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Decolonizing Porto? Thinking on the Portuguese “Unfinished” Decolonization Process From a Collaborative Action-Research Project With the City's Black Communities

Lígia Ferro ^a

Beatriz Lacerda ^a

Lydia Matthews ^b

Susan Meiselas ^c

^{^a}University of Porto, Portugal

^{^b}The New School, USA

^{^c}Magnum Photos Cooperative, USA

Elites, Nonelites, and Power

ISBN: 978-1-83797-584-6, eISBN: 978-1-83797-583-9

Publication date: 28 November 2024

Abstract

The repercussions of Portugal's colonialism are not widely discussed. The marks of colonialism in the public space are still present in the urban landscape of Portuguese cities. Despite the growing activity of the Black movement's in the country, they are still not being systematically considered in the design of public policies. Moreover, the Portuguese census does not include any data collection on ethnic belonging. Therefore, it is difficult to deepen the knowledge of the Black communities. The Black community has been growing in Porto, the second-largest city in Portugal and it remains highly invisible. Starting from a collaborative project between Portuguese and American professionals, acting in the fields of sociology and socially engaged curatorial and contemporary art practices, an experimental approach was developed to map and cocreate with the Black community in Porto. By using digital tools while collecting, analyzing, and sharing data, and by applying an ethnographic approach and techniques of exploration from documentary photography, the team developed a collaborative project side by side with the community. An exchange between disciplinary knowledge and “various subject positions,” with all participants engaging in an exploration of how to begin decolonizing the city through those tools took place at the project TRAVESSIA. This chapter explores how the Black nonelite is expressing and questioning race and ethnic inequalities in Porto by discussing the results of this collaborative project.

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Acknowledgements

Acknowledgments

This paper was first presented at the 2022's Social Science History Association Annual Meeting (November 20, 2022, Chicago, Illinois, USA) on the panel “Between Marx and Mosca: The Critical Legacy of Elite Theory,” organized by Rebecca Emigh (UCLA) and chaired by Dylan Riley (University of California at Berkeley), to whom the authors thank for the comments and suggestions.

Citation

Ferro, L., Lacerda, B., Matthews, L. and Meiselas, S. (2024), "Decolonizing Porto? Thinking on the Portuguese “Unfinished” Decolonization Process From a Collaborative Action-Research Project With the City's Black Communities", Emigh, R.J. and Riley, D. (Ed.) Elites, Nonelites, and Power (Political Power and Social Theory, Vol. 41), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 85-109. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0198-871920240000041004

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited