Introduction to the special issue “Contested urban territories: decolonized perspectives”

Abstract

Abstract. This paper serves as an introduction to the “Contested urban territories: decolonized perspectives” special issue. The idea for this issue emerged during our reflections on a socioterritorial perspective, preeminent in the current Latin American analysis of contemporary urban struggles (Schwarz and Streule, 2016). It aims to contribute to these ongoing debates about a specific understanding of urban territories from a postcolonial and decolonized perspective by combining contributions from two paper sessions we organized at the 2017 meeting of the American Association of Geographers in Boston with additional papers by scholars who could not participate in the conference. All seven contributions tackle the question of what a relational and dynamic conceptualization of territory may contribute to current debates in the urban studies field. Put more precisely, to which extent are socioterritorial approaches of value for a further decentering and pluralizing of urban theory? What is their significance to research on urban social movements? And, finally, how does such a socioterritorial perspective nurture and complement an analysis of the social production of space? The present special issue invites the reader to get familiar with new concepts and engage in a critical reflection on the conditions of knowledge production in urban geography and beyond.

Estudios urbanos, ciudades y decolonialidad: abordajes críticos desde América Latina y el Caribe

“…En este sentido, la crítica poscolonial a los estudios urbanos, visibilizó el importante trabajo desplegado en la experiencia urbana de diferentes ciudades de Asia y África, cuestionando la pertinencia de ciertos conceptos y metodologías en el campo de los estudios urbanos dominantes, por ejemplo, la mirada peyorativa sobre la informalidad urbana (McFarlane, 2012;Roy, 2011); el reconocimiento de otras formas de planificación urbana (Roy, 2005); y provocar un importante debate respecto de las posibilidades de comparar experiencias urbanas diversas (Jazeel, 2019;McFarlane, 2010;McFarlane y Robinson, 2012;Robinson 2011Robinson , 2016aRobinson , 2016b, entre otras contribuciones relevantes. Al igual que los estudios decoloniales, este enfoque también ha centrado su interés en prácticas y luchas urbanas descolonizadoras (Schwarz y Streule, 2020), realizando para ello un llamado explícito a descolonizar teórica y metodológicamente los estudios urbanos y geográficos (Jazeel, 2017(Jazeel, , 2019Schwarz y Streule, 2020). Es posible reconocer la crítica poscolonial a los estudios urbanos en diversos trabajos que permiten comprender su influencia en el contexto latinoamericano: informalidad urbana (Lombard, 2015;Rivero, 2021) urbanismo subalterno (Cruz y Silva, 2019;Magliano y Perissinotti, 2020); estudios urbanos comparados (Imilan et al, 2016;Jajamovich, 2017), entre otros.…”

Maroon Socioterritorial Movements

“…Indigenous territorial practices are often identified as the symbolic inspiration for counterhegemonic movements in Latin America (Zibechi 2012;Schwarz and Streule 2020). In contrast, Afro-descendant struggles for space and freedom are not acknowledged as ideological sources of political resistance for current counterhegemonic territories in the region.…”

Rendering territory (in)visible

“…This photograph of the destruction of the mural 'Alerta mi general Emiliano Zapata en la lucha de Atenco' [Alert my general Emiliano Zapata in the struggle of Atenco] on December 12, 2013, was published the following day on the blog of the Frente de Pueblos en Defensa de la Tierra [People's Front in Defense of the Land, or FPDT] (FPDT 2013), a social movement set out to stop the large-scale infrastructure project of a new international airport on land of the municipality of San Salvador Atenco on the eastern outskirts of Mexico City. The image, taken by an unnamed photographer, is illustrative of what we have introduced elsewhere as 'contested urban territories' (Schwarz and Streule 2020). Taking the violent erasure of the mural as a starting point for this chapter, we examine contemporary urban contestations through a socio-territorial lens.…”