Description
Book Synopsis The past decades have seen significant urban insurrections worldwide, and this volume analyzes some of them from an anthropological perspective; it argues that transformations of urban class relationships must be approached in a way that is both globally informed and deeply embedded in local and popular histories, and contends that every case of urban mobilization should be understood against its precise context in the global capitalist transformation. The book examines cases of mobilization across the globe, and employs a Marxian class framework, open to the diverse and multi-scalar dynamics of urban politics, especially struggles for spatial justice.
Trade Review “Overall, this volume constitutes a timely and innovative contribution to the understanding of urban mobilisation in the aftermath of 2011 from a class perspective, especially as it explores new attempts to rearticulate class brought about by neoliberal capitalism, challenging old parameters of class difference. For this reason, the book is extremely relevant and important for scholars interested in particular in the anthropological study of political economy, contemporary urban movements, contentious politics in the urban space, and urban and social transformations.” • Comparative Southeast European Studies
“The extremely variegated geographical and political contexts taken into consideration highlight the ambitious project of this book, which applies a sound common methodological framework to multiple subjects for anthropological reflection…The volume constitutes a fundamental reading to avoid generalizing accounts of what the editors deem the increasingly contested but still dominant neoliberalism as well as commonsensical clues about its local political manifestations.” • ANUAC
“Each of the chapters is a careful and nuanced analysis of a contemporary populist movement for reclaiming urban space and for a transformation of the moral order. Thus, the new trend, as this book amply illustrates, is not just confined to the economy but also for more abstract values such as corruption and the environment; morality and aesthetics have entered into what is termed as ‘post-political’.” • Anthropological Notebooks
“This is a timely contribution to our understanding of urban protest, and the analytical framework proposed by the editors is extremely relevant and important. I believe the volume… will spark a much-needed debate about class and social transformation in the 21st century.” • Lesley Gill, Vanderbilt University
“A very important contribution to understanding popular movements in late capitalism.” • Winnie Lem, Trent University
Table of Contents Acknowledgements
Introduction: Introductory Thoughts on Anthropology and Urban Insurrection
Don Kalb and Massimiliano Mollona
Chapter 1. Confronting ‘Aggressive Urbanism’: Frictional Heterogeneity in the ‘Gezi Protests’ of Turkey
Mehmet Barış Kuymulu
Chapter 2. Reconfiguring 'the People'? Notes on the 2014 Winter Revolt in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Stef Jansen
Chapter 3. ‘Sofia 2014, Feels Like 1989’: Abstention from the Protests and Declining Market Teleology in Bulgaria
Dimitra Kofti
Chapter 4. Spontaneity, Antagonism and the Moral Politics of Outrage: Urban Protest in Argentina since 2001
Sian Lazar
Chapter 5. ‘Neither Left nor Right’: Crisis, Wane of Politics, and Struggles for Sovereignty
Giacomo Loperfido
Chapter 6. Rebels and Revolutionaries: Urban Mobilizations of the Kamaiya Movement in Post-Conflict Western Nepal
Michael Peter Hoffmann
Chapter 7. The Brazilian ‘June’ Revolution: Urban Struggles, Composite Articulations and New Class Analysis
Massimiliano Mollona
Chapter 8. Contradictions of the ‘Common Man’: A Realist Approach to India's Aam Aadmi Party
Luisa Steur
Chapter 9. Re-envisioning Social Movements in the Global City: from Fordism to the Neoliberal Era
Ida Susser
Afterword: Notes for a Contemporary Urban Class Analysis
Massimiliano Mollona and Don Kalb
Index
