Urban Protest Research Articles

‘Happiness Hefei’: public art and rural–urban citizenship struggles in transitional China

On 8–9 May 2010, a deprived chengzhongcun (urban village) in the city of Hefei hosted a session of the Second Hefei Contemporary Art Biennale. In this article, we focus on the artistic practices and the online and offline discussions that they evoked. Drawing upon literature on citizenship, public art, public space and public pedagogy, we analyse the exhibition and its social and political potentialities. Looking at a case study in a country where fear of an aggressive crackdown is part and parcel of the psychology of urban protest, we reflect upon the pedagogical potential of public art in the struggle for equal rights to housing, education and urban space. By paying special attention to the geographical and the pedagogical dimensions of this extraordinary event, we demonstrate that public art can play a role in Chinese citizenship struggles.

The ‘Occupy’ Movement: Emerging Protest Forms and Contested Urban Spaces

The Occupy Movement represents the evolving nature of contemporary social movements. It employs traditional tactics as well as new tools of technology and alternative forms of organizing to articulate concerns. In an era of widening income inequality, record corporate profits, and government austerity measures, Occupy protestors claimed urban public spaces as sites of resistance this past year. By framing their cause as one driven by “the 99%”, corporate interests were successfully linked to a diverse set of economic impacts that united the masses, from diminishing prospects of employment to record foreclosures and crippling student debt. In claiming their right to the city, Occupiers created physical and political space for reasserting the power of the people. Occupiers’ seizing of public spaces and use of social media to promote and report acts of resistance suggest that in mediated societies, protests configured for virtual audiences are likely to become mainstays of urban social movements. The Occupy Movement embodies these developments and underscores the need for new thinking on how public spaces can facilitate participatory democracy. Using scholarly blogs and news reports, this paper tracks the movement and explores its implications on the governance of public space and the future of urban protests.

Furia urbana a Istanbul. Dai ‘Progetti di trasformazione urbana' ai movimenti di contestazione

Over the past few years, a series of ‘urban transformation proj¬ects' has been radically changing the face of the city of Istan¬bul. In line with the political project begun in the early 1980s, aimed at reintroducing the old capital of the Ottoman Empire onto the international scene and transforming it into a global city, the hub of a network of financial services and international tourism, today radical interventions have been made in the old neighbourhoods of Gecekondu and peripheral enclaves in the city centre, provoking the removal and further marginalization of large parts of the population. The reaction of the individual inhabitants has joined with the activism of neighbourhood as¬sociations and the interests of professional groups, and become translated into many forms of opposition to the projects and the politicisation, though controversial, of these urban protests.

Struggling for the Right to the (Creative) City in Berlin and Hamburg: New Urban Social Movements, New ‘Spaces of Hope’?

