Miscellaneous Documents by Frank Müller
Papers by Frank Müller
International sociology : journal of the International Sociological Association, 2017
Urban informality is typically ascribed to the urban poor in cities of the Global South. Drawing ... more Urban informality is typically ascribed to the urban poor in cities of the Global South. Drawing on Judith Butler's concept of performativity and taking the case of Rio de Janeiro in the context of the 2016 Olympic Games, this article conceptualizes informality as a signifier and a procedural, relational category. Specifically, it shows how different class actors have employed the signifier informality (1) to legitimize the confinement of marginalized populations; (2) to justify the organized efforts of the upper middle class to protect their 'self-enclosed' gated communities; and (3) to warrant the formation of opposition and alliances between inhabitants, activists, and researchers on the edges of the urban order. This article offers new perspectives to better understand the relationship between informality and confinement by examining the active role that inhabitants of marginalized settlements assume in the Olympic City.
Critical Reviews on Latin American Research - CROLAR, Nov 29, 2016
Journal of Illicit Economies and Development, 2022
Latin America's 'housing crisis' affects 28 million lower-income households. In many Latin Americ... more Latin America's 'housing crisis' affects 28 million lower-income households. In many Latin American countries, governments have developed housing policies to provide access to basic standard dwelling and to offer a route towards legal tenure at an affordable cost. Yet, they have failed to address violence and crime that beneficiaries are often exposed to. I argue that housing policies must take stronger efforts in accounting for urban security. To sustain that argument, I will trace Brazil's attempts to provide a 'secure future for beneficiaries by providing equal access for all to physical and social infrastructure and basic services, as well as adequate and affordable housing' (UN Habitat 2017: 7). I refer to such policy directive as an incentive for national governments to pursue housing security. I primarily draw from academic literature on housing policies in Latin America, evaluations of Brazil's contemporary housing program, and media outlets, and use parts of my own interviews with public administrators and beneficiaries of the housing program. Designing routes towards housing security, first and foremost by reinforcing the constitutionally granted right to housing along with guaranteeing the social function of property, must be central concerns of Brazil's next federal government.
Journal of Illicit Economies and Development, 2022
Provoked by Charles Tilly's analogy of state-making as organized crime (1985), this issue aims at... more Provoked by Charles Tilly's analogy of state-making as organized crime (1985), this issue aims at better understanding the material conditions of illicit city-making-that is, of urbanization and criminal governance, as well as the criminalizing discourses and strategies that underpin them. In opposition to the liberalist paradigm of states vs. illegitimate enemies, Tilly proposed to see the dynamics of state-making (and the negotiation of protection and extraction involved therein) as akin to the dynamics of organized crime. After all, both seek to establish territorial sovereignty based on their capacity to monopolize violence. More importantly, this analogy illuminates the way in which states can enact their protection rackets without a pre-established legitimate authority. Bringing this analogy to the urban realm-seeing city-making as continuously imbricated in attempts to foster the legitimacy of heterogeneously authored protection rackets-this special issue elicits the practices, flows, extraction, and actors involved in illicit city-making, as well as the processes that deem them so.
CROLAR, 2021
How has the opposition between “civilized” urbanity and “barbaric” rurality conditioned future im... more How has the opposition between “civilized” urbanity and “barbaric” rurality conditioned future imaginaries in Latin America? What are the historical links between urbanization and attempts to establish social and spatial order during colonization, after independence, and in other political conjunctures? In the following conversation, anthropologist Austin Zeiderman reviews historical perspectives on Latin American cities with a focus on the future. With an interest in the genealogy of urban imaginaries, he sheds light on contemporary preoccupations with future uncertainty and the specific role that security plays therein. Ever since the conquistadors set foot on the continent, he argues, the future has exerted affective power via hopes, threats, and visions of both utopian and dystopian possibilities.
