This is the abstract for the paper I gave yesterday at the Royal Geographical Society in London. I was part of a session on "Complex Geographies of Post-Crisis Social Movements" organized by Maarten Loopmans and Walter J. Nichols.
Expression, Critique, and Resistance in Localized Practices of Contesting and Reclaiming Urban Space
This study suggests an understanding of contemporary practices of contesting or reclaiming urban space as instances of highly individualized, localized resistance to the commoditization of cityspace under advanced capitalism. Phenomena including so-called guerrilla gardening, adbusting and graffiti, political squatting, and other spatially-attuned activism and expression have received relatively little scholarly attention, yet could benefit from consideration in the context of critical geography and social movements literatures. At the same time, the theories behind these disciplines stand to gain from the empirical analysis of these phenomena.
With their subtle but swiftly growing importance in many cities over the past several decades, practices of spatial reclaiming also present examples of the rapid development and uptake of new repertoires of ‘contentious performance’ (Tilly), while the forms taken by this expression also raise questions of scale and place for contentious politics. This paper considers the meaning of these highly informal, localized, and often quite individual spatial actions for social movement studies as well as critical theory. Through a focused analysis of the relevant literature and research on critical spatial practice, everyday resistance, and the neoliberal city as preeminent site of struggle (including Lefebvre, Harvey, de Certeau, Scott, Goonewardena and others), I offer a theory of reclaiming as an expression of critique and resistance to contemporary urban socio-spatial conditions, as well as the methodological context in which specific instances of these phenomena can be studied and understood.
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