Social innovation, reciprocity and contentious politics: Facing the socio-urban crisis in Ciutat Meridiana, Barcelona

Urban Studies ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 54 (9) ◽  
pp. 2172-2188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ismael Blanco ◽  
Margarita León
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Social Innovation ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Community Level ◽  
The Political ◽  
Urban Crisis ◽  
Political Empowerment ◽  
Grassroots Movements

Taking one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Barcelona as a paradigmatic case, the aim of this paper is to explore the ways in which contestation organised by sublocal grassroots movements in the context of the current urban crisis operates, both in terms of content and form of protest. Our thesis is that resident mobilisation in the neighbourhood of Ciutat Meridiana is expressive of a new cycle of (urban) social mobilisations in Spanish cities. In such mobilisations, more or less spontaneous initiatives which emerged to counteract the effects of the crisis at the community level are simultaneously serving as platforms for reciprocity and political contestation. Establishing a dialogue with the literature on social innovation, in this paper we claim that these micro-local urban practices are linked to broader social movements and thus play a fundamental role in the political empowerment of citizens living in highly segregated and vulnerable urban areas.

scholarly journals Popular Demobilization, Agribusiness Mobilization, and the Agrarian Boom in Post-Neoliberal Argentina

2015 ◽  
pp. 69-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo Lapegna
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Food Regime ◽  
Collective Actions ◽  
Left Turn ◽  
Institutional Politics ◽  
Global Corporations ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Business Sectors

Based on ethnographic research, archival data, and a catalog of protest events, this article analyzes the relationship between popular social movements, business mobilization, and institutional politics in Argentina during the post-neoliberal phase, which arguably began circa 2003. How did waves of popular mobilization in the 1990s shape business mobilization in the 2000s? How did contentious politics influence institutional politics in the post-neoliberal period? What are the changes and continuities of the agrarian boom that cut across the neoliberal and post-neoliberal periods? While I zoom in on Argentina, the article goes beyond this case by contributing to three discussions. First, rather than limiting the analysis to the customary focus on the mobilization of subordinated actors, it examines the demobilization of popular social movements, the mobilization of business sectors, and the connections between the two. Second, it shows the ways in which the state can simultaneously challenge neoliberal principles while also favoring the global corporations that dominate the contemporary neoliberal food regime. Finally, the case of Argentina sheds light on the political economy of the "Left turn" in Latin America, particularly the negative socio-environmental impacts of commodity booms. The article concludes that researchers need to pay closer attention to the connections between contentious and institutional politics, and to the protean possibilities of neoliberalism to inspire collective actions.

The Tribal Impact on Political Stability in Sudan

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 167-188
Author(s):  
Abdu Mukhtar Musa
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Third World ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
The Political ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Conflict Escalation ◽  
Islamic Movement ◽  
Patterns Of Behavior ◽  
Cultural Structure

As in most Arab and Third World countries, the tribal structure is an anthropological reality and a sociological particularity in Sudan. Despite development and modernity aspects in many major cities and urban areas in Sudan, the tribe and the tribal structure still maintain their status as a psychological and cultural structure that frames patterns of behavior, including the political behavior, and influence the political process. This situation has largely increased in the last three decades under the rule of the Islamic Movement in Sudan, because of the tribe politicization and the ethnicization of politics, as this research reveals. This research is based on an essential hypothesis that the politicization of tribalism is one of the main reasons for the tribal conflict escalation in Sudan. It discusses a central question: Who is responsible for the tribal conflicts in Sudan?

Hastings Donnan and Pnina Werbner (eds). Economy and Culture in Pakistan: Migrants and Cities in a Muslim Society. London: Macmillan. 1991. 268 pp.

1992 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 325-328
Author(s):  
Ziaul Haque
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Political System ◽  
Direct Result ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Factors ◽  
Population Movements ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Divide ◽  
Different Parts

Modem economic factors and forces are rapidly transforming the world into a single society and economy in which the migration of people at the national and international levels plays an important role. Pakistan, as a modem nation, has characteristically been deeply influenced by such migrations, both national and international. The first great exodus occurred in 1947 when over eight million Indian Muslims migrated from different parts of India to Pakistan. Thus, from the very beginning mass population movements and migrations have been woven into Pakistan's social fabric through its history, culture and religion. These migrations have greatly influenced the form and substance of the national economy, the contours of the political system, patterns of urbanisation and the physiognomy of the overall culture and history of the country. The recent political divide of Sindh on rural/Sindhi, and urban/non-Sindhi, ethnic and linguistic lines is the direct result of these earlier settlements of these migrants in the urban areas of Sindh.

