(Backstage) What drove you to write this specific article?
This article and the ethnographical research that informs it are part of a larger project aimed at understanding the politics of urban marginality in Chile, considering the role of poverty-alleviating government institutions in poblaciones emblemáticas (old, traditional shantytowns). In that context, this article began as an exploration of violent demonstrations performed by the urban poor and their political meanings, often overlooked by the press and mainstream academic approaches. To a broader extent, this article observed the political agencies in the context of urban marginality and problematized how the existing literature could not fully grasp the political meanings raised and mobilized in those contexts.
(Contribution) In brief, in which set of theoretical discussions your article engages and what is the article’s contribution to those debates?
The first, more evident discussion we engage with is related to the problem of urban marginality in Latin America. Since the 1960s and onwards, the problem of urban marginality has been in the scope of social sciences across the region, moving from traditional marginality approaches led by the Catholic Church to reinterpretations of the concept regarding the political, social, and physical transformations in zones of peripheral urbanization. In that sense, the article engages with the epistemological question of understanding political actions within marginal urban territories, taking a strong position: the Chilean poblaciones emblemáticas are generally places where political claims may take the form of violent demonstrations. The second discussion the article engages with is the role of violence in the everyday life of the urban poor in Lo Hermida. Thus, we show how people experience structural violence in complex ways. We also highlight how, by mobilizing violent acts by themselves, with particular meanings and distinctions, the urban poor pursue the questioning of traditional politics through their spatial experience.
(Reflection) How do you make anthropological theory? Is there a way that theory making in anthropology diverges from theory making in other disciplines? What are some of the challenges one faces in making anthropological theory? [choose one or answer all, or make up your own question]
Paradoxically, none of us comes from an anthropological background. We work at the intersection between sociology and urban studies. However, we found some dimensions that, despite being present in other social sciences, seem particularly well valued in the anthropological way of making theory. Deep, long-term fieldwork is crucial in that sense. Our article relies on more than one year of an ethnographical approach, combining participant observation, walking interviews, semi-structured interviews, photo-elicitation, meetings with neighbors, and a feedback process with the community, where we sat with key informants to talk about how to avoid extractivist academic practices. We think it seems impossible to respectfully engage with the community and create meaningful social and urban theory without that approach. At the same time, the fieldwork was simultaneously deployed in other similar cases, both in Valparaíso and Santiago de Chile, by the extended research team working on the abovementioned project. Thus, the article and the theoretical discussion addressed owe much to the collective dialogue with colleagues, sharing different epistemological approaches, key readings, and fieldwork experiences.
(Expansion) Why does theory matter (to you and/or in a broad sense)?
Social theory is often underestimated and accused of being too abstract and disconnected from people’s real problems. Of course, part of that criticism should be addressed, trying to make clearer connections between the construction of abstract frameworks to understand social reality and everyday social life. But, overall, the crucial question would be: is there something such as a world without social theory? Definitively not. As many intellectuals noted (of course, in different ways and with different sensibilities to capture it), people think abstractly – they make theory – in their everyday practices because that allows them to understand their lives within what is possibly the biggest abstraction we face: society. In other words, exactly because we cannot run away from theory, we need to question both the ways and outcomes of social theory. In that sense, theory matters because it renders visible the abstractions we use to understand collective life, at the time showing its cracks and opening the possibility of creating new regimes to live together.
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