Geoforum 101 (2019) 212–214

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Geoforum
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum

The risky streets of ontologically redesigned cities: Some comments on T

Arturo Escobar’s rurbanization research program
Kiran Asher
Department of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003, USA

In Habitability and Design: Radical Interdependence and the Remaking contiguous with the trajectory of his previous two monographs En-
of Cities, Escobar expands on his remarks at the 2018 GeoForum lecture countering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World
at the AAG (Escobar, 2018a, 2018b). He contends that cities are gov- (1995/2012) and Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes
erned by a Western, patriarchal logic that disconnects them from the (2008). Given the continuities in Escobar’s work, my comments parallel
Earth and makes them unconducive to life. In order to make cities my remarks on his earlier writings (Asher, 2013; Asher and
habitable again, he notes, we must redesign them along the lines of Wainwright, 2018). I flag a series of analytical slippages in his “design
communities whose political ontologies are grounded in their re- for the pluriverse,” and argue that however inadvertent, they risk un-
lationship with the Earth as a living system: dermining his, and indeed our, larger political desire for habitable cities
and Earthly justice. Therefore, I suggest his relational frameworks need
The current crisis is a crisis of the patriarchal and capitalist occi-
supplementing with other methods to understand and address the
dental modes of dwelling that have eroded the systemic mode of
“patriarchal capitalist colonial modernity” (p. 5) that he holds re-
living based on radical interdependence. … Important clues for the
sponsible for the current crises in cities and beyond.
relational rethinking and remaking of cities might exist in the au-
Escobar intervenes in urban studies to attend to the inadequacies of
tonomous territorial struggles by some groups against extractive
most extant analyses of the “urban revolution of space,” and to share
activities (largely, but not only, in rural and forest areas in the
lessons from those who struggle for urban justice and rights to the city.
Global South), involving the defense of other modes of inhabiting.
To illustrate the problems with the former, he references the discussions
To do so, however, requires the ontological redesigning of design,
at the October 2016 United Nations-Habitat III conference. Convened
away from its functionalist and instrumental orientations and to-
every 20 years, these large UN conferences are the most influential
wards relational principles and goals. (2018b: 1–2)
events in the urban studies field. Escobar observes that the New Urban
Escobar describes his GeoForum remarks and paper as a research agenda that emerged from Habitat III to meet the challenges of rapid
program on cities and an intervention in the field of urban studies, urbanization in the 21st century (rise of megacities, urban governance,
which he elaborates in his latest book Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical migrant flows, etc.) was drafted by professional planners, international
Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds (2018c). The range corporations and multinational development institutions. Small wonder
and scope of Escobar’s paper are ambitious, as is evident from the key then that it prioritizes, “… the accumulation of capital rather than so-
terms in the quote above. The assertions and approaches in Habitability cial reproduction.” (p. 3) and does little to meet the needs of most
and Design also bear the hallmarks of Escobar’s thinking: tackling large marginalized communities. Like the post-World War II development
questions, seeking broad explanations, and following up on critiques agenda of the last century, this 21st century New Urban Agenda and the
with proposals. While the focus on the urban is a new element in Es- mainstream approaches to urbanism it represents foster a “crisis of
cobar’s critiques of Western modernity and proposals for non-Euro- habitability,” which are symptomatic of “… a deeper crisis, of patri-
centric alternatives, there are clear continuities between his current archal capitalist colonial modernity as the dominant civilizational
intervention and his prolific work over the past 20+ years. model for the globalizing world. (p. 5)
Escobar’s writings have shaped scholarship on a diverse range of Escobar contends that to go beyond these impasses of modernity
concerns across the globe. Indeed, my own research on development, and to make cities habitable again, they must be reconnected to the
the environment and Afro-Colombian social movements in the Pacific Earth. He proposes the concepts “rurbanization” and “ontological me-
lowlands of Colombia has developed in relation to his (Asher, 2009, trofitting,” to foreground the relationality between the rural and urban,
2014, 2018). These brief comments cannot do justice to Escobar’s vast and between other spaces and subjects. Escobar reviews the current
contributions. Rather I flag some central threads of his foray into urban “relational turn” in urban studies and commends it for its ethnographic
studies and note that the goals, methods, and politics of this latest sensibility, recognition of urban complexity, links to politics, designing
critique and research proposal for “ruralizing the urban,” are policies from below, and attention to various forms of materiality,

E-mail address: [email protected].

