ABSTRACT

Through a range of ethnographic case studies focusing on the Portuguese recovery after the economic crisis, this book begins a conversation about the experience of recuperation and repair. Located in the cracks and gaps between the state and society, recuperation appears as a social and infrastructural answer linked to reciprocity, critical urbanity, generational interweaving, alternate ordering and reconnection of different bodies and histories. With chapters looking at public art in Lisbon and recuperative modes of action, this collection takes a thorough look at a society in crisis and shows how the people of the community create micro-politics of resistance. Ultimately, Politics of Recuperation reflects on the meaning of personal and collective resilience in Europe today, as well as on the limits and interstices of contemporary politics.

chapter |35 pages

Introduction

The material culture of recuperation

chapter 1|18 pages

Recuperative modes of action

Reciprocity, dependence and resistance to austerity policies in Rural Portugal

chapter 2|19 pages

'Beautiful people eat ugly fruit'

Ugliness and the cracks in the system

chapter 3|25 pages

If buildings could talk

Makeshift urbanity on the outskirts of Lisbon

chapter 5|20 pages

The compost of recuperation

Fabricating social ties in the interstices

chapter 6|15 pages

The place of recuperation

Limits and challenges of urban recovery in post-austerity Portugal

chapter 9|26 pages

Recuperative dances

Reconnecting through kizomba in a crisis context

chapter |14 pages

Conclusion

Repair as repopulating the devastated desert of our political and social imaginations

chapter |6 pages

Afterword Micro-spaces of resilience and resistance

Coping with the multiple crises in Portugal