Formas políticas peri-urbanas

de la exclusión a la participación y reivindicación en Bolivia

Abstract

This essay explores the production of peri-urban participatory
practices in the city of Cochabamba, Bolivia. We seek to identify the
distinctive and productive elements of local forms of social and
political organization, constructed both in spite of and in the context
of the city’s exclusions. We begin by examining the historical and
institutional frameworks that have created a discriminated and
excluded area of the city. We then consider the formation of
organizational relations in this context, identifying everyday
participatory practices of inhabitants of two neighborhoods in the
peripheries of the city. We highlight, in particular, those local
practices that point towards alternatives to two fundamental elements
of liberal citizenship: its enduring division between the private and
the public, and its individualization of socio-political claims. Finally,
we explore the importance of peri-urban practices and logics in the
current socio-political panorama of the country.