Urbanities,
Vol. 4
·
No 2
·
November 2014
© 2014
Urbanities
87
Poverty (Silverman 2005: 307). This included the impacts of urban renewal, which began
earlier, in the 1950s and 1960s, with predictably negative results for many relocatees. Yet
those working on forced relocation in developing countries today rarely turn to developed
countries to learn from their experiences. Indeed, just as Prato and Pardo note how urban
anthropology grew somewhat independently in Europe, the United States and elsewhere, so
too has international development practice grown separately from concerns about similar
social issues in the global North. In contrast to policy makers in international organizations,
who must focus on developing countries, scholars can carry out comparative analyses to
outline common urban social processes, regional differences and city particularities.
Scholarly comparative analyses can also build on knowledge of the deep past. While
the macro-processes of urban change today are linked to the growth of global capitalism,
capitalism is not the only economic force that has led to the growth of cities or to forced
movements of people. Archaeologists have shown that people were obliged to relocate to
cities among the Inka as well as in ancient Anatolia (Morris 2008, Stone 2008). Indeed,
archaeologists have pursued an anthropology of the city even longer than have socio-cultural
anthropologists, looking at patterns of planning, growth, and long-term change (Smith ed.
2003, Marcus and Sabloff eds 2008). Thus comparative analysis of many topics, not just
urban forced resettlement, would be enriched by systematic comparison of historical and
archaeological materials to contemporary ethnographies.
The insights from urban anthropology facilitate practitioners’ understanding of the
effects of coercion. In rural areas, displaced residents often express shock at leaving the
places where their families have lived and their ancestors are buried, but displaced urban
residents do so less often. Although some people subjected to urban renewal have expressed
strong place attachment (see, for example, Fullilove 2004), today’s urban displaced often
include significant numbers of recent migrants. Urban residents voluntarily change their place
of residence to take up new economic opportunities or show changing social status. However,
even for people willing to move voluntarily in their own interests, a coerced move is quite
different. The coercion itself compromises the ability of the relocated to reconstitute the social
networks that underpin economic, social and psychological well-being.
In spite of the problems that usually accompany forced displacement, evidence shows
that some people can use the new resources, especially monetary compensation, to create
substantially better lives. When urban residents are forcibly relocated during strong economic
times, a greater number may be able to benefit than when forced relocation occurs during an
economic downtown. To keep pressure on international organizations to implement and
maintain strong safeguard policies for the forcibly resettled, development practitioners have
not often looked closely at those individuals or groups who do well. Nevertheless, scholarly
approaches can and should do so. Theoretically important in themselves, these findings may
also suggest how to improve strategies for the less well off, building on what enterprising
individuals have already found effective.
