Cities are the focal points of migration, economic activities, and unique social formations in international relations. Professor AbdouMaliq Simone’s work challenges traditional urban studies by centering on “Southern Urbanisms,” the everyday ways of living for those who reside in cities located in the Global South. In this interview with GJIA, Professor Simone discusses how Southern Urbanism can transform our understanding of social life in cities. His intellectual trajectory in urbanism began with community action programs in the US, followed by work in African universities and Islamic organizations in West Africa, before moving to opportunities abroad with various organizations and projects. Southern Urbanism unsettles the prevailing perspectives, practices, and histories in urbanism by prioritizing the moving peripheries of the Global South to challenge authority and knowledge. While the Global South is an ongoing project, it also represents the unsettling and undoing of a project that starts from a particular perspective or aspiration and then materializes over time. The conflict over the use and abuse of technology is prevalent, with judgments being made about whose lives count and in what way, and decisions being made about what constitutes plausible interventions. Professor Simone’s most recent book, The Surrounds: Urban Life Within and Beyond Capture, describes “the surrounds” as spaces that residents use in innovative and resistant ways outside their originally designed purposes. The notion of surrounds is hard to pin down and identify precisely what they are, but they represent mechanisms of “exclusionary inclusion” and “inclusionary exclusion,” within a space that is neither inside nor outside. Southern Urbanism and the notion of surrounds challenge traditional perspectives and provide alternative lenses to study urbanism and social life in cities.
