Street Mobility Research Articles

Practising (for) revolution: street mobilizations in Athens as political performatives

ABSTRACT The controversial district of Exarcheia in Athens has a long and turbulent history shaped by dissidence, persecution and marginalization that can be traced back to the Greek Civil war of 1946–1949. In this paper I focus on one of Exarcheia's quintessential characteristic, its weekly riots – colloquially referred to as ‘báhala’. Political, media and vernacular discourses have seen the báhala gradually entering the realm of the criminal and the banal, often regarded as apolitical, senseless acts of vandalism. Contributing to the need for a more nuanced study of resistance, this paper takes a de-pathologizing orientation towards street mobilizations in Exarcheia by placing them under a historicizing lens. It argues that despite their loss of vigour or momentum, their frequent demonization or trivialization, their potency remains intact for it is located in their very repetition; a repetition that renders them political performatives that teach participants the partisan logic of the streets and preserve the historical and ethical legacy of the Struggles of the Greek Left.

The radicalness of social solidarity: protests and political change in contemporary Brazil

Since 2013, Brazil has faced a process of political, institutional, and social upheaval, translated into outbreaks of political scandals and major street mobilizations that evoke a certain social radicalism. Between May and June 2020, amid the initial period of the COVID-19 pandemic, demonstrations by organized social movements and civil society took to the streets of cities in the country for "democracy and life," guided by an agenda characterized as antifascist. These mobilizations seemed to indicate that something would happen quickly, especially from the impoverished social strata - those most affected by the political scenario and the pandemic - but they cooled off at the same speed as they started. What has happened since then? The article examines this question, analyzing the protests through the category of social solidarity. We investigate their role in building social cohesion in Brazil during the last year, both in mobilizing sectors of the population and in the very corrosion and reversal of our society's social fabric bases.

A NEW COLLECTIVE BARGAIN? A MULTICASE COMPARISON OF U.S. LABOR UNION STRATEGY

Twenty-five years ago, a vocal faction of progressive union leaders, labor educators, and academics charted a new path forward for American labor unions. Proponents of “social movement unionism” sought to reverse unions’ flagging strength through redoubled organizing drives, street mobilizations, “public dramas,” and labor-community coalitions. While case studies describing this repertoire of contention abound, there are few systematic analyses that take stock of emergent union strategy. Based on an analysis of 76 case studies of union-led collective-bargaining campaigns, strikes, and political mobilizations, I argue that contemporary labor union revitalization is best understood not as a singular, movement-inspired struggle but as a mix of four strategies— sometimes competing, sometimes complementary—each espousing divergent visions for how to recapture social, economic, and political power. These divergent visions, in turn, shape how unions form alliances and construct class-based identities.

Are shared streets acceptable to pedestrians and drivers? Evidence from Virtual Reality experiments.

While the development of cities tends to focus on improving traffic mobility, it has gradually neglected people’s demand for safety and comfort walking on the streets. To address this problem, shared streets that can integrate traditional street life and traffic mobility are getting more attention as pedestrian-friendly development. In order to measure the performance of shared streets, it is essential to identify how people feel when driving and walking around. However, investigating the various factors that influence the real world is not straightforward because of cost, time-consuming, and safety problems. Virtual reality and the Human-in-the-loop (HITL) have become valuable tools for conducting experiments without compromising them. The experiments are performed on both pedestrians’ and drivers’ sides. The three shared street layouts in a virtual environment are designed according to Europe’s real shared street cases. To evaluate shared street effects, questions in five aspects: amenity, walking or driving experience, safety, economy or priority, and environmental perception are asked to participants, respectively. MPR, EWM, and Fuzzy Comprehension Evaluation methods are used to assess the performance. The result revealed that different groups of people have different sensitivity and preferences for each evaluation criteria. However, the results of the comprehensive evalutation showed that scenario C with the largest isolation measurement is preferable in both pedestrian and driver’s groups based on shared street design elements. The city planners can get help from this shared street analysis, where the new design and layout could be tested in advance.