AbstractIn cities across the globe there is mounting evidence of growing mobilization by members of the so‐called ‘creative class’ in urban social movements, defending particular urban spaces and influencing urban development. This essay discusses the meaning of such developments with reference to the hypothesis made by David Harvey inSpaces of Capitalabout the increasing mobilization of cultural producers in oppositional movements in an era of wholesale instrumentalization of culture and ‘creativity’ in contemporary processes of capitalist urbanization. After briefly reviewing recent scholarly contributions on the transformations of urban social movements, as well as Harvey's hypothesis about the potential role of cultural producers in mobilizations for the construction of ‘spaces of hope’, the essay describes two specific urban protests that have occurred in Berlin and Hamburg in recent years: the fight for Berlin's waterfront in the Media Spree area, and the conflict centred on the Gängeviertel in Hamburg. In both protests artists, cultural producers and creative milieux have played a prominent role. The essay analyses the composition, agenda, contribution and contradictions of the coalitions behind the protests, discussing whether such movements represent the seeds of new types of coalitions with a wide‐ranging agenda for urban change. The essay finally proposes a future research agenda on the role of artists, cultural producers and the ‘creative class’ in urban social movements across the globe.RésuméDans les villes à travers le monde, on constate une mobilisation croissante des membres de la classe dite ‘créative’ dans des mouvements sociaux urbains afin de défendre certains espaces de la ville ou d'influencer l'urbanisme. La signification de ces évolutions est analysée en référence à l'hypothèse qu'a formulée David Harvey dansSpaces of Capitalsur la mobilisation accrue des producteurs culturels dans des mouvements contestataire à l'ère de l'instrumentalisation massive de la culture et de la ‘créativité’ dans les processus contemporains d'urbanisation capitaliste. Après une courte étude des récentes contributions sur les transformations des mouvements sociaux urbains et de l'hypothèse d'Harvey sur le rôle potentiel des producteurs culturels dans les mobilisations en vue d'élaborer des ‘espaces d'espoir’, deux contestations urbaines qui ont eu lieu ces dernières années à Berlin et Hambourg sont présentées: le combat pour les quais de Berlin dans le projet Media Spree et le conflit centré sur le Gängeviertel hambourgeois. Dans les deux cas, artistes, producteurs culturels et milieux créatifs ont joué un rôle déterminant. Cet essai analyse la composition, le programme, la contribution et les contradictions des coalitions qui soutiennent les contestations, tout en cherchant à savoir si ces mouvements sont les germes de nouveaux types de coalitions dont l'agenda se diversifie en faveur du changement urbain. Pour finir, un programme de recherches est proposé sur le rôle des artistes, des producteurs culturels et de la ‘classe créative’ dans les mouvements sociaux urbains à travers le monde.

Social Movement Scenes: Place‐Based Politics and Everyday Resistance

AbstractSociologists Darcy Leach and Sebastian Haunss coined the term “social movement scene” to refer to people “who share a common identity and a common set of subcultural or countercultural beliefs, values, norms” and the network of physical places they frequent. Leach and Haunss explain the numerous ways in which scenes can benefit social movements (e.g. as pools of mobilization or as places for cultural experimentation) and that scenes are places where resistance happens. I propose that thinking of a scene as a process is more useful than thinking of it as a stable context where political activity happens. Scenes are the products of urban protests, such as squatting; rituals, such as protest and music; and the activities of everyday life. Drawing on research from sociologists, geographers, historians, and cultural studies scholars, I discuss social movement scenes on both the political left and right in terms of their spatial, symbolic, and relational dimensions.

Against ourselves – Local activists and the management of contradicting political loyalties: The case of Phiri, Johannesburg

In spite of continued mass urban protests in post-apartheid South Africa, few are the social movements or individuals which openly disengage from the dominant and former liberation party, the African National Congress. Many authors have analysed this paradox as a two-pronged strategy, ‘the brick’ and ‘the ballot’, to try and influence public policy. However, these two political positions become increasingly contradictory and difficult to hold together, as the ANC becomes more and more intolerant towards social movements. This paper, using the example of women’s contention about water commodification in Phiri (Soweto), examines how activists shape their opposition whilst still stating their affiliation to the ruling party. They manage these contradicting political loyalties through a variety of tactics exonerating the ANC from the blame of urban mismanagement: contrasting the current ANC with the ‘real’ ANC of the past – to which they remain faithful; and blaming the ‘deployees’ of the ANC at the local level for betraying the ‘real’ ANC at the national level. These tactics however may be short-lived as social movements upscale their action to the national level.

Tej City. Protests in Mumbai, 1988-2008

The paper aims at understanding the types, scope and contents of urban protests in Mumbai for the past twenty years. Firstly, it tries to define the nature of mass struggles within the city. Then it deals with the rather violent history of the city in the past twenty years. Thirdly, it describes the different types of urban protests and their evolution over time. Finally, it offers a typology of urban protests and discusses the changes occurring in the popular milieus. The class content of the ‘popular’ (which is not altogether dead) has been increasingly fragmented by a process of community-based assertion that led to protests led by groups representing small categories of the popular classes. In the period studied, workers’ struggles were lost while the more recent assertions of the rich who launched (near) urban protests were acknowledged and listened to. This segmentation helps to understand the limits and the ambiguousness of ‘civil society’ rhetoric.

