‘The Politics of Security in Bogotá’ – Austin Zeiderman

Urban Governance and its Discontents Seminars:Endangered City:
In this talk, I will present an overview of my forthcoming book. I will focus in particular on “endangerment” as an analytic for understanding cultural, social, and political life in places like Bogotá. Rather than drawing attention to the direct experience of violence, threat, or danger, I will show how endangerment conditions, often indirectly, the domain of politics and government, the relationship between the state and the citizen, and the city as a political community. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in the self-built settlements on the periphery of Bogotá and among the municipal government agencies active in these areas, I will argue that endangerment offers a way of apprehending the politics of security and the government of risk, and their implications for contemporary cities and urban life.