Urban Insurgency Research Articles

Terrace Dissent in Urban Western Sahara: Between Plazas and Homes

AbstractSince 2018, domestic Saharawi houses in occupied Western Sahara have become tactical sites for organising dissent. The move to interior spaces came as a collective retreat from the city's public plazas. This retreat from extravagant plazas illustrates that the turn toward interior spaces was a tactic in front of destructive occupation power rather than a withdrawal. This article explores Saharawi spatial production of dissent under two different political moments. I ask, what spaces of dissent do people under occupation animate when the city is mobilised against them? This paper is based on ethnographic engagement with encounters between Saharawis and Moroccan security forces that led Saharawis to construct the house as its own public. I demonstrate interiorising the exterior by analysing homes’ terraces as the new space of urban dissent in the Western Sahara. As such, the terrace appears as a new space and a new tool of and in urban insurgency.

Violence in the Hill Country: The Texas Frontier in the Civil War Era by Nicholas Keefauver Roland

Reviewed by: Violence in the Hill Country: The Texas Frontier in the Civil War Era by Nicholas Keefauver Roland Christopher Menking (bio) Violence in the Hill Country: The Texas Frontier in the Civil War Era. By Nicholas Keefauver Roland. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2021. Pp. 288. Cloth, $45.00.) For many Americans, Texans included, the Texas Hill Country remains a unique and little-known region. In Violence in the Hill Country, Nicholas Keefauver Roland delves into the violence that engulfed the Hill Country in the Civil War era and investigates possible causes for the spike in deaths during this period. His analysis covers the years roughly spanning 1850 to 1880 and addresses twelve Texas counties that experienced an increase in wartime violence. Roland argues that the uptick in violence during these years was a result of the struggle for power between Confederates and Unionists. He uses David Kilcullen’s model, originally created to explain urban insurgencies, to provide a theoretical framework in which to place the competing interests in the region. While the model provides a useful tool to help understand the increased violence, other factors beyond a high-level struggle for power came into play in a region like the Hill Country. Before the Civil War, the Hill Country existed on the western frontier of settled land in Texas. The prewar experience of limited governmental oversight and low taxation created among the settlers a unique mix of staunch independence and self-reliance in defending their homesteads from Native American raids. Their reaction to the Confederate government’s new imposition of taxes and draft of Hill Country residents may have contributed to the hostilities. The author weaves a detailed and well-researched narrative of the years before, during, and after the Civil War, providing the reader with a vivid image of Hill Country life during this time. The use of primary sources, including government records, memoirs, letters, and newspapers, provides a depth to the narrative. Roland, however, makes limited use of important secondary sources written over the past few decades that would have provided additional historical context. He does an excellent job of placing events within a larger historical narrative, one of the book’s primary historical contributions, but by neglecting some of these secondary sources, he misses important explorations of the timing of the violence. For example, works related to the Great Hanging at Gainesville, a mass killing of Unionists in North Texas, would have enriched Roland’s discussion of the loss of life in the Hill Country. Also, sources relating to the guerrilla and partisan violence in Missouri and Kentucky should have been included, particularly because Roland mentions these similar cases without accompanying citations. The author’s highly readable prose brings such events as the Nueces Massacre to life. The massacre is little known or discussed outside of the Hill Country, even in Texas. Roland’s book provides the first major effort to [End Page 571] place the massacre within the context of the larger historical narrative of the Civil War era, and also to offer an explanation as to why it, and general violence, gripped the region. This important contribution to the historiography begins to fill in a long-standing gap in Texas and Civil War history. Readers interested in the American Civil War, Texas history, or the Texas Hill Country will all benefit from this book. Roland makes a diligent effort to create a framework for using the Hill Country in the Civil War era as a template to analyze similar regions that experienced waves of violence and partisan warfare. The author discusses several factors that contributed to the rise in wartime violence: poverty, which resulted from a lack of marketable resources and a wartime drought; the withdrawal of the U.S. Army and the income it provided; geographic isolation; and cultural aspects, such as a sense of racial superiority, hypermasculinity, and a tradition of vigilantism. Considering that vigilantism, race-based lynching, and more conventional violent reprisals persisted into the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Roland’s narrative begins to offer origins for the violence that continued in the region. Overall, Roland has created a well-written work that greatly enhances the historiography related to...

