Politics of the Urban Poor

Aesthetics, Ethics, Volatility, Precarity

Bibliographic Data

ID2224552
AuthorsLeslie C Aiello (0000-0001-9546-0963, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume56
IssueS11
PagesS1-S2
Publication date2015-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCurrent Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0011-3204 • E-ISSN: 1537-5382
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/682410
OpenAlexW2302325598
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited3

Next article FreePolitics of the Urban Poor: Aesthetics, Ethics, Volatility, Precarity Wenner-Gren Symposium Supplement 11Leslie C. AielloLeslie C. Aiello Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMorePolitics of the Urban Poor is the 148th symposium in the Wenner-Gren symposium series and the eleventh symposium to be published as an open-access supplementary issue of the Foundation's journal, Current Anthropology. The symposium was organized by Veena Das (Johns Hopkins University) and Shalini Randeria (Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna, Austria, and Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland) and held September 20-26, 2013, at Hotel Villa Luppis, Rivarotta di Pasiano, Pordenone, Italy (fig. 1).Figure 1. Participants in the symposium "Politics of the Urban Poor." Ground, from the left: Javier Auyero (kneeling), Carlos Forment, Melani Cammett, Jonathan Spencer. Seated: Shalini Randeria, Leslie Aiello, Veena Das. Standing: James Williams, Teresa Caldeira, Harri Englund, Hayder Al-Mohammad, Asef Bayat, Sylvain Perdigon, Valeria Procupez, Fiona Ross, AbdouMaliq Simone, Gerardo Leibner, Harini Amarasuriya, Filip De Boeck.View Large ImageDownload PowerPointThe main theme of the symposium was that the lives of urban poor, and particularly their various forms of political involvement and activism, are shaped by a myriad of factors that go beyond basic material scarcity. There are 17 contributions in this collection, including a substantive introduction by the symposium organizers, Das and Randeria (2015). These contributions cover a wide geographic range from South Asia, to Africa, to the Middle East, and to Latin America, and they demonstrate clearly that there is no single culture of poverty resulting in uniformity of life and expression. Although it is clear that poverty may adversely affect the capacity and nature of individuals and of collective action, the purpose of this collection is to examine and interrogate the varied accounts of politics in the daily lives of the urban poor living under a wide range of conditions around the world and tease out the factors that underlie the observed heterogeneity.Four major questions form the basis for the examination of the relationships between urban transformations, poverty, and various forms of democratic politics. The first is the nature of the relationship between government and politics in relation to basic amenities such as water, sanitation, electricity, and housing. The second is the nature of solidarity and antagonism within poor communities in the context of locality, kinship, and work. The third is the effect of violence and specifically how urban decay and institutional corrosion either negate politics or result in collective action that becomes an end in itself (e.g., protests, gang violence). And the fourth is a focus on communication and expression and specifically on whether and how the varied regional histories, intellectual traditions, and geographies result in differences in the basic conceptualization of the issues facing the urban poor.Poverty is of fundamental importance in the world today. Although this CA supplementary issue provides a unique contemporary collection of anthropological research focusing on both poverty and politics in the urban environment, many of the threads addressed here have a long genealogy in the field. For example, a 1964 Wenner-Gren symposium titled "Urban Anthropology: Cross-Cultural Studies of Urbanization" (Southall 1973) defined the then-young field of urban anthropology and recognized not only the heterogeneous nature of the urban poor but also what constitutes urbanity. Likewise, a 1978 symposium titled "Social Inequality: Comparative and Developmental Approaches" (Berreman 1981) addressed broad issues of social inequality and how systems of institutional inequality are experienced and responded to by those who are impacted. Similar to the current collection, a main theme that emerged from this earlier work is that the degree of variation in response depended on specific conditions and histories.We are always looking for new ideas from all areas of anthropology for future Foundation-sponsored and Foundation-organized symposia and eventual CA publication. Please contact us with your ideas and a proposal. Information about the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the symposium program, application procedures and deadlines, and what constitutes a good symposium topic can be found on the Foundation's website (http://wennergren.org/programs/international-symposia).References CitedBerreman, Gerald D. 1981. Social inequality: comparative and developmental approaches. New York: Academic Press.First citation in articleGoogle ScholarDas, Veena, and Shalini Randeria. 2015. Politics of the urban poor: aesthetics, ethics, volatility, precarity: an introduction to supplement 11. Current Anthropology 56(suppl. 11):S3-S14.First citation in articleLinkGoogle ScholarSouthall, Aidan W., ed. 1973. Urban anthropology: cross-cultural studies of urbanization. New York: Oxford University Press.First citation in articleGoogle ScholarNotesLeslie C. Aiello is President of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (470 Park Avenue South, 8th Floor North, New York, New York 10016, U.S.A.). Next article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Current Anthropology Volume 56, Number S11October 2015Politics of the Urban Poor: Aesthetics, Ethics, Volatility, Precarity Sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/682410 (c) 2015 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article

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