Controlling Urban Events ─ Law, Ethics and the Material

How does order emerge out of the multiplicity of bodies, objects, ideas and practices that constitute the urban? This book explores the relation between space, law and control in the contemporary city – and particularly in the context of urban ‘mega events’ – through a combined geographical and normative analysis. Informed by the recent spatial, affective and material ‘turns’ in the humanities and social sciences, Andrea Pavoni addresses this question by pursuing an innovative and trans-disciplinary approach, capable of accounting for the emergence of order in urban space both at the conceptual and empirical levels. Two overarching objectives are pursued. First, to account for the increasing convergence of logics, techniques and technologies of law, security and marketing into novel, potentially oppressive spatial configurations. Second, to envisage a consistent ethico-political strategy to counter this evolution, by rethinking originally and in radically spatial terms the notion of justice. Forging a sophisticated and original analysis, this book offers an analysis that will be of considerable interest to those working in critical urban geography, critical legal studies and surveillance and control studies.

Andrea Pavoni is post-doctoral fellow at DINAMIA'CET, Centre for Socioeconomic and Territorial Studies, at the University Institute of Lisbon, Portugal. He completed his PhD at the University of Westminster, London, in 2013. He is a fellow at the Westminster Law and Theory Lab, co-editor of the Law and the Senses Series (University of Westminster Press), and associate editor at the journal Lo Squaderno, Explorations in Space and Society.