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State, Development, and Everyday Politics at the Urban Margins: Rethinking Participation in Lisbon

Principal researcher: Gianpiero Iacovelli

Research group: Livelihoods, Politics and Inequalities


Keywords

Development policies | Urban marginality | State-society relations | Local governance

Funding Institution

Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia

State

Open

Start date

01-09-2023

End date

31-08-2027

Reference

2023.01466.BD


Abstract

This research will investigate how participatory development policies affect the everyday politics of a deprived neighbourhood and former slum area in Lisbon (Beato civil parish). I will study the relationship between the state and civil society, analysing how urban communities adopt, implement, contest, and negotiate development policies. The project will consider how different state development programs produced shifts in residents’ collective organisation and local governance over time — from 1970s participatory housing construction programs to current participatory budgeting schemes — questioning their supposed capability to bring empowerment and democratisation in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. To pursue this goal, I will conduct an ethnographic investigation of the network of residents’ associations, cooperatives and local development organisations that are (and were) active in the neighbourhood, as they constitute the main actors involved in mediating people’s agency with the state institutions, implementing development projects and shaping local governance practices. This research will engage with and expand current debates in urban anthropology and political anthropology, offering new insights into the study of state-society relations, urban marginalisation, development policies, grassroots organisation, and activism.

Team

Full members

Patrícia Alves de Matos

Simone Tulumello (coorientador, ICS-UL)