Edward Murphy 2015: For a Proper Home: Housing Rights in the Margins of Urban Chile, 1960–2010. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press


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In some regards, the compilation reads as a foil to the long-developing and com-
plex narrative of movement-aligned local organizing observed in some of today’s US 
cities and suburbs. Indeed, not all anger is created equal. Contemporary US formations 
such as Black Lives Matter, Right to the City Alliance and National Domestic Workers 
Alliance contrast with the Alinskyist tradition in theories of change and community  
care practice. On the other hand, organizers within these formations often deploy power 
analysis adapted from the Alinskyist tradition. More recently, several non-Alinsky for-
mations developed strategic alignments with Alinskyist institutions NPA and PICO.

The pragmatic choice for the astute organizer and student of urban democracy 
is to read People Power for its examples and its silences. Schutz and Miller contribute an 
invaluable account of the pitfalls and advantages of tried Alinskyist approaches. When 
considered in the more expansive context of transgressive struggle, the lessons drawn 
from these approaches remain apt for winning ‘non-reformist reforms’ of urgent and 
strategic need.

Marnie Brady, City University of New York

Edward Murphy 2015: For a Proper Home: Housing Rights in the Margins of 
Urban Chile, 1960–2010. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press
From the 1940s to 1973, Chile experienced an unprecedented increase in social  

consumption, largely caused by import-substitution industrialization policies that rap-
idly brought a massive influx of the rural poor to the main cities (especially Santiago). 
From 1957 onwards, thousands of homeless households began squatting at the edges 
of Santiago and other cities. These squats were characterized by high levels of political 
organization. As their clamour for social housing grew, the state responded with an 
increasingly sophisticated system which was nevertheless insufficient to meet the bur-
geoning demand (that overwhelmed not only the public sector’s limited resources but 
also the country’s insufficient economic and construction capacity); however, both the 
increasing number of politically organized land seizures (known as campamentos) and 
the considerably enlarged public housing provision of the late 1960s and early 1970s 
contributed to transform the traditionally segregated socio-economic structure of 
Santiago.

In 1973 the country saw the advent of one of the harshest and bloodiest military 
dictatorships ever seen in Latin America. Under General Pinochet’s rule, the public 
housing sector was progressively dismantled and soon replaced by a neoliberal subsidy-
on-demand system. For strategic military reasons, the campamentos dwellers were 
repressed and urban segregation was reinforced by the eradication of thousands of poor 
households occupying expensive land (who were then sent to the worst fringes of the 
city). Although these pobladores proved to be key political actors in toppling the Pinochet 
regime, when democracy was restored in 1990 the state only reinforced its neoliberal 
rules of housing provision, since its primary goal was to rapidly meet the demand for a 
million housing units left in the dictatorship’s wake. This enormous amount of housing 
needed in the country was provided by progressively reducing construction quality 
(both dwellings and surrounding areas were reduced to their minimum acceptable 
quality level) since state-led subsidies did not meet the increasingly higher returns that 
private developers expected

The story of Chile’s housing sector is not uncharted territory; numerous inci-
sive books and papers have been written about it. However, Edward Murphy’s book 
con tributes in two novel ways: first it offers an original chronological perspective (cov-
ering the 1960–2010 period in its entirety); and second it attempts to build  a  sub jec-
tive narrative from grassroots’ oral memoires. Murphy’s hypothesis is also interesting: 
grassroots’ demands and state policies were always on convergent paths, promoting 



B O O K R E V I E W S 4 8 3

property ownership and social recognition. As housing policies transformed squatted 
land into regularized environments, pobladores were turned into homeowners; in fact, 
historically, the Chilean housing sector can be seen as a transition from marginalization 
to a unique form of deprived citizenship. The ideology of property intertwined with 
propriety (understood as a certain good behaviour and right to recognition) was so 
embedded in the nation’s culture that even the socialist government of Allende could 
not escape from it; in fact, in the three years that Allende’s government was in power, it 
issued more property titles per year than at any time in Chilean history up to the late 
1990s.  Murphy’s long-term analysis is indeed effective and also reinforces previously 
known stories. Some expert readers will probably find certain passages superfluous, but 
younger readers who need to know more about the evolution of the Chilean housing 
sector will be fascinated by this book.

The work’s most interesting and informative passages come from the author’s 
careful scrutiny of existing data, books and papers, especially when referring to the 
1960s to 1980s period. I found one of the most illuminating chapters to be where Mur phy  
discloses several letters written to General Pinochet by poor supporters demanding a 
rapid resolution to their crucial housing needs, a demand the regime could not entirely 
meet. Murphy shows how people’s ideology, the social support the mili tary  regime 
needed for implementing the neoliberal project in the country, the much needed co-
optation of the grassroots, and even connections between pobladores and appointed 
government officials, were four intertwined variables that greatly deter mined the level 
of housing provision. Even the previous socialist government of Allende had to clash 
with this ‘cry and demand’ from the marginalized ones.

However, the book’s aspiration to provide a deep grassroots’ perspective is not 
entirely achieved. There is an excess of anecdotal evidence, making the book longer 
than is necessary. The beginning of the book has plenty of detail on how the author 
actually built a relationship with his research subjects (ethnographically interesting 
yet irrelevant to the topic); readers have to endure long descriptions of material 
deprivation, unemployment, social unrest, etc., in almost every chapter, but these 
accounts are ultimately predictable and of questionable relevance to our understanding 
of the Chilean case. I found the sole exception to be in part IV (on the dictatorship), 
where grassroots’ narratives are driven into more concrete spheres of political struggle. 
Here the author’s analysis of the period helps readers to understand how much people 
suffered in the course of their personal and social lives under military dictatorship. 
Overall, I wondered why Murphy did not also interview others more directly engaged 
with the whole process: housing activists, revolutionary architects and planners, 
geographers, etc. They would have given additional interesting perspectives too, 
that would have bridged mainstream people’s accounts and the ‘official’ history. An 
additional critique is that the book focuses almost entirely on Santiago, contradicting 
the countrywide perspective that the title implies. Despite these quibbles, this is a 
much-needed contribution to the topic, essential reading for anyone who wants to have, 
in a single book, a complete and very detailed critical depiction of the last 50 years of 
Chile’s housing and urban struggles.

Ernesto López-Morales, University of Chile

Glen S. Coulthard 2014: Red Skins White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial 
Politics of Recognition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
In Red Skins White Masks, Glen Coulthard exposes how the contemporary poli-

tics of Indigenous recognition in Canada has come to so intricately serve the interests of  
continued colonial domination, and what we should do about it. Coulthard com pellingly 
demonstrates how colonial power has merely changed register, no longer  rest ing