Abstract
The right to the city represents a critique of the city as a place and an object of capitalist accumulation, in which priority is given to exchange value over use value. This critique references an ongoing and collective struggle for urban production to be radically democratic, as the expanded participation of city users would lead to appropriation, with social movements occupying a central role. This paper discusses the practices of urban social movements that cooperate with governmental institutions participating in and influencing the design and implementation of public policies. We focus on the possibilities of transformation towards the right to the city as well as the conflicts and contradictions that social movements face when partnering with the State. We carry out an in-depth investigation of two social movements involved in building housing units in Brazil as part of a federal government programme. By conceptually translating the right to the city into the economies of worth, we propose an original theoretical approach. Our study contributes to advance the understanding of the role of social movements that collaborate with governments without abandoning the goal of struggling for the right to the city. We add a pragmatic perspective to the radical conception of the right to the city by showing how different logics of action enable or hinder the possibility of the right to the city horizon. We propose that the prominence of the civic common world might transform operational processes mainly through self-management.
Introduction
The increasing urbanization of the world’s population has been accompanied by continuing social inequalities (UNHSP, 2016). Proponents of critical urbanism (Brenner, 2009; Harvey, 2008; Lefebvre, 2008; Marcuse, 2009) relate the causes of these inequalities to the functioning of the capitalist system. The expression ‘right to the city’ – coined by Lefebvre in 1968 and later applied by critical urbanists and geographers (Dikeç, 2001; Gray, 2018; Huchzermeyer, 2018; Purcell, 2003, 2013a) – expands the limit of what is considered possible and proposes “a path to a radically different urban society, beyond both the State and capitalism” (Purcell, 2013a: 311). Based on the exercise of collective power, the right to the city opens the door to a radical democracy scenario that presupposes a new concept of citizenship beyond the dominant liberal democracy (Huchzermeyer, 2018; Purcell, 2016). Such a perspective constitutes the theoretical-conceptual significance of the term, departing from a Marxist conception of the urban debates recaptured by Lefebvre (Katznelson, 1992; Tavolari, 2016). In the last few decades, the term has also been used as a rallying cry and assumes a practice-claiming connotation. In this vein, the right to the city has become the central paradigm used to analyse urban social movements (Domaradzka, 2018; Purcell, 2014; Uitermark et al., 2012).
Some authors stress that the practice-claiming connotation, while serving as a common frame or slogan that unites several actors, also poses as a threat to de-radicalizing the construct, diluting the transformational horizon proposed by Lefebvre into blueprints that should be followed to achieve “improved” cities (Mayer, 2009; de Souza, 2010). The discussion of de-radicalization reaches urban social movements with respect to how these movements opt to follow the social struggle and their capacity not to be co-opted by governments as service providers (Belda-Miquel et al., 2016; Domaradzka, 2018; Pruijt, 2019). The literature on the dilemmas faced by urban social movements when partnering with the State is relatively advanced (Abers and Bülow, 2011; Lavalle et al., 2018; Pruijt, 2019; Pruijt and Roggeband, 2014; Sites, 2012). In contrast, studies that analyse concrete steps towards the right to the city in its theoretical-conceptual approach are still lacking. This line of thought is the one we adopt here.
In this study, we seek to contribute to the extant literature on the right to the city by targeting social movements that cooperate with the State within the liberal-democratic system. We are interested in analysing how these urban social movements might advance towards the right to the city horizon, unveiling the conflicts and identifying the compromises that emerge from the collaborative relationship between urban social movements and the State. By examining two social movements that have been partnering with the State to deliver social housing in Brazil, we analyse practices that may reveal glimpses – as well as conflicts and contradictions – of the way to achieve a new urban society.
To develop a theoretical background that enables a dialectical analysis of individual action and the macro structure, we compose an original framework that translates the right to the city into the economies of worth, which is part of pragmatic sociology. By translating, we mean that we mobilize the right to the city lens by integrating some assumptions and vocabulary of the economies of worth. This can be seen as an attempt to conduct a “transduction” process, to use Lefebvre’s expression that denotes an intellectual construction of possible futures through the empiric (Lefebvre, 2008). Our study seeks to make two main contributions. The first is to advance the understanding of the role of social movements that collaborate with governments without abandoning the goal of struggling for the right to the city in its intrinsically transformational sense. The second is to unveil conflicts and compromises that emerge from the social practices carried out by social movements, promoting a pragmatic analysis of the strategies that might pave the way towards the right to the city. Although our empirical investigation took place in the Brazilian arena, we believe that our findings have a potential to be reflexively transferable to other contexts sharing some of the conditions described in this work.
A pragmatic analysis of the right to the city
The right to the city from a normative perspective: a possible horizon
The concept of the right to the city emerged as a critique of the contemporary city in the process of urban reproduction as a result of industrial capitalism and, later, within a neoliberal model of governance (Dikeç, 2001; Purcell, 2013a). In line with Marx, this concept denounces the effects of the functional approach to the city, the emphasis given to exchange value over use value and the centrality of consumption in the organization of society. In the “city of capital”, resources and decisions are confined to a political and economic elite who design the city in accordance with their desires, transforming space and quality of life into commodities. The right to the city radically challenges the social relations structured, reproduced and controlled by the homogenizing capitalist order (Belda-Miquel et al., 2016; Dikeç, 2001).
Instead of providing a “step-by-step” on how to achieve the right to the city, Lefebvre inspired the radical thinking towards the “right to a very different life in the context of a very different, just society” (de Souza, 2010: 318). In such a society, a city would respond to the social needs of its users, those who inhabit it, rather than those who are its owners (Belda-Miquel et al., 2016; Lefebvre, 2008; Purcell, 2003, 2006). Defined as “people managing collective decisions themselves rather than surrendering those decisions to a cadre of state officials” (Purcell, 2014: 147), self-management (autogestion) is paramount to cementing the right to the city. That is, it requires that people take over decisions themselves instead of granting decision making to a centralized power (Purcell, 2013a, 2014; de Souza, 2010). This involves reconfigured and expanded participation and appropriation. Expanded participation pursues total control over every decision that might affect urban life. This control would facilitate expanded appropriation, granting space design, production and usage to those who most need it (Busquet, 2012). Use is thus more important than the potential financial gain that space could provide (Belda-Miquel et al., 2016; Dikeç, 2001; Gray, 2018; Lefebvre, 2008; Purcell, 2003, 2006, 2014).
