Rethinking Cities in Contentious Times: The Mobilisation of Urban Dissent in the ‘Arab Spring’

Abstract

Throughout history, cities have been the theatre of social and spatial struggles. The issue of urban protests, however, has not yet been investigated in detail in the light of the growing concern of the need to rethink urban studies, from theoretical and epistemic assumptions, to methodological issues. It is argued that the mobilisation of urban dissent in the so-called Arab Spring offers a good opportunity to develop a critical approach based on the observation of the nexus between an event (a punctual expression of dissent) and a site (the urban environment in which the former takes place). The goal is to avoid theoretical rigidities inherent to the assumptions about the intrinsic qualities of cities or social movements. The paper also aims at connecting different academic and disciplinary traditions across linguistic dividesand especially the Anglophone urban studies with the Francophone stream of cityfocused political science and political sociology.

Development as a Battlefield

“…Authors who oppose this trend include Yacobi (2009) and Peraldi and Tozy (2011). For a critical analysis of this literature in the context of the Arab Spring, see Allegra et al (2013). 60…”

Epilogue—from ‘Gray Space' to Equal ‘Metrozenship'? Reflections On Urban Citizenship

“…The broad and rich overviews and analyses provided by scholars such as García (), Varsanyi (), Plyushtva (), Roy (; ), Brenner, Marcuse and Mayer (); Harvey (), Allegra et al . () and Keil (), to name but a few of the leading scholars in the field, illustrate the depth and scope of the conversation developed around this concept.…”

“…The debate has also focused attention on the different local, spatial, material and political practices of struggling for and 'making' urban citizenship, and on the mobilization of urban dwellers to attain their political and material rights. The broad and rich overviews and analyses provided by scholars such as García (2006), Varsanyi (2006), Plyushtva (2009), Roy (20092011), Brenner, Marcuse andMayer (2011);Harvey (2012), Allegra et al (2013) and Keil (2013), to name but a few of the leading scholars in the field, illustrate the depth and scope of the conversation devel oped around this concept.…”

The Tunisian Revolution: Neoliberalism, Urban Contentious Politics and the Right to the City

“…This, finally, enables me to reflect on the nature of the political in general and on theorizations of the politicizing of the city in particular. Here, the empirical reality of the Tunisian revolution is not only used as a sample for testing urban theories that have by and large been constructed from Western cases (Allegra et al, 2013). Rather, the empirical depth and, I hope, precision of my analysis will offer opportunities for a more comparative and cosmopolitan theorizing of cities around the world (Robinson, 2011).…”