ephemera - theory & politics in organization, 2021
This paper conceptualizes dwelling as an analytical lens to study the effects of combined human-m... more This paper conceptualizes dwelling as an analytical lens to study the effects of combined human-made and environmental threats on the governing of peripheral urbanization. I call this grounded and phenomenological-analytical approach to dwelling dwelling in limbo to highlight the improvised and always uncertain nature of low-income populations’ forms of residence. As such, dwelling will be explored as a temporal, political, and more-than-human process: as residents’ exposure to, endurance while, and ways of navigating towards urbanization. Combining three data sources – semi-structured interviews with residents, politicians, state attorneys; own observations/ fieldwork notes, and local media reports – the paper situates this approach in the northern periphery of Rio de Janeiro. I present cases of once promised, yet suspended resettlement and highlight the role of organized criminal actors in the partial implementation of the Project Iguaçu – a disaster prevention program financed by Brazil’s Federal Growth Acceleration Programme (PAC). The paper identifies such dwelling in limbo, that is, residents’ exposure to criminal actors’ dominion, enduring (non)resettlement, and navigating amidst uncertainty, to illustrate the effects of standby urbanization. Standby urbanization, I argue, is characterized by an active passivity of marginalized residents: To secure future dwelling, low-income populations are forced into supporting structures that perpetuate their marginality. In other words, dwelling in limbo is not an accidental side-effect of urbanization, but a form of political violence inherent to the governing of urban peripheries.
Latin American Perspectives, 2019
The transnational (re)making of contemporary urban pacification practices, discourses, and techno... more The transnational (re)making of contemporary urban pacification practices, discourses, and technologies between Brazil and Israel is underpinned by coercive entanglements. The Israeli experience with the occupation of the Palestinian territories has brought the Israel Defense Forces and the country's private security industry international recognition for their urban warfare skills and related security technologies; Brazil has recently gained international recognition for urban pacification efforts that emphasize the country's military's ability to combine "hard" and "soft" skills, thereby foregrounding the nexus of military and humanitarian forms of engagement on urban battlefields. Empirical findings framed by critical scholarship on pacification demonstrate how recent shifts in the military and diplomatic relations between the two countries seek to symbolically capitalize on their own and each other's urban warfare experiences to promote themselves as security experts capable of addressing a range of future urban threat scenarios-from urban warfare to antigang and antiriot policing and peacekeeping. A reorganização transnacional das práticas, discursos e tecnologias de urbanização con-temporânea entre Brasil e Israel são movidas por envolvimento coercitivo. A experiência israelense de ocupação dos territórios palestinos trouxe prestígio internacional às Forças de Defesa Israelense, bem como à indústria de segurança particular do país, em virtude de tec-nologia de combate urbano. Brasil recentemente alcançou reconhecimento internacional pelos esforços de pacificação urbana, que enfatizam a habilidade das forças armadas do país em combinar "soft and hard skills", criando assim um nexo de interação militar e humanitário no campo de batalha urbano. Observações produzidas em moldura crítica acadêmica sobre pacificação demonstram de que modo mudanças recentes nas relações diplomática e militar dos dois países visam capitalizar simbolicamente as experiências respectivas para promoverem a si mesmos como especialistas em segurança capazes de tratar uma variedade de cenários urbanos de risco-desde a guerra urbana contra gangs até o policiamento de manifestações.
