"Anarchy in the streets": anarchism, public order and social housing in Portugal (1900-1940)

In this article we aim to contribute to the history of contemporary State by bringing into the picture what often falls outside its domain, defies its logic and is built against it. For that purpose, we look at the history of anarchism in Portugal, dominant among the Portuguese working classes during the first decades of the 20th century, and suggest that the threat that anarchism posed to the affirmation of modern State powers contributed to the urban planning and social housing projects developed by private and public institutions. In other words, and despite anarchism being an anti-statist political culture, in this article we are interested in the conflicting but mutually constitutive relationship between anarchism and the State. Our main focus is on the disciplinary and moral dimensions of the social housing projects developed throughout a historical period that encompasses different political regimes (Monarchy, Republic and a Fascist dictatorship). As we argue, those projects had amongst their purposes the destruction of the "collectivist tendencies," class struggle and the overcoming of the nefarious and unpredictable effects that industrialisation had brought.