ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to provide a longer history for the southern urban critique. Scholars of postcolonialism have long examined the production of cultural knowledge as well as the production of scholarly ideas, including consideration of the relationship between researcher and subject. In 1991, in a Presidential address to the Canadian Association of Geographers, T. G. McGee drew on decades of work in Asian cities to reiterate the need to think differently about southern cities, not to transpose established perspectives onto the dynamic sites of urban change in the global south. D. Slater argues against the use of northern theories in his examination of Eurocentricism, arguing that the south is different and therefore requires new theories. The chapter examines the phrase “the southern urban critique” to describe this analytical focus on the process of urban research and theory-making.