European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 2019
In urban Latin America social housing developments have become a strategy to (re)centre territori... more In urban Latin America social housing developments have become a strategy to (re)centre territorial sovereignty with the state, by relocating low-income populations from informal settlements controlled by organized criminal groups. Yet criminal groups wield significant influence in new social housing developments, and states' monopoly on violence continues to be contested. While studies of urban housing in the region have largely disregarded matters of urban security, research on urban security has ignored houses as material agents. Bridging studies of housing and studies of urban security, I promote a broad understanding of security that conceives the cumulative effect of diverse threats to residents' livelihoods. By doing so, I further develop a material approach to state sovereignty in which a house operates both as a material referent and as an affective "object of desire" (Berlant, 2011) in urban security politics. By promising a secure home, social housing developments materialize the state's responsibility to protect its citizens. However, the deficient construction and inadequate design of many new homes expose residents to climatic, health and crime-related threats. I conclude by outlining three interrelated sets of question that arise from conceiving houses as politicized materiality. I base my argument on an ethnographic case study of a social housing development in peripheral Medellín. Keywords: Crime, social housing, sovereignty , state, Medellín. Resumen: Asegurando el hogar: crimen, soberanía estatal y vivienda social en Medellín En la América Latina urbana, las urbanizaciones de vivienda social se han convertido en una estrategia para (re)centrar la soberanía territorial en el Estado, reubicando poblaciones de bajos ingresos en asentamientos informales controlados por grupos criminales organizados. Estos grupos criminales ejercen una gran influencia en las nuevas obras de viviendas socia-les y se sigue cuestionando el monopolio de violencia de los estados. Mientras los estudios de vivienda urbana en la región han descuidado en gran medida los asuntos de seguridad urbana, las investigaciones sobre seguridad urbana han ignorado la vivienda como agente material. Uniendo los estudios de vivienda y seguridad urbana, promuevo una comprensión amplia de la seguridad que concibe el efecto acumulativo de diversas amenazas al medio de vida de los residentes, desarrollando así un enfoque material de la soberanía estatal en el que la vivienda funciona como referente material y "objeto de deseo" afectivo (Berlant, 2011) en Please download full-text at: https://www.erlacs.org/ articles/abstract/10387/
Global Crime, 2018
This article assesses the nexus of militarised humanitarian work, governance and violence in the ... more This article assesses the nexus of militarised humanitarian work, governance and violence in the context of the ‘Mission des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation en Haïti’ (MINUSTAH). It draws on empirical fieldwork in Port-au-Prince and Rio de Janeiro. Brazil’s leading role in this UN mission reinforces the country’s ambitions as an emergent economic and political power on a global stage. Brazilian military and civilian actors base their claim of being uniquely qualified for urban ‘pacification’ efforts on a supposedly deeper cultural sensitivity which they assert to have developed in everyday civil–military encounters in the criminalised peripheries of Brazilian cities. By analysing the conflicting narratives in which the military, police and citizens negotiate these encounters, we argue that they allow for a revealing of the contested and often violent forms in which peace enforcement occurs.
Latin American Perspectives, 2019
The transnational (re)making of contemporary urban pacification practices, discourses, and techno... more The transnational (re)making of contemporary urban pacification practices, discourses, and technologies between Brazil and Israel is underpinned by coercive entanglements. The Israeli experience with the occupation of the Palestinian territories has brought the Israel Defense Forces and the country’s private security industry international recognition for their urban warfare skills and related security technologies; Brazil has recently gained international recognition for urban pacification efforts that emphasize the country’s military’s ability to combine “hard” and “soft” skills, thereby foregrounding the nexus of military and humanitarian forms of engagement on urban battlefields. Empirical findings framed by critical scholarship on pacification demonstrate how recent shifts in the military and diplomatic relations between the two countries seek to symbolically capitalize on their own and each other’s urban warfare experiences to promote themselves as security experts capable of addressing a range of future urban threat scenarios—from urban warfare to antigang and antiriot policing and peacekeeping.
Latin American Perspectives, 2016
“Urban informality” is a signifier that is disputed by real estate developers, politicians, and r... more “Urban informality” is a signifier that is disputed by real estate developers, politicians, and residents in undertaking strategies of social distinction and gaining particular political and economic benefits. Research in the western periphery of Mexico City distinguishes three cases of such use of informality. First, real estate developers employ informality as a threat to valorize and justify an enclosed “First World” lifestyle in gated communities. Second, informality motivates homeowners’ associations to take on a neighborhood-defending and state-monitoring role. Third, besides its function in reconstituting class frontiers, it serves as a referent for broader social mobilization against the perceived informality of the local elite. By facilitating social distinction, informality continues to marginalize communities as it influences planning decisions and access to land in urban Latin America.