Resisting ‘leftist dictatorship’? Memory politics and collective action framing in populist far-right street protest

ABSTRACT This article contributes to cultural approaches to populism, focusing on the uses of memory in far-right protest politics. Conceptually, it develops a novel approach to memory politics suitable to investigate the uses of memory in grassroots mobilization by integrating scholarship on ‘the politics of memory’ and the ‘movement-memory nexus’. Also, it argues for the conceptualization of populism as a collective action frame to explain the emergence and persistence of populist street mobilization. Methodologically, the article draws from the critical case study of the Dresden-based ‘Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the Occident’ (PEGIDA), one of contemporary Europe’s most sustained instances of populist far-right protest. Based on the interpretive analysis of original ethnographic data generated in demonstrations in Dresden in 2019-20, it shows how PEGIDA deploys controversial reinterpretations of regional, national, and European history to sustain the populist master frame of ‘resistance against dictatorship’, articulating the antagonism between ‘the people’ and ‘the elites’ as a long-standing struggle of democracy against leftist totalitarianism. Uncovering the many ways in which PEGIDA strategically mobilizes the past, the analysis emphasizes the constitutive relationship between culture and populist protest, and demonstrates the dovetailing of populist and far-right ideational elements in grassroots mobilization.

In praise of Arab ‘Defeat’: another reading of Arab struggle

This article seeks to detach the 2011 Arab uprisings from an ontology of revolution and resistance that relegates them only to a discourse of success and failure. While the grievances of street mobilization of millions of protesters are familiar, they cannot be contained in a narrative that simply measures them against a Western prototype of democracy or a blueprint of revolutionary practice. Such an analysis, I argue, dilutes the contextual specificity of these events by subsuming them into an exhaustive model they either conform to or deviate from. Instead, I ask, what if we opened up the archive to read these events differently? What if we wrote against the grain and tempo of that dominant archive to demystify Arab societies and evoke a long view of Arab protest, a view that is not obsessed with interpretive ease and an external political expediency? Drawing on a historical record of continuous struggle in Morocco and using the media work of Hicham Lasri as an example, this article provides an alternative reflection on the necessity to read these uprisings as a persisting expression of a people’s demand for agency, dignity, and possibility in societies still afflicted by the burdens of autocracy, corruption, and neoliberalism and tormented by their quest for political rights and cultural independence. The ‘Arab Spring’ in this analysis ceases to be a singular event or a fleeting spectacle of revolutionary potential.

Social Movement Gains and Losses: Dilemmas of Arena Creation

Social movements never entirely win or lose, nor do they suddenly appear or disappear. Just as their component parts recombine and continue in other forms, so movements have dozens of impacts of various kinds. To make sense of this complexity we propose examining the outcomes of political interactions for a variety of players (including individuals) across a range of arenas. Given the acknowledged tradeoffs and dilemmas of collective action, we would expect packages of outcomes to appear together sometimes; for example, gains in street mobilization may lead to losses in the form of a damaged reputation or police repression. The first step to explaining such patterns is to identify and name them. We examine one of these outcome patterns, the arena-ownership package, through the case of Seattle's historic $15 per hour wage law passed in 2014, the first ever in a major U.S. city. The players who crafted the bill included an avowed Socialist, the owner of Seattle's iconic Space Needle tower, many representatives of the city's labor movement, and the newly elected Democratic Mayor Ed Murray. These diverse players moved through a series of complex arenas to arrive at the legislative outcome. In this case, we find players who create new arenas, rather than only using already-existing arenas. This move is associated with a typical package of gains and losses: increased control for the player on the one hand, but corresponding losses and risks—the alienation of excluded players and increased perception of responsibility. The creating player is blamed for the arena's failures as well as credited with its successes.

