Overview

Comments: Andrés Spognardi (CES)


Abstract

This seminar aims to share the work developed during a research stay at the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra. The purpose of the seminar is to present the empirical research developed in Madrid as part of a doctoral thesis, under a theoretical framework on contemporary cities and production of social space. The seminar will present a synthesis of extensive ethnographic material on various resistance practices, ranging from informal mutual support to collective projects such as 15M, urban gardens or the associative movement. This presentation proposes a theoretical problematisation around four main problems: the urbanism of contemporary cities, the migratory phenomenon, citizen participation and neighbourhood sociability in urban contexts.

All these issues will be placed in the socio-political context of current Spain, in which the emergence of new political formations stands out in the face of a context of austerity, of rights cuts and privatisation of public services. Consequently, it will be necessary to historicize the process of democracy in Spain, strongly linked to the period of dictatorship and the framework of global capitalism and dispossession. This offers more insight into the meaning of resistance practices in a district like Tetouan and allows new imaginaries about sociability and politics to be placed from below. The proposed seminar is presented as an opportunity to explore both the potentialities and the tensions, contradictions and fractures of these democracy projects, to reflect on their scope and meaning and to engage in dialogue in other geographical contexts through discussion.

Bio note

Ivonne Herrera Pineda was born in Ecuador where she spends her childhood. She has lived in Spain since her adolescence as part of a migratory process. Ivonne was been academically trained at the Autonomous University of Madrid, where she completed a degree in Philosophy (2012), a Master's Degree in Public Orientation Anthropology (2013) and currently PhD studies in the Human Sciences, Anthropology and African and Asia Studies programme. Her doctoral thesis is titled “Sociabilidad vecinal y Apoyo mutuo en el distrito madrileño de Tetuán. Una experiencia de transformación social desde los márgenes”. This thesis seeks to understand the processes of coexistence and neighbourhood self-management in a context of inequality, as ways to dispute the right to the city and to create new collective imaginaries about democracy, citizenship and participation. She is currently conducting a research stay at the CES under the supervision of Tiago Castela, focused on the theoretical reflection on processes of production of space in contemporary cities.