Blogs
Introducing Corona Governance in Urban Margins: Researching Pandemic Politics and Contested Sovereignty in World Cities
Zaki Arrobi, Tessa Diphoorn, Sterre Gilsing, Marie-Louise Glebbeek,
Murtala Ibrahim, Hans de Kruijf, Kees Koonings[1], Martijn Oosterbaan,
Wil Pansters, Nikkie Wiegink
In Rio de Janeiro, while the government has largely denied the severity of the pandemic, various criminal groups that control hundreds of favelas have introduced preventive measures, such as curfew, partial lockdown, and basic health care, to mitigate the pandemic.[2] In contrast, Kenyan police officers have upheld the imposed curfew through brutal policing tactics, thereby exacerbating the reputation of the state police as a fearful and mistrusted state agent that does not provide security for the inhabitants of Nairobi’s ghettos. These are two examples that illustrate how various state and non-state actors have taken up (new) governance roles during the Covid-19 crisis in urban margins across the globe.
In June 2020 the Department of Anthropology at Utrecht University started a collaborative research project to explore how urban governance is reconfigured by the Covid-19 pandemic in so-called global ‘urban margins’. We are interested in understanding how these reconfigurations affect responses to the pandemic by public agencies, non-state authoritative actors, and subaltern (‘poor’, ‘excluded’) urban communities. This project is funded by the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences of Utrecht University and based within the research programme Sovereignty and Social Contestation, wherein we examine competing actors and mechanisms of sovereign power at different levels and in diverse domains of human life.
Why focus on “urban margins”?
We focus on cities as urban spaces that have acted as key nodes for the unfolding of the Covid-19 pandemic and hence for understanding its social impact and strategies for containment. As illustrated in a recent issue of City and Society, it is to be expected that Covid-19 will above all affect the ‘urban margins’ of so-called megacities that are primarily, but not exclusively, located in the Global South.[3]
Such urban margins are shaped by complex and unstable state and non-state governance. These margins display ‘hybrid’ (Jaffe 2013) and ‘contested’ sovereignties that collaborate and compete over authority as portrayed by various members of our research programme (Diphoorn 2016; Glebbeek and Koonings 2016; Oosterbaan and Pansters 2015). City dwellers thus have to navigate uncertain, informal, and shifting forms of domination and control and we imagine that these circumstances have been and currently are magnified by the Covid-19 pandemic. We hypothesize that these so-called micro-political responses to the pandemic will transform patterns of rule and order in the middle and long run.
We seek to document and compare such micro-political responses and their implications in nine cities: Georgetown (Guyana), Guadalajara (Mexico), Guatemala City (Guatemala), Lagos and Jos (Nigeria), Maputo (Mozambique), Nairobi (Kenya), Jakarta and Jogjakarta (Indonesia) and Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). We chose these cities based on the expertise of our research and current research projects.
Our research is guided by three main questions:
- How do state, non-state, and community-based authoritative actors in selected urban margins experience and act upon the Covid-19 pandemic?
- How do these experiences and practises shape public health interventions and collective coping strategies aimed at Covid-19?
- How are these interventions and practises reconfiguring power relations and legitimation of rule and order in urban margins?
We aim to address these questions with a hybrid form of ethnography. Ethnographic fieldwork in the selected cities is not possible for the Utrecht-based team members due to travel restrictions. Therefore, we innovatively combine the use of digital sources, channels and modes of interaction, with collaborations with researchers and research institutes in the selected cities. Where possible, those researchers will conduct fieldwork.
First results and further questions
A first quick-scan of the case studies shows the expected variety of pandemic experiences and responses, as well as a wide number of non-state actors involved in implementing and/or policing the preventive measures in urban margins. These actors include community organizations, vigilantes, criminal gangs and cartels, or religious groups, and they are involved in the implementation and policing of distancing rules, lockdowns, testing, and are at times also providing basic goods and services.
We are interested in analysing their relations with the state: are these actors acting in so-called “governance voids” left by the limited capacity of the state? Or are they acting as state proxies? These questions touch upon existing core debates in studies on urban violence and criminal violence, where we can identify complex dynamics between the legal state, non-state (coercive) actors, and grass roots community groups.
We are interested in uncovering to what extent the Covid-19 pandemic has impacted these complex dynamics. In some of our case studies, the policing of the urban margins in corona times appears as a key political concern. In others, the pandemic response has become the locus of political struggles on national and local levels. Politicization and securitization of corona measures seem to surface as potential cross-cutting patterns.
Another set of questions relates to the social, political, and cultural impact of the pandemic at various levels. What are the meaning and implications of violence by community residents directed at the ‘Covid-19 sick’ and health workers? How do livelihood imperatives influence pandemic-related prevention measures in urban areas where lockdown measures are dire? How do inhabitants navigate between social distancing measures and maintaining a livelihood, especially in the already fragile informal sector?
Finally, we also expect to address various forms of political and cultural meaning making of the corona pandemic. Which credible actors will respond to or maybe also downplay the corona crisis? What will be the impact of distrust and disbelief among residents of urban margins? How is this shaped by news media, local actors, and social media? How do community groups and activist movements act to protect residents and to pressure the state and non-state groups? And how will urban and national politicians mobilize – or exclude – urban margins?
More to come
As our project unfolds, we expect to uncover these themes and explore them comparatively. We posit that shifts in relations of power and legitimation of rule in these urban areas will (re-)shape pandemic-related governance, coping strategies, urban security, and overall urban resilience. Essentially, we aspire to better understand how hybrid governance structures and practices change during times of crisis.
Throughout the next few months, we will publish the results of the project on this website. We will kick off with regular blogs wherein various members will present their (preliminary) research findings. In March 2021, we will discuss our findings in a webinar. We invite you to read along and let us know if you have any comments or suggestions!
References
Diphoorn, T. (2016) Twilight Policing: Private Security and Violence in Urban South Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Glebbeek, M. and K. Koonings (2016) Between Morro and Asfalto: Violence, Insecurity and Socio-spatial Segregation in Latin American Cities. Habitat International 54(1), pp. 3-9.
Jaffe, R. (2013) The hybrid state: Crime and citizenship in urban Jamaica. American Ethnologist 40, pp. 734-748.
Oosterbaan, M. and W. Pansters (2015) Introduction: Sovereignty and Social Contestation – Between Violence and Alternative Sociocultural Orders. Conflict and Society 1, p.125-128 (Special Section: Sovereignty)
[1] For correspondence please contact Kees Koonings at c.g.koonings@uu.nl
[2] See https://wikifavelas.com.br/index.php?title=Not%C3%ADcias_sobre_Coronav%C3%ADrus_nas_Favelas
[3] See two examples of early-pandemic alerts: https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-in-slums-helpers-left-high-and-dry-in-infection-hot-spots/a-53146529; https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/opinion/coronavirus-slums.html (referring to the ‘neglect’ of the billion slum dwellers by ‘governing elites’).