Insurgent Citizenship

Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil
Erscheinungsjahr 2009
ISBN: 978-0-691-14290-6
Verlag: Princeton University Press

Buch, Englisch, 416 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 705 g

Reihe: In-Formation

Insurgent citizenships have arisen in cities around the world. This book examines the insurgence of democratic citizenship in the urban peripheries of São Paulo, Brazil, its entanglement with entrenched systems of inequality, and its contradiction in violence. James Holston argues that for two centuries Brazilians have practiced a type of citizenship all too common among nation-states--one that is universally inclusive in national membership and massively inegalitarian in distributing rights and in its legalization of social differences. But since the 1970s, he shows, residents of Brazil's urban peripheries have formulated a new citizenship that is destabilizing the old. Their mobilizations have developed not primarily through struggles of labor but through those of the city--particularly illegal residence, house building, and land conflict. Yet precisely as Brazilians democratized urban space and achieved political democracy, violence, injustice, and impunity increased dramatically. Based on comparative, ethnographic, and historical research, Insurgent Citizenship reveals why the insurgent and the entrenched remain dangerously conjoined as new kinds of citizens expand democracy even as new forms of violence and exclusion erode it. Rather than view this paradox as evidence of democratic failure and urban chaos, Insurgent Citizenship argues that contradictory realizations of citizenship characterize all democracies--emerging and established. Focusing on processes of city- and citizen-making now prevalent globally, it develops new approaches for understanding the contemporary course of democratic citizenship in societies of vastly different cultures and histories.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Holston, James

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Theorie, Politische Philosophie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein Gesellschaftstheorie
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Regierungspolitik
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Kultur Menschenrechte, Bürgerrechte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Systeme Demokratie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Sozialphilosophie, Politische Philosophie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations and Tables xi

Preface xiii

PART ONE: DISRUPTIONS

Chapter 1: Citizenship Made Strange 3

Public Standing and Everyday Citizenship 15

Particular Citizenships 18

Treating the Unequal Unequally 25

History as an Argument about the Present 33

PART TWO: INEQUALITIES

Chapter 2: In/Divisible Nations 39

Comparative Formulations 41

French Indivisibility 44

American Restriction 52

Brazilian Inclusion 62

Chapter 3: Limiting Political Citizenship 82

The Surprisingly Broad Colonial Franchise 83

Restrictions with Independence 88

A Long Step Backward into Oligarchy 100

Urbanization and the Equalization of Rights 104

Chapter 4: Restricting Access to Landed Property 112

Property, Personality, and Civil Standing 113

Land, Labor, and Law 116

The Tangle of Colonial Land Tenure 118

National Land Reform, Slavery, and Immigrant Free Labor 123

The Land Law of 1850 131

Land Law and Market Become Accomplices of Fraud 136

Illegality, Inequality, and Instability as Norms 142

Chapter 5: Segregating the City 146

Center and Periphery 147

Evicting Workers and Managing Society 157

Autoconstructing the Peripheries 165

Social Rights for Urban Labor 186

A Differentiated Citizenship 197

PART THREE: INSURGENCIES

Chapter 6: Legalizing the Illegal 203

The Illegal Periphery 206

A Case of Land Fraud in Jardim das Cam?lias 213

Histories of Dubious Origins 219

Federal Ownership Claims: Sesmarias and Indians 220

Ackel Ownership Claims: Posse and Squatter's Rights 223

The Ownership Claims of Adis and the State of S?o Paulo 224

The Misrule of Law 227

Chapter 7: Urban Citizens 233

New Civic Participation 235

The Mobilization of Lar Nacional 241

Reinventing the Public Sphere 247

New Foundations of Rights 253

Rights as Privilege 254

Contributor Rights 260

Text-Based Rights 264

PART FOUR: DISJUNCTIONS

Chapter 8: Dangerous Spaces of Citizenship 271

Everyday Incivilities 275

In/Justice 284

Gang Talk and Rights Talk 300

Insurgent Citizenships and Disjunctive Democracies 309

Notes 315

Bibliography 361

Index 375

Über Autor(innen)

Holston, James
James Holston is professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of "The Modernist City" and the editor of "Cities and Citizenship".