Abstract
This final chapter and conclusion develops the idea of ‘transgressive citizenship’, understood as the way the housing movements shape their relationship with the state through their acts of civil disobedience, combined with a politics of rights. The chapter asserts the importance of text-based law (the Constitution and City Statute in particular) in the construction of urban citizenship, highlighting the emancipatory potential of the law for urban social movements. The chapter then returns to the discussions of Lefebvre and, particularly, the utopian aspects of the right to the city, positing his utopianism as social and political criticism—as a way of critiquing dominant assumptions on the nature of urban society and asserting other possible urban worlds. In this vein, the housing movements’ acts of transgressive citizenship can be seen to bridge the divide between pragmatic responses to violations of rights in the city and the search for alternative futures.
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- 1.
- 2.
Interview with Kelly, 29.05.07.
- 3.
Interview with Lourdes, 30.06.07.
- 4.
The expression Aos meus amigos, tudo. Aos meus inimigos, a lei (translation in main text) is attributed by O’Donnell (1999) to Getulio Vargas.
- 5.
Interview with Ivana, 01.06.07.
- 6.
Hohfeld categorized rights as either claim rights or liberty rights. Each of these categories was further divided into positive and negative categories (Jones 2005).
- 7.
During the Suplicy era, the UMM ‘crossed the line’ but did not ‘transgress’ and was therefore in danger of being incorporated into the municipal government machinery.
- 8.
Interview with Tristana, 26.03.07.
- 9.
Interviews with Ivana, 01.06.07; Diogo, 12.06.07; and Gaetano, 08.06.07.
- 10.
UMM meeting, 05.07.07.
- 11.
Interview with Anderson, 26.06.07.
- 12.
From E. Pieterse (2008), City Futures: Confronting the Crisis of Urban Development. London, New York: Zed.
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Earle, L. (2017). Transgressive Citizenship. In: Transgressive Citizenship and the Struggle for Social Justice. Studies of the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51400-0_8
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