While Lefebvre sees the right to the city as a “superior form of rights”, other authors have discussed what kind of right it would be (Attoh, 2011; Huchzermeyer, 2018). The agreement is that the right to the city aspires a radical democracy, one that overcomes its liberal form (Huchzermeyer, 2018; de Souza, 2010). Through radical democratization of the cities, “an ongoing and collective struggle by urban inhabitants to manage the city for themselves, without the state and without capitalism” (Purcell, 2014: 311), the right to the city is the exercise of a collective power, a social transformation conquered by political struggle, by which the inhabitants claim, organize and transform capitalist processes and the very function of the State, which gradually diminishes its role (Belda-Miquel et al., 2016; Purcell, 2013a). The right to the city is a permanent cultural revolution based on the collective logics of interaction and political learning and has autogestion or self-management at its core.
Albeit restricted by political opportunity structures that are restrained by the institutional and power structures connected to a “master-frame”, 1 which hinders or even prevents the emergence of counter-frames, social movements assume centre stage in this quest (Belda-Miquel et al., 2016; Tilly and Tarrow, 2006). In this vein, the right to the city can be understood as a counter-frame through the promotion of radical ideas of self-management.
There have been critiques towards the right to the city. The first considers a conceptual overstretching, directed to the term’s institutionalization under a liberal systems of rights and to its use as a common frame, potentially diminishing its radical character (Belda-Miquel et al., 2016; Gray, 2018; Mayer, 2009; Purcell, 2006, 2014). This expanded meaning, while enabling the existence of a “slogan”, disconnects the concepts from the critical perspective, opening ground for the term’s colonization and its hijacking by elites (Domaradzka, 2018; de Souza, 2010). The second point of attention is the “local trap”, i.e., mistakenly presuming a direct relationship between more democratic and fair practices in more localized jurisdictions (Purcell, 2006), which could lead to missing the instauration of supra-local initiatives (Harvey, 2008). Third, the class reductionism, that is, the allocation of individuals and groups within predefined homogeneous categories, lacks an understanding of fragmented, complex, non-universalizing claims and interests (Blokland et al., 2015; Mayer, 2009; Uitermark et al., 2012). Grasping the potentially conflicting interests is also necessary to address the trade-offs that must be considered on the way towards the right to the city (Attoh, 2011). Lastly, the focus on denouncing the effects of neoliberalism brings the risk of turning the concept into a cliché instead of comprising practical content and contributing to ideas on how to intervene in the local public realm (Gray, 2018; Purcell, 2013a).
We believe that the connection of the right to the city, in its radical perspective, to ongoing practices enables grasping parts of the horizon. The literature on the right to the city does not go in this direction, providing little analytical power for explaining the on-the-ground struggles and relegating to the background the possibilities of everyday life revolution. Our study aims at bringing practical content to the right to the city by asking the following: How might urban social movements that agree to collaborate with the State advance towards the right to the city horizon? What conflicts and compromises emerge from this collaborative relationship? Considering the many challenges and critiques outlined, we decided to mobilize a complementary theoretical lens that will help connect the micro and macro perspectives.
The pragmatist perspective of the economies of worth
We propose an analysis of collective action towards the right to the city from a pragmatic sociology perspective, for which society is always en train de se faire, requiring social relations to be analysed in situ (Cefaï, 2009). More specifically, we mobilize the economies of worth, originally économies de la grandeur, which seeks to reconnect the micro and macro by placing the actor at the centre of the research and recognizing actors’ reflexivity (Boltanski, 2011; Boltanski and Thévenot, 2007). This literature has already been used by other scholars as an analytical lens to analyse the logics and disputes of different government-led urbanistic projects (Ekinci and Görgülü, 2015; Fuller, 2012; Holden and Scerri, 2015). We mobilize the economies of worth to understand collective action (Andion et al., 2017) undertaken by social movements acting in partnership with governments and their relations to the right to the city.
According to the economies of worth, the agreements and disagreements that enable the interactions of people in society are based on the imperative of justification, a maxim that leads different actors to expose and reinforce their motivations and interests, which are always subject to critique (Krieger and Andion, 2014). The statement of an argument requires the justification of a position, which – to be valid – must be recognized as legitimate by the individuals who are part of this public sphere (Holden and Scerri, 2015). These justifications are embedded in different “orders of worth”, philosophical constructions that consolidate common higher principles of what is considered just (Boltanski, 2011; Oldenhof et al., 2014).
When the orders of worth are translated from philosophical constructions to the empirical level of lived experiences, they are called common worlds. 2 Such differentiation emphasizes that orders of worth are experienced and put to test in real situations, engaging “persons, in their bodily existence, in a world of things that serve as evidence” (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2007: 131). In this passage, Boltanski and Thévenot (2007) consolidate a flexible framework to understand how the different orders of worth are embedded in situations, identifying, for instance, worthiness, investment formula, objects and subjects for each common world. In their seminal works, Boltanski and Thévenot (2007) and Boltanski and Chiapello (2009) identify and thoroughly describe seven common worlds. After categorizing and conducting the analysis of our research corpus, we found four of these common worlds to be particularly relevant to our study – the civic, market, industrial and domestic worlds. Table 1 brings these common worlds, briefly describing their higher common principles, worthiness and investment formula. These categories delineate each common worlds’ sense of justice, what is valued and the expected sacrifices (investment formula) to achieve a worthiness level.
Civic, industrial, market and domestic common worlds.
The common worlds are hardly found to be isolated, implying that living situations are always composite, they comprise different common worlds. Such an attribute opens the possibility of establishing relations among the different worlds, which can either lead to exposing tensions and conflicts or to establishing agreements. Regarding the possibility of conflicts, individuals can opt (according to their interests and skills) to unveil and denounce two distinct situations: when individuals or groups are subject to test which criteria come from a different logic; and when worthiness is bestowed upon an individual or a group that has not made the sacrifices to achieve it (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2007). In contrast, compromises between justifications can be developed, comprising different common worlds and maintaining the differences between the logics involved. Such compromises are always contingent. Considering the case studies of this paper, the social movements partnering with the State to deliver a social housing programme are tested according to their capacity to deliver housing units, which follows the industrial logic. Nonetheless, one can argue that the test should abide by the civic logic as well, as housing involves the appropriation of the residents in the long term, questioning the very nature of the test. Self-management, through participation and appropriation, could be understood as a compromise between those two common worlds.
Bridging the right to the city and the economies of worth
The two theories mobilized here are inscribed in different research paradigms. The right to the city belongs to the critical paradigm, which has historical realism as an ontology; the researcher and the subject are connected, and the research is mediated by values (Guba and Lincoln, 1994). The theory known as economies of worth, in turn, is rooted in pragmatic sociology or the sociology of tests, within a critical constructivist paradigm (Vandenbergue, 2006) and, ontologically, assumes that the social phenomenon is the result of the actions taken amidst situations. Although economies of worth do not deny the materiality and objectivity of social phenomena, it does not consider that structures hold deterministic power over the actors. According to Prasad (2005), albeit ontologically distinct, the theoretical traditions where the two theories are inserted share some epistemological assumptions, the foremost being that both refute an objectivist view of knowledge construction. By considering their distinctiveness and convergences, this study addresses the trading zones, i.e., areas located on the border between theoretical paradigms that are open to dialogues (Bénatouïl, 1999).
