1st Edition

Urban Change and Citizenship in Times of Crisis Volume 3: Figurations of Conflict and Resistance

    164 Pages
    by Routledge

    164 Pages
    by Routledge

    At times of triumphant neo-liberalism cities increasingly become objects of financial speculation. Formally, social and political rights might not be abolished, yet factually they have become inaccessible for large parts of the population. The contributions gathered in this volume shed light on the clash between the perspectives of restructuring and reordering urban environments in the interest of investors and the manifold and innovative agencies of resistance that claim and stand up for the rights of urban citizenship. Renewed waves of urban transformation employ state coercion to foster the expulsion of poor and marginalised inhabitants from those urban spaces that attract interest from speculators. The intervention of state agencies triggers the work of hegemonic culture for reframing the housing issue and implementing moral and political legitimation, as well as legislation that restricts urban citizenship rights. The case studies of the volume comparatively show the different and sometimes contradictory patterns of these conflicts in Berlin, Sydney, Belfast, Jerusalem, Amsterdam, and İstanbul as well as in metropoles of Latin America and China. Innovative resistance agencies emerge that paint possible paths for the re-establishment of the right to the city as the core of urban citizenship.

    Introduction: Logics of Urban Marginalisation and Resistance

    Gregor Fitzi

    Part 1: Restructuring and Reordering Urban Citizenship

    1. Violence and the Latin American City: Security and Open Citizenship in an Age of Disorder

    Jenny Pearce

    2. National Policymaking, Contested Citizenship, and the City

    Scott Bollens

    3. Criminalising Activist Spaces: Privatisation, Public Order and Moral Order

    Deanna Dadusc

    4. Exclusionary Tales of (Non)Belonging: The Crisis of Urban and National Citizenship in the Netherlands

    Jan Willem Duyvendak

    Part 2: Urban Agency and Resistance

    5. Strengthening Urban Citizenship in Berlin. Three Modes of Claiming and Expanding Rights, Resources and Recognition at the Local Level

    Andrej Holm and Henrik Lebuhn

    6. Urban Changes and (Sub-)Citizenship in China: Emergence of the Subaltern-Diaosi Subjects

    Ngai-Ling Sum

    7. Resistance to Urban Restructuring in Turkey

    Tuba Inal Çekiç and Senem Kozaman

    8. The Promise and Practice of Urban Alliances

    Kurt Iveson and Amanda Tattersall

    Biography



    Bryan S. Turner is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute for Religion Politics and Society at the Australian Catholic University, Honorary Professor and Director of the Centre for Citizenship, Social Pluralism and Religious Diversity at Potsdam University, Germany, and Emeritus Professor at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York City. He is the founding editor of the Journal of Classical Sociology. He edited the Blackwell Wiley Encyclopedia for Social Theory (2018). He was awarded a Doctor of Letters by Cambridge University in 2009 and received the Max Planck Award in social science in 2015.



    Hannah Wolf is a researcher and lecturer completing her PhD at the University of Potsdam, coordinator of the Centre for Citizenship, Social Pluralism and Religious Diversity and associate member at the collaborative DFG-research centre Re-Figuration of Spaces (TU Berlin). Her academic background includes theatre and media studies, anthropology, philosophy, and sociology. Her research interests lie in the political and moral economies of housing and home, citizenship, urban sociology, and the sociology of everyday life.



    Gregor Fitzi is co-director of the Centre for Citizenship, Social Pluralism and Religious Diversity at the University of Potsdam, Germany. After his PhD in Sociology at the University of Bielefeld, he was Assistant Professor at the Institute of Sociology, University of Heidelberg, Germany. Among his recent publications are The challenge of modernity. Simmel’s sociological theory (2019) and Populism and the Crisis of democracy (2019), 3 vols. edited with Jürgen Mackert and Bryan S. Turner.



    Jürgen Mackert is Professor of Sociology and a co-director of the Centre for Citizenship, Social Pluralism and Religious Pluralism at the University of Potsdam, Germany. His research interests lie in the sociology of citizenship, political economy, closure theory, (neo-)liberalism, settler colonialism, and de-democratisation. His most recent publication is Populism and the crisis of democracy (2019), 3 vols., edited with Gregor Fitzi and Bryan S. Turner (2019).

    "This is a timely and well-crafted book, bold in scope and analysis. It brings together different voices on a global scale, with examples reaching from Amsterdam, Jerusalem, Belfast, Berlin, Sydney, China, Turkey to Latin America, analysing the contradictions of urbanization processes by differentiating hegemonic and critical discourses from each other. A must-read book for anybody who is interested in understanding contradictions in the social practices of urban life in a neo-liberal world."

    Ute Lehrer, Professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University, Toronto, Canada

    "In these new times of crisis conflict and resistance are growing in cities around the world. Reacting to the march of neo-liberal policies, of planetary gentrification, the hegemony of real estate, and the inequalities and segregations they inflict, urban citizens are fighting back. They are fighting for their right to the city, their right to community, and their right to stay put. As this superb volume evidences – these struggles are both local and global. Conflict and resistance are not static they are constantly in process (they are figurations) and herein lies their potential. This collection is not only timely, it is conceptually and theoretically informed, empirically rich and it is global. It is an excellent read for all interested in these issues."

    Loretta Lees, Professor of Human Geography, University of Leicester, UK

    "The central claim of this volume is that cities lie at the core of the global political economy and that global crises and discontents can only be understood through the lens of contemporary urban struggles. Leading scholars provide keenly insightful case studies covering Medellin, Jerusalem, Belfast, Amsterdam, Berlin, migrant workers in Chinese cities, Istanbul, and right to the city movements, yielding a rich volume that transcends the usual constricted viewpoints."

    John Mollenkopf, Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology, and Director of the Center for Urban Research at the Graduate Centre, City University of New York, US