Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Decolonizing Ecology (Contested urban territories: Ethnographic concept building for a more global urban theory)
Reporting period: 2021-10-04 to 2023-10-03
Different practices and ecological imaginaries at play in urban contexts could signal different routes for a more sustainable development. The question is how people relate to urban nature. The EU-funded Decolonizing Ecology project answers this question. Building on Latin America-based scholarship, it reframes these types of socio-environmental struggles as urban contestations. The emphasis is on an intersectional dimension of indigeneity, race and gender, to understand these multiple-scaled processes. Specifically, the project explores and shed light on the practices that indigenous urban movements mobilise to defend their right to territory. With the conceptualization of “urban extractivism”, the project offers an adequate identification and interdisciplinary analysis of interrelated urban environmental and social challenges. These insights are useful to foster social learning processes, understood as increasingly reflexive interventions by indigenous actors with an impact on the structuring of local urban society. It improves our understanding about how diverse urban worlds challenge and inform concepts and urban studies more widely.
1. Project website
https://www.lse.ac.uk/geography-and-environment/research/decolonising-ecology-contested-urban-territories-in-mexico-city-and-la-pazel-alto(opens in new window)
2. Publications
PDFs are replaced and the funding information is included in the repository of LSE
Incorporation of urban differences in Tokyo, Mexico City, and Los Angeles
https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/117517/(opens in new window)
Peripheralization through mass housing urbanization in Hong Kong, Mexico City, and Paris
https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/118065/(opens in new window)
1. Project website
https://www.lse.ac.uk/geography-and-environment/research/decolonising-ecology-contested-urban-territories-in-mexico-city-and-la-pazel-alto(opens in new window)
2. Publications
PDFs are replaced and the funding information is included in the repository of LSE
Incorporation of urban differences in Tokyo, Mexico City, and Los Angeles
https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/117517/(opens in new window)
Peripheralization through mass housing urbanization in Hong Kong, Mexico City, and Paris
https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/118065/(opens in new window)
Empirically, the research builds on a systematic comparative study of 4 different urbanized indigenous villages in Mexico City (Mexico) – a megalopolis marked with indigenous urban movements and rapid urbanisation. Multiple dissemination activities were conducted during the MSCA fellowship. The researcher has published a total of 4 peer-reviewed articles and contributed 4 chapters to edited volumes. Moreover, they were co-editing a book on comparative urbanism published in October 2023 with Birkhäuser. Also, they have 2 articles in preparation to be published in high-ranking journals. Additionally, they were invited to give keynotes, published a newspaper article, attended conferences and launched a podcast series.
The work performed during the fellowship period is structured in different phases including preparation, field work and dissemination. In the preparation phase the researcher carried out desktop research, focusing on an online research on the representation of the groups, based on social media and literature. During this first period of field research, the researcher alternated travel to the different sites in the larger metropolitan region of Mexico City on several occasions. The researcher applied methods such as mobile ethnography including explorative walks and mobilized oral history interviews with key interlocutors. A second period of field research in Mexico took place later in the same year. The methods used in this phase included collaborative and comparative mapping workshops. The workshops were framed with local public events such as invited talks and cultural performances. These workshops served for data collection, data analysis and preparing the writing phase. To better share the results with the participating groups, a podcast was suggested and eventually produced together with local collaborators.
The work performed during the fellowship period is structured in different phases including preparation, field work and dissemination. In the preparation phase the researcher carried out desktop research, focusing on an online research on the representation of the groups, based on social media and literature. During this first period of field research, the researcher alternated travel to the different sites in the larger metropolitan region of Mexico City on several occasions. The researcher applied methods such as mobile ethnography including explorative walks and mobilized oral history interviews with key interlocutors. A second period of field research in Mexico took place later in the same year. The methods used in this phase included collaborative and comparative mapping workshops. The workshops were framed with local public events such as invited talks and cultural performances. These workshops served for data collection, data analysis and preparing the writing phase. To better share the results with the participating groups, a podcast was suggested and eventually produced together with local collaborators.
This research demonstrates novel strategies to compare different ecological and urban understandings. By advancing an interdisciplinary approach to analyse environmental conflicts in cities, the project contributes to knowledge on urban development and provide a sound base to put forward suitable policy instruments to work towards sustainable cities and communities.