What Neighbourhood, Whose Neighbourhood?
Contested Public Space, Active Citizenship and the Grassroots in the Cabanyal
Keywords:
Spain, public space, active citizenship, grassroots movements, urban resistanceAbstract
This article aims to understand the geographical specificity of the repoliticized public space in the Cabanyal-Canyamelar—a neighbourhood in Valencia (Spain). The goal of this endeavour is to discuss how the struggles over public space reveal and expose hidden, latent, and wider tensions that produce different configurations of active citizenship; those, in turn, pose the questions of the access to and the uses of public space, which are mostly determined by class and ethnicity. To this end, the peculiar topography and history of the Cabanyal-Canyamelar, the practices, politics, and discourses through which the ‘publicity’ of space is produced, the differences in the social, cultural, and power capital among two antithetically polarised groups of grassroots associations have been considered and compose the discursive and empirical ground on which the research was based on. This research shows how within the abstract definition of public space as a space open to everyone, structured conflicts among unequal and plural publics pose questions of who is entitled to claim and assert control over space.
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Plataforma Salvem el Cabanyal, Canyamelar i Cap de França. 2015. “Propuestas Específicas de Actuación.” Plataforma Salvem el Cabanyal website, October. Accessed April 1, 2016. http://www.cabanyal.com/nou/propostes-especifiques-dactuacio/?lang=es.
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Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, and Antonius C. G. M. Robben. 2008. “Whose Violence? – A California Triptych.” Social Anthropology 16 (1):77-89.
Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. London: Yale University Press.
Staeheli, Lynn A., and Albert Thompson. 1997. “Citizenship, Community, and Struggles for Public Space.” Professional Geographer 49 (1): 28–38.
Waldner, Lisa K., and Betty A. Dobratz. 2013. “Graffiti as a Form of Contentious Political Participation.” Sociology Compass 7 (5): 377–389.
Watson, Sophie. 2006. City Publics: The (Dis)enchantments of Urban Encounters. New York: Routledge.
Wimmer, Andreas. 2013. Ethnic Boundary Making: Institutions, Power, Networks. New York: Oxford University Press.
Asad, Talal 2003. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large. Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. London: University of Minneapolis Press.
Baumann, Gerd. 1999. The Multicultural Riddle. London: Routledge.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1973. “Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction.” In Knowledge, Education, and Cultural Change: Papers in the Sociology of Education, edited by Richard Brown, 71–112. London: Tavistock Publications.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1986. “The Forms of Capital.”. In Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, edited by John Richardson, 241–258. New York, NY: Greenwood.
Brighenti, Andrea Mubi. 2010. “At the Wall: Graffiti Writers, Urban Territoriality, and the Public Domain.” Space and Culture 13 (3): 315–332.
Cabanyal Espai Veïnal. 2016. “Manifest. Per un Cabanyal de totes i tots.” Cabanyal Espai Veïnal website, February 29. Accessed May 2, 2017. https://espaicabanyal.noblogs.org/post/2016/02/29/manifest-per-un-cabanyal-de-totes-i-tots/
Castells, Manuel. 1983. The City and the Grassroots. A Cross-Cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements. London: Edward Arnold.
Cerveró i Martí, Lluís. 2014. El Cabanyal, per exemple (1998–2013). Crònica de quinze anys de resistència. Valencia: Edicions 3i4.
Comaroff, John L., and Jean Comaroff. 2009. Ethnicity, Inc. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
de Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Dickinson, Jen, Max J. Andrucki, Emma Rawlins, Daniel Hale, and Victoria Cook. 2008. “Introduction: Geographies of Everyday Citizenship.” ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 7 (2): 100–112.
Eley, Geoff. 1992. “Nations, Publics, and Political Cultures. Placing Habermas in the Nineteenth Century.” In Habermas and the Public Sphere, edited by Craig Calhoun, 289–339. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Foucault, Michel. 1979. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage.
Foucault, Michel. 1986. “Of Other Spaces.” Diacritics 16 (1): 22–27.
Foucault, Michel. 2003. Society Must Be Defended. New York: Picador.
Foucault, Michel. 2007. Security, Territory, Population. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Frank, Karen A., and Quentin Stevens, eds. 2006. Loose Space: Possibility and Diversity in Urban Life. London: Routledge.
Fraser, Nancy. 1990. “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to Actually Existing Democracy.” Social Text 25/26: 56—79.
Habermas, Jürgen. 2001. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Hortensia, García. 2016a. “Los «okupas» impiden el acceso a una casa del Cabanyal que el ayuntamiento quiere restaurar.” Levante website, September 3. Accessed April 25, 2017. http://www.levante-emv.com/valencia/2016/09/03/okupas-impiden-acceso-casa-cabanyal/1462391.html.