Racial myth, colonial reform, and the invention of customary law in Morocco, 1912–1930

Throughout the period of French indirect rule in Morocco (1912–56), colonial scholars and administrators generated a mass of literature to explain the perceived differences between Arab and so-called Berber (Amazeeri) societies. In the minds of many colonial enthusiasts, objective ethnic difference translated into a series of clear social, cultural, and political traits that had divided the indigenous populations for centuries. Historians of the period have highlighted this ethnographic focus as one of the preeminent justifications for French reforms in Morocco. The reform and institutionalisation of customary Berber law, which provoked the most widespread urban protest in nearly two decades, has long been understood as an example of legislative overreaching: the vibrant popular reactions to the so-called Berber dahir of 1930 signalled to many contemporary actors and subsequent historians the veritable birth of the Moroccan nationalist movement, as urban populations protested the what they saw as the diminution of the sultan's jurisdiction and the attenuation of shari‘a in many rural areas. Implicit in this narrative is the idea that by 1930 the otherwise cautious and informed process of ethnically specific reform somehow went awry. This article seeks to demonstrate that the French legal reform program was, from its inception, founded upon vague, contested understandings of Berber social and political organisation that colonial administrators mobilised for very specific political ends. The so-called reform of Berber customary law was rather an invention of a system that French administrators used to remove the Berber population from the influence of the Arab makhzan, to marginalise religious law in favour of secular European values, and ultimately to fracture the network of social, cultural, and political relationships between the sultan and his people. Understanding the manipulative bases of legal reform sheds light on the relationship between the human sciences and colonial policy – specifically the complicated strength and malleability of scholarly mythmaking – and underscores the paradoxes of the French ‘civilising mission’.

“A Weapon as Powerful as the Vote”: Urban Protest and Electoral Politics in Venezuela, 1978–1983

Abstract Scholarship on Venezuela has long cast the first decades after the founding of democracy in 1958 as a period of popular passivity, when citizen demands were effectively channeled through elections and state institutions before these broke down in the late 1980s. This article complicates such a reading and considers the role that street protest played in expanding the meaning of democracy among urban popular sectors to include a more dynamic interplay of institutional and extrainstitutional, legal and illegal protest. It focuses on a weeks-long hijacking of public service vehicles in the early 1980s by residents of Venezuela’s largest urban housing project, the 23 de Enero in downtown Caracas. Coupling archival data and oral history interviews, the article reconstructs the protest and its context to show how residents balanced a formerly contradictory experience of electoral support for the democratic regime on one hand and violent antiestablishment opposition on the other to mobilize the state around their demands. In particular it considers how residents seized on new discourses of accountability and participation emanating from political elites to lend their protest legitimacy, showing that the process to recalibrate Venezuelan democracy involved greater interaction between popular and elite-level actors than hitherto recognized.

