1.
Zapata Campos, María José, 1972, et al.
(författare)
Organising grassroots infrastructure: The (in)visible work of organisational (in)completeness
2023
Ingår i: Urban Studies. - : SAGE Publications. - 0042-0980 .- 1360-063X. ; 60:1
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat) abstract
In this article we build on the concept of incompleteness, as recently developed in both organisa- tional and urban studies, to improve our understanding of the collective actions of grassroots organisations in creating and governing critical infrastructures in the changing and resource-scarce contexts of urban informal settlements. Empirically, the article is informed by the case of resident associations providing critical services and infrastructure in informal settlements in Kisumu, Kenya. Findings suggest three organisational processes that grassroots organisations develop for the production and governance of incomplete grassroots infrastructures: shaping a partial organi- sation but creating the illusion of a formal and complete organisation; crafting critical (and often hidden) material and organisational infrastructures for the subsistence of dormant (but still visi- ble) structures; and moulding nested infrastructure that shelters layers of floating and autono- mous groups embedded in communities. In a resource-poor environment, the strategy is to create incompleteness, less organisation and to keep it partial and limited to a minimum of ele- ments. The article also explores the political implications of organisational and infrastructural incompleteness by examining how it leads to efforts to craft loose and ambiguous governmental arrangements, connecting them materially and politically to formal infrastructure systems. These governmental arrangements are shifting and in the making, and therefore also incomplete. The article reveals how grassroots organisations mobilise a wide range of (in)visibility approaches. It concludes by exposing the hidden power of ‘incompleteness’ and the potential in hiding certain elements of incompleteness from outsiders, while rendering other elements visible when per- ceived as useful.
2.
Zapata Campos, María José, 1972, et al.
(författare)
Organising grassroots initiatives for a more inclusive governance: constructing the city from below
2019
Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The project examines how grassroots organizations and networks providing urban critical services in informal settlements contribute to improve the quality of life of urban dwellers and to more inclusive forms of urban governance, constructing the city from below. The project is informed by the study of Kisumu’s informal settlements’ Resident Associations, the Water Delegated Management Model, and the Kisumu Waste Actors Network. The study adopted an action-research approach with researchers working with citizens, politicians, officers and entrepreneurs in all stages of the research process and used a combination of methods including document studies, ethnographic and participatory observations, visual ethnography, interviews, focus groups, social media analysis and stakeholder work- shops as well as participatory videotaping. The study discusses a) the institutionalization of grassroots organizations for the delivery of critical infrastructure and services and their need to gain, regain and maintain legitimacy; b) their flexible and nested structure facili- tating their resilience; c) their embeddedness in the communities’ knowledge and assets, and their role as social and institutional entrepreneurs to bridge informal settlements with city governance; d) the redefinition of the roles of the citizen, from passive into active agents, and its transformation into more autonomous and insurgent citizens; e) the blending of civic and material rationales and the construction of more fluid identities allowing citizens to draw pragmatically from a broader repertoire of roles and resources; f) and the creation of grassroots organizations as a collective process that emerge from different directions, with the ability to become gateways but also gatekeepers, or the top of the grass at their communities. It concludes with recommendations to informal settlements’ resident grass- roots organizations, public officers, NGOs, politicians, researchers and citizens in general, engaged in constructing a more inclusive city governance from below.
3.
Zapata Campos, María José, 1972, et al.
(författare)
Inclusive recycling movements: a green deep democracy from below
2020
Ingår i: Environment and Urbanization. - : SAGE Publications. - 0956-2478 .- 1746-0301. ; In Press
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat) abstract
This paper examines the multiple strategies articulated by grassroots recycler networks to bring about socioenvironmental change. The paper shows how these networks are an emblematic case of grassroots governmentality, whereby urban poor communities contribute to building more inclusive environmental regimes by developing technologies of power more typical of the powerful. These technologies include enumeration, with its resulting self-knowledge; the production of discourses and rationalities of social inclusion and environmental sustainability; and engagement in open and diverse alliances, at times with actors holding apparently antagonistic interests. The paper also reveals how recycling networks are a representative case of deep and green democracy. It is deep democracy, as grassroots networks strive to gain deep and true representativeness in their territories. It is green democracy, as it illustrates alternative pathways to environmental governance that is not limited to state and global organizations, but that also includes a range of control techniques emanating from the communities themselves.