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.01.008
Received 28 December 2018; Accepted 15 January 2019
Available online 15 February 2019
0016-7185/ © 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
K. Asher Geoforum 101 (2019) 212–214

including that of climate change. Given the imperatives of planetary 1990s, feminists from within and beyond the academy have been at
urbanization, critical scholars and professionals also acknowledge that pains to highlight the multiple roots and transnational connections of
cities “… will need to be significantly rethought, reconfigured, and radical politics. Indeed, relationality and multiple logics are funda-
remade.” (p. 7). mental to feminist theories and politics, and their anti-sexist, anti-ca-
But such remaking, he reiterates, cannot be imagined from these pitalist, and anti-colonial allies (Asher, 2017). For instance, various
prior relational frameworks, which he finds weak due to their still being feminist, post-colonial, transnational, “of color,” black, queer, decolo-
bound to anthropocentric approaches of patriarchal, Western moder- nial, post-humanist, and other critical perspectives have reframed de-
nity. To imagine habitable cities, he contends, requires radical re- bates about science, the nature of subjectivity, domination, and re-
lationality of the kind found in “other” cosmo-visions and ontologies, sistance; and posited new forms of radical politics. They have
and the non-Western logics of autonomous indigenous and black com- questioned the masculinist and essentialist assumptions of disciplinary
munities. At his AAG lecture, in a combination of analysis and politics thinking to examine how women, human, culture, nature, race, in-
that is characteristic of Escobar, he foregrounded the importance of digeneity, peasants, proletariat, the rural, urban, city, country, globe,
movements and knowledges of indigenous, Afro-descendant, pre-wes- among other categories of analysis and politics emerge in relation to
tern, Latin American indigenous and black feminists to outline a re- each other. They have also challenged how the foundational categories
search program for rurbanization. In the written version of this lecture, and dualisms of Enlightenment modernity (nature-culture, object-sub-
he fleshes out the concept of “ruralizing the urban” and the relevance of ject, feminine-masculine, sex-gender, colony-nation, knowledge-praxis,
the “peasant mode of dwelling” to urbanization, with particularly re- and more) are constituted as a result of power, representation, and
ference to the work of Colombian architect and designer Harold political economy. Going beyond oppositional thinking, feminists from
Martínez Espinal. This too is characteristic of Escobar. He is among the multiple locations have shown how these dualisms and others such as
few authoritative Western academics who consistently references works rural vs. urban, or the West vs. the Rest, tell us little about specific
by lesser-known, women, young or non-Western scholars, and oral and conjunctures of historical interactions and geographical connections
activist knowledges. A close reader of Escobar’s work will note that that forge and bind them. Patriarchal practices then are but one form of
apart from the object of his paper—the urban studies field and ci- such power.
ties—the aim, methods, politics, and citational practices of this work Students of the urban who resist the temptation to paint Western
mirror those of his work on development and development studies academic knowledge with a broad brush and avoid the pitfalls of
(Escobar, 1995/2012, 2008). identity politics will find a rich lode of critical scholarship on the
In the context of the ecological and economic crises of the 21st makings and workings of “patriarchal colonial capitalist modernity.”
century, the imperatives of social and environmental justice are more (Hall et al., 1996; Lemert, 2013). They will learn that modernity takes
urgent than ever. Escobar’s alternative proposals and the voices he re- diverse and divergent forms as it shapes and is shaped by those it en-
peatedly brings to bear on them are clearly necessary. Yet as I noted in counters. They might recognize multiple forms of radical relationality
my AAG commentary, there are analytical slippages and political risks, in the works of environmental historians such as Cronon (1992), an-
in this as in his older work. I flag them and outline some supplemental thropologists such as Wolf (1986), and feminists such as Federici (2012)
strategies for those in the urban studies field who wish to take up the to name but three. Reading Marx’s writings and critiques of the capi-
call of rurbanization and ontological metrofitting. Without these sup- talist mode of production critically but openly (Anderson, 2010; Brown,
plements we risk slipping into precisely those dualisms of modernity 2012; Haraway, 1991; Osborne, 2006; Luxemburg, 2004; Spivak, 2012;
that these calls are meant to undo. For example, without understanding Tsing, 2015; Weeks, 2011) will enable students to trace its complex and
the political economy of development and agrarian change, Martínez contradictory dynamics, and how difference (racial, gendered, sexual,
Espinal’s design principles and “ruralizing the urban” could become just spatial and more) and social reproduction are key to capitalist accu-
another technical fix, the dangers of which Escobar has been flagging mulation (Katz, 2001; Mies, 1982). Becoming close readers of texts and
since his critique of development planning (1995/2012). Urban studies the world will enable urban studies scholars to contextualize the New
experts are best qualified to assess the systematics of Escobar’s systems Urban Agenda in historical terms and parse the analytical parameters of
thinking for architecture, design and urban planning. Here I focus on the latest phase of capitalist accumulation.
“relational thinking,” which is at the heart of his proposal for a non- Understanding and undoing the ravages of many violent “-isms”
patriarchal pluriverse and outline how it can be supplemented pro- (sexism, colonialism, capitalism, Eurocentrism, to name but a few) to
ductively. My remarks are not aimed at Escobar but rather at those who imagine and construct a world for non-humans and their human kin is
take his warning of civilization crisis seriously (as they must do). an ethical and political imperative. I believe it is such an imperative
Remarking on the need to develop our thinking about the relevance that underlies Escobar’s urging that
of patriarchy to the urban crisis, he notes,
Non-patriarchal ways of being are open to us in the archives of non-
As a number of feminist writing outside the core of the Anglo- patriarchal practices, and many others yet to be invented. At issue is
American academic world suggest, patriarchy entails the systematic a politics for another civilization that respects, and builds on, the
erosion of the relational fundament (sic) of life. The encroachment radical interconnectedness of all life –what Mexican feminist so-
of patriarchal cultures, starting in Europe several thousand years ciologist Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar (2017) calls a politics in the
ago, has not ceased to gain hold in most societies. … Patriarchal feminine, centered on the reproduction of life, in tandem with the
cultures value competition, hierarchies, power, growth, appropria- re-appropriation of collectively produced goods (postcapitalism),
tion, procreation, the negation of others, violence, and war. In this and beyond the masculinist canons of the political, linked to capital
culture, modern humans seek certitude though control, including and the state. Or, to return to Argentinean anthropologist Rita
the control of the natural world. Conversely, historical matristic Segato (2016), a politics than ends the “minoritization” of women
(sic) cultures were characterized by conversations highlighting in- that has accompanied the de-communalization of modern worlds, in
clusion, participation, collaboration, respect, sacredness, and the favor of a re-communalizing autonomous politics that reclaims the
always recurrent cyclic renovation of life. They required awareness “ontological fullness” of women’s worlds. Re-weaving the com-
of the interconnectedness of all existence. (p. 11) munal and relational fabric of life means, as she puts it, that “the
strategy, from now own, is a feminine one” (106). (Escobar, 2018b:
The choice to draw on feminist thinking from beyond the western
11)
academy and name the problems of patriarchy is politically important.
Yet limiting patriarchy's origins to Europe is problematic for feminist As we attend to the “radical interconnectedness of all life,” we must
politics in the broad sense that Escobar aims to flag. At least since the bear in mind the warning that comes from many quarters not to reify

