Creative Spaces: Urban Culture and Marginality is an interdisciplinary exploration of the different ways in which marginal urban spaces have become privileged locations for creativity in Latin America. The essays within the collection reassess dom
Clara Irazábal and her contributors explore the urban history of some of Latin America’s great cities through studies of their public spaces and what has taken place there. The avenues and plazas of Mexico City, Havana, Santo Domingo, Caracas, Bogotaì, SaÞo Paulo, Lima, Santiago, and Buenos Aires have been the backdrop for extraordinary, history-making events. While some argue that public spaces are a prerequisite for the expression, representation and reinforcement of democracy, they can equally be used in the pursuit of totalitarianism. Indeed, public spaces, in both the past and present, have been the site for the contestation by ordinary people of various stances on democracy and citizenship. By exploring the use and meaning of public spaces in Latin American cities, this book sheds light on contemporary definitions of citizenship and democracy in the Americas.
Performance Constellations maps transnational protest movements and the dynamics of networked expressive behavior in the streets and online, as people struggle to be heard and effect long-term social justice. Its case studies explore collective political action in Latin America, including the Zapatistas in the mid-’90s, protests during the 2001 Argentine economic crisis, the 2011 Chilean student movement, the 2014–2015 mobilizations for the disappeared Ayotzinapa students, and the 2018 transnational reproductive rights movement. The book analyzes uses of space, time, media communication, and corporeality in protests such as virtual sit-ins, flash mobs, scarfazos, and hashtag campaigns, arguing that these protests not only challenge hegemonic power but are also socially transformative. While other studies have focused either on digital activism or on street protests, Performance Constellations shows that they are in fact integrally entwined. Zooming in on protest movements and art-activism in Mexico, Argentina, and Chile, and putting contemporary insurgent actions in dialogue with their historical precedents, the book demonstrates how, even in moments of extreme duress, social actors in Latin America have taken up public and virtual space to intervene politically and to contest dominant powers.
This book examines the struggles that unfolded in Latin America over the memory of the pasts of political violence experienced by the countries of the continent in the second half of the twentieth century: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, the United States, Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay.
The Routledge Handbook of Henri Lefebvre,The City and Urban Society is the first edited book to focus on Lefebvre's urban theories and ideas from a global perspective, making use of recent theoretical and empirical developments, with contributions from eminent as well as emergent global scholars. The book provides international comparison of Lefebvrian research and theoretical conjecture and aims; to engage with and critique Lefebvre's ideas in the context of contemporary urban, social and environmental upheavals; to use Lefebvre's spatial triad as a research tool as well as a point of departure for the adoption of ideas such as differential space; to reassess Lefebvre's ideas in relation to nature and global environmental sustainability; and to highlight how a Lefebvrian approach might assist in mobilising resistance to the excesses of globalised neoliberal urbanism. The volume draws inspiration from Lefebvre's key texts (The Production of Space; Critique of Everyday Life; and The Urban Revolution) and includes a comprehensive introduction and concluding chapter by the editors. The conclusions highlight implications in relation to increasing spatial inequalities; increasing diversity of needs including those of migrants; more authoritarian approaches; and asymmetries of access to urban space. Above all, the book illustrates the continuing relevance of Levebvre's ideas for contemporary urban issues and shows – via global case studies – how resistance to spatial domination by powerful interests might be achieved. The Handbook helps the reader navigate the complex terrain of spatial research inspired by Lefebvre. In particular the Handbook focuses on: the series of struggles globally for the 'right to the city' and the collision of debates around the urban age, 'cityism' and planetary urbanisation. It will be a guide for graduate and advanced undergraduate teaching, and a key reference for academics in the fields of Human Geography, Sociology, Political Science, Applied Philosophy, Planning, Urban Theory and Urban Studies. Practitioners and activists in the field will also find the book of relevance.
Case studies written by anthropologists, geographers, political scientists, and sociologists provide empirical detail and analytical insight into states' and communities' relations to natural resource sectors, and show how resource dependencies continue to shape their political spaces.
This book, paying attention to the axes of identity, strategy, and democracy, grew out of the authors' shared and growing interest in contemporary social movements and the vast theoretical literature on these movements produced during the 1980s, particularly in Latin America and Western Europe.
This collection of essays studies the depiction of contemporary urban space in twenty-first century Latin American fiction. The contributors to this volume seek to understand the characteristics that make the representation of the postmodern city in a Latin American context unique. The chapters focus on cities from a wide variety of countries in the region, highlighting the cultural and political effects of neoliberalism and globalization in the contemporary urban scene. Twenty-first century authors share an interest for images of ruins and dystopian landscapes and their view of the damaging effects of the global market in Latin America tends to be pessimistic. As the book demonstrates, however, utopian elements or “spaces of hope” can also be found in these narrations, which suggest the possibility of transforming a capitalist-dominated living space.
This comprehensive study offers a thematic approach to Latin America, focusing on the dynamic connections between people, places, and environments rather than on pre-defined notions about the region. The book s well-rounded and accessible analysis includes discussions of borders and migration; transnationalism and globalization; urbanization and the material, environmental and social landscapes of cities; and the connections between economic development and political change. The authors also explore social and cultural themes such as the illegal drug trade, tourism, children, and cinema. Offering a nuanced and clear perspective, this book will be a valuable resource for all those interested in the politics, economy, and society of a rapidly globalizing continent. Contributions by: Fernando J. Bosco, J. Christopher Brown, James Craine, Altha J. Cravey, Giorgio Hadi Curti, James Hayes, Edward L. Jackiewicz, Thomas Klak, Mirek Lipinski, Regan M. Maas, Araceli Masterson-Algar, Kent Mathewson, Sarah A. Moore, Linda Quiquivix, Zia Salim, Kate Swanson, and Benjamin Timms."
Since the re-democratization of much of Latin America in the 1980s and a regional wave of anti-austerity protests in the 1990s, social movement studies has become an important part of sociological, political, and anthropological scholarship on the region. The subdiscipline has framed debates about formal and informal politics, spatial and relational processes, as well as economic changes in Latin America. While there is an abundant literature on particular movements in different countries across the region, there is limited coverage of the approaches, debates, and theoretical understandings of social movement studies applied to Latin America. In The Oxford Handbook of Latin American Social Movements, Federico M. Rossi presents a survey of the broad range of theoretical perspectives on social movements in Latin America. Bringing together a wide variety of viewpoints, the Handbook includes five sections: theoretical approaches to social movements, as applied to Latin America; processes and dynamics of social movements; major social movements in the region; ideational and strategic dimensions of social movements; and the relationship between political institutions and social movements. Covering key social movements and social dynamics in Latin America from the late nineteenth century to the twenty-first century, The Oxford Handbook of Latin American Social Movements is an indispensable reference for any scholar interested in social movements, protest, contentious politics, and Latin American studies.