Popular logistics for collective unpredictabilities in pandemic Madrid

Abstract

This article develops the concept of collective unpredictability as a socio-geographic gathering and sensibility for redescribing territories of urban habitation. It describes in detail the databases, privacy protocols, call centres, inventory and queue flow management systems, spatial surveys, food supply chains, transport operations, credit and voucher economies, and financial accounting systems designed by community organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic across six neighbourhoods in Madrid. It demonstrates how these various systems of attention, logistical geographies and ecologies of habitation threw into question the ceteris paribus assumptions underpinning the geographical epistemologies of biopolitical models. The emphasis on collective unpredictabilities aims not to confront expert factuals against community counterfactuals, but to insist on the urban liveliness of otherwisefactuals.