Constructing a Global Right to the City: Cultural Power and Diffusion of an Urban Development Model

• In Event: 3184 - Section on Sociology of Culture Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 06. Culture, Diffusion, and Reception

Abstract

An important research agenda in sociology is to explain how a new global discourse, development model, or norm, gets constructed, transmitted, and institutionalized. A complex and dynamic process of diffusion plays a role in the formation of global discourse as it drives wider acknowledgment and participation from diverse actors. Diffusion studies, however, tend to ignore the characteristics of the object that may better explain why and how certain things are more likely to diffuse at a global scale. Moreover, few studies have tried to uncover the diffusion process of urban development practices, despite the mushrooming of international institutions in this area. I propose a cultural power model for diffusion that accommodates the interaction among structural resources, the role of actors, and the autonomy of the diffused object. Using “the right to the city” as a case, I examine how an urban development model from Latin America was able to diffuse both vertically to global institutional levels and horizontally to Asia (India and Indonesia). This study involves analysis of archival data, live-streamed conferences, and secondary sources. The findings suggest the role of transnational and local urban activists in shaping the cultural power of the right to the city model by generating its modularity, unitary capacity, and cosmopolitan resonance. The increasing cultural power of the model, however, reduces its revolutionary orientation to a reformative agenda. The resources that are significant in the vertical and horizontal diffusion processes include 1) existing ideology of universal human rights and democracy, 2) infrastructural mediums through international forums.

Author

• Wara Urwasi, Northwestern University