Category Archives: The Worldwide Urban Mobilizations
Dina Makram-Ebeid: “Old people are not revolutionaries”: Labor struggles and the politics of value and stability (ʾistiqrār) in a factory occupation in Egypt
On 11 February 2011 I stood in Tahrir Square surrounded by millions celebrating the toppling of Mubarak following eighteen solid days of battle. Around me were people from all walks of life: Saʿidis (“Southerners”) who came all the way from villages in the south, street children turned rebels, family members of martyrs who were killed […]
Ida Susser: Re-envisioning social movements in the Global City
This paper is an effort to understand social movements in the United States with respect to regimes of accumulation (following somewhat in the footsteps of social theorists such as Gavin Smith (2011) and Jane Collins (2012). Here, I review recent approaches to theorizing social movements of the neoliberal era and then attempt to understand the […]
Yves Cohen: Crowds without a master: A transnational approach between past and present
This text stems from a historical study. The research focused on the cultures and practices of leadership and authority between 1890 and 1940 in France, Germany, the United States, and the Soviet Union (Cohen 2013). Fieldwork, mostly in Brazil but also in Russia and France, must be added to the latter study.1 This historical study […]
Giacomo Loperfido: “Neither left nor right”: Crisis, wane of politics, and the struggles for sovereignty
When I arrived on the fieldwork in Rome, in early 2008, I was seeking to track and interview the ex-militants of fascism-inspired “Spontaneista groups.” These had been active in the late ’70s, had been very violent, and had claimed to be “neither left nor right.” Their name made reference to the supposed “spontaneity” of their […]
Dimitra Kofti: Abstention from the Bulgarian protests: Indebted workers and declining market teleology
“The glass will overflow” Written at the entrance of a factory shop floor in Pernik, an industrial Bulgarian town close to the capital, this slogan predicted an uprising. According to workers’ testimonies, the slogan had been written before the February 2013 Bulgarian protests. Nevertheless, the glass did not overflow in the plant during 2013, as […]
Luisa Steur: Trajectories of the Common Man’s Party
“Mr. Ambani, you are one of the richest persons in this country where majority of the population does not get to eat two square meals in a day. Does your greed for money know no end? Why do you have to indulge in illegal activities to make money when you can do good business without […]
Michael Hoffmann: Strong vs. weak targets: Urban activist practices of the kamaiya movement in the western lowland of Nepal
I. Introduction The study of urban activist practices has recently gained currency within anthropology (see Graeber 2013; Harvey 2012; Karakatzanis 2013; Lazar 2008; Nash 2004; Smith 1999). In line with this trend, the anthropological interest in urban activism has increased also in South Asia (Aiyer 2007; Baviskar 1998; Dorron 2008; Subramaniam 2009). However, much of […]
Massimiliano Mollona: The Brazilian “June” revolution: Urban struggles, composite articulations, and new class analysis
The June 2013 revolution that shook Brazil last year took everybody by surprise. It started in Sao Paulo as a small gathering against a looming rise in the cost of public transport, and in two weeks it spread to 400 cities and towns, bringing millions of people (6 percent of the national population) to the […]
Cédric Masse: Identities of Portuguese Urban Social Movements: Universality and Class Heterogeneity
The ontological question of social movements—what are social movements?—is particularly important given that one of the fundamental aspects of the scientific approach consists in defining its object of study, elucidating its nature, finding its essential properties in order to better understand it.