Urban activism in confined civil spaces: Networked organizations of housing activists in urban China

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn the social movement literature, networked organizations are presented as being pivotal to the development of a movement. Yet in authoritarian states, such organizations are perceived as challenging the redline of the state. Hence, the establishment of networked organizations of homeowner activists in urban China and their proliferation to inland cities signifies a changing state-society interaction. This paper attempts to trace the development of homeowner networked organizations using data from in-depth interviews with homeowner activists as well as information collected from the networked organizations. This paper attempts to trace the development of cross-neighborhood networked organizations of homeowners in urban China against the conceptual backcloth of social movement networks and examines the recent development of such networks within the context of the tight social control of the authoritarian regime. This paper helps to shed light on the process by which seemingly neutral, mundane, and isolated small-scale actions involving everyday issues in residential neighborhoods are able to create networked organizations which may have the potential to orchestrate social movement mobilization.