What does this intersection reveal about urban reproduction? Boltanski and Thévenot (2007) suggest that the State activity is a compromise between the willingness to achieve the common good, civil equity and solidarity (civic world, adopting a Rousseauian perspective of the formation of the State) and the bureaucratic institutions that aim at performance and efficiency (industrial world, from the La Phisiology Social proposed by Saint-Simon). In contrast, the right to the city evolves from a Marxist perspective, for which the State is an institution conformed to facilitate accumulation by the capital owners, an oligarchy (Kipfer et al., 2013; Purcell, 2013a). Thus, the critical paradigm denounces that the market logic is not only imbricated but prioritized in this formation: the State activity is a compromise between civic, industrial and market common worlds, in which the last one achieves pre-eminence. As the city produced by the State guarantees production and appropriation to an elite, in the right to the city horizon, both the State and market wither away (Huchzermeyer, 2018; Purcell, 2014; de Souza, 2010).
Using the vocabulary provided by the economies of worth, we could argue that the right to the city renounces the city in its market perspective (the city and space as commodities, a product that is the result and the driver of capital accumulation) and evokes the city as a civic space (Dikeç, 2001). In the city assumed as a political space, market logic (exchange value) loses ground to civic logic (use value). The transformational role of the right to the city requires that those who produce the city must use it as well. This production and appropriation, based neither on property titles nor on commodified relations, implies a decrease in the power of the market world in urban reproduction. In this sense, communitarian and collective spaces are given priority, while private space and property titles that establish the groundwork for capital accumulation are reconfigured or extinguished, as they represent the market logic.
Participation and appropriation of space are solidified with the civic world higher superior principle as a legitimate justice criterion. Self-management emerges as a compromise formula, connecting the civic and the industrial worlds: the production (industrial) of the city by its users occurs in appropriation by them (civic). However, compromises between worlds are hardly established without conflicts.
Building on Belda-Miquel et al. (2016)’s argument, radical movements prefer to maintain distance from the State. From this point of view, the alignment of the State and capital forces hampers the possibility of the governmental institutions granting the right to the city to those who are not part of the elite. Even when considering welfare systems, the State continues to be an oligarchy that prevents radical democracy to emerge (Purcell, 2013a). Under this framework, one assumes that social movements that cooperate with the State would possibly choose not to raise critiques and not to defy the tests of worthiness that are foreign to civic logic. This framework also presupposes that the State holds a single logic and that social movements, to access resources and alliances, utterly abide by this logic when partnering with government institutions.
From urban movements literature, Mayer (2009, 2013) proposes that the urban development patterns combined with similar forms of governance adopted in Global North cities caused these movements to go through similar cycles. In the first cycle, in the 1960s and 1970s, the movements were more politicized and questioned the Fordist-Keynesian city norms and standardization. After the 1980s, in a second cycle, urban neoliberalization led the movements to a co-optation path, in which they became part of urban development strategies and providers of services that government – due to austerity measures – was no longer providing. Some of these movements became cultural agents, gaining support from local governments as they contribute to urban economy and competition (Uitermark, 2004). From this analysis, the co-optation of social movements may mean the end of the social movements’ life cycle (Pruijt, 2019). There are authors who question this view, suggesting that co-optation is not the only viable option, that interaction with government does not necessarily imply that radical tactics will not be part of the movement’s repertoire and that the proximity to the State varies according to the nature and identity of the social movement (Pruijt, 2003, 2019; Pruijt and Roggeband, 2014).
In Brazil, the nature of social movements and their relationship with the State is a result of a rather recent democratization process. The transition from a two-decade violent military dictatorship, when policies did not focus on the most needed, and social disparities increased, encouraged social movements to adopt a rights-based agenda, pressuring for participation while catering for their own needs. This modus operandi led to the institutionalization of practices in different areas, as in basic health, HIV/AIDS and racial agendas (Lavalle et al., 2018). In a complementary way, Abers and Bülow (2011), two important Brazilian authors, emphasize that the opposition between social movements and the State (as common enemies) or the complete absence of the State in the analysis of social movements must be surpassed, as such reductions do not consider the plurality of existing collective practices. The authors analyse the relevance and duality of social movement members that work for government, especially in environmental and health areas. Urban and housing movements, throughout the last three decades, went through the same process, finding its peak in the creation of the Ministry of Cities in 2003, with a National Housing Secretariat and a National Housing Participatory Council (Tatagiba et al., 2018).
By considering this scenario, we suggest that, as these social movements allow themselves to be present in composite situations – that is, in situations that involve several logics of justice and action (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2007) – they have a privileged role not only in raising critiques against different logics but also in establishing compromises between the common worlds and proposing the prominence of the civic world. However, raising criticisms or establishing compromises in which the civic world is prioritized in these composite situations is not an organic element, rather it is a discretion, an option to be taken or not, according to the interests and skills of the ones involved. Thus, when these movements opt not to challenge situations or accept compromises in which logics other than the civic world are given priority can be deemed a contradiction. That is, they contradict what would be expected of them in such situations.
The economies of worth literature postulates that the epicentre of the analysis does not lie in the opposition between social movements, government and market, as if they were monolithic and static. Neither should social movements be a priori considered radical or non-radical, or such titles be bestowed indefinitely, as they are also fragmented and complex. In fact, the economies of worth reject the attachment of common worlds to groups or beings, as this attachment is contingent on the situation. The level of analysis, then, lies on the logics that structure and stimulate the practices held by these actors in situ, which combine different modes of engagement and multiple rationalities (Andion et al., 2017).
The analysis of the case studies demonstrates, as we report below, that the economies of worth enables the identification of different logics that coexist within the social fabric and the results of their interactions. Such results are the translation of the imaginable future into everyday actions, bringing practical meaning to the term. By contributing to the concreteness of the right to the city, the difficulties and possibilities of reaching its radical purpose are identified and integrated.
Methodological design
We designed our empirical investigation as a collective and instrumental case study, 3 which means we are jointly looking at two different cases and are concerned with the insights and knowledge these two cases can provide to our research questions (Stake, 1998). We selected as cases two social movements that opted on self-management while constructing housing projects for low-income residents in Brazil, one in São Paulo and the other in Salvador. Such housing projects are part of a national house construction programme, named Minha Casa, Minha Vida-Entidades (hereafter MyHouse-E). Both the programme and the social movements are presented in the next section.
