Bodies holding up communities: Uncaring infrastructures in Santiago, Chile and beyond
The Many Urbanisms of the Global South: Policy Nuances and Particularities
September 28, 2023
10:00 AM - 11:30 AM
Celebrating 50 years of excellence, the Department of Urban Planning and Policy (UPP) at the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs (CUPPA) is excited to organize a seminar series featuring cutting-edge, campus wide urban scholarship and research on the Global South. The full program for this series is available here.
This research explores the role of bodies, housing, and mobility as infrastructures of care for low-income women living in peripheral neighborhoods in Santiago, Chile. Drawing from feminist political economists and urbanists, we describe the way that bodies act as infrastructures, often compensating for inadequate built and social environments. Even as the caring of these women sustains life, livelihoods, and communities, they suffer slow infrastructural violence amplified by immobility, isolation, and insufficient support. This reinforces and occurs within a broader context of gendered inequality and gendered violence, in a city where socioeconomic segregation is very pronounced. While there are geographic particularities to this case, the lack of infrastructures of care persists in cities and communities across the global North and South. We provide policy recommendations oriented toward transforming material and social urban infrastructures, simultaneously addressing gendered and intersectional power relations.
Date posted
Sep 1, 2023
Date updated
Sep 7, 2023
Speakers
