Squatters in the Capitalist City

Housing, Justice, and Urban Politics

Miguel Martinez

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781317514749
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Urban Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

To date, there has been no comprehensive analysis of the disperse research on the squatters' movement in Europe. In Squatters in the Capitalist City, Miguel A. Martínez López presents a critical review of the current research on squatting and of the historical development of the movements in European cities according to their major social, political and spatial dimensions.

Comparing cities, contexts, and the achievements of the squatters' movements, this book presents the view that squatting is not simply a set of isolated, illegal and marginal practices, but is a long-lasting urban and transnational movement with significant and broad implications. While intersecting with different housing struggles, squatters face various aspects of urban politics and enhance the content of the movements claiming for a 'right to the city.' Squatters in the Capitalist City seeks to understand both the socio-spatial and political conditions favourable to the emergence and development of squatting, and the nature of the interactions between squatters, authorities and property owners by discussing the trajectory, features and limitations of squatting as a potential radicalisation of urban democracy.

1

SQUATTING AS AN URBAN MOVEMENT

To what extent can squatting be studied as an urban movement? How do various theoretical insights from urban sociology and social movements intersect with each other? This chapter introduces the main concepts, assumptions, and theoretical approaches that help to investigate the squatters’ movements in European cities. I suggest adopting a critical perspective in which class analysis and political economy take precedence; however, the incorporation of ‘contentious politics’ and other specific concerns related to the urban and housing questions are also crucial (Alford & Friedland 1985, Barker et al. 2013, Della Porta 2015, Goodwin & Jasper 2004, Judge et al. 1995, Pickvance 1995, Tilly & Tarrow 2007). This engages with a specific attempt at understanding how ‘socio-spatial structural contexts’ shape movements, how agencies and identities of movements unfold within those contexts, and which outcomes are actually produced (Martínez 2018a, 2018b, 2019). I also look at the ‘effective radicalisation’ of urban movements when facing the increasing commodification of housing, gentrification processes, and intersectional injustices (across class, gender, and ethnic lines) (Bhattacharya 2017, Lees et al. 2016, Madden & Marcuse 2016). In addition, the context of neoliberal urbanism over the last four decades (Mayer 2016, Rossi 2017) crucially shapes the uprisings of urban movements and their right to the city (Attoh 2011, Lopes de Souza 2010) coalitions with other social movements, especially at the peak of protest cycles.

Structural Constraints and Social Conflict

Social sciences are grounded on key, but often hidden, epistemological and theoretical distinctions. Galtung (1977: 65–68, 92–97), for example, echoed the conventional boundary between ‘realists’ and ‘idealists’. The former would be ‘seekers of invariances’; the latter could be seen as ‘breakers of invariances’. As with many others later on, Galtung advocated for an integration of both camps: ‘[T]heories have to be open-ended, which means that they have to serve as a basis for understanding not only empirical, but also potential reality’ (Galtung 1977: 70, italics added). Social scientists face other conventional dichotomies between positivism-empiricism and hermeneutics-relativism, on the one hand, and between agency and structure, on the other. Researchers who emphasise agency, for example, focus on the motivations of the individual, collective identities, and the micro scales of reality. When structure leads the analysis, researchers focus on processes of historical change, political and economic dimensions, and the macro scales of reality.

These splits have been also challenged by scholars who investigated social phenomena through ‘theoretical experimentation’ (Bourdieu et al. [1973] 1991: 94), generative and ‘causal mechanisms’ (Tilly 1998), and more generally through ‘critical realism’ (Bhaskar et al. 1998, Bhaskar & Callinicos 2003). For them and for me, society is not made of individuals, but of social relations and processes. Harvey’s project to recreate historical-geographical materialism provides an additional inspiring view (Harvey 1996: Ch. 2–7). According to Harvey, one of the aims of a dialectical enquiry is to identify the ‘moments’ ‘embedded within continuous flows which can produce radical transformations’ (ibid.: 55). These ‘moments’ are not restricted to the material basis of social practices and relations but also include features from other ‘fundamental moments of social life’ (ibid.: 78) such as ‘manifestations of power’, ‘institution building’, ‘language/discourse’ and ‘the imaginary’ (values, beliefs, and desires). In particular, he incorporates the Enlightenment ideals of ‘human emancipation’ and ‘self-realisation’ into intertwined scientific and political purposes. According to the Marxist tradition, these ideals emphasise a collective dimension, a ‘strict social and political control over market operations and, if possible, the radical transformation of power relationships in the realm of production as well as in the discursive and institutional spheres’ (ibid.: 126). This approach thus calls for the interrogation of the domination of ‘nature, the self, and others’ (ibid.: 139) based on divides determined by class, gender identities, sexual preferences, ethnicity, religion, location, cultural lifestyles, physical abilities, social stigma, and age.

