Boris Vormann

Visiting Scholar

Boris Vormann is a guest professor in urban political economy and political science at Freie Universität’s John-F.-Kennedy Institute for North American Studies. Vormann has been a visiting researcher at NYU, Harvard University and the CUNY Graduate Center and is an associated researcher at the Chaire de Recherche du Canada en Études Québécoises et Canadiennes (CRÉQC), Université du Québec à Montréal. His most recent books are Global Port Cities in North America: Urbanization Processes and Global Production Networks from Routledge (2015) and a handbook on politics and policy in the United States for a German-speaking audience (Springer VS, 2015). Vormann received the 2015 Fulbright American Studies Award from the German Fulbright Commission and the German Association for American Studies. His current project examines the role of the state in building the urban infrastructures of expanding global trade networks.

Participating Years

2015–2016

Dialectics of Autonomy and Dependence

Self-determination had a heady run in the 20th century, instanced by both revolutionary assertion and homogenizing mimicry. But what is autonomy now? What is dependence? How are these conditions of existence necessarily related – as contradictory rather than contrasting ideologies, representations, relations, outcomes? What forms reveal the dialectic at work? What forms disguise or displace the dynamic?