ICS Seminar Series - Maria Luisa

Date: Thursday 3 December 2015
Time: 11.30am - 1pm
Venue: EA.G.38, Western Sydney University, Parramatta South campus

María Luisa Méndez

Neighbourhoods as Arenas of Conflict in the Neoliberal City: Practices of Boundary Making Between "Us" and "Them"

Abstract

This paper is concerned with processes of place making (Benson, 2014) and belonging among middle class residents in Santiago de Chile, and particularly focuses on the ways in which neighbourhood groups seek to receive heritage status for their areas of residence, as a way to contest and impede the demolition of houses in order to build high-rise buildings. I particularly focus on the tensions inherent in reconciling a critical view of neoliberal residential politics with a securing of their individual or family class position. I bring together debates and evidence about social and spatial boundary making with analysis of strategies of reproduction of class position. The paper focuses on intra-class symbolic boundaries in place making or neighbourhood making, and the local politics and practices involved, by addressing the relationship of the middle classes to territory and their place in the contemporary city (Andreotti, Le Galès and Moreno-Fuentes, 2014; Bacqué et al, 2015; Bridge, Butler and Lees, 2012; Brown-Saracino, 2009; Butler and Robson, 2003; Low, 2013; Savage, Bagnall and Longhurst, 2005; Zukin, 2010). I discuss data obtained from research in five inner-city urban Santiago neighbourhoods that had been, or were in the process of being declared "heritage neighborhoods" by Chile's Council for National Monuments (CMN, in the Spanish acronym). The research blends data drawn from a mix of sources: in depth interviews, non-participant observation, content analysis of CMN legal texts, real estate advertisements, websites of organisations of local residents, and copies of the files prepared by some neighbourhood groups for submission to the CMN in order to seek heritage status.

Biography

María Luisa Méndez is an Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Sociology at the Universidad Diego Portales, having been awarded her doctorate at the University of Manchester. She is Principal Investigator at the Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies, COES. Her research focuses on the study of the middle classes in Latin America from the perspective of urban and cultural sociology, and particularly explores processes of inequality reproduction and social conflict. Following these topics, she has published in various national and international journals such as The Sociological Review, Housing, Theory and Society, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research and the Cepal Review.