Globalized Authoritarianism: Megaprojects, Slums, and Class Relations in Urban Morocco

摘要

Readers may remember Casablanca as a place where European refugees (played by Humphrey Bogart) could find a passage to allied territories or get stuck in the Vichy-controlled enclave. For Koenraad Bogaert, it is one of the cities in which global neoliberal politics are produced. More specifically, they are constructed through urban projects and in conjunction with authoritarian rule. A political scientist by training, Bogaert goes against much of the established literature in that field in defending his triple thesis, i.e., that neoliber-alism is not a global model imposed from above but produced locally and with local specificities; that politics happen not only through parties and elections but through urban demolition and construction; and that globalization does not always mean democratization but often quite the contrary. Globalized Authoritarianism explores these theoretical themes through the concrete cases of the upgrading of Casablanca slums and the retooling of the Bouregreg Valley between Rabat and Sale. The book engages extensively with literature on urban and political theory, Arab politics, and global capitalism, as the author declares himself heir of Marx, Foucault, and Lefebvre. And yet he succeeds in building an analysis of his own for this much-understudied region of the world.