In terms of data collection, we combine participant observation and in-depth semi-structured interviews (Table 2), carried out from 2016 to 2017, over a year and half, while the housing projects were still being built. We followed the guidelines for data collection 4 provided by Denzin and Lincoln (1994) and Glesne (1999), three leading constructivist qualitative researchers. We started the interviews with leaders of each social movement, and we then invited other actors relevant to the history of each project. Our judgement regarding the most knowledgeable people to contact was informed by our participant observation. We held 16 interviews, totalling 18 h 45 m of recording. We received no refusals regarding the willingness to be interviewed or to be observed during the meetings. The participant observations were held in different phases in the same period, involving participation in one general assembly meeting; two meetings of participatory commissions; one meeting between a federal bank and social movements; two training moments with social movements and a federal bank; one meeting between researchers and members; and several conversations and observations of future residents as they were visiting the housing project; in addition, one week was spent inside the Ministry of Cities in an immersion with the MyHouse department.
Summary of interviews.
All the empirical material – the field notes from the observations, the transcripts of all interviews and the documents – were organized using NVivo software. We used the principles of critical hermeneutics to conduct the analysis, connecting the text to its broader context in Brazilian reality, unveiling and interpreting the ideological aspects of the text, respecting the plurivocity of narratives and emphasizing intertextuality (Lejano and Leong, 2012: 769; Prasad, 2002). The main concepts of our theoretical framework were used as a sensitive guide to orient our analysis. However, the most important part of the analysis was of an inductive nature, producing a list of 42 codes or themes related both to the right to the city literature and to the economies of worth. This codification enabled the connection between the empirical data and the theoretical background (as exemplified in the Appendix). After a first coding, we reread the data and undertook a deep reflexive process to make sense to that interpretation in light of the political and theoretical context, creating three main findings (presented in the results) and their respective compromises, conflicts and contradictions. We followed the guidelines of Alvesson and Sköldberg (2009) to produce our results from a careful analysis of the empirical material. In the analysis and presentation of data, we used techniques suggested by the ethical committee in terms of the protection of anonymity and confidentially of our respondents, as the removal of real names and elements that could identify the respondent in the text.
We were also reflexive regarding our role as researchers and regarding the weight of our choices in the development of this research. The cases and the data we collected delimit the scope of our results, as in any research endeavour. This means that, from a critical constructivist perspective, we tried to respect the meanings produced by the respondents, but at the same time, we analysed those meanings in the context where they were produced in a very iterative – hermeneutical – manner. For reasons of length, we cannot describe here all of our reflections regarding such reflexivity.
Social movements cooperating with the state
In this section, we present the main context that led to MyHouse-E programme and the activities held by the social movements studied in this research. We are considering social movements to be “a form of sustained collective action, from which actors who share identities or solidarities face dominant social structures or cultural practices” (Abers and Bülow, 2011: 53), and both cases fit into this concept, as it will be seen below. We selected social movements that cooperate with the State using self-management to deliver housing units to people living in precarious circumstances. Although our study takes place in Brazil, the contextual conditions described below are present in many other countries, as both the cooperation with the State and the self-management mode of governance are important elements discussed by the concerned literature.
The MyHouse-E programme
From a liberal-democratic perspective, Brazil is a paradigmatic case in the discussion of the right to the city (Huchzermeyer, 2018; Purcell, 2014). First, after 21 years of military dictatorship (1964–1984), the Federal Constitution of 1988 institutionalized the social function of property. In addition, due to the strong advocacy and activities of the National Forum of Urban Reform during the 1990s, the City Statute was approved in 2001, recognizing the right to the city as a collective right. Albeit seen internationally as a robust legislation to make way for a democratic urban reform, recent analysis points to the difficulties in consolidating the instruments provided by the law in concrete urban processes taking place throughout the country 5 (Marguti et al., 2016).
From 2003 until 2016, Brazil was governed by the Workers Party, which established numerous social-oriented programmes following a more left-wing agenda. In 2009, the federal government launched Minha Casa Minha Vida (hereafter MyHouse), conceived as a countercyclical policy to reactivate the country’s economy through construction and real estate, which, as of October 2017, had delivered 3.5 million housing units. There are different clusters under MyHouse. Group 1, subsidized, is the cluster that includes low-income families, whose monthly incomes are less than three minimum wages (approximately US$500) (do Lago, 2011).
Pressures from housing social movements – including the movements here studied and the national coalitions they integrate – led to the incorporation of the MyHouse-Entities modality (Stiphany and Ward, 2019), which represents less than 1% of the 1.2 million Group 1 housing units delivered. The most important feature is that, under this programme, associations, cooperatives and social movements – called entities – receive funds to deliver housing projects. The beneficiaries within MyHouse-E are screened by the social movements 6 and officially approved by the government banks. Priority is given to households headed by women, households with disabled members and families affected by environmental disasters.
Each entity managing a housing programme must opt between using a self-management system or hiring a private developer. When adopting a self-management system, the entities are fully responsible for managing and building the housing projects, following basic regulations: the totality of the future residents constitute a general assembly, which elects at least two commissions of residents to monitor the project’s construction and finances. The members of these commissions end up being the “leaders” of the projects, who make decisions on an everyday basis and pass major decisions to the general assembly.
Our two selected cases belong to Group 1 (lowest income cluster) and opted for self-management, providing a fertile field for our investigation of social movements that cooperate with the State without renouncing their pursuit of the right to the city, with self-management being one of the key components of their emancipatory and communitarian practices.
The cases: 708 housing units under a self-management system
The first case (Case-SP) is the self-managed construction of two housing projects by a housing social movement in the city of São Paulo, the capital of the state of São Paulo, comprising 396 apartments of 58 m2. Formalized in 2003, the social movement began its activities in 1987 by organizing landless workers and using squatting as its main strategy. The common claim is the right to land and housing for low-income families from a specific region of São Paulo, with almost 4 million inhabitants, of which more than 30% live in high-vulnerability conditions (Centro de Estudos da Metrópole, 2004). Comprising 32 local groups and integrating approximately 3000 families, the social movement is affiliated to the state and national coalitions of social movements.
To develop these two housing projects, the social movement started to search for land in 2008, and the acquisition continued in 2009. That same year, the government bank approved the project to be part of MyHouse-E. The social movement opted for a self-management system: representatives of all housing units engage in thematic commissions, where the decisions are collectively made; they partake in joint construction and cleaning taskforces; they take security shifts overnight and on weekends; and future residents hold monthly assemblies at the project’s construction site. The residents were involved from the outset, first by participating in the search for the land tract and later by scrutinizing, transforming and approving the apartments design proposed by the technical advisors.
The second case (Case-SV) is the self-managed construction of a housing project by a social movement in the city of Salvador, the capital of Bahia, encompassing 312 terraced houses of 51 m2. The social movement, consisting of several formal and informal local groups and associations, started its activities in 1999. Part of a national coalition, the movement advocates for “self-management, right to housing and to the city, participation in public policies and the end of forced evictions” and uses both squatting and participation in housing programme as strategies.
Regarding the construction of the housing project, in 2004, the social movement found a farm for sale on the outskirts of the city, which was acquired in 2007 after a judicial negotiation. In 2009, this housing project became part of MyHouse-E, but it only started receiving funds in 2013. The movement adopts a self-management system: during the first years of the project (beginning in 2004), assemblies were held with future residents every two weeks and are now held monthly at the construction site or its surroundings; project governance is conducted by a management team comprising two commissions formed by residents and that runs weekly meetings with the technical assistants; joint efforts of construction and cleaning are made when the commissions deem it necessary.
By taking attendance at events and meetings, both movements assess the participation of each housing unit’s residents and translate this participation into specific benefits or penalties: those with the highest participation rates are given priority in choosing the unit in which they will live, while those with the lowest rates could be expelled from the project.
The funds are transferred to the movements after monthly measurements are conducted and approved by the bank. These measurements follow a monthly plan developed by the social movements together with the technical assistants and validated by the government bank. The transfer of funds may occur days, weeks or even months after the measurements are approved. The movements then use different tactics – such as meetings, demonstrations and influence through federal government agents – to pressure the bank to make payments on time. The projects’ overall budgets have not been adjusted by inflation or any other index throughout the years. With outdated budgets, the bank may authorize specific changes as long as the housing unit numbers remain the same, which may affect the common areas planned for the project. In one of the projects, for instance, as the research took place, the movement was trying to find cheaper solutions for the community centre, as the original plan no longer fit the budget.
When construction is finished and paperwork is formalized, each housing unit’s property title is transferred to the residents. However, when considering the entire programme, as of 2017, approximately 35,000 housing units were completed, while property titles were transferred only to 10,000 residents. This does not mean the units are empty. In one of the projects, for example, members of the commissions were living in their houses before project completion, and residents were encouraged to move in whenever access to water and sewage was provided. Once granted property titles, residents cannot rent or sell their houses for a period of 10 years.
Presentation of results
Guided by the theoretical framework presented, three main findings emerged from the analysis of the empirical data. They are as follows:
the relationship established between the social movements and the other actors; the self-management by the users of the space; and the nature of the space produced.
There is a constitutive relation between these three main findings. The space produced is the result of the relationships established with other actors and the self-management process, materializing the compromises, conflicts and contradictions and exposing the positive advances and the barriers to the right to the city. The space produced will also establish the groundwork for new relationships and self-management. Moreover, while self-management enables new relationships, it depends on them to become feasible, which is why we start the results section with the relationship established. In keeping with our research questions, within each conceptual category, we identify compromises achieved and conflicts. We also recognized certain contradictions that, if not addressed properly, might generate new conflicts.
The relationships established: Transformational but contradictory
When questioned about their practices, members of the movements did not describe them as revolutionary. Nonetheless, they recognized the transformations that occur, first and foremost, regarding the relationships established with the actors with whom they interact. Considering the right to the city as an everyday revolution in social relations, these transformations assume a central position (Belda-Miquel et al., 2016).
For many of the actors with whom the social movements interact, such as the public bank, the members of the social movements and their families, the greatest test of the movements is having the project up and running through self-management. As the project gains concreteness, the movements transform power relations so that engineers, bank agents and construction workers recognize the leadership of the social movements’ members. Therefore, these social movements’ members – consisting of low-income individuals, usually women, and many of them afro-descendants with little access to formal education – must demonstrate their worthiness in the industrial logic connected to the civic logic. This balance enables compromises, as well as raises conflicts and contradictions, as summarized in Table 3 and explained below.
The relations established with other actors and their compromises, conflicts and contradictions.
Compromises with the federal government
The social movements, through the coalitions of the social movements they integrate, started developing relationships with the federal government from the beginning of the Workers Party (PT) administration.
7
This relationship was two-fold: it aimed at including urban matters in the government’s central agenda and pressed for the prominence of civic logic in the federal urban programmes that were being created: At that time, the Workers Party was not connected to urban issues, and the mobilization for the first Conference of the Cities began (social movement Case-SV).
After the creation of the Ministry of Cities in 2003, pressures
8
exerted on the Workers Party resulted in the Crédito Solidário programme, directing federal government funding for self-managed housing projects. By considering Gray's (2018) perspective, such an attempt is aligned with the right to the city, as the social movements are demanding resources so that they themselves can manage the production of the territory. In 2009, the MyHouse programme was announced to comprise only private developers, with greater funds available and offering better payment conditions. Again, the housing social movements pressured for the replacement of Crédito Solidário with MyHouse-E, creating more flexible rules that embraced the lower classes: MyHouse-E redeems the history of struggles of the housing movements. The movements analysed the problems inside the Crédito Solidário, raised proposals and pressured the government. The Crédito Solidário programme was already understood as a kind of advancement, because, at the federal level, there was nothing encompassing participation and fostering community organization. However, in the Crédito Solidário, the beneficiaries still had to show proof of income, thus making it inaccessible to those who needed it the most (technical assistant Case-SP).
Over the years, through phone calls, meetings and public demonstrations, the social movements remained engaged in pressuring and negotiating with the Ministry of Cities and government bank for changes in regulations. These changes aimed at facilitating self-management and calibrating formal aspects of the programme to the material needs of the social movements and beneficiaries, prioritizing civic logic.
The conflictive relationship with public banks
The relationship between the social movements and the government banks is based on the balance among the civic, industrial and market logics. In practice, the relationship may have different approaches depending on the bank agent who interacts with the social movement. With agents who demonstrate a greater understanding of the movement’s civic aspects, this relationship is one of complicity and closeness. With agents who prioritize the industrial and market aspects, the relationships are more contentious, as these agents tend to obliterate the civic common world. As this last group of agents makes judgements adopting solely industrial and market logics, they establish more harmonious relationships with private companies: The bank assumes that private builders will have no problems, that the social movements will bring problems and that things will not work out. They maintain a veiled resistance, I believe, towards the social movements. I believe there is a very bitter prejudice burden related to the movements that does not exist in relation to private companies (public agent from a federal government bank).
Two main “accusations” are levelled by bank agents against the movement’s legitimacy. The first is an allegation of funds misappropriation, which would represent a decline in the civic world. The movements answer this accusation through a broader transparency in financial processes – that is, developing worthiness within the civic logic. The second allegation suggests the movements’ ineptitude in managing a large project, representing an inadequacy in the industrial world. The movements counter that construction delays occur because of cash transfer delays, thus making the bank itself responsible. In addition, the movements argue that private developers access market-oriented credit solutions to diminish the impact of cash transfer delays, indicating that their industrial worthiness is achieved through market privileges, something not accessible to the movements.
