Solidarity Cities: Examining Solidarity Economies at the Urban Level with Maliha Safri

Cities@Tufts Lectures

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Contemporary urban discourse is caught in a binary between the Gentrified City, and the Disinvested City. Maliha Safri’s new book presents an alternative urban imaginary: the Solidarity City. Her new co-authored book Solidarity Cities. Confronting Racial Capitalism, Mapping Transformation introduces an alternative spatial imaginary highlighting solidarity relations as definitional features of urban life. In contrast to profit-motive and competition, solidarity economies and the corresponding international movement have commitments to cooperation, democracy, and inclusion. The movement is exceptionally diverse, bringing together community gardens, worker cooperatives, credit unions, all kinds of consumer cooperatives, mutual aid societies, and other organizations. The book makes visible through mapping solidarity economies in three cities - New York City, Philadelphia, and Worcester, MA and analyzes its impact on urban space through spatial analysis, qualitative research, interviews, and economic impact modeling.

About the speaker

Maliha Safri is Professor of economics at Drew University. Her academic research has focused on collective economic practices (including worker, food, and housing cooperatives, amidst other organizations). By teaching popular education seminars and courses with activists since 2000, and specifically with migrant workers at a variety of worker centers in the process of forming collectives, her research was based in concrete issues faced by participants of what some movement activists call solidarity economies, which are economies prioritizing cooperation and inclusion. She has published articles in Signs, Antipode, Environmental Policy and Governance, the Economist's Voice, Organization, among other journals and edited book collections. She has a new co-authored book Solidarity Cities: Confronting Racial Capitalism and Mapping Transformation (January 2025, University of Minnesota Press).

Resources

Solidarity Cities Confronting Racial Capitalism, Mapping Transformation by Maliha Safri, Marianna Pavlovskaya, Stephen Healy and Craig Borowiak

In addition to this audio, you can read the full transcript of the conversation and watch the lecture recording on Shareable.net – while you’re there get caught up on past lectures.

Cities@Tufts Lectures explores the impact of urban planning on our communities and the opportunities to design for greater equity and justice with professor Julian Agyeman.

Cities@Tufts Lectures is produced by Tufts University and Shareable.net with support from Barr Foundation,

Paige Kelly is our co-producer and audio editor. The original portrait of Maliha Safri was illustrated by Jess Milner, and the series is co-produced and hosted by Tom Llewellyn.

“Light Without Dark” by Cultivate Beats is our theme song.

67 episodes

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