In Etnografía desde el subsuelo, Diego Pérez López explores how peripheral neighbourhoods, often relegated to the margins of the urban imagination, serve as active sites of social production, symbolic resistance, and identity formation. Drawing heavily from Henri Lefebvre’s triadic conceptualisation of space—perceived, conceived, and lived—the article exposes the tensions between top-down spatial representations crafted by technocrats, urban planners, and state apparatuses, and the grassroots spatial practices of residents who inhabit these “mal hechos” (poorly made) neighbourhoods. Through a methodological framework that includes drifting interviews, spatial ethnography, and photographic documentation, Pérez López reveals how communities contest imposed spatial orders through daily interactions, artistic expressions, and the cultivation of urban intimacy. Activities such as street sports, graffiti, communal gatherings, and vernacular rituals are read as spatial tactics that re-embed the neighbourhood with dignity, meaning, and cohesion. The author critiques the hegemonic urban aesthetic which tends to homogenise and devalue the lived experience of marginalised communities, arguing instead for the recognition of informal urbanism as a legitimate and dynamic urban grammar. By centring the voice and agency of subaltern actors, this ethnography offers a powerful counter-narrative to the dominant discourse of urban decay and dysfunction. The study not only maps physical spaces but uncovers the epistemic violence inherent in spatial design and proposes an alternative urban reading rooted in co-presence, affect, and cultural vitality.
Pérez López, D. (2018) ‘Etnografía desde el subsuelo; fueron barrios que los hicieron mal hechos’, URBS. Revista de Estudios Urbanos y Ciencias Sociales, 8(1), pp. 79–91. Available at: http://www2.ual.es/urbs/index.php/urbs/article/view/perezlopezdiego (Accessed: 1 August 2025).