La “informalidad urbana” es un significante que es cuestionado por las empresas de bienes raíces, los políticos y los residentes cuando se involucran en estrategias de distinción social para obtener determinados beneficios políticos y económicos. Nuestra investigación en la periferia occidental de la Ciudad de México establece tres casos de ese uso de la informalidad. Primero, las empresas inmobiliarias emplean la informalidad como una amenaza para valorizar y justificar un estilo de vida del mundo desarrollado en comunidades con acceso controlado. Segundo, la informalidad mueve a las asociaciones de dueños de casa a asumir el papel de defensores del vecindario y la función de vigilancia del estado. Tercero, además de reconstituir las fronteras de clase, también sirve como un referente para una movilidad social más amplia en contra de la presunta informalidad de la élite local. Al facilitar la distinción social, la informalidad continúa marginalizando comunidades ya que sigue influyendo en las decisiones sobre la planificación y el acceso a la tierra en el espacio urbano de América Latina.
International Sociology, 2017
Urban informality is typically ascribed to the urban poor in cities of the Global South. Drawing ... more Urban informality is typically ascribed to the urban poor in cities of the Global South. Drawing on Judith Butler’s concept of performativity and taking the case of Rio de Janeiro in the context of the 2016 Olympic Games, this article conceptualizes informality as a signifier and a procedural, relational category. Specifically, it shows how different class actors have employed the signifier informality (1) to legitimize the confinement of marginalized populations; (2) to justify the organized efforts of the upper middle class to protect their ‘self-enclosed’ gated communities; and (3) to warrant the formation of opposition and alliances between inhabitants, activists, and researchers on the edges of the urban order. This article offers new perspectives to better understand the relationship between informality and confinement by examining the active role that inhabitants of marginalized settlements assume in the Olympic City.
Digitalization refers to a multifaceted process which has experienced a vertiginous expansion on ... more Digitalization refers to a multifaceted process which has experienced a vertiginous expansion on a global scale in the last few decades. This issue of CROLAR aims to explore one these facets: digitalization of urban space in Latin America. Thus, the contributions submitted discuss how the advances in digital technology are connected to social inequalities in urban Latin America, and which social, political, cultural and economic opportunities and obstacles they offer for a more equal, just and participative urbanization.
In this paper I offer an analysis of the critical place that “informality” occupies in the urbani... more In this paper I offer an analysis of the critical place that “informality” occupies in the urbanistic reordering of the “Cidade Olimpica” Rio de Janeiro. Contextualizing it in Brazil’s claim to an emergent geopolitical position as a BRICS country, I explore how this reordering intersects with spatial confinement of the urban poor. I draw from examples of real estate entrepreneurialism, resettlements and territorial conflicts in Barra da Tijuca and Jacarepaguá, two of Rio de Janeiro’s rapidly transforming areas. Drawing from Judith Butler´s concept of performativity (1993), I introduce informality as a performed role and volatile ascription allowing us to understand how urban actors bargain their influence vis-à-vis unstable urban planning processes. In the making of the Olympic City, informality functions (1) as a signifier of what is perceived to be a threat to justify the stigmatization and subsequent confinement of marginalized communities as a result of local infrastructure projects related to mega-events; (2) as
a signifier to justify defensive interventions against the municipal government and real estate developers by an organized upper middle-class; and (3) as a signifier around which resistances and alliances form between activist groups, researchers and NGOs on the edges of the urban fabric. Correlating urban informality and spatial confinement allows for an understanding of a spatialized, contested and performed stateness
underlying city branding and also of the political mobilization of the urban poor despite of hegemonic marginalization in cities of the Global South.
