5th International Conference on Anthropology of Urban Conflict

Urban technodystopias: neo-hygienism and emerging forms of resistance

In memory of Juliana Marcús

OACU invites you to participate in the 5th International Conference on Anthropology of Urban Conflict, which will take place in Barcelona from 9 to 11 December 2026.

The conference aims to question the discourses of technological innovation and sustainability as seemingly unquestionable drivers of the neoliberal city. The promise of technology and sustainability in the form of Artificial Intelligence, algorithms, automation, robotisation, surveillance devices, and alternative construction techniques is presented as the optimal solution for correcting the problems of the city and the impoverishment of the population. This trust in the redemptive capacity of technology is necessarily associated with the horizon of cities that are more accessible, efficient, intelligent, and aesthetically and ethically impeccable.

However, beneath this promise lies a trap: techno-sustainability, presented as a radical break, often reproduces inherited urban planning logics, particularly the hygienist, security-oriented, and markedly utopian visions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries about how the city should function in the service of its capitalist exploitation. Moreover, the close connection between the technological complex and the military industry, the intensive use of technological devices in war and colonisation, with the extreme example of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, project these promises of redemption into a dystopian landscape in which violence, gentrification, elitisation, and technological advancement become blurred and overlap. This gap between transformative rhetoric and practices that perpetuate old and violent imaginaries forces us to ask to what extent technology and urban sustainability models truly transform the social and spatial dynamics of the city, and to what extent, instead, they act as mechanisms that reactivate inherited modernist systems of action and representation, exacerbating their oppressive and colonial characteristics.

In the face of this tension, the conference also seeks to explore emerging forms of resistance: social, collective, and everyday practices—organised or spontaneous—that question, overflow, or reimagine dominant techno-sustainable frameworks. It is in this space of friction, between persistent rationalities and forms of resistance, that we situate the debate we propose to open in this fifth edition, in tribute to Juliana Marcús and her critical legacy in urban anthropology.

Important dates:

• Opening of the submission period for contributions - June 2, 2026
• Deadline for contribution submissions - September 10, 2026
• Notification of acceptance - September 30, 2026
• Registration period - from September 30 to November 6, 2026
• Publication of the final programme - November 11, 2026