When voting turnout becomes contentious repertoire: how anti-ELAB protest overtook the District Council election in Hong Kong 2019

AbstractUnder what conditions can voting turnout be transformed into a contentious repertoire? Based on the two case studies of the Umbrella Movement and the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill movement in Hong Kong, I compare how movement actors used the electoral arena to leverage their causes. I propose a new relationship between street and electoral politics – short-term mobilization that turns voting turnout into a contentious repertoire. I posit three necessary scope conditions for movements to perceive this electoral strategy as viable: (1) protest cycle precedes and/or overlaps with the electoral period, (2) election perceived to be competitive, and (3) closing of political opportunity window for street mobilization. I further argue that the tactics movements pursue in the electoral arena is conditional on the relationship between movement actors and political elites, and regime type. In democratic regimes where parties and elections are institutionalized and less volatile, movements are on a more solid ground to invest in a long-term electoral strategy with existing parties. Contrarily, electoral competition in authoritarian regimes tends to skew toward incumbent's advantage. Movement activists and political elites may seek short-term strategic mobilizations focusing on the election at hand rather than a long-term plan. This argument illuminates the common ground between collective action and voting, and thus bridging the two sets of literature for further engagement, as recent movements such as the Black Lives Matter and the Sunrise Movement in the United States and Navalny's anti-Putin movement in Russia are mobilizing their supporters to take on the electoral arena.

Silent Walk as a street mobilization: Campaigning following the Grenfell Tower fire

AbstractThis paper uses ethnography and interviews with 15 participants who were actively involved in the campaign following the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire to address the question of how campaigners use street mobilization to seek justice in the aftermath of a disaster. Analysis of observations and themes suggests that campaigners used street mobilization to do two things. First, they used it to build solidarity with supporters through accessibility, the use of shared social spaces and collectively showing respect for losses. Second, they used it to protest in a way that challenged negative stereotypes and projected their power to the authorities, who could not ignore such a large and dignified mobilization. Whereas previous social psychology research on disaster communities focuses on the determinants of the immediate responses of people who experienced a disaster, we show the strategic aspects of such disaster communities. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement.

Narratives of city exposure: Incarnations of the street person in Zanta: The Living Legend and The Dregs

This article examines the rationale for definitions of the homeless in the public imagination and the kind of discourses used to create a physical, psychological, and moral distance between the domiciled and the destitute. In a society where the worthy individual is tied to an ideal of entrepreneurial, rational, homed, successful consumer, and where public space is solely destined for the unobstructed consumption of the privileged, street dwellers are naturally seen as a threat to the economic, social, and moral order as well as a visual blemish: an obstacle to safety and wellbeing. Drawing from a number of sociological, urban, and narrative studies on the survival tactics of homeless people, and especially from Nicholas Blomley’s (2010) insights about street mobility and Leon Anderson’s (2017) classifications of stigma management, this article describes how subjects defined as pathological, dangerous, or pitiful, negotiate street restrictions and create their own standing within a revanchist city. These individuals feature in two comic books published in Canada, Zanta: The Living Legend (2012) and The Dregs (2017), whose originality lies in the heroic role the street person assumes, a legitimate searcher for meaning that sees what most people overlook. In their different format as non-fiction comic and serialized fictional comic we find the expressive visual and narrative potential of the genre and become witnesses of the tribulations of two characters whom the world may consider as deranged but are, however, able to enhance their self-esteem, dismantle ideologies behind assumed notions of respectability, and actively contribute to the city as a place of encounter with difference.

Implicit feminist solidarity(ies)? The role of gender in the social movements of the Greek crisis

AbstractThis article explores the role of gender in the social movements of the Greek crisis. Building on extensive fieldwork, we observe a gradual shift from claim‐based, street mobilizations to locally embedded solidarity initiatives that addressed social reproduction needs in relation to food, health, education, and housing. We illustrate how this foregrounded social reproductive practices; challenged traditional divisions of labor and the temporalities and spatialities of movement organizing; and brought forward the value of building intersectional coalitions and of embracing affect and radical care. Despite the lack of explicitly articulated feminist values and principles, we argue that many social movements of the crisis therefore have cultivated situated and implicit modes of feminist solidarity that warrant further attention. Accordingly, we discuss the implications for feminist organizing and radical social movements more broadly.

