Mobilizing Geography: Locating Space In Social Movement Theory

Abstract

ion that exists outside of human agency, but as a manifestation and response to the Mobilizing Geography 231 practices of human agents. Certainly, as Chuck Tilly has argued, the state is an ensemble of “coercion wielding organizations that are distinct from households and kinship groups and exercise clear priority in some respects over all other organizations within substantial territories” (as quoted in Steinmetz 1999: 8).” But it is also a cultural and social practice that reflects the contentious politics of social movement actors as well as bureaucrats, citizens, soldiers, and legislators, among any number of others. Take Guidry’s piece in this special issue as an example: not only does he show how social movements are the product of uneven representations of space, he also probes how different movements construct the state (differently) and how the state, in turn, (differently) constructs those movements. As well, Carter, Wolford, Bandy, and Bickham Mendez all stress how human agents in specific spatial and temporal contexts―through processes of identity formation and meaning making―use symbolic practices to construct, challenge and shape the state in small and large ways. Thus, all these articles make the point that the state itself is a space of struggle through which and against which social movements articulate their aims. In the four articles of this special issue, as well as in the substantive introduction to this volume by Deborah Martin and Byron Miller, the argument for taking space seriously is carefully made and compellingly justified. More important, however, than the establishment of the centrality of space to social movement theory, the articles in this volume reveal that opportunities for counter-hegemonic politics abound, and how they can be effectively capitalized upon in order to move toward a more just society: global, local or otherwise. It is my sincere hope that the articles in this special issue truly do change the terrain upon which social movement theorizing and empirical investigation proceeds, for they promise an exciting new era of social movement analysis and the possibility of significantly changing the worlds in which we live.