Language Movement and Civil War in West Africa

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ericka A. Albaugh
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Language Spread ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter examines how civil war can influence the spread of language. Specifically, it takes Sierra Leone as a case study to demonstrate how Krio grew from being primarily a language of urban areas in the 1960s to one spoken by most of the population in the 2000s. While some of this was due to “normal” factors such as population movement and growing urbanization, the civil war from 1991 to 2002 certainly catalyzed the process of language spread in the 1990s. Using census documents and surveys, the chapter tests the hypothesis at the national, regional, and individual levels. The spread of a language has political consequences, as it allows for citizen participation in the political process. It is an example of political scientists’ approach to uncovering the mechanisms for and evidence of language movement in Africa.

Populism From Below and Social Movements: A Case of Zimbabwe’s #ThisFlag Movement

2021 ◽  
pp. 002190962110345
Author(s):  
Theophilus Tinashe Nenjerama ◽  
Shepherd Mpofu
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Digital Ethnography ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
Analyse Data

This study examines a new wave of populisms arising in the digital era using Pastor Evan Mawarire’s #ThisFlag movement: What are they, and how do they express themselves? How does the hegemony react to them? Non-mainstream, digitally born movements, especially in dictatorships, are dismissed by the political elite as ill-mannered disruptors whose political interventions are detrimental. To analyse the cleric’s populism and its meaning to the Zimbabwean body politic, we use three specific themes: (a) personality and influence of movement leader(s); (b) populist communication and messaging; and (c) recreating an involved citizenry. We used digital ethnography to gather and analyse data.

Collective Memory and Social Movements: Football Sites of Memory in Supporters’ Activism

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Dino Numerato ◽  
Arnošt Svoboda
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Czech Republic ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
European Level ◽  
Significant Component ◽  
The Czech Republic

This paper examines the role of collective memory in the protection of “traditional” sociocultural and symbolic aspects of football vis-à-vis the processes of commodification and globalization. Empirical evidence that underpins the analysis is drawn from a multisite ethnographic study of football fan activism in the Czech Republic, Italy, and England, as well as at the European level. The authors argue that collective memory represents a significant component of the supporters’ mobilization and is related to the protection of specific football sites of memory, including club names, logos, colors, places, heroes, tragedies, and histories. The authors further explain that collective memory operates through three interconnected dimensions: embedded collective memory, transcendent collective memory, and the collective memory of contentious politics.

Agonistic Conflict as a Distinct Type of Contentious Politics: Learning from Protests For and Against Asylum Seekers in Israel

2021 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-118
Author(s):  
Tali Hatuka ◽  
Miryam Wijler
Keyword(s):  
State Policy ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Distinct Type ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Shared Knowledge ◽  
The Political ◽  
Court Decisions ◽  
The Relationship

This paper focuses on a particular form of protest that emerges in what this paper calls an 'agonistic environment'. It defines the latter as a form of contentious politics within deliberative democracies in which concurrence rather than estrangement is more likely to define the relationship between citizens and the state. It then asks what is the nature of conflict in such environments, and will activism in the settings be more or less likely to generate change. Finally, it considers whether protest in agonistic environments produces a form of shared knowledge among parties to the conflict, particularly with respect to the possibility of change and how best to achieve it? In exploring these questions, the paper focuses on the political dynamics in Israel associated with the wave of African asylum seekers who arrived from 2010 to 2012, most of whom originated from Eritrea and Sudan. Using a quantitative approach, the paper analyses this agonistic environment focusing on two dimensions: (a) protest events; and (b) state policy and juridical decisions as well as legal initiatives aimed at challenging state policy and relevant court decisions. By highlighting the scalar mismatch between protests focused on delimited urban spaces and responses of authorities at the scale of the nation – in this case, legal rulings – the paper further advances our understanding of agonistic conflict and how it produces change.

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