In Defense of Intra-Sectarian Divide: Street Mobilization, Coalition Formation, and Rapid Realignments of Sectarian Boundaries in Lebanon

AbstractThis article examines the rapid transformations in the salience of sectarian boundaries despite seemingly deeply entrenched polarization. Lebanon provides an interesting case study where sectarian dichotomies moved relatively quickly from a predominantly “Christian–Muslim” divide to a more recent “Sunni–Shia” split within the context of tumultuous street mobilizations. While this sectarian dichotomy is resonant with the regional intra-Muslim divide, its local dynamics and mechanisms remain unknown. Based on recent literature pointing to street mobilization as an important channel for ethnic politics, this article focuses on co-mobilization—or coalition formation in protests—as a mechanism of sectarianization. It builds on an original and exclusive protest event catalogue (2000–2010), network analysis, and in-depth interview to ask: how does the salience of sectarian dichotomies shift in tandem with transformations in street politics? Through an analysis of momentous street mobilizations and coalition formations, the article traces how sectarian and political fault-lines are (re-)drawn and crystalized. The findings suggest that sectarian polarization emerges when political parties (re-)alignments overlap with the boundaries of sectarian cleavages, thus allowing interchangeability between political and sectarian categories. Contrary to common belief, this finding indicates that intra-sectarian political unity—rather than inter-sectarian divisions—shapes the processes of sectarianization and polarization.

Pressão política da mobilização “Fora Valencius”

Em 2015, o rumo da Política de Saúde Mental se viu ameaçado e os movimentos sociais da luta antimanicomial protagonizaram a mobilização “Fora Valencius”. Assim, este estudo visou analisar as implicações que as estratégias de pressão política desenvolvidas pela mobilização trouxeram para fortalecer esta luta. Tratou-se de uma pesquisa do tipo qualitativa, utilizando-se a análise do discurso político para interpretação dos dados a partir de entrevistas com quatro militantes líderes desta luta. Segundo eles, as estratégias de maior pressão política foram a Ocupação, o Grupo de Alinhamento Político (GAP) e as manifestações de rua. A implicação trazida pelo “Fora Valencius” demonstrou que a aposta na apenas institucionalidade como caminho tradicional da esquerda não logrou o êxito esperado.

Montée de la droite radicale en Allemagne et en Europe de l’Est : le passé est à venir

Cet article décrit l’ascension récente de la droite radicale en Allemagne et les raisons de cette ascension, en lien avec la situation en Europe de l’Est, et en prenant pour point de référence l’histoire des partis de la droite radicale en Europe occidentale sur les trente dernières années. Selon l’auteur, l’extrême droite en Europe de l’Est n’a pas suivi la même trajectoire que son homologue à l’Ouest. Cependant, les deux modèles se retrouvent en Allemagne avec un radicalisme politique plus prononcé à l’Est qu’à l’Ouest, ce qui montre que des évolutions propres à l’Europe de l’Est ont eu une influence sur l’extrême droite allemande. Pour l’auteur, ce constat devient manifeste et, après avoir clarifié certains concepts et cartographié ce phénomène, il en explique les raisons, en portant attention à l’idéologie extrémiste, à la volatilité électorale dans un contexte de partis sous-institutionnalisés et à la mobilisation de rue de la droite radicale en Allemagne de l’Est et en Europe de l’Est.

