Hybrid insurgent citizenship: intertwined pathways to urban equality in Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

This paper contributes to critical and Southern urban studies by discussing how the notion of hybridity is useful to understand contemporary modes of politics rooted in equality pursuits and crafted by peripheral subjects. It analyses the birth, discourses and tactics of three grassroots groups in Rocinha, an immense peripheral settlement in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to show how modern insurgent claims – based on material urban rights – are intertwined with other grammars of justice, such as the politics of intersectional difference, critical pedagogies, solidarity and care. These cases suggest that contemporary insurgency builds on rights-based citizenship claims to create unique pathways that somehow articulate the universality and relationality of justice. I suggest that hybrid insurgent citizenship operates like a braid in which different strategies are uniquely and interdependently linked over time. Whilst in Rocinha the central thread is insurgency, the same logics could apply to other context-situated political traditions.

Normative future visioning: a critical pedagogy for transformative adaptation

“…Recent accounts include, for instance, the work of Allen et al (2022), which explored the strategies of social and housing movements in the global south, and identified different practices that were geared towards transformation: weaving (connecting different knowledges, and past with future), sentipensar (connecting rationality and emotions in an non-hierarchical way), emancipating (intertwined with action -thinking/crafting new pathways into the future), mobilising (connecting intersectional and intergenerational struggles through action) and reverberating (amplifying discourses to reach new audiences and increase impact). Meanwhile, Comelli (2022) and Ortiz and Millan (2022) have also emphasised the role of critical urban pedagogies for the building of local solidarity practices and urban citizenship performances in peripheral urban areas, all oriented towards action and change and all led by emancipated (critical, reflexive) marginalised urban actors.…”