Urban wood/s
Resumo / Abstract
Quais são os fundamentos sociomateriais da desigualdade urbana? Com foco na aparência e na essência da madeira e da mata nas cidades, investigo como a madeira, como material de construção, e a mata, como material vivo, moldam e refletem as desigualdades sociais nos mundos urbanos. Ao examinar as práticas relacionadas à madeira e a mata urbana e as suas implicações sociopolíticas, este projeto visa esclarecer os entrelaçamentos entre infraestrutura material, relações sociais, produção cultural e políticas ambientais. O projeto abrange diversos contextos urbanos na América Latina, Ásia e Europa, envolvendo urbanistas, arquitetos, fábricas de madeira, carpinteiros, artesãos, jardineiros, construtores e habitantes de várias origens socioeconómicas. Através do conhecimento dos profissionais da madeira e da arborização urbana, exploro como as políticas climáticas e sociais, bem como as práticas de sustentabilidade, distinção e sobrevivência, influenciam a perceção e o uso da madeira, desde luxuosos interiores em madeira maciça e objetos de arte, passando por estruturas sustentáveis totalmente em madeira e a arborização e as florestas urbanas, até habitações e ecologias mais-do-que-humanas precárias. O projeto aborda questões teóricas sobre a reprodução e contestação da desigualdade urbana, intuições empíricos sobre a política quotidiana de equidade e sustentabilidade e inovações metodológicas na pesquisa etnográfica multimodal e colaborativa. Ao unir a teoria etnográfica do Sul e do Norte Global e empregar métodos de pesquisa qualitativas e participativas, esta pesquisa contribui para o debate mais amplo sobre a desigualdade social, cultural e epistemológica, urbanização, mobilidade e sustentabilidade.
English:
What are the socio-material foundations of urban inequality? Focusing on the appearance and substance of wood/s in cities, I investigate how wood, as both living and dead material, shapes and reflects social inequalities within urban worlds. By examining wood-related practices and their socio-political implications, this project aims to illuminate the entanglements between material infrastructure, social relations, cultural production, and environmental policies. The project spans diverse urban contexts in Europe, Latin America, and Asia, engaging with urban planners, architects, timber factories, carpenters, artisans, gardeners, builders, and inhabitants from various socioeconomic backgrounds. Through the knowledge of wood and urban greening practitioners, I explore how climate and social policies as well as practices of sustainability, distinction, and survival influence the perception and use of wood and urban greening, from luxurious solid wood interiors and art objects, through sustainable all-wooden structures and greening projects, to precarious dwelling and more-than-human ecologies. The project addresses theoretical questions about the reproduction and contestation of urban inequality, empirical insights into the everyday politics of equity and sustainability, and methodological innovations in multimodal and collaborative ethnographic research. By bridging ethnographic theory from the Global South and North and employing qualitative and participative research methods, this research contributes to the broader discourse on social, cultural, and epistemological inequality, urbanization, mobility, and sustainability.
Urban materiality and inequality. Rethinking Social and Ecological Challenges in the Global South. Workshop at the Global South Studies Center, University of Cologne, 24-25/06/2025.
Urban materiality and inequality. Rethinking Social and Ecological Challenges in the Global South. Workshop at the Global South Studies Center, University of Cologne, 24-25/06/2025.
Abstract:
This workshop renews the interest in an old link between the urban built space and social inequality. The morphology of a city, its architecture, infrastructure and urban designs all link in intricate ways to the heterogeneity of urban social life and the different people who animate it. Given the current attention to urban geographies, their predicament and potentials under the climate emergency and its unequal impact on different parts of the planet’s inhabitants, understanding this link has obtained new urgency. Urban inequality and materiality gain contours in the human and more-than-human dimensions both as relevant part of the challenges and part of possible solutions. Particular forms of urban materiality – wood and other building materials, built space, the underlying urban geography and historical sedimentations - and how they were and are handled and weaponized within logics of capitalism and extraction as well as social engineering and redistribution will be discussed within standing and new research projects.
