Social Movements in Urban Society: The City as A Space of Politicization

Abstract

Recent anti-systemic social movements have illustrated the central role of cities in social movement mobilization. We not only highlight the characteristics of urban social relations that make cities fertile ground for mobilization, but also point to the disjunctures between the geographies and spatialities of social relations in the city, and the geographies and spatialities of many systemic processes. Struggles for a more just society must consider the broad geographies and spatialities of oppression, which we illustrate with a brief analysis of the Occupy movement. Finally, we introduce the next five articles in this special issue, all illustrating the importance of the geographies and spatialities of urban social struggle.

Key words:

• urban theory
• social movements
• political mobilization.

Notes

2 Mobility politics is social and cultural as well (e.g., Cresswell, 2010), such as the politics of public space and the politics of automobility.