Description
Book SynopsisThe Everyday Life of Urban Inequality explores how steadily increasing inequality and the spectacular pace of urbanization frame daily life for city residents around the world. Ethnographic case studies from five continents highlight the impact of place, the tools of memory, and the power of collective action as communities interact with centralized processes of policy and capital. By focusing on situated experiences of displacement, belonging, and difference, the contributors to this collection illustrate the many ways urban inequalities take shape, combine, and are perpetuated.
Trade ReviewEthnographically based and cross-culturally comparative, this volume of articles provides students of anthropology with first-hand portrayals of urban life in different cities. Authors in this volume demonstrate that urban inequality is a multifaceted phenomenon: public policy, institutional arrangement, space, infrastructure, and even personal hygiene. Jointly, they made it clear that urban inequality is not merely a local story but a global reality with shared roots with various ramifications. -- Anru Lee, John Jay College, CUNY
A comprehensive compilation of ethnographic studies carried out in cities around the Global South, this book offers a brilliant insight into how excluded populations make sense, experience, and struggle with social inequality in an era of planetary urbanization. Covering a wide range of topics like gentrification, urban informality, citizenship participation, place making, and migration, The Everyday Life of Urban Inequality helps us understand the diversity of ways in which urban residents deal creatively with contemporary forms of exclusion while making the city. A must-read for anyone interested in reflecting anthropologically on the relationship between urban space and everyday life.
-- Miguel Pérez, Alberto Hurtado University & Center for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies, Chile
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
List of Figures
Introduction
Megan Sheehan and Angela D. Storey
Section 1: Development and Displacement
Chapter 1: Losing or Gaining Home? Experiences of Resettlement from Casablanca’s Slums
Raffael Beier and Cristiana Strava
Chapter 2: Kuala Lumpur: World Class City Formation and Urban (In)Equities
Seng-Guan Yeoh
Chapter 3: Full of My Love: Notoriously Dangerous Informal Mass Transit in Maputo
Joel Christian Reed
Section 2: Belonging and Contestation
Chapter 4: Part and Parcel of Urbanization: Contested Claims to Land Access and Urban Indigenous Spaces in Hermosillo
Lucero Radonic
Chapter 5: Traditions of the Oppressed: Popular Aesthetics and Layered Barrio Space Against the Erasure of Gentrification in Austin
Ben Chappell
Chapter 6: They Always Promise Toilets: Electoral Politics and Infrastructural Inequality in Post-Apartheid Cape Town
Angela D. Storey
Section 3: Difference and Proximity
Chapter 7: Spaces of Migration and the Production of Inequalities in Santiago, Chile
Megan Sheehan
Chapter 8: Privilege and Space: An Analysis of Spatial Relations and Social Inequality in Mexico City Through the Lens of Golf
Hugo Ceron-Anaya
Chapter 9: New Cityscapes: Redesigning Urban Cartographies Through Creative Practices and Critical Pedagogies in London
Chiara Minestrelli
Conclusion: The Power of Breadth and Depth: Urban Ethnography Across Geographies
Angela D. Storey and Jessica Bodoh-Creed
Index
About the Contributors