In an interdisciplinary dialogue between anthropology, architecture and urban planning, geography and cultural studies, researchers will discuss the long-standing and multiple links between materiality and inequality, how they are currently analysed, and what potentials remain for new insights and why. Given recent developments and exchanges, the workshop complements the hegemonic debates regarding cement, sand, and steel by focusing on lesser discussed, but no-less relevant materialities. Project proposal and paper presentations will explore, for example, the role of wood and woodwork in contemporary realities at the intersection of inequality and sustainability, the rural-urban, violent history of the trade in wood, the (increasingly unsuccessful) domestication of water ways as an outstanding example of unequal urban development, as well as the peri-urban where the city meets the forest and rivers. Examples draw from cities in the Global South.
More information: GSSC (UzK)
Selected presentations
Wood(s) in the city. Tracing inequality and sustainability in urban ecologies
12th Simpósio da Sociedade Latino-americana e Caribenha de História Ambiental (SOLCHA) – Mudanças Climáticas e Desafios Planetários: perspectivas da História Ambiental, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 22-27/07/2025
Abstract
Recently, approaching the city through the materials that constitute its environment is recurrent: Sand, cement, and glass are among the most recent urban protagonists of ethnographies of global urbanization. They are uniquely capable of bringing all scales from the molecular to the planetary together to better understand the urban age we inhabit. Wood(s) in the city – from built infrastructure to urban forests – stands out: wood suffers from historical prejudice and is celebrated as a sustainable future, it marks inequality and celebrates distinction, it symbolises risks and promises climate mitigation. How does tracing wood(s) in the city disclose distinct assemblages in which sustainability and inequality intertwine in tense ways? While not hegemonic at this current stage regarding urban growth, wood participates in urban ecologies at crucial instances due to its versatility: as building material of precarious housing for those who have close to nothing and as the built form of distinction in expensive interiors made of increasingly rare species, as a basis to construct sustainably by reforestation, and as an ecological source of solace to combat increasingly uninhabitable heat by urban greening.
Grounded in examples of wooden traces in contemporary Rio de Janeiro and suggesting comparisons across cities in the global south, I critically enquire into the potentials (and challenges) of tracing urban ecologies of inequality and sustainability through wood. To ethnographically study wood and those who work it (urban planners, timber factories, carpenters, gardeners, urbanites, etc.) bears the methodological potential of ethical research on extreme inequality and its effects and the challenges to building sustainable urban futures. Epistemologically, following the traces of wood(s) deepens our understanding of the socio-techno-material constitution of life worlds that is at the basis of both the ecological and social crises the planet faces. The binary juxtaposition of natural and built environment – or nature and culture – collapses back into one as wood(s) pervade a discontinuous but deeply relational and multidimensional (urban) ecology. To study traces of inequality and sustainability as entangled provides novel answers to both ecological and social crises.
MadeiraMente: Sustentabilidade e desigualdade urbana
ODS: do global às práticas da PUC Minas [Sustainable Development Goals: from the global to the practice at the Catholic University of Minas Gerais], PUC Minas, 04/10/2024
Resumem
Para mitigar a crise ecológica que enfrentamos, habitar o nosso mundo de forma sustentável faz parte das soluções possíveis. Mas essas tentativas de fazer o bem também são mais justas? Em vez de um debate filosófico, esta apresentação contempla os fundamentos sociomateriais da desigualdade urbana ao explorar a presença da madeira nas cidades, tanto em projetos de arborização urbana quanto em ambientes construídos. Como parte de soluções sustentáveis, a madeira promete mitigar a crise ecológica. Pergunto, pelo contrário, se e como a madeira, em suas diversas formas, dá expressão às desigualdades sociais: de moradias precárias a interiores caros, de habitações sociais a projetos sustentáveis vanguardistas, de bosques urbanos à preservação ambiental. Ao examinar as práticas relacionadas à madeira e suas implicações sociopolíticas, pretendo iluminar as relações entre infraestruturas materiais, relações sociais, produção cultural e políticas ambientais.