Provoking ‘Globalist Sydney’: Neoliberal Summits and Spatial Reappropriation

Neoliberal globalism, as market ideology, thrives as an abstract and universal claim on society. The social relations that drive it become most clearly exposed through the exercise of material power in concrete places. In these places, challengers engage in public pedagogy, unveiling social interests and impacts of neoliberal globalism, forcing public deliberation. Within these sites of contestation, new refusals and alternatives can come into view. The article analyses challenges to globalist summits in Sydney, creating a narrative of urban protest centred on spatial reappropriation. Street conflicts are seen as demonstrating the territorial logic of neoliberal globalism, and not only provoking dominant formations but also suggesting possibilities beyond them. Evidence of this pedagogic process is gleaned from press reports and public encounters, signalling a different city, beyond ‘Globalist Sydney’. El globalismo neoliberal, como una ideología comercial, florece como una noción abstracta y universal en la sociedad. Las relaciones sociales que la guían, se exponen más claramente a través del ejercicio del poder material en sitios concretos. En estos lugares, los retadores participan activamente en la pedagogía, revelando intereses sociales e impactos del globalismo neoliberal, forzando a deliberaciones públicas. Dentro de estos sitios de protesta, pueden salir a la luz nuevas negativas y alternativas. El artículo analiza los retos a las cumbres globalistas de Sídney, creando una narrativa de protesta urbana centrada en la reapropiación espacial. Los conflictos callejeros se ven como la demostración de la lógica territorial del globalismo neoliberal y no sólo el reto a las creaciones dominantes, pero también sugiriendo las posibilidades más allá de ellas. Una evidencia de este proceso pedagógico se ha obtenido de los reportes de los medios y enfrentamientos públicos, que señalan a una ciudad diferente, más allá de una ‘Sídney globalista’.

Nineteen Days in April: Urban Protest and Democracy in Nepal

For 19 days in April 2006, Nepal witnessed a popular uprising against the royal-military coup staged by King Gyanendra in February 2005. The Jana Andolan II (People’s Movement II) demanded a return to democracy, the establishment of a lasting peace in Nepal and more political and economic inclusion for the various ethnic and caste groups historically marginalised in Nepali society. Through an analysis of the Jana Andolan (particularly within the urban space of Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu) and the subsequent peace process that has unfolded in Nepal, this paper will consider how and why the city was a key terrain for the prosecution of conflict by the people’s movement, and how such protest entailed the articulation of particular democratic rights discourses. The paper will also consider the role of civil society within urban protest in order to reflect upon debates concerning liberal and radical democracy, and the ‘politics of the governed’.

A Tenants’ League or a Shopkeepers’ League?: Urban Protest and the Town Tenants’Association in the West of Ireland, 1909-1918

A Tenants’ League or a Shopkeepers’ League?: Urban Protest and the Town Tenants’Association in the West of Ireland, 1909-1918

Urban Protest in Mexico and Brazil. By Kathleen Bruhn. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 212p. $85.00. - Cycles of Conflict, Centuries of Change: Crisis, Reform, and Revolution in Mexico. Edited by Elisa Servín, Leticia Reina, and John Tutino. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007. 405p. $89.95 cloth, $24.95 paper.

Urban Protest in Mexico and Brazil. By Kathleen Bruhn. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 212p. $85.00. - Cycles of Conflict, Centuries of Change: Crisis, Reform, and Revolution in Mexico. Edited by Elisa Servín, Leticia Reina, and John Tutino. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007. 405p. $89.95 cloth, $24.95 paper.

Urban protest in Mexico and Brazil

Why do social organizations decide to protest instead of working through institutional channels? This book draws hypotheses from three standard models of contentious political action - POS, resource mobilization, and identity - and subjects them to a series of qualitative and quantitative tests. The results have implications for social movement theory, studies of protest, and theories of public policy/agenda setting. The characteristics of movement organizations - type of resources, internal leadership competition, and identity - shape their inherent propensity to protest. Party alliance does not constrain protest, even when the party ally wins power. Instead, protest becomes a key part of organizational maintenance, producing constant incentives to protest that do not reflect changing external conditions. Nevertheless, organizations do respond to changes in the political context, governmental cycles in particular. In the first year of a new government, organizations have strong incentives to protest in order to establish their priority in the policy agenda.

Cities and the making of modern Europe, 1750-1914

Introduction Part I. 1750-1850, An Era of Disruption: 1. Urban worlds around the middle of the eighteenth century 2. Industrial urbanization 3. Varieties of urban protest 4. Pursuits of urban improvement Part II. 1850-1914, An Era of Reconstruction: 5. The challenge of the big cities 6. Toward the social city 7. Urban cultures 8. Imperial and colonial cities Conclusion Appendix A. The growth of individual cities in Europe, 1750-1910 Appendix B. General works about individual cities in Europe.

