A

AIA CES Credits

AV Office

Abstract Publication

Academic Affairs

Academic Calendar, Columbia University

Academic Calendar, GSAPP

Admissions Office

Advanced Standing Waiver Form

Alumni Board

Alumni Office

Architecture Studio Lottery

Assistantships

Avery Library

Avery Review

Avery Shorts

S

STEM Designation

Satisfactory Academic Progress

Scholarships

Skill Trails

Student Affairs

Student Awards

Student Conduct

Student Council (All Programs)

Student Financial Services

Student Health Services at Columbia

Student Organization Handbook

Student Organizations

Student Services Center

Student Services Online (SSOL)

Student Work Online

Studio Culture Policy

Studio Procedures

Summer Workshops

Support GSAPP

Close
This website uses cookies as well as similar tools and technologies to understand visitors' experiences. By continuing to use this website, you consent to Columbia University's usage of cookies and similar technologies, in accordance with the Columbia University Website Cookie Notice Group 6

Javier Auyero

Tue, Sep 30    1:15pm

Squatter Life. Persistence at the Urban Margins
This talk will present the recently published Squatter Life, along with new directions in the study of urban marginality. Squatter Life (co-authored with anthropologist Sofía Servián) details the diverse and often precarious strategies that Argentina’s urban poor rely on to survive. Blending three years of ethnographic fieldwork with personal narratives of Servián’s experience growing up and living in a squatter settlement, the talk a) examines how Argentina’s squatter communities contend with violence and secure necessities like food, land, and housing despite inadequate state support and protection, b) recounts the bricolage of tactics these individuals employ to make ends meet, such as relying on highly exploitative jobs, patronage, and networks of reciprocal exchange that can involve illicit activities, and c) analyzes how these survival strategies intersect with class, gender, and political domination. The talk will conclude presenting two ongoing projects that spring from Squatter Life, one on “dark governance,” the other one on “grassroots initiatives that work.”

Javier Auyero is the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long in Latin American Sociology at the University of Texas-Austin, where he founded the Urban Ethnography Lab, and Ikerbasque Research Professor at the Universidad del País Vasco. His main areas of research, writing and teaching are urban poverty, political ethnography, and collective action. He is the author of several award-winning books among them Poor People’s Politics, Routine Politics and Violence in Argentina, Patients of the State, and various co-authored books including Flammable. Environmental Suffering in an Argentine Shantytown (with Débora Swistun), In Harm’s Way. The Dynamics of Urban Violence (with Fernanda Berti), and The Ambivalent State (with Katherine Sobering).