The Right to the City

Popular Contention in Contemporary Buenos Aires

Gabriela Ippolito-O'Donnell

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2011
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Print ISBN:
  9780268031794
  9780268210120
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• eBook ISBN:
  9780268082659
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Based on extensive, original fieldwork, as well as new survey data, The Right to the City contributes to the study of democratization by focusing on the dilemmas and opportunities of popular contention in the city of Buenos Aires. It also offers an excellent overview of the history of social mobilization in Argentina. Gabriela Ippolito-O'Donnell's main assertion in this study is that through various channels of collective action and associational activities, as well as by voting, the urban popular sector is a fundamental actor in the pursuit of the expansion and consolidation of citizenship rights. Using both qualitative analysis and quantitative data, Ippolito-O'Donnell explores what factors—economic, politico-institutional, organizational, and subjective—account for the emergence in the 1980s, and collapse in the 1990s, of a wave of grassroots popular organizations in Villa Lugano, a poor neighborhood located in the south of Buenos Aires. She identifies factors crucial for explaining the organizational weakness and concomitant cyclical patterns of collective action by the urban poor, as well as the consequences for alleviating poverty and inequality in this newly democratized nation.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Series page
• Title page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• List of Graphs
• List of Maps
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I. Politics in Space
• Part II. The Landscape of Contention
• Part III. Dynamics of Contention
• Part IV. The Politics of Signification
• Appendix A. Survey Demographics
• Appendix B. Survey Questionnaire
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index