Coalitions and class alliances: Compromises and contradictions
As the right to the city literature illustrates, these movements strategically establish coalitions and class alliances (Marcuse, 2009) to press for public policy changes and to emphasize the civic logic. The support of technical advisors and small construction companies, for example, enables movements to adopt self-management. Other examples refer to the alliances made with other social movements to leverage the necessary number of residents for the housing projects or to secure land acquisition through occupation strategies. The role of these coalitions and alliances is to foster civic logic in composite situations – such as bringing industrial knowledge to enable self-management, promoting justice in land acquisition and including other low-income residents in the project.
These coalitions and alliances, however, do not include small businesses or cooperatives that could provide construction materials for the projects. For cost-benefit reasons, these social movements prioritize a client relation with large companies, which represents a contradiction, as they establish purchasing relationships based on the market and industrial worlds but exclude civic logic from this process.
Self-management by the users of the space: Connecting the civic, industrial and market common worlds
Although this paper focuses on the similarities and knowledge obtained from the two case studies (Stake, 1998), there are considerable differences between them, especially regarding self-management and the strategies adopted to guarantee that residents will have income to cope with the costs of living in the housing project. For instance, one of the social movements implements several resident commissions to manage the housing project, while the other just maintains the two commissions demanded by the regulations. This social movement, on the other hand, chose to develop cooperatives to become an income alternative for the residents in the future. Such differences corroborate with the ideal of self-management, demonstrating that social movements have the possibility of going beyond the programme regulations and implementing self-management according to their experience and contexts, decentralizing “control to autonomous local units” (Purcell, 2014: 147). The connection between different logics through self-management represents compromises and unveils conflicts and contradictions, as summarized in Table 4 and explained below.
Self-management and its compromises, conflicts and contradictions.
Compromises prioritizing civic logic
The interviews and field notes are permeated with terms such as committees, collective efforts and participatory decision making, placing participation and appropriation as central features of the self-management system, as established in the right to the city literature (Purcell, 2013a). The self-management process led by the social movements brings the civic logic to the construction of the housing projects, promoting a compromise between the civic and industrial worlds. In this compromise, appropriation is leveraged through the labour that future residents expend in turning that land tract into their houses. This situation expresses the sense of what is considered just, as shown in this excerpt: […] if you ask me how much a bag of cement costs, I know the answer. Why do I want the best window? Because I have a right to it. I’m going to get an apartment that is 58 m2, with a balcony, a flower box, but, above all, with high-quality materials. And I can tell you where every penny went. And I’m going to be able to pay a fair price in the long run, and it will be worth it; that’s why it is ‘My House, My Life’ (social movement Case-SP).
Although self-management tends to emphasize the civic side in the balance between civic and industrial logics, industrial advantages are observable. The shared management process and the joint efforts improve the operational processes, such as faster construction combined with budgetary savings. The needs to respect deadlines and to adjust the budget are collectively agreed upon, as shown in this interview with a social movement member responsible for mobilizing residents: The engineer once told me: “Maria, the bricklayers will not be able to tile all the roofs as planned”. He was feeling lost. I told him, “we will throw a barbecue; you are going to provide the meat, and we will come to tile the roofs”. Around 40 women showed up. This was the day the joint efforts began to strengthen, because these women tiled around 20 housing units in one day (social movement Case-SV).
In addition to enabling a compromise between civic and industrial logics, self-management also brings worthiness to the market world. As cleaning, security and construction efforts are conducted by residents on a volunteer basis, more financial funds become available for the materials and services that must be acquired through regular market relations (directed to large companies, as seen in the previous section). This leads to better and larger housing units, with a potentially higher market value than the housing units developed in regular projects. On the opposite, interviewees deplore that when priority is given to the market logic, lower-quality housing projects are produced: One way of opposing the logic is by demonstrating that with the same money, the social movements can do better than the developers. Their houses were 42 m2, while the ones produced by the movements were 56 m2 or 60 m2. Larger houses with the same money.
9
We made it possible through participation and collective organization (technical assistant Case-SP).
The social movements conceive strategies to ensure that the low-income groups will be included in the development of these projects and will be able to continue living there. Examples of these strategies are the following: instead of demanding documents to be delivered during bank working hours (10 am to 3 pm in Brazil), social movements accept documents submitted on weekends or after working hours, or they are collected from beneficiaries; instead of having a strict participation criteria that could exclude the most needed residents, participation measurements are relativized when residents present relevant justifications (such as illnesses of relatives); income-generation projects, as cooperatives, are implemented so that residents can have extra income to afford the costs of living in a formal area.
Those reflections and negotiations redefine the relationship between the civic and market worlds, as the orientation of who should reside in the house units is not dictated solely by financial factors but include civic elements. This condition increases the possibility that the people who produce the space will appropriate it, despite their lower economic power. Additional compromises between civic and market worlds are established to promote long-term appropriation (as the development of the cooperatives): the collective logic of action causes the residents to prioritize the use value (civic common world) over the exchange value (market common world): I think it is to reinforce the awareness of “where I am, why I am here, what my role is in this process, I am part of a collective, nobody does anything alone”, which is the discourse against this issue of “I do it myself, meritocracy, I don't need public policy, I don't need the collective, if I try and work, I get what I want”. So, I think it's really the discourse of solidarity, of the collectivity, of the social organization; this I think is the most fantastic part of MyHouse-E (public agent from a federal government bank).
Unveiling conflicts: The exclusion of the most in need
By implementing the aforementioned strategies, the movements unveil and reject another common output of the conflict among the market, industrial and civic worlds: when the market and industrial perspectives prevail, the space left for the inclusion of the non-elite is scarce.
Such conflict is disclosed not only when dealing with external actors. The relevance of keeping the condominium fee affordable to everyone so that the low-income residents can remain in the housing units built, for instance, is problematized in general meetings, demonstrating the existing tensions within the social movements themselves: What is the limit to increasing this condominium fee? Three or four people from the entire group, whose income improved a little, will want several things that will increase the fee. But if the group is strong, it will not allow this minority to decide for it (technical assistant Case-SP).
Possible contradiction: Members of social movements as clients
Despite these strategies, there are situations in which the relationship between the movements’ leaders and the residents is guided by a customer relationship (market world), once again demonstrating the existing tensions of the composite circumstances. Field observations show that this condition emerges in certain test situations, as the following passage illustrates: The members of the commission were discussing how to tell in the general assembly meeting about delays in the project, delays that would prevent the residents from moving in over the next months, as planned. One of the members argued that this topic should not be addressed in the general meeting, because the commissions are responsible for the project, and the other residents should simply wait for the work to be completed. This was rejected by the other members of the commission, who countered that transparency should prevail, that the future residents face financial problems that require planning and that this could even be an incentive to further engaging residents and families in the construction and advocacy process (field notes, 2017).
