Governing Urban Poverty: Boston, Dublin and Vancouver

Karen Murray – York University – Department of Political Science

Empirically, Karen aims to document the governmental and political character and implications of shifting poverty mentalities, practices and dynamics in inner-city locales in Boston, Dublin and Vancouver. She pays close attention to how certain people and places are rendered governmentally visible in relation to poverty and its various elements of disadvantage. Methodologically, her work involves extensive archival research, field interviews, and photography. Theoretically, she seeks to understand how shifting forms of urban poverty governance relate to changing notions of democracy and citizenship, including the extent to which poverty becomes a field for authoritarian practices. Politically, she investigates, in a neo-Foucaultian way, how definitions of poverty and the practices they inspire align with/disrupt wider political aims, such as the production of wealth, the securing of a willing and able workforce, and the promotion of order and stability. In this way, her research seeks to open up space for new ways of thinking and acting upon mass inequalities that define the global present.