Book Reviews by Frank Müller
European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 2017
Avoiding a simplistic picture of the economic/political elite, the state versus ‘the’ population ... more Avoiding a simplistic picture of the economic/political elite, the state versus ‘the’ population as well as its encompassing incorporation of diverse actors make this book an outstanding contribution to critical urban security studies. Perhaps the strongest point of this book is that, although insecurity seems to be everyone’s shared concern, the intentions of (self-styled) security providers should not be trusted. Instead, security should be conceived of as a governing tool of reordering urban capitalism at the expense of the urban poor. Müller elegantly channels this argument towards the need to de-securitize local (security) politics.
American Ethnologist, 2018
An urban future in which risk and security become the dominant and direful predicaments of govern... more An urban future in which risk and security become the dominant and direful predicaments of governing needs to be force- and thoughtfully distrusted. “Endangered City” powerfully encourages to do so.
Edited volumes & journal issues by Frank Müller
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Miscellaneous Documents by Frank Müller
Papers by Frank Müller
La “informalidad urbana” es un significante que es cuestionado por las empresas de bienes raíces, los políticos y los residentes cuando se involucran en estrategias de distinción social para obtener determinados beneficios políticos y económicos. Nuestra investigación en la periferia occidental de la Ciudad de México establece tres casos de ese uso de la informalidad. Primero, las empresas inmobiliarias emplean la informalidad como una amenaza para valorizar y justificar un estilo de vida del mundo desarrollado en comunidades con acceso controlado. Segundo, la informalidad mueve a las asociaciones de dueños de casa a asumir el papel de defensores del vecindario y la función de vigilancia del estado. Tercero, además de reconstituir las fronteras de clase, también sirve como un referente para una movilidad social más amplia en contra de la presunta informalidad de la élite local. Al facilitar la distinción social, la informalidad continúa marginalizando comunidades ya que sigue influyendo en las decisiones sobre la planificación y el acceso a la tierra en el espacio urbano de América Latina.
a signifier to justify defensive interventions against the municipal government and real estate developers by an organized upper middle-class; and (3) as a signifier around which resistances and alliances form between activist groups, researchers and NGOs on the edges of the urban fabric. Correlating urban informality and spatial confinement allows for an understanding of a spatialized, contested and performed stateness
underlying city branding and also of the political mobilization of the urban poor despite of hegemonic marginalization in cities of the Global South.
Book Reviews by Frank Müller
Edited volumes & journal issues by Frank Müller
La “informalidad urbana” es un significante que es cuestionado por las empresas de bienes raíces, los políticos y los residentes cuando se involucran en estrategias de distinción social para obtener determinados beneficios políticos y económicos. Nuestra investigación en la periferia occidental de la Ciudad de México establece tres casos de ese uso de la informalidad. Primero, las empresas inmobiliarias emplean la informalidad como una amenaza para valorizar y justificar un estilo de vida del mundo desarrollado en comunidades con acceso controlado. Segundo, la informalidad mueve a las asociaciones de dueños de casa a asumir el papel de defensores del vecindario y la función de vigilancia del estado. Tercero, además de reconstituir las fronteras de clase, también sirve como un referente para una movilidad social más amplia en contra de la presunta informalidad de la élite local. Al facilitar la distinción social, la informalidad continúa marginalizando comunidades ya que sigue influyendo en las decisiones sobre la planificación y el acceso a la tierra en el espacio urbano de América Latina.
a signifier to justify defensive interventions against the municipal government and real estate developers by an organized upper middle-class; and (3) as a signifier around which resistances and alliances form between activist groups, researchers and NGOs on the edges of the urban fabric. Correlating urban informality and spatial confinement allows for an understanding of a spatialized, contested and performed stateness
underlying city branding and also of the political mobilization of the urban poor despite of hegemonic marginalization in cities of the Global South.
This book results from papers presented at the workshop “Rethinking enclosures in Colombia from a regional and global context. The role of territory, coloniality, and temporality,” held at the Universidad del Rosario in 2018. The texts were enhanced by exchanges and debates during the workshop and by writing each chapter in dialogue with comments and suggestions from the editors of this volume.