Doe-Het-Zelf Werkplaats Rotterdam. Performing urban citizenship through acts of solidarity and collective practices of repairing.

Abstract

This thesis, drawing on materials collected during ethnographic fieldwork in Doe-Het-Zelf Werkplaats in Rotterdam, explores the articulations and performances of urban citizenship through acts of solidarity and collective practices of repairing. By adopting the practice-oriented perspective, combined with the focus on solidarity and an epistemological inquiry into collective knowledge-making, this study provides a multi-angular account of urban citizenship, that contributes to the fields of urban anthropology, citizenship studies, and anthropology of solidarity. Urban citizenship, in this context, was conceptualized as a non-state-centric formulation that captures the multiple and overlapping ways in which people organize themselves in grassroots political communities, specifically embedded in an urban context, with aims at reshaping and governing their urban habitat.