Informalities and legitimacies in the Bolivian urban peripheries (Cochabamba)

Abstract

This article's topic is the legitimate but informal territorialization of Bolivia's urban peripheries. Based on an ethnography of outlying districts of Cochabamba, it identifies the mechanisms for establishing legitimacy without legality, especially their connections to the demands and discourses of the country's indigenous movement. It emphasizes the rhetorical hegemony needed to sustain this legitimacy in the periurban context. Finally it examines how the instability generated by the boundary shifts between normative orders is resolved bureaucratically through the liberal sociopolitical system.