Urban Insecurity as a Language of Political Contention in Madrid (Spain)
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| Title | Urban Insecurity as a Language of Political Contention in Madrid (Spain) |
| Authors | |
| Abstract | Public policies for urban planning developed since the 1980s in Spanish city centres have been marked by the idea of “refurbishing” areas that are “in crisis.” The discourse of citizens’ insecurity has become the framework of shared meaning for diagnosing problems, as well as for legitimizing policies. Using an ethnographic analysis carried out in a central Madrid neighbourhood, I will analyze how the experience of insecurity of one sector of the residents, which is shaped in the framework of the general discourse of citizen insecurity, is, however, rooted in a specific life trajectory that indicates socio-cultural and economic keys that have little to do with the causes of insecurity that the hegemonic discourse continually indicates. More generally, I hope to show, with this case study, how anthropological analyses can contribute to the evaluation of public urban policies. |
| Publisher | Maryland Institute of Research (MIR) |
| Date | 2013-07-24 |
| Source | 2167-9045 |
| Rights | This is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. |