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Endangered City: The Politics of Security and Risk in Bogotá
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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Endangered City: The Politics of Security and Risk in Bogotá
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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Endangered City: The Politics of Security and Risk in Bogotá
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.
Austin Zeiderman is an anthropologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Table of Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction. The Politics of Security and Risk 1
1. Apocalypse Foretold 33
2. On Shaky Ground 63
3. Genealogies of Endangerment 93
4. Living Dangerously 131
5. Securing the Future 161
Conclusion. Millennial Cities 193
Coda 209
Notes 213
Bibliography 247
Index 269
What People are Saying About This
Urban Leviathan: Mexico City in the Twentieth Century - Diane E. Davis
"Extraordinarily well-grounded in ethnographic research and urban and social theory, Endangered City makes a significant contribution to debate about the ways that contemporary urban governance is shaped by actual and discursive engagement with the notion of risk. It will appeal to a wide range of scholars who study the rapidly transforming cities of the global South and to urbanists concerned more broadly with citizenship and governance."
City of Walls: Crime, Segregation, and Citizenship in São Paulo - Teresa Caldeira
"Endangered City offers a compelling and critical analysis of how concerns with security and risk have displaced other rationalities of government—such as development, democracy, and welfare—in contemporary Colombia, rearranging the field of political possibilities. Austin Zeiderman combines masterful ethnographic and archival research to reveal both the mundane practices and the various modalities of power that intersect in the management of life-at-risk. Taking us well beyond Colombia, Zeiderman's bold theorization considers the problems of framing urban and political life in terms of threat."
