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