Urban Popular Economies

This collective considers issues of urban social reproduction, livelihood, and urban formations through a multiplicity of ground-level practices operating simultaneously within and outside the prevailing logics of capital accumulation.

Co-convened with the Consejo Latinamericano Ciencias Sociales (CLACSO) and the Sheffield Desk on Popular Economy, this collective considers issues of urban social reproduction, livelihood, and urban formations through a multiplicity of ground-level practices operating simultaneously within and outside the prevailing logics of capital accumulation. 
 
In both the reiterated and newly created gaps between what states imagine as the composition of settlements and urban economies it seeks to govern, and the actual dynamics of settlements and work at ground-level, what existing forms of popular economy are being seen in new ways and what new forms are likely to emerge in the working out of new relationships between governmental and administrative institutions, local communities, institutions, and collectives? As pandemic conditions provide new incentives and legitimacy for attempts on the part of states to formalise, straighten out, and curtail a wide range of settlement and work practices—at the same as implicitly needing them to endure as safety valves and “real economies”—what new forms of popular economy might emerge in this process? What opportunities might exist for workers to garner new rights and possibilities?

These questions formed the starting point for the initial workshop of the collective in September 2020.
 
Since then, through a series of workshops and collaborative activities, the collective has developed a glossary of critical concepts (to be published in Cityscapes), is preparing a collectively written article for a forthcoming special issue of Public Culture, and preparing a monograph for consideration by the University of Manchester Press.

Team

AbdouMaliq Simone Urban Institute, University of Sheffield

Alioscia Castronova University of San Martin, Sapienza University of Rome

Brij Maharaj University of KwaZulu Nata

Constance Smith University of Manchester

Cristina Cielo Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales Sede Ecuador

Gabriel Silvestre Urban Studies Program, University of Sheffield

João Tonucci Federal University of Minas Gerais

Luci Cavallero University of Buenos Aires

Raquel Rolnik University of Sao Paolo

Solomon Benjamin Indian Institute of Technology Madras

Véronica Gago University of Buenos Aires

Victoria Habermehl Urban Institute, University of Sheffield