Landscapes of inequality, spectacle and control: Inka social order in provincial contexts, with comments of Sonia Alconini, Gabriel Cantarutti, R. Alan Covey, Ian Farrington, Martti Pärssinen y Simón Urbina

Th is article explores Inka colonial order from a landscape perspective. It is argued that the Inkas strategically employed the spatial organization and architecture of the settlements they built throughout the Empire in order to regulate interactions, create particular representations, and assemble specific experiences. In this sense, this paper examines the spatial layout of Inka provincial centers in order to understand the world the Inkas sought to create within these places. I argue that there are three main principles that organized Inka spatiality in conquered lands: stratifi cation, rituality, and control. It is claimed that those who resided in or visited Inka provincial centers experienced three overlapping landscapes: 1) a landscape of inequality, 2) a landscape of commemoration and spectacle, and 3) a landscape of control.Este artículo explora el orden colonial Inka desde la perspectiva del paisaje. Se argumenta que los Inkas emplearon estratégicamente la organización espacial y la arquitectura de los asentamientos que construyeron a lo largo del Imperio con el objeto de regular las interacciones, crear representaciones particulares y ensamblar experiencias específicas. En este sentido, este trabajo examina el diseño espacial de los centros provinciales Inkas para entender el mundo que los Inkas buscaban crear dentro de estos lugares. Argumento que hubo tres principios que organizaron la espacialidad Inka en las tierras conquistadas: la estratificación, la ritualidad y el control. Se sostiene que aquellos que residían o visitaban un centro provincial Inka experimentaron tres paisajes superpuestos: 1) un paisaje de desigualdad, 2) un paisaje de conmemoración y espectáculo y 3) un paisaje de control

Towards an Engaged, Militant Archaeology

It is not a secret that archaeology is not a politically innocuous enterprise. Throughout its history, and in the name of science, modernity, and the state, the discipline has appropriated minorities’ heritage, generating representations that have contributed with their subordination and denial. For some decades now, scholars have critically reflected about archaeology’s social role, its contribution to sustain Western, capitalist hegemony, and the negative impact that archaeological narratives have had on different collectives. In this light, the decolonisation of the discipline and the construction of a more reflexive, open, tolerant, and democratic archaeology have become valuable goals. Although some believe that archaeology is no longer what it used to be, in actuality only a small group of scholars have developed an engaged, activist archaeology. Just by attending any archaeology congress in the First World or in Latin America, we can easily realize that the great majority of our colleagues still maintain a bourgeois fascination about the exotic, conducting an uncommitted, apolitical, and increasingly hyper specialized archaeology. Archaeologists keep discussing topics that, in the great majority of the cases, only interest other archaeologists

City Diplomacy: Towards More Strategic Networking? Learning with WHO Healthy Cities

Cities are increasingly capturing the attention of major international actors and now regularly feature in multilateral processes. Yet while there are many studies on networking among cities, there have been few studies of 'city networks' as formal and institutionalized governance structures facilitating city-to-city and city-to-other actors cooperation, or 'city diplomacy'. Institutionalized networks of cities, while not new, are becoming a growing presence on the international scene, almost omnipresent and perhaps even too common. Might it be time for a 'Darwinian' selection between city networking options? Diving deeper into this networked challenge, this essay focuses on the effects this networked diplomacy and overlap it might have on cities. Drawing on a research collaboration between the UCL City Leadership Laboratory at University College London and the World Health Organization's Healthy Cities Network and both a global dataset of city networks as well as qualitative focus group data, we consider the growth of these governance structures, their strengths, but also the weaknesses associated with their rapid growth, and how cities can engage with this networked landscape more strategically. In short, we argue that the potential of city networks must go hand-in-hand with more integrative and strategic thinking at both local and international levels

