Displacing the “slum-line”: a narrative approach

Abstract

This article explores some discursive constructions of slums and the narrative foundations that sustain them. In such discourses, the distancing function of language demarcates a slum-line that defines and creates a “natural” separation between slums and the rest of urban populations to the extent that some see that the modern concept of slum opens an urban dimension of Orientalism. Slum discourses generate narratives that, after repeated exposure, accrue to become history, culture and knowledge. Drawing from Bruner's work on narrative accrual, this article studies how slum-narratives accrue according to specific agendas that determine lines of socio-political action on slum-dwellers.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 7 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.