Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

‘Decent Housing for the People’: Urban Movements and Emancipation in Portugal

2004; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 9; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/1360874042000253483

1743-9612

João Arriscado Nunes, Nuno Serra,

Risk Perception and Management

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. The two most influential versions of this line of argument are developed in Beck 1992 Beck U 1992 Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity London Sage [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] and Giddens 1991. The critical debate triggered by the work of these two sociologists gave rise to a considerable – and growing – number of publications, of which the following should be singled out: Beck et al. 1994 Beck U Giddens A Lash S 1994 Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order Cambridge Polity Press [Google Scholar]; Lash et al. 1996 Lash S Szerszynski B Wynne B 1996 Risk, Environment and Modernity: Towards a New Ecology London Sage [Google Scholar]; Adam et al. 2000 Adam B Beck U Van Loon J 2000 The Risk Society and Beyond: Critical Issues for Social Theory London Sage [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Irwin 1995. On the political implications of these arguments, see the contributions to Franklin 1998 Franklin J 1998 The Politics of Risk Society Cambridge Polity Press [Google Scholar]. The broadening of the discussions on the relationships between experts and citizens to include southern hemisphere societies can be found, among others, in Silliman and King 1999 Silliman J King Y 1999 Dangerous Intersections: Feminism, Population and the Environment London Zed Books [Google Scholar], and Fischer 2000 Fischer F 2000 Citizens, Experts, and the Environment: The Politics of Local Knowledge Durham, North Carolina Duke University Press [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]. 2. ‘Each society has its truth regime, its general politics of truth, that is, the kinds of discourses society accepts and enacts as true; the mechanisms and instances which allow the distinction between true and false statements to be made and the way statements of either kind are sanctioned; the techniques and procedures which are valued as means of producing truth; the status of those to whom the task is committed of stating what will work as true’ (Foucault 1994 Foucault M 1994b Entretien avec Michel Foucault Dits et Écrits Paris Gallimard 3 140 60 [Google Scholar]b: 158). 3. Guinea-Bissau had unilaterally declared independence in 1973. 4. For a detailed historical account of the struggles and movements of urban populations in Oporto during the Revolution, see Rodrigues 1999 Rodrigues M 1999 Pelo Direito à Cidade: O Movimento de Moradores no Porto (1974/76) Oporto Campo das Letras [Google Scholar]. 5. For a more detailed analysis of the housing policies of the Estado Novo, see Gros 1982. 6. It was not possible, within the limits of this case-study, to explore some of the experiences of intervention in popular housing under the dictatorship, namely those carried out by some progressive Catholic organizations. 7. Social housing (bairros camarários) consists of apartment buildings owned by city councils, for accomodating families with scarce economic resources. 8. The neighbourhoods where social housing was located were in a permanent state of surveillance by council inspectors who, in their reports, did not fail to record the situations which, according to their judgment, fell under the category of violations of the regulations. They proposed penalties for alleged violators which might go as far as expulsion from the neighbourhood, a penalty which entailed the loss of entitlement to social housing, as if the latter were an undeserved privilege. Some of the statements found in inspectors' reports reveal much about the harsh regime of surveillance and control social housing residents were subject to: ‘Has an illegal chicken ( … ). Laundry on the balcony ( … ). Plastic vases on the front of the building ( … ). Has animals; the cat died ( … ). She entertains a man ( … ). She has a lover, while being a spinster ( … ). He bought a motorcycle’ (Costa et al. 1979 Costa AA Siza Á. Guimarães C Moura S Fernandes MC 1979 SAAL/NORTE. Balanço de uma experiência Cidade/Campo 2 Lisbon Edic¸ões Ulmeiro 16 60 [Google Scholar]: 29). 9. The ‘ilhas’ consisted of ‘rows of small, single-floor houses ( … ) built in the backyards of old bourgeois houses’ (Teixeira 1992 Teixeira, M. 1992. As estratégias de habitação em Portugal, 1880–1940. Análise Social, XXVII(115): 65–89. [Google Scholar]: 67), which were often deprived of water supply. They emerged as a response, even if a precarious one, to the search for inexpensive housing by the working class of Oporto. Estimates of the proportion of the population of the city living in ‘ilhas’ at the end of the nineteenth century are as high as 50 per cent. The ‘ilhas’ were identified with patterns of spatial organization and of sociability which could not be reproduced under different forms of social housing, particularly those organized in the form of single-family flats. On the housing conditions of the popular classes in Oporto in the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries, see Pereira 1995 Pereira GM 1995 Famílias Portuenses na Viragem do Século Oporto Ed. Afrontamento [Google Scholar]. 10. The actual implementation of these rights is a different story, which has been discussed in detail by Santos (1990 Santos Bde S 1990 O Estado e a Sociedade em Portugal (1974–1988) Oporto Ed. Afrontamento [Google Scholar]). 11. See Santos 1993 Santos Bde S 1993 O Estado, as relações salariais e o bem-estar social na semiperiferia: o caso português Boaventura de Sousa Santos Oporto Ed. Afrontamento, Portugal: Um Retrato Singular 16 56 [Google Scholar], and the thematic issue of Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais (42, 1995, ‘A Sociedade-Providência’). 12. ‘ [ … ] the projects would start as soon as the neighbourhood committees were created; the land for construction was in the process of being selected while the legal decrees which would consolidate the process were drafted’ (Portas 1986 Portas N 1986 O processo SAAL: Entre o Estado e o Poder Local Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais 18/19/20 635 44 [Google Scholar]: 637). 13. ‘[ … ] the idea that all the residents who are in need of help from the state are incapable of contributing in any way because they are already exploited was, of course, a simplistic view which did not fit the actual problems the country was facing ( … ). For the question was: either the state would build only a few houses and people would pay ‘political’ rents, covering the cost of housing through payments in money, be it in the form of rent or of mortgage, or one would have to resort to other means, probably interesting to the residents, of reducing the amount of investment by the state’ (Portas 1986 Portas N 1986 O processo SAAL: Entre o Estado e o Poder Local Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais 18/19/20 635 44 [Google Scholar]: 641–42). 14. As they were forced to deal with this debate, some political organizations on the left ended up defining SAAL as an obvious instance of a bourgeois strategy based on ‘buying time’ for the recomposition of state power as it had existed during the dictatorship. 15. Different versions of this ‘normalized’ narrative circulate in Portuguese society, taking a more explicit and coherent form in the moments of commemoration of the 25 April and 25 November. 16. See, namely, Santos 1990 Santos Bde S 1990 O Estado e a Sociedade em Portugal (1974–1988) Oporto Ed. Afrontamento [Google Scholar], and the contributions to the special issues of Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais (15/16/17, 1985, and 18/19/20, 1986), on ‘1974–1984: Ten Years of Social Change’. The creation of archives and documentation centres of the history of the Revolution is decisive for the reconstruction of its memory. The ‘Centro de Documentação 25 de Abril’ of the University of Coimbra harbours the most important collection of documents related to the period. It has provided the information for detailed and commented chronological reconstitutions of the revolutionary period, as well as for a set of educational materials for primary and secondary schools. See, for instance, Santos et al. 1997 Santos Bde S Cruzeiro MM Coimbra MN 1997 O Pulsar da Revolução: Cronologia da Revolução de 25 de Abril Coimbra/Oporto Centro de Documentação 25 de Abril/Ed. Afrontamento [Google Scholar].