Between Street Mobilization and Backroom Dealing: The Power to Prevent Action at the Ukrainian Parliament (an Evidence of the Coleman Index)

Between Street Mobilization and Backroom Dealing: The Power to Prevent Action at the Ukrainian Parliament (an Evidence of the Coleman Index)

“Lurched Forward and Stopped”: Last Stop on Market Street and Black Mobility

This article examines the racialized productions of space in Matt de la Pena and Christian Robinson’s 2015 picturebook Last Stop on Market Street, arguing that depictions of characters’ movements show how Black mobility constitutes a form of resistance to state circumscription. Language and illustrations both work to portray CJ and Nana’s environment as fundamentally flexible, often exceeding the confines of what appears to be possible. The geographies of their journey on a city bus privilege communication, alternative epistemologies, and the spatial transcendence of creativity over literalism. Yet, importantly, other realities also impact the way characters move; the carceral regulation of Black people within the United States inevitably shadows this book’s spatial optimism, and Nana’s loving surveillance and careful direction shape the outlines of CJ’s imagination. To move while Black, Market Street suggests, is to create new possibilities within the confines of limitations, the process of motion a continual and unsettled oscillation.

Urbanización popular en la ciudad de Asunción, Paraguay

This paper analyzes the processes of urbanization, organization and resistance taking place in urban areas developed through popular intervention in Asuncion, Paraguay. To this end, this study collected data from official institutions and conducted qualitative research through observation and in-depth interviews with 30 local community leaders. According to those surveyed, the popular urbanization process dates back to the colonial period, focusing on the riverside area of Asuncion, then expanded to other municipalities within the metropolitan region of the city. Local communities built these popular neighborhoods through the elaboration of organizational networks and solidarity initiatives. While mechanisms of occupation and resistance included street mobilization, community organizations still rely on institutional management to achieve better citizen participation.

Conditional Choice and Collective Dynamics of Historical Change in the Tunisian Revolution (2010 - 2014)

Why did Tunisia alone peacefully transition from authoritarian rule in the wake of the Arab Spring? This question addresses the broader sociological puzzle of variation in revolutionary outcomes. Drawing from rich archival and interview data, I pursue a microanalysis of three pivotal moments in the Tunisian case. The dissertation reveals endogenous forms of causality that cast doubt on the explanatory value of dominant structural accounts, which emphasize the decisional impact of positional interests, dispositions and an objective balance of power. In contrast, situational logic trumps motivational or contextual factors inherited from the long run, because actors facing the confusion and instability characteristic of revolutionary and post-revolutionary situations make their behavior conditional on one another. Hence the aggregate outcome of revolutions is sensitive to small events, and thus probably unpredictable. But we can explain individual and collective behavior by develop- ing systematic propositions about the processes by which actors understand their situation and adjust to one another in these exceptional conditions. The first chapter investigates what drives the stance of armed forces facing an uprising. Soldiers and policemen make or break revolutions. Yet we know little about why they betray a dictator or stay loyal in the face of mass protests. I investigate the dynamics of the mutiny that overthrew Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali on 14 January 2011, turning the Tunisian uprising into a regional wave of unrest. I trace the likelihood of rebellion to the moment when reserve forces face the imminent prospect of using large-scale lethal violence against civilians. The moment represents a critical decision, manifested in collective doubt and uncertainty. This makes professional armed forces susceptible to cascades, which are driven by expectations rather than preferences, positional interests or institutional rules. Hence the stance of the institution as a whole is highly sensitive to small events that shape officers’ beliefs regarding their colleagues’ likely behavior. The mutiny of a handful of officers can tilt the institution as a whole. Flows of information prove to be decisive. Hence accounting for the variation in outcomes of mass uprisings requires shifting the explanatory focus toward endogenous, locally proximate causes. The argument has implications for the study of revolutions, authoritarian breakdown, civil-military relations, and nonviolence. The second chapter draws from a study of the prelude to Tunisia’s 2011 “roadmap” to investigate the emergence of political pacts after the revolutionary collapse of a personalist regime. Such pacts feature prominently in dominant accounts of transitions from authoritarian rule, but how they come about is poorly understood. I argue that prevailing strategic evaluation hypotheses illuminate negotiators’ motivations, but fail to theorize how actors form a convergent view of their respective strengths, which is necessary to avoid conflict. In post-breakdown moments, public events, particularly mobilization events, provide the primary yardstick actors use to evaluate the balance of power. Well-attended street mobilization creates common knowledge about the capacity of the group and can focalize its stance, which allows it to overcome collective action problems, strengthens its bargaining position, and provides cues to the solution of the bargaining problem. A mobilization contest unambiguously favoring one side encourages the weaker side to concede, facilitating agreement. The argument has important implications for bargaining, collective action, and political transitions. The third chapter analyses the Tunisian political crises of 2013 to explain group formation and contentious mobilization in reaction to violence. Processes of contentious escalation engage the definition of what constitutes the relevant actors: individuals mobilizing together broaden their relevant frame for action to a group with whom they identify. This point problematizes general accounts of mobilization that take groups for granted and anchors a line of inquiry focused on shifts in group boundaries as a prelude to action. I argue that public, symbolic acts of violence reinforce group boundaries associated with the act’s symbolism while weakening those made irrelevant because the violent act communicates the perpetrator’s intent to target a group and generates negative emotions among those who identify with the victims. Anger reinforces relevant cleavages, diminishes tolerance for ambiguity – fostering a logic of “with us or against us” – and provides a motivational basis for mobilization as a defensive display of solidarity. When well-attended, mobilization fosters a sense of confidence and a perception of opportunity among contenders, facilitating further action. The argument locates the emergence of coalitions of contention in the coevolution of patterns of symbolic events, interpretation and action. In doing so it theorizes the effects of public violence, mediated by anger. It has broad implications for the study of social movements, community conflict, polarization, and descent into civil war.

