Living Just Enough for the City

Today, most of us call the city home. The city is also the context in which we come to understand ourselves, build relationships with others, and negotiate our collective lives. Many authors have recognised this transformation entails new social and political challenges. What is less often acknowledged is how this alters the way we think about ourselves, as well as politics and social life more broadly. Humanity's move to the city entails a philosophical transformation as well as a physical relocation. Placing the city at the centre of our thinking challenges contemporary political theory, giving rise to distinctive problems, suggesting new ways of thinking, and calling for innovative methods. Living Just Enough for the City develops an urban political theory by asking "where are we?" and "where should we be going?". By using the city as both a site for theorising and a focal point it reconstructs key concepts in political theory and provides important insights into contemporary political life and the democratic possibilities of the city. It argues the central political problems facing cities, such as gentrification, growing inequality, and conflicts over citizenship, demonstrate the need for a people-centred conception of legitimate authority that challenges state sovereignty. Drawing on urban experience for insights into the nature of contemporary politics and the prospects for positive change, it argues that as individuals and communities are shaped by urban life, the city's denizens have a right to participate in its democratic remaking. Philosophising from and about the city, which is defined by change and contingency, suggests a new approach is needed. To do this, Living Just Enough for the City develops an innovative situationist methodology drawn from Pragmatism, which begins with practical problems arising in everyday experience, and incorporates personal reflection, original empirical research, and artistic representations of the city to understand, critique, and improve our shared urban lives.

Joe Hoover is a Reader in Political Theory in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary University of London. His research is informed by philosophical pragmatism and agonistic pluralism, focussing on human rights, urban politics, democracy, and justice. It attends to how philosophical reflection grounded in everyday political experience can assist in addressing pressing social problems, to develop ways of doing political theory that is engaged with practical political action. He is the author of Reconstructing Human Rights: A Pragmatist and Pluralist Inquiry in Global Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2016).