Transnational connections and socio-spatial configurations in the (re) production of inequalities in Latin American cities

RAMIRO SEGURA

Manchester

Congreso; 17th World Congress of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences; 2013

IUAES. Manchester University.

The paper summarizes results of the postdoctoral research project conducted in the framework of the Network for the Study of Interdependent Inequalities based on the Frei Universität Berlin. The city is an ideal place to reflect on the theoretical debates on global entanglements and social inequalities. The starting point is to recognize the city as an open system node in a network of flows and connections of multiple scales and variables that impact on the "socio-spatial configuration" of cities, (re) produce inequalities. The city as a setting where actors are intertwined, processes and different scales, and the city as the product of these entanglements that are changing dramatically in many cases, the extent, composition and dynamics of urban space transformations referred with terms as diverse as duality, fragmentation, segregation, marginalization and even exclusion. In the specific case of Latin America since the mid 1970's certainly contradictory and ambivalent processes such as globalization, neoliberalism and democratization, each with its own temporalities and significant changes in each country, are changing both the place of Cities in society and socio-spatial configurations of each of the cities. Through a comparative perspective, the article analyzes the links between transnational connections and socio-spatial configurations in the processes of production and reproduction of Inequality in Latin American cities since the mid 1970's to present, from the analysis of available research on the subject in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico.