James Scott

El siguiente estudio se enfocó en las prácticas artísticas desarrolladas en el espacio urbano por artistas y gestores culturales que se involucran con la vida social y comunitaria de grupos vulnerables y excluidos. Se estudiaron los proyectos presentados en los “Encuentros de arte urbano y comunitario al zur-ich” (2002-2018); realizados en el sur de Quito-Ecuador; sector de extracción popular, obrera y campesina. Los proyectos artísticos se midieron y analizaron en su aspecto comunicacional y espacial, basándose en las categorías que James Scott encontró en las prácticas políticas de los “dominados”, y relacionándolas con la delimitación espacial que, según Michel de Certeau, produce el relato como relato de viaje. Los resultados dieron cuenta de un espacio urbano “oculto” en lo comunitario, donde sus prácticas, con características estéticas propias, evocan el vínculo existente entre arte y política.

In the context of new world orders threatening from above and new popular struggles breaking out from below, description and analysis of mass protest in Latin America is confronted with the need for comprehensive theories of social conflict. To account for these developments among the subaltern classes, Latin Americanists are increasingly turning to the views of James C.

On December 6, 1904 the present international border between Laos and Cambodia was unilaterally established when the French colonial government extracted Stung Treng Province from Laos and transferred it to Cambodia. The ethnic Brao people living in the border region were not well known to the French, and in any case, their views were not deemed important. But since then the Brao have utilised this state administrative boundary in ways not intended by its designers, or governments since then, to give them more power to create new spaces. When conditions in Cambodia have been deemed unfavourable, the Brao have often crossed into Laos, and similarly, when circumstances have been less advantageous in Laos they have moved to Cambodia. This paper traces the history of the Brao as it specifically relates to the international border between Laos and Cambodia. While this administrative boundary was created to help national governments keep populations confined within nation-states, Brao human agency has sometimes confounded these efforts, through transforming its significance and role. The boundary has separated Brao populations in ways that are sometimes upsetting to them, but it has also allowed the Brao to position themselves at the margins of different nation-states, in spaces where they have been able to, at least temporarily, avoid or reduce state control over them. These are not non-state spaces; they are fundamentally constituted by a state-established boundary, even if the Brao have been able to mobilise this resource to empower themselves, and sometimes to resist the state itself.

El siguiente estudio se enfocó en las prácticas artísticas desarrolladas en el espacio urbano por artistas y gestores culturales que se involucran con la vida social y comunitaria de grupos vulnerables y excluidos. Se estudiaron los proyectos presentados en los “Encuentros de arte urbano y comunitario al zur-ich” (2002-2018); realizados en el sur de Quito-Ecuador; sector de extracción popular, obrera y campesina. Los proyectos artísticos se midieron y analizaron en su aspecto comunicacional y espacial, basándose en las categorías que James Scott encontró en las prácticas políticas de los “dominados”, y relacionándolas con la delimitación espacial que, según Michel de Certeau, produce el relato como relato de viaje.Los resultados dieron cuenta de un espacio urbano "oculto" en lo comunitario, donde sus prácticas, con características estéticas propias, evocan el vínculo existente entre arte y política.

In this essay I want to put into dialogue the question of the state as it relates to urbanism, social control, and political struggle. To do this, I examine James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State and Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle, paying particular attention to how they each construct the underlying political logics at work in urbanism and city planning, as well as some of the claims drawn from these positions as it relates to proletarian class struggle and revolution. Of particular interest to me is what each author sees as the driving force within society, and how these views may parallel or differ in important ways.