Power Struggle and Conflict Over Urban Space in Nepal: Implications for Sustainable Peace
摘要
This chapter provides an everyday account of micro-level conflict over urban space between street vendors and Kathmandu Metropolitan City in Nepal. Drawing on the Weberian and Foucauldian concepts of power, this study examines how spatial authority is constructed and negotiated. Findings reveal the use of legal rational frameworks and public support garnered by charismatic authority to consolidate the vision of a modernized city. However, vendors resist through everyday subtle practices and collective movements. Constant contestation exposes vendors to direct, structural, and cultural violence. Yet, vendors resist as they are driven by survival, making the conflict intractable and vicious. Vendors, therefore, negotiate and re-negotiate within the very exclusionary space to create an alternative urban imaginary. In saying so, I argue that urban space itself is a power for vendors. This chapter contributes to knowledge lacuna by situating urban space conflict within the broader discourse of peace and conflict scholarship and provides direction for future research on inclusive space, vendors, and urban peacebuilding.