BIDDING WARS: ENACTMENTS OF EXPERTISE AND EMOTIONAL LABOR IN THE SPANISH COMPETITION FOR THE EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE 2016 TITLE By Alexandra Oancă Submitted to Central European University Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Supervisors: Professor Jean-Louis Fabiani Professor Daniel Monterescu CEU eTD Collection Budapest, Hungary 2017 I hereby state that this dissertation contains no material accepted for any other degrees in any other institutions. The thesis contains no materials previously written and/or published by another person, except where appropriate acknowledgment is made in the form of bibliographical reference. Budapest, May 2017 Alexandra Oancă CEU eTD Collection In the loving memory of Marcel Oancă (1961-2016) CEU eTD Collection Abstract Competition appears to be pervasive. Nowadays, it is portrayed as the necessary philosophy of socio-economic life, seemingly driving both companies and cities, to engage in an all-out competitive struggle for resources. However, competition between cities is neither ‘natural’ nor a ‘macro-structural effect’ of contemporary urbanism and state restructuring but a dynamic and relational ensemble of socio-spatial policy processes that connect and disconnect cities, scales and wider policy networks. For European cities, the engineering of inter-urban competition is a state-led political and economic project: it is not a coherent project of the EU but a partial assemblage of different policy processes that have uneven consequences and that are contestable and contested. Instead of looking at inter-urban competition and competitive bidding solely as phenomena that are reflecting and reinforcing class interests, state projects or hegemonic ideologies, it is more productive to include them into a relational and processual analysis and focus on how these processes of inter-city rivalries are actually unfolding and on the specific labor practices that make them possible. Elite projects, just like state-led projects, need to be labored-over. In this dissertation, I propose a relational and processual approach to the study of inter-urban competition based on the one hand, on the relationality of places and scales, and on the other hand, on the relationality of expertise and the interplay between competitive, cooperative and conflictual social relations underlying enactments of expertise. While drawing on a multi-sited research of the Spanish competition for the European Capital of Culture 2016 title, I focus on the enactments of expertise and the techno-political work that inter- city rivalries require, and their contradictory effects. During this research, I carried out an extensive examination of policy documents and 110 in-depth interviews with policy actors involved in the competitive bidding process (civil servants, local professionals, external experts, EU technocrats, politicians, corporate actors, cultural producers, activists, and volunteers). CEU eTD Collection I argue that processes of inter-urban competition are made possible through three labor practices: first, the imagineering of the city through comparative practices with competitors, model and reference cities; second, emotional labor and the management of optimism, hope, and civic pride; and third, the instrumentalization of socio-cultural and ‘extra-economic’ aspects in the pursuit of competitiveness. As part of the enactments of expertise, imaginative labor – through relational comparisons and the instrumentalization of the socio-cultural and ‘extra-economic’ – is prioritized and considered more ‘worthy’, while emotional labor is seen as ‘inferior’ work performed by ‘street-level’, frontline civil servants or policy actors in lower hierarchical positions – usually by women. Processes of competition and the pursuit of competitiveness are both premised on and are reinforcing this privileging of imaginative over emotional labor. Competition itself is an inherently unbalanced, divisive, and ungovernable process. Inter-city rivalries are messy, antagonistic and cruel for the policy actors that are laboring for them. It leads to conflict, competition, and contradictions, and a weakening of cooperative social relations in and between cities, scales and wider policy networks. Yet, there are also openings and cracks in processes of competitive bidding, as actors – that are positioned in the flux of the increasing valorization and instrumentalization of socio-cultural and ‘extra-economic’ aspects for inter- urban competition – encounter discrepancies that can offer insights and enable them to practice critical politics. CEU eTD Collection Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisors, Jean-Louis Fabiani and Daniel Monterescu, for their unwavering support throughout the last six years. This work has benefitted immensely from their feedback and comments. This thesis has been shaped and made possible by the generous contributions of many other people. I am deeply grateful to Cris Shore, whose ideas have shaped my thinking, and who has been kind to contribute to this project during my stay at the University of Auckland and after. Also I am indebted to Martin Müller, John Pickles, and Elena Trubina for their support and invaluable comments. Their comments during our submission process of a journal issue on mega-events in European Urban and Regional Studies, and the wonderful workshops and conferences on mega-events they have organized have undoubtedly improved my work. Arturo Rodríguez Morató has offered critical guidance and practical support at the early stages of this project. Diane Dodd and Greg Richards have also been generous with advice and support during my research. At various stages, other researchers, who I have met at conferences or with other serendipitous occasions, have contributed with insightful and ingenious observations on this project: Iolanda Bianchi, André Carmo, Rebecca Lund, Pedro de Novais Lima Jr, Kevin Ward, and many others. Moreover, my work has benefited from numerous, formal and informal, discussions with members of the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at CEU, particularly from our Wednesday colloquiums. Judit Bodnar, Dorit Geva, Don Kalb, Alexandra Kowalski, Daniel Rabinowitz, Jakob Rigi, and others have given invaluable comments on different aspects of this dissertation and have helped clarify my thinking and writing. My fellow students and friends at the department have been vital throughout my PhD years, CEU eTD Collection offering wonderful and insightful comments, and making the whole process both possible and enjoyable. The comments, support and camaraderie of Natalia Buier, Ian Cook, Ștefan Guga, Jessi Jungblut, Juli Szekely and many others have been and are precious to me. The discussions vi with Ariadne Collins and Csaba Jelinek have also been a great part of my PhD journey, and have shaped this dissertation. The Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at CEU has been a wonderful home. Its integrated program, aimed at transcending the disciplinary boundaries between sociology and anthropology, has shaped my identity as a researcher in a subtle but substantial manner. It has proved to be an open multidisciplinary space, characterized by inquisitiveness, generosity, and a playful irreverence towards the disciplinary boundaries of anthropology, sociology, human geography, and history. In this department, my academic interests in critical urban studies and critical policy studies have received encouragement and support from early on. Teaching has been a vital part of this journey, both as a research assistant in the Department and as tutor in the the Roma Graduate Preparation Program. I have learnt just as much, if not more, from my students, colleagues, and members of the RGPP program and the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology. Furthermore, this dissertation was made possible by the people that have agreed to be interviewed and that have offered their time, thoughts, and energy to this project. Their names cannot be disclosed but their contributions are deeply appreciated. I cannot express enough gratitude for all the people that have agreed to participate in this research. My hope is that those who participated and who will read this dissertation will gain some insights about their work in process of competitive bidding for the European Capital of Culture title and about the implications of processes of inter-urban competition for themselves, their city, and beyond. Financially, my PhD work was enabled by CEU through a full doctoral scholarship, numerous conference travel grants, a doctoral research support grant, and a write-up grant, and by the Foundation for Urban and Regional Studies through a write-up grant. Financial support from family members was also vital during this PhD journey. Last but not least, my partner, parents, parents-in-law, family members, and friends have been CEU eTD Collection incredibly supportive, understanding, and patient, even though they were at least partially bemused with the whole dissertation process, and its many ups and downs. This dissertation would have been impossible without their love. I have the deepest appreciation for my friends, vii Ana-Maria Murg, Ana Stroe, Georgiana Blaj, Gina Munteanu, Ionut Gusoi, and Olga Negura, for how they are and for making me laugh. I am extremely grateful to Georg Fisch, my partner, who has accompanied and encouraged me from the very beginning. Words cannot do justice to his moral