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negotiationprocessesand international and national planningand
programming. The activism of that decade opened newopportunities
for engagement with the UN, and we workedto highlight the very
different situations that women in theSouth experienced from those
in the North, to differentiatethe experiences of middle-class and
working-class women,
andto link micro and macro issues. Thenegotiated outcomesof
these conferences continue to be monitored by the UNand womens
groups around the world.
A large number of members played an active role atthe 1995 NGO
Forum on Women, which ran parallelto the Beijing Conference (the
4th World Conference onWomen). There were multiple IWAC panels, and
as theorganizer of the Forums official weeklong program of
ple-naries, I brought IWAC women into the mainstream of theForums
activities. The linking of scholarship and activismthrough such
interactions with women activists from acrossthe globe enabled a
more complex understanding of socialmovements and gender as they
were playing out around theworld.
For over a decade, the energy of the internationalwomens
movement fueled IWACs numerous activities andwidely distributed
newsletter. IWAC meetings and panelsorganized at the AAA and
elsewhere received enthusiasticresponses, and members helped
spearhead the establishmentof the Womens Commission of the
International Union ofAnthropological and Ethnological Sciences
(IUAES).
As the heyday of feminism and the internationalwomens movement
waned, so did IWAC. Members foundless time to devote to IWAC
activities. The late 1990s sawa sharp decline for the group, and
after several planning
meetings, the New York City core members decided to giveIWAC a
rest until someone had the time and energy to take itforward. By
maintaining IWACs valuable UN consultativestatus, it would be
possible to regroup when the opportunityarose.
And, indeed, IWAC continues to be represented at UNmeetings,
conferences, and consultations. Partnering withother civil society
groups, IWAC representatives follow,lobby, and help inform the work
of various UN Commis-sions and other UN bodies. The connection to
the UN has
enabled anthropologists participate in a variety of
meetings,official and unofficial. For example, in 2001, Faye
Harrisonrepresented IWAC at theWorld Conference Against Racismin
Durban. In 2009 IWAC organized a side event panel onWomen,
Agriculture and Land for the 17th meeting of theCommission on
Sustainable Development. Currently, I am
part of the NGO Committee on Financing for Development,which
works to bring the social dimensions of economicpolicy into UN
deliberations around international economicissues. Several of us
are also involved with preparations forthe Rio+20 meetings on
Sustainable Development in June2012, providing input into the
negotiating text and lobbyingdelegates.
It is difficult, indeed impossible, to map out IWACsimpact in
the international arena or to distinguish the ac-complishments of
one organization or network from anotheras it is an inherently
collaborative project. Certainly, dur-ing the couple of decades
that it was most active, IWACcontributed to a groundswell of
activity, adding its voiceto those of many other organizations and
helping to createand sustain the networks that continue to exert
pressure forchange and to enrich our lives.
As we plan for the years ahead, we have learned a greatdeal
about how best to engage at the UN and bring the ex-pertise of
anthropologists into this intergovernmental arena,providing a path
for effective engagement with internationalprocesses. Today, we
plan to use online resources to builda truly international network
with headquarters rotating todifferent parts of the world and with
focal points in dif-ferent geographic regions that can mobilize
anthropologiststo share information and experiences. With the
lessons we
have learned and with new communications tools, it shouldbe
possible to reestablish and revitalize IWAC in ways notpossible
before. We hope many of you, our readers, will getinvolved and help
create a more vital and publicly engagedanthropology.
Eva Friedlander, Ph.D. Planning Alternatives for Change
(PAC),
Partner and President of IWAC; [email protected]
Review
BarcelonasRepensar Bon Pastor: A Collaboration ofAnthropologists
and ArchitectsDenise Lawrence-Zuniga
California State Polytechnic University
Repensar Bon Pastor (Rethinking Bon Pastor) is a
mul-tidisciplinary collaboration between anthropologists
andarchitectsurban designers concerned about the proposeddemolition
of one of Barcelonas oldest public hous-ing projects, Bon Pastor
(see http://repensarbonpastor.wordpress.com/). This project reveals
the possibilities of
social and political impacts when anthropologists collabo-rate
with environmental designers. The latter give visualexpression to
ethnographic research that can be used to en-gage and mobilize
research subjects, and critique elite powerstructures. This review
is based on correspondence withthe participating anthropologists,
review of the competitionwebsite, and research documents posted by
the collaborativeon their website
(http://periferiesurbanes.org).
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Located in the northern edge of the city, the low-income,
low-density barrio was built in 1929 to house work-ers who migrated
from rural Andalucia and Murcia. The 784single-story worker
cottages, orcasa barates(cheap or eco-nomical houses), are owned by
Barcelonas City Council andleased to residents who informally pass
them on to family
members. Lacking sufficient upkeep by the city, residentshave
invested their own meager resources to maintain theirhouses. In
2007, 145 of the houses were demolished as partof the first phase
of an urban renewal project, known as thePlan de Remodelacion,
which proposes to build 1,000 newapartments in multistoried
buildings on land currently oc-cupied by the barrio. The violent
eviction of some residentsopposed to the project attracted public
attention and outcry.
