ISRF Independent Scholar Fellow 2022-23
ISRF Independent Scholar Fellow 2022-23
Christos is an Athens-based architect, with a research background in urban studies and urban geopolitics. Over the past years he has critically investigated issues related to urban securitisation and militarisation. He is particularly interested in counterinsurgency theories and practices, highlighting topics that lie at the point where the police/war apparatus, bio/necropolitics and the urban phenomena intersect. His latest field research focused on the pacification operations conducted in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. More specifically, it historically examined the link between counterinsurgency and the food question, reading the notion of food (in)security within the context of the implemented pacification programme and understanding its dynamics through a particular nexus formed by law enforcement, sustainable development, and green governmentality. He is currently investigating the urbanisation processes in the Global South within the Cold War context, through the lens of modernization theory, international development policies and counterinsurgency agenda.
This research will focus on various U.S. urban development initiatives in selective regions of the capitalist “periphery” during the Cold War. The Greek architect and urban planner Constantinos Doxiadis was from the very beginning at the centre of these initiatives. The aim of this project is to investigate Doxiadis’ role, examining his relations with the U.S. staffs, exploring the basic principles of his theory and evaluating his work not only in terms of applied architecture and urban planning but firstly in terms of its ideological-political context. More specifically, this research aspires to shed light on Doxiadis’ involvement, highlighting the strong influence of the then dominant theory of modernisation on his thinking and interpreting his work as a particular implementation of the U.S. national security policy and the U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine. These urban development initiatives have to be understood as part of a broader Cold War strategy, given that the modernisation of the “developing” world, as a method for containing the communist threat, was the primary goal of the U.S. cadres.
The research will be based on an interdisciplinary approach, utilising critical tools from the fields of architecture, urban studies, human geography, critical geopolitics, international relations, development studies, postcolonial studies, and critical security studies. Regarding research methodologies, the project will rely on primary sources and archival research, combining them with secondary data analysis. Through this study, data from Constantinos Doxiadis Archives and Ford Foundation Records will come to light, highlighting the geopolitical dimensions of the U.S. urban development interventions in the “developing” world. The reading of these interventions through the U.S. national security doctrine lens will enrich with valuable historical evidence the ongoing research on the urbanisation of the Global South and its genealogies.
If you would like to contact any of our Fellows to discuss their ISRF-funded work, please contact Dr Lars Cornelissen (Academic Editor) in the first instance, at lars.cornelissen@isrf.org.