Urban spatial politics and collective action in revolutionary Cairo: Counter spaces and paradoxes of mobilisation

This article centres the role of Cairo's popular forces in the 2011 revolutionary Uprising in Egypt. It does so by bringing to focus the relationship between these forces' everyday spatial practices and forms of contention, on one hand, and revolutionary activism and protests in central places like Tahrir Square, on the other. It demonstrates that everyday life in popular neighbourhoods of Cairo is constitutive of a political domain in which ordinary citizens cultivate resources, dispositions and capacities for collective action and mobilisation of the kind witnessed in the January Uprising. It also shows how the lived experiences of ordinary citizens in the city's popular neighbourhoods are formative of the oppositional subjectivities enacted in the context of this revolutionary mobilisation.The article identifies and illuminates two primary paradoxes of revolutionary mobilisation. The two paradoxes arise out of a disjuncture between modalities of action pursued by Tahrir-oriented revolutionary activists (al-thuwwar) on one hand, and popular forces' tactics, strategies and conception of the Revolution, on the other. Tracing the engagement of popular forces in the context of the Uprising, this contribution reveals that in enacting their oppositional subjectivities popular forces articulated their own conception of the Revolution. More specifically, the article expounds on how they did so by shifting the locale of revolutionary action from Tahrir Square to Cairo's streets and popular neighbourhoods, and by widening acts of urban insurgency to advance rights claims to the city.

Urban insurgency in the twenty-first century: smaller militaries and increased conflict in cities

Abstract In the last two decades, urban insurgencies have become a major concern for scholars and practitioners. It is widely assumed that because half the human population now live in cities in often appalling conditions, it is inevitable that conflict has migrated to cities, not least because urban areas offer would-be insurgents the best opportunity to evade state security forces and their advanced technologies. Demography and asymmetry have been all but universally accepted in the literature as the sole causes of urban insurgency. They are certainly important. Yet, scholars have overlooked a third vital factor: the size of state forces. In the twentieth century, urban insurgencies were common. However, because states commanded very large military forces at that time, insurgents found it very difficult to operate in urban areas. By contrast, as their forces have contracted in the twenty-first century, states have been unable to dominate urban areas, as they typically did in the twentieth century. Consequently, urban enclaves have appeared inside cities from which insurgents have mounted their attacks and contested with state forces.

On urban studies in Brazil: The favela, uneven urbanisation and beyond

This essay discusses some key ideas and debates about urban studies in Brazil, considered historiographically, from the mid-1900s to the present. It presents the main components and particularities of what emerges as the Brazilian matrix of urban studies, interrogating the most influential work in the field with the country’s own experiences of industrialisation and urbanisation. It discusses some key urban debates of the 21st century, namely new planning models associated with globalisation, global mega-events, public–private partnerships, inner-city gentrification, housing and city financialisation, rising forms of urban warfare and social control in slums (favelas), and new activisms and urban insurgencies. Through this analysis, we point to contradictions and tensions in relation to European and North American urban theory, calling for the need to formulate new categories and hypotheses to better understand the unequal and extreme processes resulting from violent expansion of capitalist relations over the entire planet, and comment on the new practices and forms of social mobilisation emerging from turbulent contexts.