Hortensia, García. 2016b. “El Cabanyal: barrio ‘okupado’.” Levante website, March 6. Accessed April 25, 2017. http://www.levante-emv.com/suscriptor/en-domingo/2016/03/06/cabanyal-barrio-okupado/1388044.html.
Hou, Jeffrey, ed. 2010. Insurgent Public Space. Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities. Perth, UK: Routledge.
Kingwell, Mark. 2008. “The Prison of ‘Public Space’.” Literary Review of Canada 16 (3): 18–21.
Kobayashi, Audrey, and Suzanne Mackenzie, eds. 1989. Remaking Human Geography. Boston: Unwin Hyman.
Law, John. 1992. “Notes on the Theory of Actor–Network: Ordering, Strategy, and Heterogeneity.” System Practices 5 (4): 379–393.
Lefebvre, Henri. 1991a. Critique of Everyday Life. London: Verso.
Lefebvre, Henri. 1991b. The Production of Space. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Low, Setha. 1996. “Spatializing Culture: The Social Production and Social Construction of Public Space in Costa Rica.” American Ethnologist 23 (4): 861–879.
Low, Setha. 2014. “Spatializing Culture. An Engaged Anthropological Approach to Space and Place.” In The People, Place, Space Reader, edited by Jen Jack Gieseking and William Mangold, 34–39. London: Routledge.
Low, Setha, and Neil Smith. 2013. The Politics of Public Space. London: Routledge.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1962. The Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge.
Miller, Byron. 2006. “Castells’ The City and the Grassroots: 1983 and Today.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 30 (1): 207–211.
Mitchell, Don. 2003. The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space. New York: Guilford Press.
Ortner, Sherry B. 2005. “Subjectivity and Cultural Critique.” Anthropological Theory 5 (1): 31–52.
Padrón Municipal de Habitantes. 2015. Ajuntament de València website, January 1. Accessed April 1, 2016. http://www.valencia.es/ayuntamiento/webs/estadistica/inf_dtba/2015/Districte_11_Barri_2.pdf.
Parrilla, José. 2015a. “Las familias gitanas del Cabanyal quieren participar en la recuperación del barrio.” Levante website, July 4. Accessed April 24, 2017. https://www.gitanos.org/upload/05/22/soc_cabanyal.PDF.
Parrilla, José. 2015b. “Las familias de la droga se hacen fuertes en el Cabanyal.” Levante website, July 9. Accessed April 25, 2017. http://www.levante-emv.com/valencia/2015/07/09/familias-droga-fuertes-cabanyal/1288416.html.
Pask, Andrew. 2010. “Public Space Activism, Toronto and Vancouver: Using the Banner of Public Space to Build Capacity and Activate Change.” In Insurgent Public Space. Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities, edited by Jeffrey Hou, 227–240. Perth, UK: Routledge.
Power, Nina. 2013. “The Public, the Police and the Rediscovery of Hate.” Strike! website, December 5. Accessed April 25, 2017. http://strikemag.org/no-no-no-love-for-the-po-po/.
Plataforma Salvem el Cabanyal, Canyamelar i Cap de França. 2015. “Propuestas Específicas de Actuación.” Plataforma Salvem el Cabanyal website, October. Accessed April 1, 2016. http://www.cabanyal.com/nou/propostes-especifiques-dactuacio/?lang=es.
Rodman, Margaret. 1993. “Beyond Built Form and Culture in the Anthropological Study of Residential Community Spaces.” In The Cultural Meaning of Urban Space, edited by Robert Rotenberg and Gary McDonogh, 123–138. London: Bergin and Garvey.
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, and Antonius C. G. M. Robben. 2008. “Whose Violence? – A California Triptych.” Social Anthropology 16 (1):77-89.
Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. London: Yale University Press.
Staeheli, Lynn A., and Albert Thompson. 1997. “Citizenship, Community, and Struggles for Public Space.” Professional Geographer 49 (1): 28–38.
Waldner, Lisa K., and Betty A. Dobratz. 2013. “Graffiti as a Form of Contentious Political Participation.” Sociology Compass 7 (5): 377–389.
Watson, Sophie. 2006. City Publics: The (Dis)enchantments of Urban Encounters. New York: Routledge.
Wimmer, Andreas. 2013. Ethnic Boundary Making: Institutions, Power, Networks. New York: Oxford University Press.
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Published
2019-05-24
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Andriollo, F. (2019). What Neighbourhood, Whose Neighbourhood? Contested Public Space, Active Citizenship and the Grassroots in the Cabanyal. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 18(2), 308–334. Retrieved from https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1708
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