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K. Asher Geoforum 101 (2019) 212–214

“women,” the “feminine,” “non-Western” and other “Others.” Asher, K., 2013. Latin American Decolonial Thought, or making the Subaltern Speak.
Furthermore, by now the feminist insight that “women” (or indeed any Geogr. Compass 7 (12), 832–842.
Asher, K., 2009. Black and Green: Afro-Colombians, Development, and Nature in the
group or entity) are not a monolithic category is almost a truism. Thus, Pacific Lowlands. Duke University Press, Durham, NC.
the need to be attentive to what I call “differences within difference” is Asher, K., Wainwright, J., 2018. After post-development: on capitalism, difference, and
yet another repetition in a series of repetitions. The words and wisdom representation. Antipode. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12430. (available online,
print forthcoming).
of activists and academics feed into the endeavors to “learn from Brown, H., 2012. Marx on Gender and the Family: A Critical Study. Haymarket Books,
below.” These are active tasks, which must necessarily involve parsing Chicago, IL.
the parameters and permutations of “patriarchal practices,” “post- Cronon, W., 1992. Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. WW Norton, NY.
Escobar, A., 2018a. Habitability and design: “Rurbanization” and the architectures of
capitalism,” “ontological fullness,” “politics of the feminine” and “au- interdependence and complexity. (Outline of a research program). GeoForum Lecture
tonomous politics.” on April 12 at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, April
Urban scholars and planners certainly have a lot to learn from 10–14, 2018. New Orleans, LA.
Escobar, A., 2018b. Habitability and design: radical interdependence and the remaking of
Escobar’s call to “re-Earth the city,” but they must do so without ro-
cities. GeoForum.
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munal.” And the “politics of the feminine” must be supplemented by a the Making of Worlds. Duke University Press, Durham, NC.
feminist politics to undertake a serious critique of colonialism, capit- Escobar, A., 2008. Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes. Duke
University Press, Durham, NC.
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again with the unpaid labor of reproducing life. Federici, S., 2012. Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist
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