ABSTRACT

Uneven development in many North American cities has given rise to an increasing number of homeless encampments as residents seek shelter, sanitation, and other basic needs outside of formally recognized networks. In gentrifying cities, these informal infrastructures are also subject to the recurring violence of sweeps, wherein states remove, seize, or destroy life-sustaining necessities to decrease their visibility and designate space for other uses. The sweep is both a strategy of governance and a viscerally felt phenomenon in which infrastructural networks become terrains of contestation. In this article, we examine the cultural politics of sweeps through the analytic of maintenance. Drawing on examples from Toronto, Ontario, Canada and San Francisco, California, United States, we argue that sweeps are mechanisms of policing that often operate through the apparently benign work of routine maintenance, which in turn iteratively organizes belonging and exclusion in cities. These dynamics have thereby become important sites for infrastructural struggle. With our analysis, we join scholars in the study of infrastructure taking a critical stance toward processes of maintenance and repair, asking questions about what is being maintained, for whom, and toward what end.

摘要

由于居民在正式认可的网络之外寻求住所、卫生和其他基本需求，许多北美城市的发展不平衡导致越来越多的无家可归者营地。在高档化的城市中，这些非正式的基础设施也受到经常性的扫荡暴力的影响，在这种情况下，国家移除、夺取或摧毁维持生命的必需品，以降低它们的知名度，并为其他用途指定空间。扫荡既是一种治理策略，也是一种内在感觉的现象，在这种现象中，基础设施网络成为了争论的领域。在本文中，我们通过维护分析来研究扫荡的文化政治。借鉴加拿大安大略省多伦多和美国加利福尼亚州旧金山的例子，我们认为清扫是警务机制，通常通过日常维护的明显良性工作来运作，这反过来又反复地组织城市中的归属和排斥。因此，这些动态已成为基础设施斗争的重要场所。通过我们的分析，我们与学者一起研究基础设施，对维护和维修过程采取批判性立场，询问有关正在维护什么、为谁维护以及为了什么目的而维护的问题。