The Contagion Effect of Muslim Street Rallies on Stocks’ Volatility: Is it a Political Risk for Investors?

Muslim street rallies refer to the super-peaceful mass street mobilizations to pressure law enforcement against a blasphemer, the Governor of Jakarta. The Event was organized by the National Movement to Safeguard the Indonesian Muslim Scholar Council’s Fatwa (GNPF-MUI) on the 4 th of November (411) and 2 nd of December (212) 2016 at the capital city of Indonesia. We compare the performance of stock returns and shares trading volume on the Indonesian Stock Exchange (IDX) before and after the events. The observations were made stock performance seven days before and after the events. We found that the event had a significant influence on the abnormal return of stocks sold in the Indonesian Stock Exchange during the first event held on November 4 th , but the case was different on the second event. Thus, investors do not consider the event as a political risk for portfolio investment. This study contributes to existing literature as the first to analyze the impact of the super peaceful rally on the pattern of stock price and trading volume in the Indonesian stock market. JEL Classification: G14, G32 DOI : https://doi.org/10.26905/jkdp.v22i4.2123

Using triangulation to assess a suite of tools to measure community severance

There is a lack of tools to identify and measure community severance caused by large roads and motorised traffic, despite the evidence of its negative impacts on local communities. This paper reports the development of a suite of tools to measure and value community severance, undertaken as a part of the Street Mobility and Network Accessibility research project. The tools include participatory mapping, spatial analysis, a video survey, street audits, a health and neighbourhood mobility survey, and a valuation tool based on a stated preference survey. They were tested in the area around Finchley Road, a busy arterial road in North London. The study found that Finchley Road is an unpleasant place for pedestrians due to high traffic levels, air and noise pollution, and the lack and poor quality of pedestrian crossing facilities. This has a negative impact on the mobility and accessibility of local residents and, to some extent, on their health and wellbeing. The analysis showed coherence between the findings from the different measurement tools applied individually, but also revealed interconnections between factors which contribute to severance, demonstrating that overall the suite is reliable for assessing community severance in urban areas. Overall, the paper provides a multidisciplinary approach to developing standardised methods to measure a negative impact of transport that is still relatively unknown.