The relation between property titles (market common world) and the participation (civic common world) in the process also represents an internal contradiction, as the owners are the ones with voting rights in the general assembly. This contradiction can strengthen the logic of the city being produced for its owners rather than its users and inhabitants, prioritizing market over civic logic and going against the right to the city horizon. Since collective experience is fundamental to solving future coexistence problems and to fostering the permanence of the residents in the housing project, excluding users who are not owners can potentially threaten long-term appropriation.
The space that is produced: The private, the communitarian and the city
The space that is being built by these movements must be problematized at three levels: the housing projects, the areas surrounding the projects and the city itself. Beginning with the city level, by the implementation of these housing projects, the social movements here studied cannot radically transform the urban space and its reproduction. Some authors have shown that MyHouse-E contributes to increasing peripheral urbanization in Brazil (e.g., Stiphany and Ward, 2019), as these projects are located in the cities’ peri-urban areas. For instance, the members of the movements did not discuss urban sprawl nor did they complain about the distant location of the projects from the city centre, which could represent a potential contradiction in the democratizing advances of the movements.
Nonetheless, the analysis involving the housing projects and the surrounding areas demonstrates positive advances as well as barriers towards the right to the city, as summarized in Table 5 and discussed below.
The consequences of the space that is produced: advances towards and barriers to the right to the city.
Positive advances towards the right to the city
The engagement of low-income groups in self-management processes illustrates that these movements are making it possible for specific parts of the city to be built and appropriated by their users (Busquet, 2012). In the interviews and informal conversations, the users report feeling proud of the transformations they are developing in the region. This sense of belonging also leads to increased appropriation: I think this area has gotten better with us being here, in this piece of the city where dead bodies were thrown, where bodies were hidden; we have given a gift to the city, a piece of a better city […]; there will be a community here, there will be families who like to live here, who will take care of it (social movement Case-SV).
Such a pride and sense of belonging reach the surrounding areas of the project. As these projects are located far from the city centre, where basic public services are relatively poor 10 (do Lago, 2011; Stiphany and Ward, 2019), both movements began to pressure local governments for improvements in their localities. According to the interviews, these improvements – such as public health clinics, school vacancies, sidewalks and bus routes – will benefit the entire neighbourhood. Given their political experience and mobilization, these movements can bring in public investments that were unavailable earlier, putting forward a collective and solidarity-based logic.
Barriers towards the right to the city
As for space within the housing projects, the movements demonstrate one contradiction: priority is given to private space to the detriment of the community/collective space. The regulation establishes that at least 1% of the budget must be allocated to common areas, but over time, the purchasing power of the allocated budget diminishes. No alternative to making private spaces common, such as shared kitchens or laundry facilities, was discussed by the movements. In fact, intentions led in the opposite direction: private housing units are much larger than the requirements. We raise this topic not to discuss the size of the houses themselves but rather to convey that no consideration was given to this subject within the movements.
In this way, the movements create a potentially negative loop: worthiness in the civic and industrial worlds leads to a worthiness in the market world, which, in turn, can result in a decline in the civic world. This decline would reinforce division and prioritize a self-serving individualism. In addition, this process reveals a conflict between the domestic and the civic worlds. This preference for private space demonstrates the prioritization of time-space given to private and particular affairs, family personal connections and the exclusivity of the domestic interior, which hinders the existence and emergence of public issues being discussed by the collective body (Belda-Miquel et al., 2016).
Discussion: Opening opportunities for inclusive social relations and democratic space production
In light of the results obtained, we will now return to the literature and to our research questions. How might urban social movements that agree to collaborate with the State advance towards the right to the city horizon? What conflicts and compromises emerge from this collaborative relationship?
First, it is important to consider that the movements, rather than a subjugation or an uncritical co-optation relationship, have a reflexive approach (Boltanski, 2011) towards their ties with the government. These ties are mediated by the existence of a public policy based on self-management, which is implemented following pressures by the movements. The movements’ members are aware that the State is willing to reproduce the city according to the forces of capital. However, in their opinion, the Workers Party opened a space for dialogue, representing a dislocation moment in hegemonic power that enabled political opportunity structures connected to the counter-frame to emerge (Laclau and Mouffe, 2015). This led the social movements to adopt more institutionalized repertoires of action, that is, accepting and building relationships with external actors – especially governmental – and advancing transformations through institutions (Pruijt and Roggeband, 2014).
This demonstrates that these social movements, embarking on a cooperative role with the State, do not intend to form part of a bourgeois perspective of space production nor do they want the State to organize communal production (Gray, 2018). Instead, they pressured to institutionalize policies addressing the needs of those who have been historically marginalized and to have funds so that they could be responsible for production (Huchzermeyer, 2018; Lavalle et al., 2018; Marcuse, 2009; Tatagiba et al., 2018). In this sense, we agree with Pruijt (2003) that co-optation is not the only viable option and corroborate the findings of Abers and Bülow (2011) and Lavalle et al. (2018), adding that the institutionalization of the demand became a new point of departure, which led to the ongoing struggle of the movements and to very different implementation experiences (Purcell, 2013b; Stiphany and Ward, 2019).
Nonetheless, the State apparatus remains an ally to the hegemonic groups: in 9 years, more than 97% of the housing budget for Group 1 was directed to the regular programme based on market logic; federal banks and other actors are engaged with private firms; and overall, budget and regulations have contributed to space segregation (Stiphany and Ward, 2019). What, then, is the relevance of interacting with the government in this public policy?
From our perspective, even if these movements are not able to radically change urban reproduction, their importance lies in denouncing what is behind the dominant ideology and demonstrating that several possibilities exist for more inclusive social relations and more democratic space production, pushing the boundaries of the existing political opportunity structures (Belda-Miquel et al., 2016). This change is advanced mainly through self-management, which allows the social movements to push for a balance among the civic, market and industrial common worlds in urban reproduction, even when partnering with the federal government. By establishing a dialogue with the literature on reforms and revolution, these transformations are “imposed, applied and controlled by the masses themselves, based on their capacity for self-organization and their initiative” (Gorz, 1967: 124).
