Abstract
Urban conflicts inscribe tensions specific of their contexts of occurrences capable of revealing contradictions and pointing out meanings of disputes, when observed as part of the logic of capitalist production of the space. Entering these processes in a praxis of alignment between the production of knowledge and political action, under the key of the right to the city is a challenge to academic research. Using participant observation, according to the framework provided by Burawoy (1998), three conflicts, triggered by still in process urban projects, are discussed. They are named here as the Centro de Abastecimento de Feira de Santana (Supply Center of Feira de Santana), HortoBela Vista, and Elephant and Castle, located, respectively, in Feira de Santana and Salvador in Bahia, Brazil and London, in the UK. Through an analytical operation, this paper problematizes these conflicts in their contexts, searching to reflect on the legal resources, forms of produced legalities and the senses of the struggles for the right to the city, drawing on a theoretical framework from political science, cultural studies and the critical theory of law. In line with the adopted theoretical and methodological perspectives, we hint at understanding contemporary conflicting processes in different cities in their complexity and scale and affirm converging meanings of the struggles of collective subjects of rights for the right to the city.
Keywords:
Right to the City; Urban Law; Conflict