The Citizens’ Revolution in the City: Governing Subaltern Subjects in Quito’s Historic Center

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Ecuador’s capital has long been a key site for the negotiation and contestation of law and citizenship. But in the context of President Rafael Correa’s ambitious Citizens’ Revolution, such negotiations and contestations have taken on new meanings. Indeed, despite its rhetoric of inclusiveness and well-being, in the Citizens’ Revolution, who counts as a “citizen” is very much at stake. Quito’s historic center is at the heart of such struggles over citizenship, but here they play out in everyday social interactions, shaped by encounters across competing levels of law and government. In the UNESCO-recognized world heritage site, Kichwa-speaking children shine the shoes of police officers; tourists snap photos alongside sex workers dressed in spandex; and merchants hawk shoes while negotiating with municipal officials over fees and regulations. An important locus for civil society political organizing, the historic center is situated at the intersection of multiple scales of lawmaking and governance, from police efforts to control the use of public space, to national initiatives to foment alternative forms of economy and society. Quito’s historic center thus offers a unique case for the exploration of law, governmentality, and political subjectivity in relation to contemporary state transformation in Latin America.

This panel considers how forms of regulation and governmentality across institutional scales articulate with urban space and the lives of its occupants, especially in the context of national-level proposals for sociopolitical reform. We focus on Quito’s historic district as a site of national projects, local policies, and efforts to “make tidy” subaltern subjects. The papers in this panel will focus on encounters between subaltern or otherwise marginalized groups and the agents and officials of government. Papers will draw on particular ethnographic cases to ask questions like: As multiple claims to the city are voiced, how do residents negotiate their own rights and responsibilities as citizens? How might attention to the multiple scales of law shift our understandings of state and civil society and the constitution of political subjects? How might our notions of public-ness, political engagement, and civic life change through attention to urban governance and municipal law?

Sub Track

• Law, Rights, Citizenship, and Justice

Session Organizer

• Nicholas Limerick, University of Pennsylvania

Chair

• Anna V Wilking, New York University

Individual Presentations

• Speaking Like Liberal Multicultural Citizens: The Politics of Schooling and Illustrating Indigeneity for Quichua Youth in Ecuador - Nicholas Limerick, University of Pennsylvania

• "El Ecuador en Chiquito": The Infrastructures of Politics in an Urban Market in Quito's Historic Center - Taylor C Nelms, University of California, Irvine

• The Citizens’ Revolution, Sex Work, and Exclusion in Quito’s Historic Center - Anna V Wilking, New York University

Discussant

• María Amelia A Viteri Burbano, University of San Francisco, Quito