Los movimientos urbanos: de la identidad a la glocalidad

El proposito de nuestra comunicacion es examinar la transformacion de los movimientos urbanos en el contexto de la globalizacion y su impacto en los procesos de produccion y cambio urbano. Consideramos que la ciudad constituye a la vez el escenario y el producto de las relaciones sociales que en ella se desarrollan, y en este sentido no pueden separarse el analisis de los movimientos urbanos de la teoria urbana. Tal y como ha puesto de relieve la literatura academica (Hamel, 2000; Swyndgedouw, 1997, 2000; Mayer, 1999) los movimientos urbanos de Europa occidental estan experimentando cambios substantivos en la construccion de la agenda movilizadora; la articulacion de actores; los repertorios de accion y los marcos interpretativos que organizan y dotan de sentido sus acciones. Hemos pasado asi de un modelo de movilizacion liderado por agrupaciones vecinales, centrado en el fortalecimiento de la comunidad local y articulado entorno a la esfera del consumo colectivo a nuevas formas de movilizacion multidimensionales que adoptan composiciones mas heterogeneas y que a menudo trascienden el particularismo local. A fin de examinar esta transformacion, proponemos desarrollar una revision critica de la teoria de los movimientos sociales urbanos de Castells (1986), atendiendo a sus desarrollos posteriores que incorporan la hipotesis de la glocalizacion (Brenner, 1999), la heterogeneidad de tipologias de la movilizacion (Mayer, 1999), asi como su capacidad de hibridacion con otros movimientos sociales (Fainstein, 1995). Para ello, tomaremos como caso de estudio, a fin de ejemplificar nuestra argumentacion, la evolucion de la protesta ciudadana en Barcelona.

St. Louis and the Sharecroppers: Urban Connections to a Rural Protest

Abstract Scholars have paid a great deal of attention to the Sharecroppers’ Roadside Demonstration by evicted farmworkers, who camped out along rural highways in Missouri’s southeastern Bootheel in January 1939. This article differs from previous works by focusing on Fannie Cook and Marcus "Al" Murphy and their interactions with the sharecroppers. Cook, an affluent Jewish woman, and Murphy, an African-American member of the Communist Party, both participated in the St. Louis Committee for the Rehabilitation of the Sharecroppers. After state officials removed the demonstrators from the highways, Cook traveled to the Bootheel to observe conditions there and wrote a novel about what she saw. She also helped support the Sharecroppers’ Camp, or Cropperville, a privately funded refuge for displaced farmworkers. Murphy came to St. Louis in the mid-1930s to teach farmworkers how to organize. When the demonstrators went out onto the roadsides, he worked with labor organizations to collect and deliver supplies. Ultimately, the connections between these urban supporters and rural protesters were personal, not ideological, reminding us that history is not about abstractions, but people.

Are practices of local participation sidelining the institutional participatory channels?: Reflections from Johannesburg

While public discourses emphasise the growing role of ward councillors in service delivery and urban policy implementation, as well as underline their role as mediators between local government and urban residents, local councillors are increasingly the target of mass urban protests. They are also relatively absent from the public scene as far as municipal decisions and debates are concerned. What can explain this discrepancy? This article argues that institutional channels (be it representative democracy, or various institutions and instruments set up by local government to enhance participation) are currently not working in the South African city, and the city of Johannesburg in particular. Whether in low-income or high-income areas, suburbs or townships, residents have to resort to other means, sidelining in particular their ward councillor, to be heard. The article analyses the structural and contextual constraints that may be responsible for this lack of bottom-up dialogue, and concludes that both the limited power of ward councillors in Council, and the lack of incentive for fostering their accountability to voters, lead to the development of patterns of clientelism at the local level. After examining the actual implementation of some urban projects in Johannesburg, the article argues that local government fragmentation (in different tiers, in several city agencies and utilities, and with the widespread use of contracts and consultants) is also an important factor in the failure of participatory processes.

