Reshaping the Neoliberal City: The Politics of Cooperation and the Movimiento de Ocupantes e Inquilinos in Buenos Aires, Argentina

Open Access
- Author:
- Dean, Kristin V.
- Graduate Program:
- Art History
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- October 21, 2010
- Committee Members:
- Craig Robert Zabel, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Craig Robert Zabel, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Madhuri Shrikant Desai, Committee Member
Sarah K Rich, Committee Member
Peter John Aeschbacher, Committee Member - Keywords:
- Cooperatives
Housing
Architecture
Argentina
Buenos Aires
Neoliberal - Abstract:
- This dissertation investigates low-cost housing cooperatives produced by the Movimiento de Ocupantes e Inquilinos (MOI, Movement of Squatters and Tenants), a small non-governmental housing organization in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Since its founding in 1991, MOI has constructed its cooperatives in the sociopolitical context of neoliberal political reforms, forces which have been largely disadvantageous to the city’s poor populations. The hypothesis of this dissertation is that if MOI cooperatives are an example of a creative alternative for low-cost housing that appeals to neoliberal ideology, then it stands to reason that analyzing the forms, styles and spaces of MOI cooperatives can correspondingly elucidate new attitudes towards urban space, housing and the working poor, effectively identifying how this non-governmental organization has contributed to the reshaping the neoliberal city. To test this hypothesis, this dissertation analyzes the architectural forms of MOI cooperatives within the context of neoliberal Buenos Aires. Each chapter takes on one MOI cooperative for case study, and asks the following questions: How were urban space and its uses affected through shifts in politics, economics and public policy? What was the discourse around low-cost housing that emerged in this context? What were the kinds of choices regarding architectural form and style that were made in designing these new cooperatives? How have existing and new forms of social identity for the working poor been mediated through MOI’s adaptive reuse of abandoned property? Through archival, field and ethnographic research, this dissertation elucidates the conditions that engendered MOI’s creative rethinking of low-cost, urban housing. In the current context of housing policy reform, this dissertation serves to define a more inclusive history of housing and a broader definition of the neoliberal city in Buenos Aires, in Latin America and abroad.