The politics of construction: towards a theory of material articulations

This paper seeks to position construction as a platform and a practice for the articulation of a new type of urban politics. The argument is presented in four steps, each of them supported by an analysis of the work of social movement GIROS in Rosario. The first part describes how construction introduces prefiguration as a means of reconfiguring the spatialities and temporalities of urban politics. The second part presents an analysis of the processes of de-institutionalisation and de-commodification that emerge from the involvement of urban social movements with construction practices in peripheral settlements. I then illustrate how the politicisation of construction operates through a simultaneous recuperation of what is described as techno-popular knowledges and a disruption of hegemonic constructive epistemologies. Lastly, the paper introduces the notion of material articulation to examine how construction, as a prefigurative tactic, is used to formulate alternative urban political programs. The part presents a brief conceptual history of the notion of articulation and argues for the need to deepen current trends that seek to expand its restrictive association with language and institutionalised politics. The paper concludes by addressing how material articulations are reconfiguring the content, agencies and spatialities of political action.