La ciudad a través de la madera
Consideraciones metodológicas, epistemológicas y políticas del giro material en los estudios urbanos
IDAES, Universidad San Martín (UNSAM), Argentina, 2024
- English below -
Resúmen en español
Últimamente, es recurrente acercarse a la ciudad a través de los materiales que constituyen su entorno construido: la arena, el cemento y el vidrio son algunos de los protagonistas urbanos más recientes de las etnografías de la urbanización global. Parecen ser singularmente capaces de aunar todas las escalas, desde la molecular a la global, para comprender mejor la era urbana que habitamos. Algunos materiales, como la madera, quizá posean una capacidad especial para centrarse en la desigualdad. Si bien no es hegemónica en esta etapa actual respecto al crecimiento urbano, entra en escena en instancias cruciales: como material de construcción de viviendas precarias para quienes no tienen casi nada, como formas más o menos sutiles de distinción en interiores caros y cada vez más escasos, así como una opción ecológica y regenerativa para combatir el calor cada vez más inhabitable o para construir de forma sostenible.
En esta charla, indago críticamente en las potencialidades (y riesgos) de estudiar las expresiones urbanas de la desigualdad a través de los materiales de construcción, en particular la madera. Metodológicamente, estudiar la madera y a quienes la trabajan (urbanistas, madereros, carpinteros, jardineros, urbanitas, etc.) encierra el potencial de realizar una investigación ética sobre la desigualdad extrema y sus efectos. Epistemológicamente, nos permite profundizar nuestra comprensión de la constitución socio-teco-material de nuestro mundo de la vida, que está en la base tanto de la crisis ecológica como de la crisis social a las que se enfrenta la humanidad. Pero, ¿qué hace políticamente? Concluiré considerando si pueden evitarse, y cómo, los riesgos de despolarización y deshumanización tanto de las víctimas como de los perpetradores de las crisis contemporáneas de redistribución y sostenibilidad.
Consideraciones metodológicas, epistemológicas y políticas del giro material en los estudios urbanos
Abstract
Recently, approaching the city through the materials that constitute its built environment is recurrent: Sand, cement, and glass are among the most recent urban protagonists of ethnographies of global urbanization. They seem uniquely capable of bringing all scales from the molecular to the global together to better understand the urban age we inhabit. Some materials, such as wood, might have a particular capacity to focus in on inequality. While not hegemonic at this current stage regarding urban growth, it enters the scene at crucial instances: as building material of precarious housing for those who have close to nothing, as more or less subtle forms of distinction in expensive and increasingly rare interiors, as well as an ecological, regenerative options to combat increasingly uninhabitable heat or to construct sustainably.
In this talk, I critically enquire into the potentials (and risks) of studying the urban expressions of inequality through building materials, in particular wood. Methodologically, to study wood and those who work it (urban planners, timber factories, carpenters, gardeners, urbanites, etc.) bears the potential to do ethical research on extreme inequality and its effects. Epistemologically, it deepens our understanding of the socio-techo-material constitution of our life world that is at the basis of both the ecological and social crises humanity faces. What does it do politically though? I will conclude considering if and how the risks of depolarization and dehumanization of both victims and perpetrators of the contemporary crises of redistribution and sustainability can be avoided.
Urban woods
How to study inequality through hidden (material) knowledge archives in the city
Lateinamerika Institut, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
Abstract
This presentation engages with methodological and epistemological questions regarding the study of the wooden expressions of urban inequality. It focuses on the wooden forms and their producers. The former range from luxurious interiors and ecological innovation to precarious and stigmatized housing. The latter include urban planners, architects, wholesalers, carpenters as well as the most diverse urban dwellers. (How) can they all be engaged through ethnography and how do new insights into the making of urban inequality emerge?
Funding
Seed Funding
Ethngraphic research
- Buenos Aires, exploratory fieldwork, April 2024
- Rio de Janeiro, exploratory fieldwork, January 2026