I translate the above insights into an epistemological framework based on nested, dependent, and non-deterministic hierarchies: ‘[E]ach lower order of complexity, being an open system, depends on (and is therefore constrained by) the orders above it (its environments) for the matter-energy and information required for its existence, survival, and eventual reproduction’ (Wilden 1987: 73) (see Figure 1.1). Hence, on the one hand, structures constrain agency in a more powerful manner than agency is expressed within or against structures. On the other hand, structures enable action by distributing the resources and opportunities available to agents. Agents may, however, use them strategically in various ways while setting different goals and relying on specific ideas. Following the same logic of a ‘dependent hierarchy’, material structures (land and means of production, for example) are assumed to enjoy more ontological powers than symbolic structures (culture, in short). In parallel, social agents depend more on material resources than on symbolic representations (in other words, identity).

FIGURE 1.1 Structures and agency

Source: Author

The non-deterministic nature of this approach suggests we must account for the constraints involved in the above hierarchical relationships (between structures and agency, the material and the symbolic, and resources and identity), but we must also examine how historical change of such structures occurs with the necessary participation of social agents’ subjectivity and practices. Historical change may be incremental (usually in the long term) or discontinuous (often due to rapid moments of disruption in the short term). Hence, we need to identify first specific structures, agencies, and their dependent relationships; then, second, we must aim to explain their changing features over time. This implies an understanding of both vertical relations between the superior and inferior tiers of the hierarchies, and horizontal relations (not necessarily harmonious) among equals (elements within the same tier).

In Wilden’s terms (1987: 77):

For goalseeking, adaptive open systems—systems involving or simulating life or mind—constraints are the basis of complexity and the conditions of creativity. Only by using the constraints of the code of English can I write this sentence, for example. … A constraint both limits and defines the … relative freedom to use information to organize matter-energy or the relative freedom to use one kind or level of information to organize another kind or level.

At the risk of simplification, this abstract scheme could be well captured by Marx’s celebrated statement: ‘Human beings make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past’ (quoted by Cox & Nilsen 2014: vi).

Critical Social Science

At the theoretical level, I take sides with the broad legacy of ‘critical sociology’ that combines Marxian and Weberian inquiries on the major social and political forces shaped by the dominant economic mode of production and the configuration of the state (Alford & Friedland 1985). In my view, critical social sciences study, above all, power conflicts among social groups enjoying different structural conditions—vertically and horizontally situated. Instead of revealing the laws and individual values that underpin social cohesion, critical scholarship aims to reveal how every structural order is socially produced and the processes that trigger its historical change. Social structures, then, are made of contradictory and evolving social relations while also showing ‘emergent’ features in contrast with those shown by their constitutive elements (individuals and small groups). In the sociological tradition, this approach engages with concern about the ‘problems of history, the problems of biography, and the problems of social structure in which biography and history intersect’ (Wright Mills 1959: 224, Burawoy 2008). The social production of space is also, in my approach, an unavoidable dimension of historical processes.

In other words, critical social scientists should disclose what is hidden and dismissed (i.e. the contexts of structural domination and historical change) by the mainstream emphasis on order, integration, reproduction, stability, differences, individuals, subjectivity, choices, and identity (which mainly occupy the efforts of functionalism, interactionism, constructionism, pluralism, and rational choice approaches). Therefore,

doing sociology in a critical way means looking beyond appearances, understanding root causes, and asking who benefits. … The use of reason, science, and evidence to critically examine religious truth, established doctrine, and political authority … [is also] devoted to a critical analysis of how social structures create relations of domination … oppression, or exploitation.

