Urban social movements as extended class actors: struggles over reproduction in Buenos Aires, New York City and Hamburg

Abstract

Along with a resurgence in urban social movements (USMs) since the Global Financial Crisis in 2007–08 has come renewed interest in what form(s) of social struggle these movements represent. This is because USMs cannot be straightforwardly explained by the contradiction between capital and labour, as they happened outside the workplace. With the aim of conceptualising USMs, a comparative and empirical case study was conducted on urban development and protest in New York City, Buenos Aires and Hamburg. Approaches ranging from spatial theory to urban sociology and political economy informed the theoretical framework. The study was empirically based on 47 interviews with activists, as well as the observation of participants at protest events and document analysis (both of publications by urban protest initiatives and urban development statistics). Emerging similarities regarding the relational and cognitive structures of investigated protests suggest that contemporary USMs are collective actors counteracting urban dispossession and are thus linked to the capitalist mode of accumulation. Therefore, the article argues for an understanding of USMs as extended class struggles over social reproduction in the city. This terminology is intended not only to highlight that USMs are expressions of the crisis of social reproduction in cities, but also to categorise the characteristic features of USMs – which represent struggles for the use value of a city. USMs can, moreover, contribute to social change, especially if they are able to provide alternative means of social reproduction through the appropriation of urban space.