4.
5.
Kain, Jaan-Henrik, 1960, et al.
(författare)
Collective Strategies of Resistance in Compact Global South Cities. Stories From the Residents of the Villa Rodrigo Bueno
2018
Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of what citizen-driven strategies are developed to cope with informal urbanisation and urban compactness. More precisely, the paper explores the intersection between informal urbanisation processes, informal economy and networks of solidarity and citizenship, in the context of compact cities. In particular, this paper aims to examine the creation of novel and collective forms of strategizing and organising resistance articulated from the informal settlements to build up alternative notions of the city from below. In order to do that the paper is empirically informed by the case of Argentina, a country that has experienced in the last decades the revival of villas miseria (misery town or shanty towns), as a result of successive economic crisis and migration waves. The history of one of these villas miserias, Rodrigo Bueno, in Puerto Madero, the most expensive urban development in Argentina, serves to illustrate the creation and maintenance of the informal city as an alternative urban logic, as well as the continuous process of stabilisation and resistance to the institutional arrangements threatening its existence.
6.
Kain, Jaan-Henrik, 1960, et al.
(författare)
Translating Policies into Informal Settlements' Critical Services: Reframing, Anchoring and Muddling Through
2016
Ingår i: Public Administration and Development. - : Wiley. - 0271-2075 .- 1099-162X. ; 36:5
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat) abstract
This paper examines how policies and plans are translated into informal settlements' practice. It builds on literature on policy implementation practice and organization studies, and more particularly, it applies the concepts of reframing, anchoring and muddling through. The paper is informed by the case of Kisumu City in Kenya and its Kisumu Integrated Solid Waste Management Plan and its implementation on Kisumu's informal settlements. The plan was funded by the Swedish International Development Agency through the United Nations Human Settlement Programme and implemented from 2007 to 2009. The study is based on action research carried out by a multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary group of researchers, through focus groups, participatory workshops, collaborative action, in-depth interviews, document analysis and observations. The paper examines what original aspects of Kisumu Integrated Solid Waste Management Plan were translated, that is, which ones faded out and which ones became stabilized into and travel as ‘best practices’ to other locations. The paper shows how the generation of ‘best practices’ can be loosely coupled with the practices that policy seeks to change. It concludes, in line with previous research in the field, how successful policy implementation is based on cultural and political interpretations rather on evidence of improved practices.
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8.
Zapata Campos, María José, 1972, et al.
(författare)
Urban commoning practices in the repair movement: Frontstaging the backstage
2020
Ingår i: Environment and planning A. - 0308-518X .- 1472-3409. ; 52:6, s. 1150-1170
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat) abstract
Citizen-led repair initiatives that collectively create urban commons, questioning the configuration of production, consumption, and discarding within neoliberal capitalism, have emerged in recent years. This paper builds on recent discussions of the openness of the commons by examining the role of repair in commoning. It is informed by the case of the Bike Kitchen in Göteborg, using in-depth interviews as well as ethnographic and visual observations to support the analysis. Through repair practices, commoning communities can reinvent, appropriate, and create urban commons by transforming private resources – bicycles – creating common, liminal, and porous spaces between state and market. This openness of the commons allows commoners to shift roles unproblematically, alternating between the commons, state, and market. We argue that commoners’ fluid identities become the vehicle by which urban commoning practices expands beyond the commons space. This fluidity and openness also fuels the broad recruitment of participants driven by diverse and entangled rationales. Beyond the porosity of spatial arrangements, we illustrate how the dramaturgic representation of space, through simultaneous frontstaging and backstaging practices, also prevents its enclosure and allows the creation of openings through which urban commoning practices are accessed by newcomers. Finally, we call into question strict definitions of ‘commoner’ and the commoning/repair movement as limited to those who are politically engaged in opposing the enclosure of the commons. Rather, commoners become political through action, so intentionality is less relevant to prompting social change than is suggested in the literature.
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