Politics of the Periphery’ in Urban Latin America: Reconceptualising Politics from the Margins

Introduction

Existing theory on how residents of urban peripheries engage with the state is largely state-centric. Political anthropology and urban studies have generally conceptualised periphery-state engagements as non-standard citizenship, informal politics, or protest. Such conceptualisations risk contributing to inequality, as they understand the politics of marginalised city residents as ‘less than’ or only as ‘anti’ formal state policies and citizenship regimes.

Objective

POPULAR will counter this disparity by developing a theory of politics that reconceptualises periphery-state engagements from the vantage point of the periphery. This reconceptualisation will connect the concepts and practices residents use as part of their political praxis to recent anthropological debates that pluralise and decentre our understandings of politics.

Approach

It will approach the variety of practices inherent in periphery-state engagements as a politics of the periphery, a diverse politics in its own right and on its own terms that emerges from:

• Local modes of agency
• Subjectivities
• The social configurations of urban populations which are marginalised on a daily basis

Methodology

POPULAR will ethnographically study the politics of the periphery in three domains:

1. Governance
2. Electoral politics
3. Activism

Case Studies

It will compare these politics in low-income neighbourhoods in three cities in Latin America:

• Medellín (Colombia)
• Santiago de Cuba (Cuba)
• Recife (Brazil)

This region is known for its urban poverty, popular mobilisations, and the diversity of government engagements with marginalised populations.

Context

The three city governments can be characterised as, respectively:

• Neoliberal capitalist
• Socialist
• Moderately neoliberal with a socialist legacy

Each case represents a distinct approach towards the urban periphery.

Conclusion

Through a new theory of politics that centres upon the periphery, POPULAR will move the fields of anthropology and urban studies beyond the inequalities inherent in current theories.