Trends in the Transnational Protest Movement

Trends in the Transnational Protest Movement Michael D. Richardson Sherlock Holmes once famously remarked that what was curious about the “incident of the dog in the night-time” was that the dog did not bark. Observers of the 2008 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, might have likewise noticed an uncharacteristic silence in the air. This year, the World Social Forum (WSF), which has staged annual anti-Davos protests since 2001 in cities from Porto Alegre to Nairobi, asked its members to stay home.1 Rather than hold a single, attention-grabbing counter-demonstration, the WSF encouraged activists across the globe to organize local press conferences and other events in their communities “to confront this important neo-liberal gathering of the elites.”2 This rejection of centrally coordinated protest in favor of a diffuse, grassroots effort reveals two important new trends in what has been called the “transnational protest movement,” or the “global justice movement.”3 For one thing, protesters have come to define themselves more by what they stand against than what they stand for . “What unites [the movement’s] different elements,” according to one scholar, “is not a demand for specific reforms, but the rejection of ‘global capitalism’ and its influence on culture and human relations.”4 A second key trend is the movement’s eschewal of a centralized, bureaucratic structure. Protests are organized via the Internet, but specific tactics and even agenda items are left to the discretion of activists on the ground.5 This approach has given rise to a string of loose activist networks that depend very little on a central leader or common ideology.6 On paper, at least, the protest movement appears to share many policy goals with more mainstream nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Indeed, the two groups have plenty of common ground to tread. But at the same time, a rift has grown between these potential allies as they struggle to be heard by governments, international institutions, and the general public.7 One activist author complained that many NGOs are “[l]lacking in imagination” and torn between competing impulses to work with the street movement, on the one hand, and to negotiate directly with power holders, on the other. As a result, some NGOs can actually become vehicles for the containment of political dissent.8 So long as this rift persists, activists risk being drowned out by NGOs that have well-cultivated ties to both political elites and the press.9 [End Page 155] The question remains as to how international organizations and governments such as the United States should respond to these trends in the protest movement. One approach has been avoidance. Massive urban protests in Seattle, Genoa, and elsewhere have led international conference organizers to move their meetings away from contentious city streets. The Group of Eight nations, for example, held its last summits in the small German town of Heiligendamm, and in 2008 at the remote Japanese island of Hokkaido. The other tactic has been to give NGOs a “seat at the table,” thereby permitting them to voice their concerns in the policymaking process.10 But so long as that seat is only open to established, mainstream organizations, it is safe to say that the transnational protest movement will live on. Footnotes 1. Dougherty, Carter. “Anti-Davos Takes a Breather.”International Herald Tribune . January 24, 2008, Finance Section, p. 16. 2. World Social Forum 2008. “World Social Forum 2008: A Global Day of Action and Mobilization.” http://www.wsf2008.net/eng/node/3621 . 3. There is some debate as to whether recent protests constitute a “movement,” but these terms are generally associated with the rise of global civil society and with widespread campaigns against states and international organizations that promote neo-liberal agendas. See Della Porta, Donatella, and Sidney Tarrow. “Transnational Processes and Social Activism: An Introduction.” In Transnational Protest & Global Activism , edited by Donatella Della Porta and Sidney Tarrow, p. 1–17. Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005. 4. Clark, John, and Nuno Themudo. “The Age of Protest: Internet-Based ‘Dot Causes’ and the ‘Anti-Globalization’ Movement.” In Globalizing Civic Engagement: Civil Society and Transnational Action , edited by John Clark, p. 109–126. London: Earthscan Publications Ltd., 2003. 5...

Globalization Rules: Accountability, Power, and the Prospects for Global Administrative Law

Abstract From urban protesters against the World Trade Organization to African nations barred from importing generic HIV drugs, globalization is seen as either brute capitalism or a new and more efficient form of colonialism. But a body of rules is emerging that may both constrain and improve the decisions of the new global bureaucrats. From the United Nations to the Basel Committee of national bank regulators, accountability is on the march.