For critics, the urban renewal project was a
speculativeneoliberal vision of public space planning that grew out
ofBarcelonas experiences with remaking the city for the
1992Olympics. According to Barcelona anthropologist ManuelDelgado,
the city characterized the houses in Bon Pastor asobsolete
(obsoleto) and uninhabitable (Vidas Baratas,ElPais,Feb. 13, 2007).
Moreover, although the planning pro-cess included a so-called
participatory component, manyof the residents claimed their
representatives in theAsocia-cion de Vecinos(Residents
Association), whose consent gavelegitimacy to the project, were
co-opted by the City Counciland therefore did not actually speak
for them. In 2007, afterthe first phase of demolitions, architects
at a local technicalcollege organized a seminar and workshop in the
neighbor-hood. Their investigations into the physical conditions
ofthe remaining buildings determined that Bon Pastor houseshad
historic significance as early 20th century social hous-
ing and exhibited conditions that could be repaired
withoutresorting to demolition.
From the very beginning some residents had also op-posed the
citys project, and in 2003 they formed the Avisdel Barri (Catalan
for Grandparents of the Quarter). Be-cause some anthropologists
were already involved in orga-nizing residents of several Barcelona
neighborhoods to op-pose real estate speculation, Avis del Barri
approached themfor help in documenting their claims of resident
opposition.Anthropologists conducted an initial 100 interviews
withresidents in 2004 to provide that support. By 2009, Avisdel
Barri, with support from Professor Delgado at the Uni-versity of
Barcelona, received funding from the Generalitatde Catalunyas IPEC
(Inventory of Ethnological Patrimony)program for an ethnographic
study entitled Social strug-gles and collective memory in
Barcelonas casa baratas.The three anthropologistsoral historians
who oversaw thestudy, Stefano Portelli, Nuria Sanchez Armengol, and
UlrikeViccaro, proclaimed they were not academics but partici-pants
in a social movement. They formed the PeripheriesUrbanes collective
within the Catalan Institute of Anthro-pology. These are activist
anthropologists who collaboratedwith barrio residents in
participant-observation research andconducting over 250 interviews
to develop a comprehensiveunderstanding of the barrio with which to
contest the claims
of the city, press, and Asociacion de Vecinos.
The Bon Pastor research documented residents strongsense of
place and attachment toward their houses and neigh-
borhoods and described the sense of familial relations
andlong-term social ties that held the community together
(seehttp://periferiesurbanes.org for details). The researchersalso
revealed how residents had internalized the City Coun-
cils discourse of power that stigmatized them by associa-tion
with their cheap dwellings. They argue that stigmainhibited
residents from fully expressing their rejection ofthe modernization
project, which, rather than enablingtheir escape from poverty,
would evict them from theirhomes.
Government stigmatization of working-class familiesas living in
blighted housing has justified urban renewalprojects.
In searching for a way to intervene in Barcelonas urbanrenewal
project, anthropologists collaborated with archi-tects who had also
been working in Bon Pastor. They de-cided to convene a competition,
typically used in thedesignprofessions for exploring architectural
solutions, to create aspace for dialogue between residents and
experts in imag-ining what Bon Pastor could become. They judged
entriesaccording to four criteria: respect for social, historical,
andarchitectural patrimony of the Casas Barates; a resident
par-ticipation component; interdisciplinarity; and feasibility
andsustainability. Of the45 proposalspresented, thejury,
whichincluded anthropologists (among them, Harvards
MichaelHerzfeld), architects, and an activist, selected 20
projectsand gave out four awards. A wide variety of issues were
con-sidered among all the projects, some of which included
thesocial effects of real estate speculation, the unique
lifestyle
of single-story residential neighborhoods, and the power
ofdeveloping a new collective memory to counter stigmaaswell as
recommendations for physical designs.
Although the proposals have not yet had an effect onBarcelonas
City Councils thinking about saving the casas
barates, they are being used by anthropologists to further
en-gage residents in rethinking the material conditions of homeand
to reconstruct identities and revitalize barrio social life.The
proposals are also evidence of a collective discourseamong
residents, anthropologists, and environmental de-signers aimed at
critiquing Barcelonas neoliberal planningparadigm, although it is
already weakened by the worsen-ing economic crisis in Spain. With
the fate of the proposedurban renewal project still unclear, public
anthropologistscollaboration with socially conscious architects has
producedresearch with a highly visual dimension that engages
com-munities where they live in a language intelligible to
politicalelites. These multiple outcomes may be well worth
over-coming the challenges of working in a
cross-disciplinaryencounter.
Denise Lawrence-Zuniga Professor, Department of Architecture
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, Pomona, CA
91768
[email protected]
