Patrik Zapata

Switching Managua on! Connecting Informal Settlements to the Formal City Through Household Solid Waste Collection

This paper explores the organizing of household solid waste management collection and disposal practices in informal settlements. It is based on a case study of an NGO project that supports Manos Unidas (Joined Hands), an informal waste picker cooperative in Managua, Nicaragua. Using horse carts, these waste pickers collect household solid waste from informal settlements where there was no previous regular, official waste collection. Unlike many development projects, which try to control people’s agency, the support examined here focused on the residents of illegal neighbourhoods and the waste pickers, who themselves became city constructors and co-producers of basic services such as household waste collection rather than service recipients of aid programmes or municipal governments. By slightly changing the actions of the actors already involved in informal waste handling in the informal settlements, the project succeeded in transforming an agent of pollution into the solution to several interconnected problems, namely illegal dumping by the cart-men and residents, the cart-men’s low and irregular incomes and the lack of household waste collection services.

Socio-environmental entrepreneurship and the provision of critical services in informal settlements

This paper contributes to the understanding of processes by which small-scale entrepreneurs who provide household waste collection in informal settlements succeed in formalized co-production of such services. The paper draws on the social and solidarity economy and social and environmental entrepreneurship theoretical frameworks, which offer complementary understandings of diverse strategies to tackle everyday challenges. Two questions are addressed: How do informal waste collection initiatives get established, succeed and grow? What are the implications of this transition for the entrepreneurs themselves, the communities, the environmental governance system and the scholarship? A case study is presented, based on three waste picker entrepreneurs in Kisumu, Kenya, who have consolidated and expanded their operations in informal settlements but also extended social and environmental activities into formal settlements. The paper demonstrates how initiatives, born as community-based organizations, become successful social micro-enterprises, driven by a desire to address socio-environmental challenges in their neighbourhoods.

Changing La Chureca. Organising city resilience through action nets

This article aims to contribute to the literature on city organizing, an important yet under-researched area in the intersection of organization theory and urban studies. The concepts of the city and change, translation and action nets are fundamental to this analysis. The study takes as its object the collective process of organizing the change of La Chureca, the rubbish dump of the city of Managua, Nicaragua. Through its translation into a global spectacle of degradation, La Chureca has become a flagship for urban change projects. La Chureca is referred to as an example of an ‘uncanny place’. In association with urban social movements, these uncanny places are strong catalysts for mobilizing urban change and resilience. The article concludes by discussing the revival of the local in Latin American cities and the permeation of the historical role of urban movements as agents of change in the processes of urban governance and managing resilience.

Infiltrating citizen-driven initiatives for sustainability

ABSTRACT To examine how citizen-driven initiatives for sustainability strive to bring about change and spread their practices, efforts to link social movement, grassroots innovation and green-consumption movements theory are built upon. Göteborg’s citizen-driven waste-prevention initiatives, such as food waste recovery, creating common reuse spaces in housing blocks, exchanging used toys and repairing abandoned bicycles, are considered with data from observations, workshops, documents, social media communications and in-depth interviews. Citizen-driven initiatives succeeded in mobilizing material resources, displaying and reframing various rationales, and creating collaborative local networks to develop their waste-prevention practices. These practices infiltrated the municipal administration, matching incipient institutional mandates to minimize waste. By so doing, they bring within mainstream institutions radical rationales that can become activated in the future, contributing to diachronic change.

Bridging Weak Links of Solid Waste Management in Informal Settlements

Many cities in the global South suffer from vast inadequacies and deficiencies in their solid waste management. In the city of Kisumu in Kenya, waste management is fragmented and insufficient with most household waste remaining uncollected. Solid waste enters and leaves public space through an intricate web of connected, mostly informal, actions. This article scrutinizes waste management of informal settlements, based on the case of Kisumu, to identify weak links in waste management chains and find neighborhood responses to bridge these gaps. Systems theory and action net theory support our analysis to understand the actions, actors, and processes associated with waste and its management. We use qualitative data from fieldwork and hands on engagement in waste management in Kisumu. Our main conclusion is that new waste initiatives should build on existing waste management practices already being performed within informal settlements by waste scavengers, waste pickers, waste entrepreneurs, and community-based organizations.

Networked Social Movements and the Politics of Mortgage: From the Right to Housing to the Assault on Institutions

Abstract Purpose In the aftermath of the Great Recession, over 500,000 families have been evicted from their homes since Spain’s property market crashed in 2008. The response of Spanish local communities has been the emergence of a networked social movement, Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH), endeavouring to build a more sustainable future through upholding the right to housing. This chapter examines the ability of the PAH social movement to uphold the right to housing and prompt social and institutional change in Spain. Methodology/approach This is a single-case study of the PAH social movement in Spain. The data are of three types: texts, photos, and films disseminated via the mass media, social networks, and PAH websites; informal conversations with PAH participants from Barcelona and Madrid; and observations and personal interviews held in two local PAH groups, that is, Mostoles and Elche. Findings In this chapter, first we explore the birth of PAH and its later spread from Barcelona to hundreds of cities in Spain and beyond, as a social reaction to the economic recession and decisions made by political, administrative, and financial institutions in response to the economic crisis. Then, by analysing the internal dynamics of two PAH groups, we discuss how networked social movements such as PAH can create spaces of citizenship that challenge taken-for-granted principles of capitalism, prompting social change. Finally, we uncover how, due to PAH’s advocacy work addressing a structural lack of emergency and social housing, the Spanish public administration is developing new roles and allocating new resources to guarantee the right to housing, a social policy area historically neglected in Spain. Practical implications New social housing offices are being established in municipalities in Spain as a result of PAH’s advocacy work. Originality/value The strengthening of social capital and movements in the aftermath of the economic crisis has the ability to prompt investment in social areas such as housing.

Waste tours. Narratives, infrastructures and gazes in interplay

A revised version of this paper is published in Etnografia e ricerca: Zapata, Patrik and Zapata Campos, Maria Jose (2018) Waste tours: narratives, infrastructures and gazes in interplay. Etnografia Ricerca Qualitativa, 11 (1) 97-118, DOI: 10.3240/89696

Cities, institutional entrepreneurship and the emergence of new environmental policies: The organizing of waste prevention in the City of Gothenburg, Sweden:

Informed by institutional entrepreneurship theory and based on the case of waste prevention projects in the City of Göteborg, this paper examines the role of cities in shaping new environmental policies. Structured by the research question, ‘How do cities shape novel environmental policies and practices?’, the paper illustrates how cities become agents of environmental change and institutional entrepreneurship through mobilizing and recombining resources (i.e. human, financial, and spatial), rationales (by reframing symbols, challenging taboos, and transforming waste socio-materialities), and relations (via internal and external collaboration and by creating new institutional arrangements, roles, and expectations). Emerging environmental policies, such as waste prevention, represent the structuring of an incipient environmental policy field. This new generation of environmental policies expands the scope of the public sector (the so-called publicness), reshapes the public/private distinction, and challenges taboos such as the intrusion of publicness into privateness.