Endangered City: The Politics of Security and Risk in Bogotá

Endangered City: The Politics of Security and Risk in Bogotá
ISBN-10
0822374188
ISBN-13
9780822374183
Category
Social Science
Pages
312
Language
English
Published
2016-05-27
Publisher
Duke University Press
Author
Austin Zeiderman

Description

Security and risk have become central to how cities are planned, built, governed, and inhabited in the twenty-first century. In Endangered City, Austin Zeiderman focuses on this new political imperative to govern the present in anticipation of future harm. Through ethnographic fieldwork and archival research in Bogotá, Colombia, he examines how state actors work to protect the lives of poor and vulnerable citizens from a range of threats, including environmental hazards and urban violence. By following both the governmental agencies charged with this mandate and the subjects governed by it, Endangered City reveals what happens when logics of endangerment shape the terrain of political engagement between citizens and the state. The self-built settlements of Bogotá’s urban periphery prove a critical site from which to examine the rising effect of security and risk on contemporary cities and urban life.

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