Dr. Graham Denyer Willis
Much scholarship considers sites in terms of their components, whether different neighbourhoods, the 'slum' and the 'city'; the formal and the informal among other distinctions. But the study of urban components in isolation creates false distinctions, misappropriates blame and depoliticises inequalities. Using the example of 'cloned cars' in the city of Sao Paulo, I will discuss why the study of urban components and their social practices is necessary, but only when placed in broader urban context, as mutually produced, codependent and inseperable cites in a larger urban space.
Dr. Denyer Willis' work examines how cities of the Global South face contrasting pressures and demands for both security and democracy. His recent book, The Killing Consensus: Police, Organized Crime and the Regulation of Life and Death in Urban Brazil (University of Southern California Press, 2015), based on a multi-year ethnographic study of homicide detectives in the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil, examines the shared regulation of homicide across space and patterns of urbanisation in the city. He has published in World Development, Latin American Research Review, and The New York Times among others.