Thinking with Bevereley Skeggs - Stockholms universitet

With the help of politics of emotion in the formulation andimplementation of participatory models these cities seemto have accomplished a more sustainable social and urbandevelopment. I have been exploring how the convergence offeminist approaches works in the city of Medellin, Colombia,that during the last few decades was ranked as the most unsafeand violent city on Earth.Nevertheless, in the last few years the city’s administration hasbeen working with a model for sustainable development calledSocial Urbanism for turning ‘from fear to hope’. The model ofSocial Urbanism encourages feminist alliances, gender and socialmainstreaming as well as politics of emotion to empower and‘to pay the social debt’ to stigmatized groups and suburbs. Thismodel can be interesting to learn more about in order to beginto overcome the neo-liberal governance that during the last fewyears has been introduced in Sweden to cope with discriminationand class divisions (Velasquez 2005a, 2005b). A model that, onthe other hand, seems to have laid the foundation for new formsof discrimination, segregation and racism that, in fact, affectsimmigrants, underrepresented women’s groups, LGBT peopleand the disabled.ReferencesAhmed, S. (2004), The Cultural Politics of Emotion (Edinburgh University Press).Anthias, F. (2004), ‘Begreppet “translokalisering” och teorier kring socialstratifiering: Frågor om genus, etnicitet och klass’, in Katarina Mattsson &Ingemar Lindberg (eds.), Rasismer i Europa: Arbetsmarknadens flexiblaförtryck (Agora).Alcoff, L. (1991), ‘The Problem of Speaking for Others’, Cultural Critique(Winter 1991-92): 5–32.Ålund, A. & Reichel, I. (2005), Medborgerlig agens för social inkludering,SOU 2005: 1112: 231–60.Araujo Freire, A. (1998), The Paulo Freire Reader (Continuum).101