Ephemeral architecture and urban insurgency. Strategies for the appropriation of street trading in the interstitial spaces of the BRT TransOeste, Rio de Janeiro.

espanolLa ciudad de Rio de Janeiro paso por importantes obras de reestructuracion urbana en la ultima decada. Su condicion de ciudad anfitriona de la Copa del Mundo 2014 y los Juegos Olimpicos 2016 significo un importante pro-ceso de transformacion de gran parte de la ciudad. En este contexto, una de las intervenciones de infraestructura mas importantes fue la implementacion del sistema de BRTs (Bus Rapid Transit). En la mayoria de las estaciones es posible percibir una dinamica informal de usos no programados y apropiaciones efimeras, a traves de objetos o dispositivos de comercio informal que ocupan los “intersticios” que deja el sistema. Esta insurgencia reivindica nuevas posibilidades de interpretacion de los espacios urbanos, una vez que revelan su potencial, ofreciendo alternativas de servicios y produc-tos en un contexto de movilidad cotidiana. El concepto de intersticialidad se propone en respuesta a la necesidad de nombrar el “entre” o lagunas del sistema BRT, que en la practica, posee limites difusos. Lo que visibiliza esta dimension intersticial son los habitantes y usuarios de estos espacios “entre”, a traves de la apropiacion efimera de la infraestruc-tura de movilidad y sus alrededores. A traves de trabajo de campo, levantamiento fotografico, una categorizacion de las conductas observadas y de los soportes efimeros detectados, complementados con una discusion bibliografica, este trabajo observa esas apropiaciones efimeras en los espacios intersticiales, principalmente de la Estacion Intermodal Jardin Oceanico del corredor TransOeste del sistema de BRT carioca. El trabajo concluye que el fenomeno de la apro-piacion intersticial debe ser considerado como parte de los sistemas urbanos, pues, en la ciudad contemporanea, es esa efimeridad insurgente e informal la que muchas veces responde a las demandas y necesidades de nuestro cotidiano. portuguesA cidade do Rio de Janeiro passou por importantes obras de reestruturacao urbana ao longo da ultima decada. Sua condicao de cidade sede da Copa do Mundo de 2014 e das Olimpiadas de 2016 significou um importante processo transformador para grande parte da cidade. Nesse contexto, uma das intervencoes infraestruturais mais im-portantes dentre as executadas foi a implementacao do sistema de BRTs (Bus Rapid Transit). Na maioria das estacoes e possivel perceber uma dinâmica informal de usos nao programados e apropriacoes efemeras por meio de objetos ou dispositivos de comercio informal que ocupam os “intersticios” deixados pelo sistema. Essa insurgencia reivindica novas possibilidades de leitura dos espacos urbanos, uma vez que revelam suas potencialidades, oferecendo alter-nativas de servicos e produtos no contexto da mobilidade cotidiana. O conceito de intersticialidade e proposto em resposta a necessidade de caracterizar o “entre”, as brechas no sistema de BRT, que na pratica, possui limites difusos. O que enuncia essa dimensao intersticial sao os habitantes e usuarios dessas brechas, por meio da apropriacao efe-mera desta infraestrutura e seu entorno. Atraves do trabalho de campo, levantamento fotografico, categorizacao das condutas observadas e dos suportes efemeros detectados, complementados com uma discussao bibliografica, este trabalho observa essas apropriacoes efemeras nos espacos intersticiais principalmente da Estacao Intermodal Jardim Oceânico do corredor TransOeste do sistema de BRT carioca. O trabalho conclui que o fenomeno da apropriacao in-tersticial deve ser considerado como parte dos sistemas urbanos, pois, na cidade contemporânea, e essa efemeridade insurgente e informal a que muitas vezes responde as demandas e necessidades do nosso cotidiano. EnglishRio de Janeiro has gone through major urban restructuration work over the last decade. Its status as host city of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games meant an important transformation process for most of the city. In this context, one of the most important infrastructural interventions made was the implementation of the BRTs (Bus Rapid Transit) system. In most stations, it is possible to perceive an informal dynamic of unscheduled uses and ephemeral appropriations, using objects or devices of informal commerce that occupy the “interstices” forgotten by the system. This insurgency reclaims new possibilities for interpreting urban spaces, once they reveal their potential, offering alternative products and services in the context of daily urban mobility. The concept of “interstitiality” is proposed in order to name the “in-between”, or the gaps in the BRT system which, in practice, have diffuse limits. What sets out this interstitial dimension are those who inhabit and use the gaps, through ephemeral appropriation of the mobility infrastructure and its surroundings. This work, through fieldwork, photographic survey, a categorization of the observed behaviors and the ephemeral supports detected, complemented with a bibliographic discussion, observes those ephemeral appropriations in the interstitial spaces, mainly of the TransOeste Corridor Jardim Oceâ-nico Intermodal Station of the BRT system of Rio de Janeiro. The work concludes that the phenomenon of interstitial appropriation must be considered as part of the urban systems, because, in the contemporary city, it is that insurgent and informal ephemerality that often responds to the demands and needs of our daily lives.

