Positioning Latin America’s Urban Margins: Where and how does Latin America live?

TY - CHAP

T1 - Positioning Latin America’s Urban Margins

T2 - Where and how does Latin America live?

AU - Roman-Velazquez, Patria

AU - Garcia Vargas, Alejandra

AU - Retis, Jessica

PY - 2024/10/1

Y1 - 2024/10/1

N2 - Where does Latin America live? How are Latin America’s urban margins theorised and experienced? What does it mean to be placed at the margins, both physically and emotionally? What is the relationship between borders, migration, periphery, and senses of the city in a highly deterritorialized and politicised social experience? We argue that Latin American spaces are not confined to the geographical boundaries that define the geopolitical region and that the construction of Latin American diasporic spaces is equally important in this dialogue about Latin America’s urban margins. We challenge academic discourses that privilege metropolitan and capital cities in the production of knowledge about Latin American cities. We then hint towards the formation of subjectivities by proposing an approach that considers the relationship between cultural practices and emotions in the production of meanings about cities. We draw on our experience of working across Latin American urban margins in different geo-political territories (London, UK; Arizona, USA; and Jujuy, Argentina) and from a communication studies perspective that is highly interdisciplinary to argue that there is a need to deconstruct the traditional notion of places to produce different knowledges of and about Latin American urban communication studies, one that is more inclusive of these other cities: the non-capital, non-metropolitan, and diasporic cities. As such, this chapter is a theoretical provocation and reflection based on our experiences of doing research about, with and in Latin America’s urban margins.

AB - Where does Latin America live? How are Latin America’s urban margins theorised and experienced? What does it mean to be placed at the margins, both physically and emotionally? What is the relationship between borders, migration, periphery, and senses of the city in a highly deterritorialized and politicised social experience? We argue that Latin American spaces are not confined to the geographical boundaries that define the geopolitical region and that the construction of Latin American diasporic spaces is equally important in this dialogue about Latin America’s urban margins. We challenge academic discourses that privilege metropolitan and capital cities in the production of knowledge about Latin American cities. We then hint towards the formation of subjectivities by proposing an approach that considers the relationship between cultural practices and emotions in the production of meanings about cities. We draw on our experience of working across Latin American urban margins in different geo-political territories (London, UK; Arizona, USA; and Jujuy, Argentina) and from a communication studies perspective that is highly interdisciplinary to argue that there is a need to deconstruct the traditional notion of places to produce different knowledges of and about Latin American urban communication studies, one that is more inclusive of these other cities: the non-capital, non-metropolitan, and diasporic cities. As such, this chapter is a theoretical provocation and reflection based on our experiences of doing research about, with and in Latin America’s urban margins.

KW - Latin Americas Urban Margins

KW - Latin Urbanism

KW - Latin London

UR - https://doi.org/10.3167/9781805396956

U2 - 10.3167/9781805396956

DO - 10.3167/9781805396956

M3 - Chapter

SN - 978-1-80539-695-6

SP - 49

BT - Subjectivity at Latin America’s Urban Margins

A2 - Kopper, Moises

A2 - Richmond, Matthew

PB - Berghahn Books

CY - New York and Oxford

ER -