Urban Social Movements: The City After Castells

220 Pages·1986·20.405 MB·English

by  Stuart Lowe (auth.)

Urban Social Movements
Urban Social Movements
The Ciry After Castells
STUART LOWE
Macmillan Education
ISBN 978-0-333-37520-4 ISBN 978-1-349-18175-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-18175-9
© Stuart Lowe, 1986
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1986
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Scholarly & Reference Division,
St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1986
ISBN 978-0-312-83470-8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lowe, Stuart, 1950-
Urban social movements.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Cities and towns-History -Cross-cultural
studies. 2. Social movements-History-Cross-cultural
studies. 3. Castells, Manuel-Criticism and interpre
tation. I. Title.
HT119.L69 1986 307.7'6 85-22301
ISBN 978-0-312-83470-8
For Sue
Contents
Acknowledgements IX
Introduction 1
1 Castells on Urban Social Movements 8
The urban domain 9
Urban social movements- phase one 17
Urban social movements- phase two 19
2 The City and the Grassroots 29
C rban social change 30
Crban social movements -- phase three 33
Conclusion 48
3 The Mobilisation Process 55
The local political system 55
Social bases and the mobilisation process 60
Ideologies of the urban system 76
Conclusion 80
4 Public Sector Housing Movements 82
Council estates as social bases 82
Tenants' associations in Britain 84
The tenants' movement in Sheffield (1967-84) 94
Political strategies of the tenants' movement 110
Vlll Contents
5 Ideologies in Local Politics - The
Ratepayers' and Squatters' Movements 118
The ratepayers' movement 119
Barnsley Ratepayers' Association 124
The squatters' movement 138
Conclusion 150
6 Comparative Urban Social Movements 152
Models of change - the growth or decline of
urban social movements? 153
Italy, France and Spain 155
An environmental movement in an East European
socialist state 161
Social movements in the United States of
America 166
The shanty-towns of South America 173
Models for comparing urban social movements 178
Conclusion 184
7 The Theory and Practice of Urban Social
Movements 187
Castells's new urban social movements 187
Analysing urban social movements 193
Urban social movements in Britain in the 1980s 196
References 203
Index 209
Acknowledgements
The genesis of this book can be precisely located; it began when
Dilys Hill, during the viva for my doctoral thesis, urged me to
read in more detail the new urban politics literature. This I
subsequently did, and discovered more of its treasures and
pitfalls. I am, of course, very grateful to my supervisors at that
time, Bill Hampton and Patrick Seyd, for their help in steering
me through the hazardous exercise of thesis writing. It was due
to them that I set about the long process of seeking a publisher.
The end product, however, bears little resemblance to the thesis,
although it was a vital stage in the intellectual preparation.
The first version of the text was written while I was working as
a tutor organiser for the Workers' Educational Association in
South Yorkshire; and it bore, at that stage, the hallmarks of that
relatively isolated occupation. The current version has been
formulated since I moved to the University ofYork, and became
able to contact a wider academic community. Peter Saunders,
Michael Harloe and Bill Hampton generously gave time to
comment on drafts of the early chapters. Bill Hampton and
Kathleen jones kindly read at short notice the nearly complete
text and made some very useful suggestions. Many thanks are
due to James Simmie for suggesting how the first version could
be made into a publishable commodity and trusting me to do
the job. The creative environment generated by Kathleen jones
in the Department ofSocial Policy and Social Work has spurred
me on. Our indispensable secretary, Alison Holdsworth,
proof-read the manuscript and typed some of the draft version. I
am very grateful to Janice Vanham for typing most of the draft
and all of the final text.
x Acknowledgements
But the greatest debt of all is owed to my family for making it
possible for me to spend the hundreds of hours necessary to
produce a book of this type.
January 1985 Stuart Lowe
Introduction
The previous two decades have seen the field of urban politics
transformed from an institutionally rooted, eclectic specialism
to a range of studies at the frontiers of our knowledge about the
fundamental social and political processes in contemporary
societies. Within this new literature an important sub-field,
concerning the role of non-party urban movements as initiators
of social change, rapidly emerged and now holds a central place
in the debates. This theme reflected the abundant and diverse
reality of urban protest across the globe, ranging from the black
ghetto riots in the USA in the 1960s, to the squatter movements
based in the shanty towns of rapidly urbanising societies, to the
neighbourhood movement in Spain at the termination of the
Franquist era, to the urban protest (particularly the mass
movement of tenants) in Italy in the mid-1970s, to the less
violent and less intense experience of the council house tenants'
movements, redevelopment action groups and environmental
organisations that were and remain a familiar feature of city
politics in Britain. What do these movements and organisations
represent? What effect have they had on social structures and in
the policy arena? To what extent does their existence suggest a
collapse of the formal procedures of political systems in express
ing social conflict? Are there any similarities ofe xperience across
the globe that indicate the existence of common 'urban'
processes irrespective of economic and political systems? Under
what circumstances do people mobilise around urban issues
and, by the same token, what factors inhibit or screen out
potential urban protest? This book is addressed to these
questions. It is focused mainly on Britain, as one country with a
particular set of experiences, but the cross-national setting is
integral to the approach.