Insurgências urbanas na Web Of Science

Considering the growing interest about the theme urban insurgencies and the need for studies that targets to understand this phenomenon, this article aimed to identify what was published about urban insurgencies in between the years 2010 and 2019, the contribution of Brazilian`s and Latin American reseachers and possible gaps. For this, we proceed to the biblliometric analyses, of the publications avaiable in the Web of Science database between 2010 and 2019. The results brought a low number of articles that presented citations indexes and among them, no one were written Brazilian or Latin American authors. Facing this scenario, it is concluded the need to promote studies by Brazilian and Latin American reseachers, either by encouraging the theme, or by disseminating what is already being produced. Keywords: Urban insurgencies. Bibliometrics. Bibliometric analyses. Web of Science. Brazilian research.

Por uma PEDAGOGIA urbana insurgente

Considering the search to understand how popular groups immersed in an oppressive neoliberal reality may be historical subjects in the production of social space, the objective is to establish a brief theoretical reflection about the production of the environment built under the advances of capitalism. So, a review of literature is carried out, in the light of the thought of Freirian and Marxist perspectives; authors who bring a hopeful perspective on urban insurgencies and community public education, being the critical reflection of this hope one of the main points of this article. Thereby, it is observed that a political action intersected between diverse patterns and the class struggle, without suppressing one by the other, is made feasible and viable public education. Which allows to conclude that it is necessary to search an action including politics, in which it considers all the diversities of the contemporary movements and the role of the public education in the development of the construction of the critical thought of the popular classes.

Pesquisar a cidade a partir das insurgências

Considering the changes in urban social movements’ forms of participation and engagement in the last decade, this paper aims to contribute in the understanding of relations between city, politics and insurgencies by analyzing the case of Belo Horizonte. In order to archive this objective, we present an analytical and historiographical framework of the relations between social movements, state and urban social production in the municipality from the 1960s to the present, highlighting the transformations in the forms of action, engagement, demands, strategies and tactics of the insurgencies. We conclude with questions that guide an ongoing research agenda to think about urban insurgencies in the recent decade, in order to enlarge other and new fields of investigation.

Taking to the streets: the Kurdistan Workers’ Party and the urbanization of insurgency

ABSTRACTThough the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has been able to sustain a rural insurgency in Turkey over several decades, it was unable to sustain the urban insurgency it began in July 2015. This paper looks at the period July 2015 and December 2016 to explore the reasons why, despite the PKK’s experience conducting an insurgency and demonstrated popular support, they were unable to sustain an urban insurgency. It then uses this example to examine the broader conditions under which urban insurgencies may be sustainable. In particular, the hypotheses in this paper look at the complex human and physical landscape of urban environments and the impact of pre-existing social networks.

Por uma PEDAGOGIA urbana insurgente

Considering the search to understand how popular groups immersed in an oppressive neoliberal reality may be historical subjects in the production of social space, the objective is to establish a brief theoretical reflection about the production of the environment built under the advances of capitalism. So, a review of literature is carried out, in the light of the thought of Freirian and Marxist perspectives; authors who bring a hopeful perspective on urban insurgencies and community public education, being the critical reflection of this hope one of the main points of this article. Thereby, it is observed that a political action intersected between diverse patterns and the class struggle, without suppressing one by the other, is made feasible and viable public education. Which allows to conclude that it is necessary to search an action including politics, in which it considers all the diversities of the contemporary movements and the role of the public education in the development of the construction of the critical thought of the popular classes.