(Buechler 2014: 12–14)

In addition to debunking myths and beliefs that are taken for granted, I place power relations at the core of the analysis. The general notion of ‘power to’ (collective capacities to do, produce, create, think, speak out, cooperate, etc.) as a relational feature of agency within the constraints and opportunities of given structures, can be broken down into two subcategories: ‘power over’ and ‘power against’. ‘Power over’ or ‘domination’ encompasses the capacities exerted by a specific social group (or an individual with the help of a social group) that result in the oppression of another group whose freedom and capacities are substantially restricted. ‘Power against’ or ‘resistance’ refers to the exercise of empowering capacities by the oppressed groups in order to oppose and overcome the domination they experience (Foucault 1975, Jessop 1982, Scott 2012). These concepts serve to frame the main vertical and horizontal relations involving class-economic, authority-political, gender-patriarchal, and ethnic-cultural dominations. Consequently, it is necessary to bridge Marxist and Weberian pursuits to explain the tensions between structures and agency, especially when there are collective demands of structural change at play.

The study of collective action and social movements meets this approach at its core when examining a basic triad:

1. how power relations are performed by both the dominant and the subaltern groups;
2. according to what specific structural constraints and opportunities those conflicts are expressed; and
3. what significant consequences in human history they produce.

Class struggles, contentious politics, and conflicts around hegemony (or ‘cultural wars’, ‘symbolic violence’, etc.) appear as the main areas of attention. As far as social scientists cannot claim to conduct research with an absolute value-free ethos, a critical stance implies a commitment to some of the aspirations of the subjugated groups without speaking on their behalf. As a consequence, scientific reports are not only about producing reliable knowledge but also about illuminating the potentialities of change opened and realised by the practices of resistance to domination. These potentialities and practices represent the central meaning of the goal-seeking, claim-making, and intersubjective framing activity that defines the collective identity of social movements. However, this bottom-up vertical relation is structurally constrained by the top-down historical rise of capitalism and nation states that crucially shape the demands and practices of social movements.

According to Alford and Friedland (1985), three levels of power can be distinguished:

1. ‘Situational power’ or ‘power as influence’—when voters, interest groups, political parties, organisations, corporations, and labour unions compete for influence in government decisions.
2. ‘Structural power’ or ‘power as domination’—when government agencies, technocrats, managers, and elites negotiate with each other in order to allocate resources and implement policies.
3. ‘Systemic power’ or ‘power as hegemony’—when societal forces, arrangements, and structures define the dominant social values, organisations, state institutions, and global development of capitalism towards crises.

These notions are aligned with three major theoretical perspectives:

1. Pluralist scholars give research priority to situational power, individuals, and small groups.
2. Managerial and elite theorists tend to emphasise structural power, large organisations, and state institutions (to avoid confusion, I would name it ‘organisational power’ instead).
3. Class-driven analysis privilege the observation of systemic power (I would name it ‘structural-systemic power’ or ‘structural power’ for short), global political economy, and the interests of labour and capital.

Following feminist and post-colonial critiques, the class perspective has increasingly incorporated gender-patriarchal and ethno-cultural sources of structural-systemic power (Bhattacharya 2017). As a consequence, the label of ‘class’ might simply be replaced by ‘conflict’, ‘contentious’, or ‘critical’ theory in order to account for all the differences, oppositions, and contradictions at play in the structural-systemic level of power relations.

Alford and Friedland suggest a ‘synthetic analysis incorporating all three … [and not] to collapse levels of analysis (and therefore levels of explanation) into each other’ (1985: 8). This would entail a healthy eclecticism and simultaneous ambition to understand the whole, but it could also neglect two important aspects: (a) the ‘critical’ stance or political commitment of social scientists with the concerns of the oppressed groups to engender structural, systemic, and historical change; (b) the epistemological hierarchy of the macro dimensions of the social system, especially in terms of organising the state and reproducing the accumulation of capital that constrains (and enables) the operations at the inferior levels of society and power. Therefore, the class-critical approach offers a more consistent approach provided it includes my previous assumptions.

The class perspective sees individuals, organizations, and society as being simultaneously held together and torn apart by societal contradictions. Capitalism, democracy, and the state are seen in terms of the dynamic relationships between capital accumulation and class struggle, creating the imperative to socialize the private and social costs of production. The multiple contradictions of this process lead to crises, which threaten the hegemony of class rule. … Class power depends on the state,...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• List of Images
• Abbreviations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Squatting as an Urban Movement
• 2 Autonomy from Capitalism
• 3 Socio-Spatial Structures
• 4 Types of Squatting
• 5 Anomalous Institutions
• 6 Criminalisation and Counter-Hegemony
• Methodological Note
• Index