Benjamin Kohl

Associate Professor
Undergraduate Student Advisor
Office: 321 Gladfelter Hall
Tel: 215 204 1430

E-mail:
bkohl@temple.edu

Curriculum Vitae

Areas of Expertise:

International development and economic policy, international urban studies, political economy of development and planning, urban planning, Latin America, Andean Region, Bolivia ...

Education:

1999 - Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning, Cornell University
1992 - M.A. in Engineering and Policy, Technology and Human Affairs, Washington University, St. Louis
1986 - B.A. in Anthropology, San Francisco State University

Courses:

GUS 1025 (060) World Urban Patterns
GUS 2032 (W131) Urban Societies in a Global Economy
GUS 4021 (220/409) Geography & Urban Studies: Urbanization in the Third World GUS4075/5075 (225/425) Geography & Urban Studies: Regional Development in the Third World
GUS 4197 (W282) Research Methods and Techniques
GUS 8097 Research Methods in Geography & Urban Studies

Research:

My research interests extend across the fields of the political economy of development, urban studies, urban theory, and research methods. Much of my work focuses on Bolivia , where I have spent over 8 of the past 20 years –first, working in, and later studying development projects before moving to broader questions of political and social change. One body of work, which examines how neoliberal restructuring in 1985 has shaped the country between 1985 and 2005, is summarized in Impasse in Bolivia: Neoliberal Hegemony and Popular Resistance , written with Linda Farthing (Zed Books, 2006).

I am presently engaged in three overlapping research projects, two of which take me back to Bolivia . The first looks at the constraints to change in democratic and bureaucratic systems and, in the Bolivian case, looks at the persistence of neoliberalism in “post neoliberal” states. The second is the biography of a Bolivian activitist that tries to tell the story of broader historical processes within the context of one person's life. Finally, I am engaged in a project to define the characteristics of neoliberal cities to complement the global cities framework that currently dominates international urban studies. This project will allow us to develop a framework for understanding neoliberal cities just as we have some shared (and perhaps contradictory) understanding of what we mean when we talk about global (or world) cities, I hope.