Closing down bars in the inner city centre

Informal urban planning, civil insecurity and subjectivity in Bolivia

Bibliographic Data

ID20153231
AuthorsHelene Risør (Anthropology Department Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile Santiago Chile, corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume37
Issue3
Pages330-342
Publication date2016-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSingapore Journal of Tropical Geography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0129-7619 • E-ISSN: 1467-9493
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/sjtg.12157
OpenAlexW2517377138
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited28

The paper presents an ethnographic analysis of a group of secondary school students' protests against (illegal) bars in the city centre of El Alto, Bolivia. It shows how informal and formal practices are entangled through the state's dependence on the (illegal) actions of the citizenry in order to ensure civil security. The paper suggests that urban intervention is coproduced by state and nonstate actors at the margins of the state and that urban transformation entails subject formation, in this case that of political youth. Following Hansen and Verkaaik's (2009) argument that the city is essentially multilayered and unknowable, I argue that urban life, as well as state‐citizen relations, is indeterminate, and that it is due to this indeterminacy that the students succeeded in transforming a common association between Alteño youth, alcohol consumption and potential criminal conduct into an alternative notion of youth as responsible citizens of the New Bolivia. This conceptualization permits us to understand the urban sphere as a space not only of conflict but also of endurance and hope, and hence as a zone that allows for the imaginative production of the otherwise (Povinelli, 2011)

Argument (complex analysis) · Conceptualization · Criminology · Economic growth · Ethnography · Informal sector · Intervention (counseling) · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science) · Subjectivity · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance · Gender Studies · Homelessness and Social Issues · Law · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies

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