Insurgency and Juxtacity in the Age of Urban Divides
- PDF / 242,237 Bytes
- 9 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 103 Downloads / 184 Views
Insurgency and Juxtacity in the Age of Urban Divides Faranak Miraftab 1 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract This commentary concerns juxtapositions of varied spaces of citizen-authority negotiation within formal and informal politics. I build on the concept of juxtacity, as a productive articulation of contradictory realities and spaces of citizenship and authority, to reveal the co-constitutive and the non-binary spaces of action in insurgent movements. Focusing on a particular articulation of citizenship and authority that I conceptualize relationally as invited and invented spaces of citizens’ action, I highlight how contrasting spaces of politics can work co-constitutively. I ground my reflections in practices of subordinate groups as key actors in southern urbanism, namely South Africa’s township struggles for dignified sanitation (Social Justice Coalition, SJC, and Ses’khona movement), and Brazil’s homeless workers struggles for housing and land (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Teto, MTST). In their citizen-authority negotiation, these movements are agile, moving across invited and invented spaces as necessary to advance their struggle. Keywords Southern urbanism . Southern turn to planning theory . Insurgent movements . Sanitation and housing justice . South Africa . Brazil
In this brief commentary, I wish to build on the theoretical and analytical value of the concept of juxtacity, as a productive articulation of contradictory realities and spaces, in particular with respect to citizenship and authority. Focusing on a particular articulation of citizenship and authority that I have theorized relationally as invited and invented spaces of citizens’ action,1 I engage with the concept of juxtacity to highlight the coconstitutive relationships of these oppositional spaces. In my prior work, I have defined the distinction between these spaces of citizenship practices and articulated the nonbinary relationship through which they should be understood. Reflecting on the practices of the subordinate groups, I note that insurgent movements rarely limit their practices to one or the other space. They are agile, moving across invited and invented 1
See Miraftab 2004, 2009 and 2018.
* Faranak Miraftab [email protected]
1
University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, Champaign, IL, USA
F. Miraftab
spaces as necessary to advance their struggle. Juxtacities’ conceptual framework, which stresses a relational approach and exposes the co-constitutive relationship among opposites, resonates productively with the non-binary articulation of invited and invented spaces of action in insurgent movements. I focus my remarks here on how these spaces of action among subordinate groups could be co-constitutive—how grassroots practices of citizenship through invented spaces might indeed open invited spaces of participation. In short, the relationship between invited and invented spaces is not zero-sum: for example, insurgent practices in invented spaces for citizens’ action can lead to openings in invited spaces such as elector
Data Loading...