Processos de auto-organização sócio-espacial: ambivalências e desafios em situações de disputa por poder de decisão

Abstract

The research aims to understand and to discuss the possibilities, ambivalences and challenges in socio-spatial self-organisation processes, which emerge from disputes on decision making power over a given urban area. Although little consolidated, some self-organisation processes challenge the reproduction of current settings and socio-spatial relationships within the fields of capitalism and representative democracy. Such processes may contribute to the democratisation of the production of space in a radical sense. With the support of a kind of theoretical lens, that combines notions on collective autonomy, radical democracy and self-management with elements of the anarchist and state-critic perspectives, two concrete situations were investigated: the self-organisation process by dwellers from Vila das Antenas, in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and the social practices of the dwellers engaged in disputes over the former airport Tempelhof, in Berlin, Germany. From the ambivalences and challenges presented by these two concrete situations, it is observed that, on the one side, socio-spatial self-organisation processes do contribute to increase conditions for discussion, decision-making and collective action in the production of space by common urban dwellers. On the other side, the contradictions imposed by the existing political and economical contexts turn difficult the progress of such processes.