Social Movements and Urban Space

XI. European Conference on Social and Behavioral Sciences September 1-4, 2016 Rome, Italy, 2016

From ancient Greek to modern period, politics, political representation and democracy are permanently in a relation with the urban space. To have a right to speak about the place they live in and do politics on the evolution and transformation of it; the one of the basic themes of new social movements. The aim of this study is to show that how the meaning of the politics, political representation and democracy re-evaluated on the new social movements. In this context, the study consists of three chapters: In the first chapter, it will be outlined of the politics, representation and democracy’s relation with urban space. In the second chapter, it will be dealt with the evolution and features of new social movements in the context of urban space. In the third and last chapter, it is aimed to suggest an analysis about the relation between these facts by the help of some specific cases which are chosen from Turkey. The goal of this study is to claim that new social movements which have local, fragmented and multi-leveled actors, discourses and strategies, are basically trying to enlarge the space of politics, representation and democratic society.

Urban Geography, 2013

Recent anti-systemic social movements have illustrated the central role of cities in social movement mobilization. We not only highlight the characteristics of urban social relations that make cities fertile ground for mobilization, but also point to the disjunctures between the geographies and spatialities of social relations in the city, and the geographies and spatialities of many systemic processes. Struggles for a more just society must consider the broad geographies and spatialities of oppression, which we illustrate with a brief analysis of the Occupy movement. Finally, we introduce the next five articles in this special issue, all illustrating the importance of the geographies and spatialities of urban social struggle. [

VOLUNTAS, 2018

This paper introduces the special issue and explains the diversity as well as common features of mobilization practices present in cities around the world. The paper starts with presenting the specificity and history of urban movements worldwide, as well as the development of ‘right to the city’ frame. Drawing on the existing literature, it focuses on presenting different forms of urban activism and interpretations of ‘right to the city’ slogan. This paper strives to fuse the framework of social movements as networks (Diani, in: Diani, McAdam (eds) Social movements and networks, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 299–318, 2003) of challengers (Gamson in The strategy of social protest, Wadsworth Publishing, Belmont, 1990) with the concepts of diffusion and translation of ideas, borrowed from Finnemore and Sikkink (Int Org 52(4):887–917, 1998). It also illustrates the application of the theoretical concepts of incumbents and challengers (Gamson 1990), organizational platform and norm life cycle (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998) as well as the development on movement networks within and between localities (Diani in The cement of civil society: studying networks in localities, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2015). The theoretical model helps to explain the rapid global spread of the notion of the ‘right to the city.’ The paper concludes with a discussion of the urban context, both ‘glocal’ and global, as an arena of social mobilization around different aspects of the ‘right to the city.’

The Sociological Review, 1975

The paper studies urban movements, as a type of social movements. These phenomena are studied through the perspectives of critical geopolitics' two sub disciplines: popular geopolitics and anti-geopolitics. Urban movements represent a type of social movements devoted mostly to the resistance of urban population towards changing of the cities under the influence of neoliberalism i.e. capital and private interests. Urban movements that were studied were mostly the ones resisting the privatization of public space as an expression of neoliberalisation of the cities, which has been going on for the last three decades in the West, and for about two decades in the former socialist countries and various emerging economies, such as P. R. China. Studying of urban movements has a tradition of a little more than quarter of a century, since critical geopolitics as a geopolitical perspective exists. It is mostly tied with the geopolitics of resistance i.e. anti-geopolitics that is an expression of challenges to the cultural, political, moral and economic dominance of the elites in various societies. Social movements represent the ties that bind the individuals involved in resistance, hence they articulate individual actions into comprehensive, socially visible and tangible actions that attract and keep the attention of the society as well as the authorities. In the era of social media, social movements have much more diverse ways of transmitting messages and coordinating actions. The main conclusion is that we live in the era of social movements (and therefore urban movements as well), in which social media have become a very important means of the social movements' actions.

Recent anti-systemic social movements have illustrated the central role of cities in social movement mobilization. We not only highlight the characteristics of urban social relations that make cities fertile ground for mobilization, but also point to the disjunctures between the geographies and spatialities of social relations in the city, and the geographies and spatialities of many systemic processes. Struggles for a more just society must consider the broad geographies and spatialities of oppression, which we illustrate with a brief analysis of the Occupy movement. Finally, we introduce the next five articles in this special issue, all illustrating the importance of the geographies and spatialities of urban social struggle. [

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2003

In this article I will start by presenting a brief overview of writing on urban movements and then introduce the three papers included in this symposium.

This essay analyzes the social uprising that developed in Colombia in 2021, focusing on the city of Pereira, located in the Coffee Region. Theoretically, this essay uses Henri Lefebvre’s concept of the right to the city and the production of space theory in analyzing the origin and development of the social uprising, focusing mainly on ordinary people production of counter-hegemonic spaces.

In this Essay I will investigate the ethnic and class features of different forms of squatting in Europe. I will argue that mainly political and cultural squatting movements in their fight for a ‘right to the city’ (Lefebvre [1970] 2003) and ‘just city’ (Harvey [1973] 2009) are, through passive resistance and civil disobedience challenging the social stratification within the urban environment. To that end their anti-capitalist struggle is fought through cultural and educational empowerment. Conversely it will be shown that it is only the already empowered and educated, hence higher classes turned-squatters that are able to enter into political activism, form urban movements and advocate for the silent others. At the beginning of the essay, based on Henri Lefebvre’s and David Harvey’s thesis, I will investigate structural conditions that position the urban environment and in particular the housing market as forms of class marginalization. I will also present both Lefebvre’s and Harvey’s proposition to the anti-capitalist reclaiming of the city by the lower classes. Further I will define squatting as a form of the anti-capitalist and anti-neoliberal urban movement that nevertheless mediates between the notion of individual need and a political fight as called for by previously mentioned authors. Finally based on selected case studies from European squatting movements I will examine their class, ethnic and cultural makeup. I will conclude by contrasting the Marxian and Weber’s class definitions and argue than within both those two spheres squatting movements attempt a social chance.

Cities, and mainly their central squares 1 have been very relevant in the explosion of the so called Arab spring, one spring that has very rapidly become a grey fall, when not a terrible winter, with too much blood, sweat and tears. But Cities, as the main stage of all kind of social movements, continue alive in a very resilient way under so many different conditions; they have always been connected to the birth and to the explanation of social conflicts and changes. Since the beginning of the 1970's has been created as a study object the concept of Urban social movements by the French sociologists, especially by the Spanish Manuel Castells (b. in 1942). Castells discussed with his former teacher Henry Lefébvre (1901Lefébvre ( -1991 the role of space on the social events and he has evolved to the analysis on the impact of the new technologies of communication in the origins of the new mobilizations . 1 Square is a conflictive English word for Spanish plaza because the public space that indicates don't refers at all at any specific geometric form.