{"id":16479,"date":"2014-07-20T09:00:54","date_gmt":"2014-07-20T12:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=16479"},"modified":"2015-12-23T21:06:23","modified_gmt":"2015-12-24T00:06:23","slug":"whats-in-a-name-slum-stigma-worldwide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=16479","title":{"rendered":"What’s in a Name? Slum Stigma Worldwide"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas\"\"<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

In 2007 the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal passed the KwaZulu-Natal Elimination and Prevention of Re-Emergence of Slums Act. Before the act became law, Abahlali baseMjondolo<\/a>, a grassroots social movement whose name means \u201cresidents of the shacks,\u201d produced a press release<\/a>\u00a0that stated: “The Bill uses the word \u2018slum\u2019 in a way that makes it sound like the places where poor people live are a problem that must be cleared away because there is something wrong with poor people\u2026 rather than the rich and the way in which they have made the poor\u2026 poor by a lack of development.”<\/p>\n

For movement members, the word \u2018slum\u2019 carried dangerous stigmas<\/a> about the area\u2019s inhabitants, encouraging government policies to \u2018eliminate\u2019 such communities over working with residents to address their problems. Abahlali declared: “The people who live in the imijondolo must decide for themselves what they want their communities to be called.”<\/p>\n

Resurgence of the term ‘slum’<\/h3>\n

The majority of English-language reports on Brazil during the intense media spotlight of the\u00a0World Cup\u00a0have translated the word \u2018favela\u2019 as \u2018slum.\u2019 It\u2019s an unsurprising trend. Not only can the journalist or editor today find countless examples of their counterparts using that definition over recent years, but even Google Translate uncritically asserts that \u2018favela\u2019 is \u2018slum\u2019 and that \u2018slum\u2019 is \u2018favela.\u2019<\/p>\n

Geography Professor Alan Gilbert writes<\/a> that the term \u2018slum\u2019 was actually disappearing from use throughout the twentieth century, but that the United Nations \u201cCities Without Slums<\/a>\u201d initiative launched in 1999 pulled\u00a0the word back into the center of development conversations, along “with all its inglorious associations.\u201d In defining slums and quantitative goals for reducing them, Gilbert acknowledges that the UN is \u201cengaging in the modern and perfectly proper practice of establishing \u2018targets\u2019 against which progress can be measured.\u201d However, he argues that a \u2018slum\u2019 does not lend itself to being measured, in part because it is a relative, rather than absolute, concept.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The UN\u2019s 2003 report, \u2018The Challenges of Slums<\/a>,\u2019 states that slums are \u201ctoo complex to define according to one single parameter\u201d and \u201clocal variations among slums are too wide to define universally applicable criteria,\u201d while \u201cslums change too fast to render any criterion valid for a reasonably long period of time.\u201d Still, the report offers an operational definition of a slum: “An area that combines, to various extents, the following characteristics (restricted to the physical and legal characteristics of the settlement, and excluding the more difficult social dimensions): inadequate access to safe water; inadequate access to sanitation and other infrastructure; poor structural quality of housing; overcrowding; insecure residential status.”<\/p>\n

This does not match the reality of many of Rio\u2019s favela residents who have access to running water, electricity, and garbage collection, while their houses are structurally sound. As noted<\/a> on RioOnWatch, \u201cunder adverse possession legislation, residents have the legal right to occupy the land and in some favelas residents hold title.\u201d Calling favelas–or indeed other such neighborhoods<\/a> globally–\u2018slums\u2019 conveys a misleading picture<\/a> of these communities to international audiences.<\/p>\n

Rejecting the\u00a0label<\/h3>\n

Labeling areas as \u2018slums\u2019 can also create a gap between residents\u2019 understanding of their community and the perspective of outsiders who try to \u2018help\u2019 them. Anthropologist Rahul Srivastava and urban developer Matias Echanove discuss Dharavi, a district of Mumbai that has gained notoriety as one of Asia\u2019s largest slums. They recall<\/a> that they were \u201csearching for slums\u201d and found that \u201cin every neighborhood residents said, ‘There is no slum here!’ They don\u2019t think their house is situated in a slum.\u201d However, they write<\/a> that the media\u2019s dominant portrayal of the district remains \u201cas a wasteland with barely standing temporary structures; an immense junkyard crowded with undernourished people hopelessly disconnected from the rest of the world, surviving on charity and pulling the whole city\u2019s economy backward.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Srivastava and Echanove, the portrayal as a \u2018slum\u2019 encourages top-down urban planning projects that ignore residents\u2019 opinions. The stigma-heavy word obscures the area\u2019s assets, such as how local residents\u2019 construction of their own buildings leads to the development of neighborhoods that respond directly to local needs.<\/p>\n

The ‘elimination of slum and blight’<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In the United States, the labeling of areas as \u2018slums\u2019 has become a means to funding. The \u2018elimination of slum and blight\u2019 is encoded as one of the Department of Housing and Urban Development\u2019s three national objectives. Accordingly, state governments allocate funding for projects that work towards that goal.<\/p>\n

In 2013, city officials in Augusta, Georgia debated labeling the downtown area a slum, a designation that would make available US$26.5 million for renovations. According to a local paper<\/a>: “City Administrator Fred Russell said…that it was unfortunate that Georgia legislators do require the characterization of a ‘slum’ for an area to receive special benefits but that suffering through the designation will be useful to continue downtown revitalization.”<\/p>\n

Similarly, in 2013 in Rock Springs, Wyoming, the city\u2019s urban renewal agency sought to label neighborhoods as \u2018slum and blighted.\u2019 According to a local news report<\/a>, the director of community development, Laura Leigh, explained that the designation \u201c[did] not mean all the properties within an area are dilapidated and run down.\u201d However, residents \u201cwere livid with being included in a slum and blighted area,\u201d leaving Leigh to question why the language could not be changed. As with\u00a0Abahlali\u2019s experience with the Slums Act, \u2018slum\u2019 language is employed to facilitate development projects at the cost of painting an inaccurate and stigmatizing picture of a community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas In 2007 the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal passed the KwaZulu-Natal Elimination and Prevention of Re-Emergence of Slums Act. Before the act became law, Abahlali baseMjondolo, a grassroots social movement whose […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":16906,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1288,1271,1282,1329],"tags":[1361,1389,1046,462,463,878,1341,558,1045,453,403,1353],"writer":[1352],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-16479","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-highlight","8":"category-favelaqualities","9":"category-research-analysis","10":"category-by-international-observers","11":"tag-endfavelastigma","12":"tag-slum","13":"tag-abahlali-basemjondolo","14":"tag-dharavi","15":"tag-india","16":"tag-international-comparison","17":"tag-language","18":"tag-prejudice","19":"tag-south-africa","20":"tag-stigma","21":"tag-townships","22":"tag-usa","23":"writer-cerianne-robertson"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16479"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=16479"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=16479"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=16479"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=16479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}