Urban Observatories in the Midst of COVID-19: Challenges & Responses

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, urban observatories have demonstrated their value, but also highlighted the challenges for boundary institutions between knowledge generation and decision-making in a variety of different ways. We aim here to capture some of their voices in a time of crisis. The Connected Cities Lab, in collaboration with University College London and UN-Habitat, and in dialogue with a variety of urban research institutions around the planet, has been working since 2018 to develop a review of the challenges and values of and challenges for ‘urban observatories’. That project aims to present evidence on the boundary-spanning roles of these institutions, capturing the ways in which they bridge information in and about their cities and the potential value they offer to urban governance. As the COVID-19 crisis took hold across cities and continents in early 2020, it became apparent that this study could not prescind from a closer look at how these observatories had both been coping with, but also responding to, the pandemic. This resulted in a series of additional interviews, document reviews and a twopart virtual workshop in August 2020 with observatories, and urban research institutions performing observatory functions, to give further voice to these experiences. As a background to this ‘deep’ dive into the reality of COVID-19 for observatories, the overall study underpinning this working paper has relied on, first, desktop research on publicly available information to identify thirty-two cases of either explicitlynamed ‘urban observatories’ or else urban research institutions performing ‘observatory-like’ functions. This research was then coupled with a series of interviews with experts and senior staff from these observatories to ground truth initial considerations as well as to capture how the processes of boundary-spanning worked beyond the publicly available persona of each observatory. We then referred back to these thirty-two cases and selected a sample of fourteen for specific analysis in relation to COVID-specific interventions, with six of them involved directly into two virtual workshops to capture directly their experience in the context of the pandemic crisis. Capturing initial findings from these engagements (which will ultimately form an integral part of the project’s final report), this working paper offers a preliminary snapshot of some of these lessons drawn from the study. Essential for us has been the chance, amidst the complications of COVID-19 lockdowns and travel bans, to better capture the voice of observatories the world over and their tangible experiences with spanning urban research-practice boundaries in a turbulent historical moment. Whilst the final report for the project will likely include more extensively analysed cases emerging from the current crisis, we have sought to present here much of the raw reflections emerging from our engagement with colleagues in observatories (and ‘observatory-like’ institutions) to both offer useful reflections to other contexts around the world as well as to offer insights on the unique situation urban knowledge institutions find themselves in a reality where cities and urban life has been fundamentally recast by the pandemic. The working paper is organised in a way that follows our broader study’s key themes looking at the structure and activities of observatories, putting our broader findings into dialogue with the voices of observatories during the COVID-19 crisis. Section 1 describes the proposed visions and functions performed by observatories and puts it into dialogue with the COVID-19 crisis. Positionality of urban observatories is also discussed in this section. Section 2 explores outputs produced by, and themes investigated in, observatories and how they have been shaped by and for the crisis. In Sections 1 and 2 we endeavoured to capture vignettes from the participating observatories through the experiences of a set of six more specific interlocutor institutions engaged in the project: the Gauteng City Region Observatory (GCRO) in Johannesburg, the Karachi Urban Lab (KUL) in Karachi, the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS) in Bangalore, the Metropolis Observatory in Barcelona, and the World Resources Institute Ross Centre in Washington DC. Section 3 concludes with a commentary on the ongoing challenges and opportunities faced by urban observatories in the wake of COVID-19, without underestimating how the crisis might be far from over

Patrimonio y luchas indígenas contemporáneas: territorio, descolonización y derecho

Diversos trabajos se han escrito sobre el tema de patrimonio en general y sobre la relación entre patrimonio y pueblos originarios en particular. En líneas generales, se acuerda en que patrimonio remite a elementos materiales o inmateriales que un colectivo determinado atesora por estar ligados con la reproducción de su identidad y la trasmisión de memorias. El patrimonio, además, conecta, y en cierta medida ancla, a ese colectivo con un tiempo y espacio determinado, sirviendo para sostener demandas de algún tipo, especialmente territoriales, pero también sobre recursos específicos. Existe también un acuerdo bastante generalizado acerca de la conexión entre patrimonio y poder, especialmente el poder de los estado-naciones y de las elites, quienes han definido qué es y qué no es patrimonio, apropiándose simultáneamente del patrimonio de otros colectivos. El patrimonio ha sido así empleado estratégicamente para definir e imponer historias e identidades oficiales y hegemónicas, borrando e invisibilizando otras historias e identidades. En la actualidad la tendencia ha sido transformar el patrimonio en una mercancía orientada al consumo de la industria turística. La presente ponencia apunta a reflexionar sobre la importancia del patrimonio cultural en las luchas indígenas contemporáneas. En particular, se discutirá cómo y por qué el patrimonio: 1) es territorio y está profundamente involucrado en la lucha por el territorio, para su restitución, reconstitución y equilibrio, 2) sirve para la reconstitución y descolonización de los pueblos originarios, sus prácticas y organizaciones, y 3) se constituye en un arma política para sustentar la preexistencia y reclamar el cumplimiento del marco de derecho indígena, especialmente lo que tiene que ver con las consulta y participación.GT23: Patrimonio Cultural y Pueblos Indígenas: prácticas, representaciones y luchas en América Latina.Universidad Nacional de La Plat

