Broken Cities: Inside the Global Housing Crisis

Abstract

course specifically about punk and hip-hop. For a book that contains both punk and hip-hop in its title, it is a strangely soundless work, engaging with those ‘subcultures’ only through visual manifestations of what he terms a ‘rebel aesthetics’ – the ‘collective practices and sensibilities’ embodied in ‘interventions that transform public space, like direct actions, as well as murals and stencil graffiti with oppositional messages’ (14–15). Though Magaña claims that the 2006 Generation ‘compels us to move beyond an artist/activist dichotomy in order to fully appreciate the ways that artists’ work is often central to social movements’ (17), this assertion is not fully elaborated. His emphasis on individual artists and their works also raises the question of how horizontal organisation may be enacted through creative practices that are either grounded in or construct a broader sense of collectivity. Though the role of the artist in social movement organising remains unclear, Magaña fulfills his primary objective in providing an in-depth look at how a particular intersection of marginalised youth in Oaxaca, post-2006, experimented with everyday horizontal practices to realise a vision of a more equitable society. The book’s wealth of ethnographic data on a too-little studied corner of the world opens the door for others to join and extend the valuable dialogues that Magaña and his collaborators in Oaxaca established.