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Short Abstract
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Based on ethnographic research conducted in Argentina, Brazil, India and South Africa, the panel explores how neighborhoods happen to be, their elusive nature, performative dimension, moral weight, political strength and affective power in shaping the contemporary.
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Long Abstract
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The neighbourhood as a category has been drawn on ambiguously, primarily as a marker to address zones of alterity where "the other", lives in conditions of scarcity: lack of education, sanitation, high levels of violence etc. In the same grain, neighbourhood, however paradoxical it might sound, appears as well as a panacea for all ailments: a site of hospitality, vicinity, coalition, and solidarity. In both senses, neighborhood has become a term whose meaning precedes its elucidation, embedded in a paradigm of 'social problems' seen as rooted in specific neighbourhoods. The nature of neighbourhoods is volatile and perennial, which enhances continuous political and theoretical challenges in understanding ontological marginalities and epistemological uncertainties.
In this panel, we do not take neighbourhoods as default places or ones othered through the category of the social problem but as ones that are of critical influence in people's everyday life. Based on ethnographic research conducted in Argentina, Brazil, India and South Africa, the panel explores how neighborhoods happen to be, their elusive nature, performative dimension, moral weight, political strength and affective power in shaping the contemporary.
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