Exploring the accuracy of analytic methods in predicting the evolution of large-scale structure

Cosmology is at a crossroads. Experiments are providing an unprecedented amount of data that, in theory, should lead to clear solutions to the many open questions in cosmology. However, with new data comes new questions and recently uncovered tensions between the predictions of the standard model of cosmology and observations are leading some to question the very foundations on which the standard model is built. To explore the vast cosmological landscape, numerical simulations are often employed, but given the broad parameter space that needs to be explored other faster (but more approximate) methods need to be adopted to maximise the coverage and the possible extensions surveyed. In this panorama one of the options is the halo model, a simple and elegant way to study the clustering of matter in the Universe. However, this method is not free from assumptions and associated uncertainties. In this thesis I explore the uncertainties associated with the halo model making use of cosmological numerical simulations. I use the BAHAMAS simulations to obtain data products such as the mass density profiles of the haloes and the number density of haloes over a wide range of masses and I use these quantities in the halo model formalism in order to make a self-consistent comparisons against the simulations results. Aside from this application, I calibrate a fitting function on the Einasto function, which has been shown to be a good representation of the matter distribution inside haloes, and I use a standard form for the halo mass function. Comparing against the simulation matter power spectrum at different redshift, I show the accuracy of the halo model predictions is strongly dependent on the mass definitions used with differences over 50%. In particular, the transition region between the 1-halo and the 2-halo terms and in the smallest scales sampled (k≈ 10 h/Mpc). This picture applies to both collisionless and hydrodynamical simulations, where galaxy formation processes are taken into account. In contrast to the poor ability in reproducing the matter clustering, the halo model can reproduce the relative impact of baryons on the matter clustering to a competitive accuracy (<5%) in line of next-generation observations predictions. In the second part of this work, I analyse the halo model applications of large-scale structure observables as gravitational weak lensing and thermal Sunyaev-Zel'Dovich effect. To explore these observables, I have built the halo model using the electron pressure inside haloes (relevant for the tSZ effect), and I have made several realisations of the matter power spectrum up to z=3 for the lensing observables, in both the collisionless and hydrodynamical cases. In this analysis, I have compared against observational data (e.g., KiDS-450 survey and Planck) and results obtained from light-cones from the BAHAMAS simulations. I examined the dependence of the results on the different mass definitions and the baryonic effects, in particular the baryonic suppression that can be inferred from this set of observables

Mobilising urban knowledge in an infodemic: Urban observatories, sustainable development and the COVID-19 crisis

Along with disastrous health and economic implications, COVID-19 has also been an epidemic of misinformation and rumours – an ‘infodemic’. The desire for robust, evidence-based policymaking in this time of disruption has been at the heart of the multilateral response to the crisis, not least in terms of supporting a continuing agenda for global sustainable development. The role of boundary-spanning knowledge institutions in this context could be pivotal, not least in cities, where much of the pandemic has struck. ‘Urban observatories’ have emerged as an example of such institutions; harbouring great potential to produce and share knowledge supporting sustainable and equitable processes of recovery. Building on four ‘live’ case studies during the crisis of institutions based in Johannesburg, Karachi, Freetown and Bangalore, our research note aims to capture the role of these institutions, and what it means to span knowledge boundaries in the current crisis. We do so with an eye towards a better understanding of their knowledge mobilisation practices in contributing towards sustainable urban development. We highlight that the crisis offers a key window for urban observatories to play a progressive and effective role for sustainable and inclusive development. However, we also underline continuing challenges in these boundary knowledge dynamics: including issues of institutional trust, inequality of voices, collective memory, and the balance between normative and advisory roles for observatories