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The City and the Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Resistance Against the Marketization of Space
The City and the Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Resistance Against the Marketization of Space
Abstract Submissions Closed
Wednesday, 24 February 2021: 09:00-10:30
Location:
RC47 Social Classes and Social Movements (host committee)
Language: English
Session Type: Oral
Inequality has been globally on the rise for several decades. At the urban scale, the increasing marketization of space strengthened social and economic division, exclusion, displacement and forced mobility, further deepening inequality in turn. The global crisis, and afterwards the rebound of real estate and tourism, accelerated this process in many countries, intensifying dynamics of gentrification and touristification. Usually considered as a Northern problem, gentrification is now spreading throughout the globe and in the Global South, multiplying housing crises, with their corollary of degradation of life condition of those citizens who, already in an extremely weak condition, would instead need more protection. In this regard, it is significant that several southern cities, including Luanda, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago de Chile, rank among the world’s most expensive in terms of housing, with monthly rents averaging the equivalent of yearly GDP per head.However, all these dynamics have not been passively suffered by citizens, who opposed them in many ways: from open struggles to different forms of everyday resistance that, often hidden, have actually shown their effectiveness in rebalancing the original inequality of power in the city’s appropriation. These ‘weapons of the weak’ are the object of this panel, which welcomes proposals addressing the fight for the right to the city, with specific interest in collecting experiences from understudied countries, such as Black Africa, and focusing on open and organized struggles as well on ‘hidden’ forms of resistance.
Session Organizers: