House, modernity and conceptions of citizenship in a Southeast city of Mexico

Abstract

I analyze the materialization of different conceptions of citizenship according to the conditions of the house and the housing environment: on the one hand, at the urban space with privileges, the universal concept of modernity citizenship is consolidated with the notion of the individual who has rights and obligations; and on the other hand, at the urban outlying zone, the citizenship auto-constructed is seen through the process of reclaims by participative forms for the social rights in order to get the modernity and desired life. With a comparative study of two colonies of Tapachula city, Chiapas, México, I will suggest that the conceptions of citizenship and the process of ciudadanization are not absolutes nor abstracts, but relatives to urban spaces: they have intimate relationship with the processes of transformations of the lifestyles and, so that, with the house and the housing space designed under the logic of modernity.