Urban Uprisings

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xv

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2. Urban Uprisings, Social Movements and Neoliberal Urbanism

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

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   2. Re-Thinking Urban Social Movements, ‘Riots’ and Uprisings: An Introduction

      • Håkan Thörn, Margit Mayer, Catharina Thörn

      Pages 3-55

   3. Neoliberal Urbanism and Uprisings Across Europe

      • Margit Mayer

      Pages 57-92

3. Challenging Neoliberal Urbanism in Europe

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 93-93

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   2. Rage and Fire in the French Banlieues

      • Mustafa Dikeç

      Pages 95-119

   3. The Neoliberal State and the 2011 English Riots: A Class Analysis

      • Tom Slater

      Pages 121-148

   4. The Stockholm Uprising in Context: Urban Social Movements in the Rise and Demise of the Swedish Welfare-State City

      • Ove Sernhede, Catharina Thörn, Håkan Thörn

      Pages 149-173

   5. Last Stand or Renewed Urban Activism? The Copenhagen Youth House Uprising, 2007

      • Anders Lund Hansen, René Karpantschof

      Pages 175-201

   6. Right to the City—and Beyond: The Topographies of Urban Social Movements in Hamburg

      • Peter Birke

      Pages 203-232

   7. Athens’ Spatial Contract and the Neoliberal Omni-Present

      • Antonis Vradis

      Pages 233-251

   8. Between Autonomy and Hybridity: Urban Struggles Within the 15M Movement in Spain

      • Miguel A. Martínez López

      Pages 253-281

   9. Gezi Protests and Beyond: Urban Resistance Under Neoliberal Urbanism in Turkey

      • Gülçin Erdi Lelandais

      Pages 283-308

   10. Neoliberal Post-Socialist Urban Transformation and the Emergence of Urban Social Movements in Poland

       • Dominika V. Polanska

       Pages 309-332

   11. Afterword: Spatialized Social Inequalities and Urban Collective Action

       • Margit Mayer, Catharina Thörn, Håkan Thörn

       Pages 333-339

4. Back Matter

   Pages 341-353

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This book analyses the waves of protests, from spontaneous uprisings to well-organized forms of collective action, which have shaken European cities over the last decade. It shows how analysing these protests in connection with the structural context of neoliberal urbanism and its crises is more productive than standard explanations. Processes of neoliberalisation have caused deeply segregated urban landscapes defined by deepening social inequality, rising unemployment, racism, securitization of urban spaces and welfare state withdrawal, particularly from poor peripheral areas, where tensions between marginalized youth and police often manifest in public spaces. Challenging a conventional distinction made in research on protest, the book integrates a structural analysis of processes of large scale urban transformation with analyses of the relationship between 'riots' and social movement action in nine countries: France, Greece, England, Germany, Spain, Poland,Denmark, Sweden and Turkey.      

• human geography
• political geography
• austerity
• riots
• protest
• cities
• European
• England
• France
• Denmark
• Germany
• Spain
• Turkey
• Poland
• urban studies

           

“This volume brings together some of the most insightful contributions on an essential theme, at the source of urban social change. Indispensable reading for students, activists and local administrators.” (Manuel Castells, University of California, Berkeley, USA)

“An excellent collection.  Not only does the focus on European protests fill a gap in the social movement literature, but the case studies are informed by the authors' considerable theoretical erudition.  Just as important, they cast a broad net, giving due attention to the more inchoate forms of protest that have often been neglected by social movement scholars. “ (Frances Fox Piven, Graduate School of the City University of New York, USA)

“We live in an age of urban unrest.  Urban Uprisings explains why this matters to what cities are and why we must understand uprisings better if we are to comprehend the nature of power in the contemporary city.  This important book makes it clear thatthe city itself – the urban landscape as the concretization of the injustice of the present neoliberal order – is shaped and reshaped through explosive struggle, struggle that (inchoate as it may sometimes be) is precisely the means by which any real right to the city may be glimpsed and grasped.” (Don Mitchell, Syracuse University, USA)

• J.F. Kennedy Institute for North America, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

  Margit Mayer

• University of Gothenburg, Goteborg, Sweden

  Catharina Thörn

• Department of Sociology & Work Science, University of Gothenburg, Goteborg, Sweden

  Håkan Thörn

Margit Mayer is Professor of Political Science at Freie Universität of Berlin, Germany, and Senior Fellow at the Center for Metropolitan Studies, Technical University Berlin, Germany. 


Catharina Thörn is Associate Professor in Cultural Studies at University of Gothenburg, Sweden.  


Håkan Thörn is Full Professor of Sociology at University of Gothenburg, Sweden. 

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