Most of the actors to which the movements relate have both industrial and market demands, representing the hegemonic logics in the production of urban space under capitalism (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2007; Harvey, 2008). Even the social movements demonstrate industrial and market aspirations, or social movements’ members bend towards these logics. However, these actors are not monolithic, and different logics of actions manifest in the living situations. Through the lenses of the economies of worth, the cases reveal that the possibilities of transformation towards the right to the city come from negotiations that put forward a civic logic in composite situations. The prevalence of the civic logic brings solidarity to the process, which means that the social movements are more attentive to different aspects of human experience instead of granting space production and appropriation to a homogeneous elite (Purcell, 2014). The creation of new strategies enables the non-elite to participate in the production of urban space and promotes appropriation in the long run, while expanded participation and joint efforts lead to better living conditions and improvements to the areas surrounding the housing projects
Nonetheless, to be able to put forward the civic logic in composite situations, the social movements must raise the conflicts in each situation when industrial, market or domestic logics predominate, which is no easy task (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2007). The unveiling of these conflicts denounces the inequalities generated by the hegemony of the market and industrial common worlds. In addition, understanding these conflicts exposes how the maintenance and prominence of these logics distance the civic logic from space production, prioritizing individuality and exchange value. As the social movements’ projects are financed by governmental funds, one might assume that the members would not be willing to denounce the conflicts that emerge in situations where federal government, federal bank and social movements interact and market and industrial common worlds are evoked. In practice, the existence of an institutionalized public police provides a safeguard, a point of departure from which the movements contingently secure political and material resources for self-management, so that the movements can demonstrate the effects of returning civic logic to the space production sphere, even as they denounce other logics (Gray, 2018). It is important to emphasize that, to address these conflicts, members of the social movements must have the capacity to understand and identify the different logics and must be willing to address these conflicts, both internally as externally (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2007), and this is the reason why contradictions can be identified.
However, the unveiling of the conflicts alone does not illustrate all the possibilities opened by the inclusion of the civic logic in this process. These movements propose new ways of balancing the industrial, market and civic logics, especially within self-management. There are two central expectations that summarize the rapprochement between social movements and public housing policy: the first is that the movements can build the agreed-upon housing units (industrial test), and the second is that the self-management process promotes participation and appropriation by the residents (civic test). In comparison, greater importance is given to the first test, which is based both on the material aspect of housing as a social need and on the measurement system, driven by the governmental bank. When prioritizing civic logic in space production, these movements reveal that the presence of industrial and market logics may contribute to worthiness of the civic logic itself.
Although the industrial and market logics underpin the construction of housing projects and shape much of the movement’s actions, the movement’s struggle to construct housing units contributes to the inhabitants and users taking responsibility, making decisions about their living space and obtaining better housing conditions for themselves. The self-managed process fosters expanded participation and space appropriation by its users (Belda-Miquel et al., 2016; Dikeç, 2001; Lefebvre, 2008; Purcell, 2003) and entails a solidarity that enables the people who need it most to access housing property and to retain it in the future. This process is an endeavour in which people actively take on the role of managing their affairs for themselves and restore primacy to use value (Gray, 2018; Huchzermeyer, 2018; Purcell, 2013b). Connecting the abovementioned with the economies of worth reveals a compromise among these three logics, the key player being the civic world. In other words, the collective purpose and solidarity principles are given priority, with the possibility of assuming a hegemonic role within the projects conducted. In every conflict to strengthen civic logic, the members of social movements make room for a social revolution – in a gradual process – and redefine their own right to the city (Belda-Miquel et al., 2016; Dikeç, 2001; Gorz, 1967).
Conclusion
This article makes theoretical and practical contributions. Theoretically, the translation of the right to the city into the concepts and assumptions of the economies of worth enables the unravelling of the orders of worth related to the term’s radical construct. This connection enables an analytical lens through which the road towards the right to the city can be investigated. The results of our research reveal that the economies of worth form a relevant background for providing an empirical understanding of the logics in action, the emergence of possibilities and the existing contradictions faced by attempts to promote a counter-hegemonic transformation (Belda-Miquel et al., 2016; Edwards, 2019).
When applied to understanding the praxis of social movements, the common worlds focus on the fragmented claims and interests present throughout the process, even if found within the social movements. This common ground also shows that the tests to which these social movements must or are willing to respond can come from different logics; therefore, the local scale does not imply homogeneity, and neither is necessarily more democratic than the other. Greater democracy depends upon the logics that permeate the situation and the emphasis given to the civic common world in complex situations (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2007). Lastly, the identification of the different logics in complex situations enables the analysis of the micro- and meso-practices that contribute to the right to the city, demonstrating the term’s practical applicability and its potential (Gray, 2018).
In this sense, the right to the city supports the connection of the utopian horizon to the actions that are being taken by urban social movements, bringing practical context to the term. By identifying the traces from the common worlds, the composition of the different common worlds in specific situations and the compromises, conflicts and contradictions, provided to be a fruitful pathway for revealing this connection. The economies of worth perspective, by not assigning predefined specific logics to groups or actors but analysing the lived situation, provides an analytical background from which to overcome the distance from micro-practices to the macro structure, which was not provided by the right to the city literature alone.
Applying this lens to the actions of the social movements that cooperate with the State in public housing policies offers a deeper analysis of these movements’ actions rather than simply assigning them to a “non-radical” category or categorizing them as co-optation. In fact, these social movements do not interact with the State according to a patron-client perspective but within a public policy, seeking to allow civic logic to prevail in different instances. However, as they are tested by the construction of housing units in the industrial world, the movements both expose conflicts and establish compromises with this logic of action. Moreover, the movements have a relationship in exposing conflicts that emerge from frictions between the market and civic worlds, although they manage to reframe this relationship in certain circumstances, thus establishing new compromises. This process is imbued with contradictions experienced within the movement itself. Some of these contradictions are recognized by members of the movement, whereas others are not perceived internally, leading to potential conflicts.
However, despite the contradictions, the social movements studied here establish new relationships that draw one closer to the theoretical construction of everyday revolution based on the collective logic of action, which has as its foundation the solidarity of the civic world. In these processes, the movements alter the practices of government agencies, public banks and the beneficiaries themselves. Moreover, they alter the practices of producing cities, supporting what is considered a new counter-frame for city production. Even if not present in the city as a whole, in these cases, the self-managed construction of housing units, the inclusion of the projects’ surroundings in social struggles and the constant unveiling of conflicts with the industrial and market logics evidence a potential to demonstrate the possibilities that arise from changes in social and political relations. These movements represent considerable advances in the constant pursuit of the right to the city, an opening towards the ‘possible’. This progress is not an incremental addition to the liberal rights perspective but rather a reconfiguration of the logics that operate social relations in city production.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the Center for Microfinance and Financial Inclusion Studies at FGV EAESP for supporting this research. We thank Lucas Ambrósio, Fernanda Lima e Silva and Cristina Tauaf. We gratefully acknowledge the support from the social movements and from the Ministry of Cities. We are thankful for the important and constructive comments we received from the editor and from the anonymous reviewers.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was financially supported by the GV Pesquisa, FGV EAESP, Brazil.
