Synopses & Reviews
From 1967 to 1973, during the socialist project of Salvador Allende, nearly 400,000 migrants illegally seized parcels of land on the outskirts of Santiago, Chile. Remarkably, today some ninety-five percent of Santaigos
pobladores hold property titles. As Edward Murphy shows, these entitlements came at a steep price, through an often-violent political and social struggle that continues to this day.
In Santaigos squatter camps, property ownership became a focal point for both activism and repression during Chiles half-century of political upheaval. The plight of the urban poor highlighted larger labor, gender, and human rights issues, all of which came the forefront as squatters mobilized for popular support. Regardless of the ruling party, property entitlements became the symbol of governmental benevolence and anti-poverty campaigns. Under the neoliberalism of Pinochet, subsidized housing and slum eradication plans displaced many squatters, while awarding them homes of their own. Today, these properties exist on the periphery of social class and meet minimal requirements for modern living. As a result of their entitlements, Santiagos urban poor now find it difficult to organize or assert claims for better conditions. They have effectively been left without a leg to stand on.
Murphy directly links the importance of home ownership and property rights among Santiagos urban poor to definitions of Chilean citizenship and propriety. Citing cultural theorists from Marx to Foucault, he explores the historic and deeply embedded liberal belief system of individual property ownership that has shaped political, social, and physical landscapes in Santiago and elsewhere. As Murphy shows, home ownership entails notions of behavior that require maintaining both the property and a domestic morality centered on family life. Conceptions of civic responsibility and proper governance are also based in home ownership, as individuals became sanctioned members of their community and nation.
The example of Santiago more broadly reflects circumstances for the urban poor in much of the global south. As Murphy demonstrates, property ownership has become a vital step towards social recognition and the basis of a moral code of citizenship, while also serving as a powerful tool for the suppression of further rights claims.
Review
and#147;For a Proper Home is a first-rate piece of scholarship and major contribution to the contemporary history of Chile, combining in innovative ways rigorous archival research with rich ethnographic field work. It will be welcomed by Latin Americanist scholars in a number of disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, history, and urban studies, and those interested in the politics and history of housing policy, urban space, and urban social movements.and#8221;
and#151;Thomas Klubock, University of Virginia
Review
and#147;
For a Proper Homeand#160;is a work of great historical, ethnographic, and theoretical power. Murphy offers a fresh and fascinating account of the politics of housing on the periphery of Santiago, Chile.and#160;Beyond the specific case, this exploration of 'insurgent ownership' will certainly advance theoretical and political understandings of the liberal state, and of the contours of urban citizenship across the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. A breakthrough in urban anthropology.and#8221;
and#151;Jeff Maskovsky, Queens College, City University of New York
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Synopsis
This book examines the dramatic forms of social mobilization, state-directed repression, mass development projects, and socioeconomic exclusion that have marked struggles over low-income urban housing in Santiago, Chile, during the past half-century.
Synopsis
From 1967 to 1973, a period that culminated in the socialist project of Salvador Allende, nearly 400,000 low-income Chileans illegally seized parcels of land on the outskirts of Santiago. Remarkably, today almost all of these individuals live in homes with property titles. As Edward Murphy shows, this transformation came at a steep price, through an often-violent political and social struggle that continues to this day.
In analyzing the causes and consequences of this struggle, Murphy reveals a crucial connection between homeownership and understandings of proper behavior and governance. This link between property and propriety has been at the root of a powerful, contested urban politics central to both social activism and urban development projects. Through projects of reform, revolution, and reaction, a right to housing and homeownership has been a significant symbol of governmental benevolence and poverty reduction. Under Pinochetand#8217;s neoliberalism, subsidized housing and slum eradication programs displaced many squatters, while awarding them homes of their own. This process, in addition to ongoing forms of activism, has permitted the vast majority of squatters to live in homes with property titles, a momentous change of the past half-century.and#160;
This triumph is tempered by the fact that today the urban poor struggle with high levels of unemployment and underemployment, significant debt, and a profoundly segregated and hostile urban landscape. They also find it more difficult to mobilize than in the past, and as homeowners they can no longer rally around the cause of housing rights.
Citing cultural theorists from Marx to Foucault, Murphy directly links the importance of home ownership and property rights among Santiagoand#8217;s urban poor to definitions of Chilean citizenship and propriety. He explores how the deeply embedded liberal belief system of individual property ownership has shaped political, social, and physical landscapes in the city. His approach sheds light on the role that social movements and the gendered contours of home life have played in the making of citizenship. It also illuminates processes through which squatters have received legally sanctioned homes of their own, a phenomenon of critical importance in cities throughout much of Latin America and the Global South.
About the Author
Edward Murphy is assistant professor of history and global urban studies at Michigan State University. He is the coeditor of The Housing Question: Tensions, Continuities, and Contingencies in the Modern City and Anthrohistory: Unsettling Knowledge, Questioning Discipline.