Unresolved conflict, urban insurgency and devastating consequences in Turkey between 2015 and 2016

ABSTRACTFollowing the fallout of peace negotiations between the PKK and the Turkish government, armed conflicts ensued in urban centres in 2015. The PKK erected sandbags and trenches to control territories in the mainly-Kurdish southeastern cities. As a response, the government employed military forces with heavy weaponries to crackdown on the PKK and gain access to neighbourhoods. A large number of residences and neighbourhoods were destroyed, leading to hundreds of civilian casualties and injuries. This study traces landmarks in the PKK insurgency to understand the military interventions between July 2015 and December 2016. Drawing on reports from domestic and international entities, this research describes the consequences of the clashes over the study period. Then, it attempts to visualise and quantify the destruction that took place in conflict zones following the military crackdowns by comparing pre and post satellite images. Overall, the pattern and magnitude of devastation in predominantly Kurdish populated neighbourhoods suggest that the conflicts between military forces and insurgents resulted in widespread devastation of homes and infrastructure in addition to the loss of hundreds of lives.

Auguste Blanqui és a városi felkelések

„The duty of a revolutionist is the fight, the fight come what may, the fight until death.” This motto belongs to Auguste Blanqui’s definition of revolutionist’s tasks. 3 After the Napoleonic wars the modern urban environment had become the main theatre of guerrilla warfare where the urban proletariat was the main source of insurrection against the Western-and Middle-European monarchies. This study focuses on these insurrections and Blanqui’s main works and theories on the urban insurgency. The related research was supported by the ÚNKP-18-4-NKE-13 New National Excellence Program of the Ministry of Human Capacities.

An agent-based model of urban insurgence: Effect of gathering sites and Koopman mode analysis.

The paper investigates the effect of preferential gathering sites on urban insurgency in an agent-based model (ABM). The ABM model was proposed in earlier work and has been validated using FBI data. There is a nonlinear tradeoff between the local density of citizens due to the number of preferential gathering sites and the ability of law enforcement officers (LEOs) to adequately patrol that leads to a non-monotonic behavior in the number of large scale outburst of insurgency with respect to the number of gathering sites. The inclusion of a moderate number of sites decreases the number of large-scale outbursts. Having no gathering sites or a large number of gathering sites has a dilutive effect on the number of large-scale outbursts. Thus, this non-monotonicity indicates that a small number of organized units produces a larger insurgency effect than a larger number of distributed units. It is also shown, using Koopman mode analysis, that the spatial morphology of agents due to the gathering sites gives rise to temporal organization of the model dynamics; there is a prominent quasi-periodic component in the number of active and intimidated citizens and in the spatial distribution of the LEOs.

Badiou, Haussmann and Saint-Simon: Opening spaces for the state and planning between ‘post-politics’ and urban insurgencies

The post-political literature – which equates ‘the political’ with insurgencies directed against the state – has only limited relevance for planning, focused as it is on the ways in which conflict is displaced from the functioning of the state apparatus. The post-political literature has however neglected a significant change in Alain Badiou’s conceptualisation of the relation between the political and the state: the introduction of a political subject which acts from the within the state – what he calls the state revolutionary. This figure, which makes ‘evental’ planning possible, is fleshed out through a Saint-Simonian reading of Haussmann’s planning practice in his first years as Prefect of the Seine.

Protecting the capital? On African geographies of protest escalation and repression

This article centres the role of Cairo's popular forces in the 2011 revolutionary Uprising in Egypt. It does so by bringing to focus the relationship between these forces' everyday spatial practices and forms of contention, on one hand, and revolutionary activism and protests in central places like Tahrir Square, on the other. It demonstrates that everyday life in popular neighbourhoods of Cairo is constitutive of a political domain in which ordinary citizens cultivate resources, dispositions and capacities for collective action and mobilisation of the kind witnessed in the January Uprising. It also shows how the lived experiences of ordinary citizens in the city's popular neighbourhoods are formative of the oppositional subjectivities enacted in the context of this revolutionary mobilisation.The article identifies and illuminates two primary paradoxes of revolutionary mobilisation. The two paradoxes arise out of a disjuncture between modalities of action pursued by Tahrir-oriented revolutionary activists (al-thuwwar) on one hand, and popular forces' tactics, strategies and conception of the Revolution, on the other. Tracing the engagement of popular forces in the context of the Uprising, this contribution reveals that in enacting their oppositional subjectivities popular forces articulated their own conception of the Revolution. More specifically, the article expounds on how they did so by shifting the locale of revolutionary action from Tahrir Square to Cairo's streets and popular neighbourhoods, and by widening acts of urban insurgency to advance rights claims to the city.

