Sound, Media, Ecology by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030165697
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Latin American Modernity, Urban Informality, and the Making of Community

Conceptions of Western modernity have historically not been troubled by the inescapable global relationality that conditions theories of the Global South. This ambivalence is noteworthy, as scholars have repeatedly shown (Mintz, 1986; Trouillot, 1995; Williams, 1961), on account of how historically pivotal the Global South was (and remains still today) in the rise of Western dominance. This is particularly true of Latin America and the Caribbean which, through the exploitation of labour and resources, provided one of the main sources of European economic accumulation at the onset of early capitalism. In spite of how integral these geographies are to the history of Western modernity, conceptions of the historical epoch tend to characterize it as a moment of industrialization and urbanization alone. By contrast, Latin American and Caribbean modernity, although inclusive of industrialization and urbanization, consists primarily of European conquest and American expansionism. It is defined by the enactment of colonial power, the influence of which extends right up to the present day. The result is that prevailing conceptions of Latin American and Caribbean modernity describe it as an ongoing historical moment that is “contradictory” and “hybrid” (García Canclini, 1995), possessing a “dark side” (Mignolo, 2002) and “an articulation of many rationalities” (Quijano, 2000).

The unequal conditions of Latin American and Caribbean modernity are made most tangible in urban centres across the region. Overpopulation, the growth of slum areas, a crisis in housing, infrastructural ruination, and the scarcity of basic necessities are only some of the struggles that residents face. The result is a form of urbanism that is itself, as García Canclini describes, “contradictory” and “hybrid”. On the one hand, there is the formal city which, as Fischer, McCann, and Auyero (2014) observe, “profits economically and politically from the slum’s illegality” (p. 1). This city is governed by policy at both the municipal and state levels and is conditioned by a market to which most residents cannot gain uninterrupted access. On the other hand, there is the informal city, which “provides a refuge from utopian urban regulations that would otherwise exclude many poor Latin Americans from city life” (p. 1). Referring less to a particular spatial geography than to the ways that residents creatively resolve their most pressing needs, the informal city is animated by the collective energies of the city’s marginal communities. Such practices are referred to as “informal urbanism”, which, urban studies scholar Rahul Mehrotra (2010) observes, is about “invention within strong constraints with indigenous resources with the purpose of turning odds into a survival strategy” (p. xiii).

Although informality is an important part of everyday life in cities across the region, it takes on a special quality in the city of Havana. Here, residents are known for their creative responses to the island’s severely limited access to international capital on account of the U.S. embargo. Remittances from family and friends living abroad, alongside the slowly increasing potential for entrepreneurial activity, help support financial flows; however, they are generally insufficient, making the need to engage informal practices necessary for most residents.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.