Feminism and the Urban Practice: Three Lines of Analysis

Abstract

In this article the authors propose reflections regarding the power of feminism over the urban practice as an activity by counter-hegemonic architectures. Grounded on historical-dialectic materialism, our study started with reflections on the material production of concrete social relations which, as their contradictions unfold, engender the counter-hegemonic emancipatory process. For such, three lines of analysis are presented. In the first one, we discuss how the logic of accumulation and violence, intrinsic to capitalism, imposes itself over body-territories, asserting itself as the rule and belittling life and those pieces of knowledge that are not guided by profit and patriarchal domination. In the second line of analysis, by mapping the downtown area in Florianópolis, we will show how this system manifests itself both symbolically and   in terms of space. Only ten of all streets in the city center have received the name of women, showing that the patriarchal standard is settled in the territory. The third line reveals itself as a synthesis of the other two. We introduce the women in urban agriculture as individual and collective body-territories building a counter-hegemonic praxis in urban spaces and on social movements. They take political action with the construction of alternatives that foster care, reproduction of life, reconnection with nature, protection of popular traditions, as well as issues of gender and the right to the city. These women carry with them the power to bring social and urban transformation.