From Occupying Plazas to Recuperating Housing: Insurgent Practices in Spain

AbstractUrban insurgencies have spread across the globe like wildfire in recent years. The indignado plaza occupations in Spain are often cited as beacons of popular and widespread dissent. This article argues that urban insurgencies with the highest emancipatory potential in Spain today are found in the practices of the housing rights movement—the Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH, or Platform for Mortgage‐affected People)—that mainly entail blocking evictions and occupying empty bank‐owned housing. I elaborate on the notion of insurgent practice by examining how insurgency has been considered in relationship to citizenship, planning and public space. I propose insurgent practice as a way of articulating how people attempt to enact equality in everyday life and engage explicitly with socio‐spatial and political questions related to an emancipatory democratic politics. Based on a detailed analysis of two of the PAH's insurgent housing practices, I posit that recuperating empty bank‐owned housing with and for evicted families has the highest and most significant emancipatory potential, as it disrupts the core dynamics of urban capital accumulation and enacts equality for evicted households by directly contesting financial rent‐extraction mechanisms at multiple levels. In closing, I outline some conclusions that emerge from the Spanish housing case and from the concept of insurgent practice and urban politicizing practice in general.

Revisiting Urban Guerrillas: Armed Propaganda and the Insurgency of Uruguay's MLN-Tupamaros, 1969–70

This article studies a singular aspect of the urban insurgency of Uruguay's MLN-Tupamaros: the tactic of armed propaganda. The Tupamaros applied the method mainly at the peak of their existence, in the years 1969–70. Afterward they opted predominantly for others, such as terrorism. By comparing the two periods, I argue that armed propaganda helped the organization to thrive, while the latter was an important cause of its demise. The conclusion suggests that armed propaganda led the Tupamaros to significant accomplishments, but also that switching tactics was a major determinant in their defeat.

Introduction to the Special Issue: Insurgencies, social media and the public city in Asia

The increasing role of cyberspace in recent urban insurgencies calls for urban scholars to rethink notions of spatialities, public space and the public sphere. However, social movements in cyberspace cannot be the ends of insurgent actions. Hopes for reclaiming public space extend beyond demonstrations and mobilisations to include rebuilding a public city with long-term social impacts. Three themes that emerged in the midst of new media proliferation and Asia's rapid urbanisation include (1) corporatisation of urban space, (2) social media and the city and (3) insurgencies and the public city. Along these three themes, this Special Issue proposes three main issues for a research agenda aimed at analysing urban insurgencies: (1) the relationship between the power of digital media in insurgent mobilisation and the physical spaces of the city, (2) the materialisation of resistance movements in cyberspace and on the ground in the form of an authentic public city and (3) recognition of modest forms of change a...

Cities on Fire: Social Mobilization, State Policy, and Urban Insurgency

Major theories of civil war emphasize the social and military attributes of rural terrain as key causes of conflict. This focus has led scholars to ignore important urban insurgencies in the Middle East and South Asia. This article makes two arguments about the roots of urban insurgency. First, it shows that robust urban social mobilization is possible and common. This can provide a social base for rebellion in areas that prevailing theories deem unlikely sites of civil war. Second, the article argues that, given social mobilization, urban insurgency emerges when security forces are politically constrained in their use of violence, opening space for sustained violence. A study of the rise of insurgency in Karachi from 1978 to 1996 and discussions of Iraq and Northern Ireland illustrate the plausibility of this argument. State policy and strategy, rather than state capacity, can play a central role in civil war onset.