The Theory and Practice of Urban Social Movements

Abstract

The book has assembled a variety of evidence from Britain and other countries to describe and locate the place in urban political sociology of a range of organisations identified as urban social movements. It has been argued that this field of study offers important lines of approach to some of the most difficult and invariant issues in political studies: the influence of social movements on policy change, the factors that mediate and control social conflict, the sources of urban political power, the repercussions of the growth of social cleavages based on sectoral and modal shifts in consumption provision. Evidence from major types of society has been reviewed to illuminate the problems of whether there are any general urban processes or urban themes that can be identified through the analysis of comparative urban social movements, and whether the idea of modelling is an appropriate methodology for approaching cross-national analysis. Because of the seminal influence of Castells on the field of urban political sociology and his theoretical stance in relation to the role of urban movements, the material has been developed around a critique and appreciation of his work. It now remains to make a final assessment of the position Castells now adopts on the political significance of his urban social movements thesis, to summarise our theoretical approach, and to conclude with an evaluation of the place of urban movements in Britain in the 1980s.