Setha Low

Faculty Fellow

Setha Low is the co-author, with Neil Smith, of The Politics of Public Space (Routledge, 2005). She plans to address the following research questions as a fellow this year. Based on current observations of public space during this economic crisis and previous research on the privatization of public space and the changes in the Latin American plaza: 1) What accounts for the shift in both who (right or left wing organizations and workers) uses public space to protest and the more limited nature and extent of current expressions of political struggle and discontent? 2) Do observations about the different kinds of protest and the state’s response in Latin America provide insights into the lack of public space protest in New York City? 3) How are public spaces as places of work utilized during an economic crisis with massive unemployment? 4) Are informal sectors workers, such as vendors and artists, increasingly occupying public spaces to organize and defend their right to work?

Participating Years

2010–2011

Labor/Crisis/Protest

Labor processes and conditions of employment in almost all sectors of the economy and most of the world have been revolutionized over the last thirty years. Generally, the share of wages in gross domestic product has declined while the share taken by capital (finance in particular) has soared. The response (or lack of it) to these new conditions has been patchy, raising questions of the state of political consciousness and political subjectivity among affected populations. Where, many ask, is the outrage and why the lack of mass protest and mass movement?