth, aesthetics, and embodiment to these youth’s experience of being in the world
• Explains how youth are able to practically and concretely impact the political process through the performance of risky and disruptive behavior

Julie-Anne Boudreau holds a Doctorate in Urban Planning from the University of California in Los Angeles. She is Professor at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique in Montreal, where she held the Canada Research Chair in urbanity, insecurity, and political action from 2005-2015. 

Joëlle Rondeau holds a master’s degree in Urban Studies from the National Institute of Scientific Research in Montreal. She is pursuing a doctoral degree in Indigenous Studies at Trent University, focusing on the urban food transformation and the resurgence of Indigenous foodways and governance systems. 

Series Editors’ Preface

Preface

Introduction Voices From Montreal

Space–Time–Affect: The Urban Logic of Political Action

Acting Aesthetically: Political Gestures, Political Acts, and Political Action

Youth Urban Worlds

The Global Urban Political Moment of the 2010s: Youthfulness in Action

Montreal in a World of Cities

A Methodological Note

The Organization of the Book

Notes

1 Montreal and the Urban Moment

Montreal’s Politico-Sensuous Feel

Montreal’s Place in the Global Urban Cultures of the 1960s and 1970s

Changing Relations to Time

Changing Relations to Space

Conclusion

Notes

2 The Urban Political World of Racialized Youth: Moving Through and Being Moved By Saint-Michel and Little Burgundy

Moving Through Saint-Michel and Little Burgundy with an Epistemology of Blackness

Being Moved: Representations and Affective Aesthetic Relations

Racialization: Disembodied Profiling Entangled With Embodied Racist Encounters

Conclusion

Notes

3 The Urban Political World of Student Strikers

Becoming a Striker: Pregnant Moments ‘Breaking the Real’

Walking the City: Space During and After the Strike

The Political Effects of Seduction and Provocation

Conclusion

Notes

4 Cultivating the City: ‘It’s Not Just Growing Food, It’s a Lot More Than That’

Embodied Experiences of the Spatialities and Circulation of Food Commodities in the City

The Urban Logic of Action of Urban Agriculture Practices

Seduction and Attraction in the Garden

Conclusion

Notes

5 The Urban Political World of ‘Risk-Takers’: Provocative Choreographic Power 

The Risk-Management Context

Urban Dancers and Diviners: Choreographic Power as Political Action

Voluntary Risk-Takers? Fear and Youth Politics

Collective Edgework: Distributed Agency Through Provocation and Seduction

Conclusion

Notes

Conclusion

Forms of Aesthetic Politics Influenced by Youthfulness and Contemporary Conditions of Urbanity

Montreal in a World of Cities

References

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