Political Action, Informality and Mobile Metropolises : An Epistemological Reflection

Abstract :

The paper reflects on the most appropriate ways to study social realities in a context of urbanity. Similarly to modernity, we define urbanity as a historical condition, unequally-distributed but dominant. Indeed, urbanisation transforms socio-political processes in three ways : 1) through the restructuring of the institutional architecture of power, 2) through the generation of new logics of action, and 3) through the elaboration of new ontologies. Yet, social sciences evolved with the formation of Nation-states, in a world much less fluid than the urban world that characterises our era. However, a new epistemology of urbanity and informality seems to be developing. This paper explores this new epistemology with the example of the transformations of the Mexican state by informal trafficking and the rise of mobile metropolises.

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