Urban Movements in a Globalising World

Pierre Hamel, Henri Lustiger-Thaler, Margit Mayer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781134542390
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This collection deals with the transformation of urban movements in these new social, economic and political environments.

Part I
Urban social movements
Global impacts and the new urban citizenship

Accounting for the global significance of local citizenship as viewed through the lenses of urban movements is a challenging task. This is due simply to the fact that most urban-based movements do not operate on a global level as such. In many cases, to do so would deny their very essence and purpose, which is the defence of local identity. Rather, they are part of a spatial chain of events within which socialised and political identities form and crystallise as part of an ongoing process of globalisation. The relationships between the global and the local, as the contributors to this first section so clearly indicate, are complex, interpolated, yet also offer a sense of balance to the sometimes chaotic sequences of cause and effect that have become synonymous with globalisation.

Too often, when dealing with globalisation as a theme or discourse, the metropolis appears as a given, impacted and configured by processes larger than itself. This implied naturalism has its drawbacks. Instead of being a frozen urban moment in the wider panoply of collective action, urban spaces are showing themselves to be mobile places for experiential contradictions around exclusion and inclusion, exoticism and familiarity and, increasingly in a post-colonial world, exile and domestication. The hyper-territorialisation of citizenship, an inevitable downloading of issues to the local level—and into renewed localised forms of collective action—has come to define contemporary urban politics and its precious baggage of rights and privileges.

Citizenship is therefore an apt and necessary way of speaking about the global, but one couched in local frames of reference and accountability. The three authors in this part examine diverse spatialised urban contexts in German, American and French cities. Roland Roth underscores global responsibilities taking place more and more in the detritus of cities experiencing social traumas particularly in respect to poverty. Henri Lustiger-Thaler points to the creation of miniaturised disciplinary spaces in a global chain of events that become manifest in the American urban ghetto. Sophie Body-Gendrot discusses marginalisation within the framework of a classic urban question, focusing on housing and paying attention to new uncertain statuses around ethnic identification. Thus she underlines the necessity for revisiting citizenship, locally, by undoing its nineteenth- and twentieth-century legacies. In all three chapters we receive a taste of the issues that are sure to preoccupy the start of the new global century.

1
New social movements, poor people’s movements and the struggle for social citizenship

Roland Roth

The return of the social

In most advanced capitalist countries the 1970s and 1980s were the decades of new ‘post-material’ issues and breaks with new social movements as the strongest active expressions of a—not so—’silent revolution’ (Inglehart 1977). On the basis of the affluent postwar period, the ‘old’ protest actors did not disappear but lost their momentum, giving space for the development of a new political agenda—with more or less successful green parties as the visible political outcome in many countries. Since 1989 there has been a new shift in the political culture. The ‘new’ issues are losing influence and public attention, whereas ‘old’ issues have returned to the top of the political agenda. Most striking has been the return of ‘old’ social problems: unemployment, poverty, homelessness—the results of growing inequalities and the political dismantling of the welfare state even in the rich countries of the north—which have led to various forms of social exclusion. In many countries there has been a growing concern about social exclusion (Paugam 1996) and the formation of a new underclass (Katz 1993; Mingione 1996). The return of the social has many expressions.

The centrality of the new social movements and their issues (ecology, gender, peace, minority and civil rights) in the movement sector is decreasing. Instead, over the last years we have observed violent right-wing counter-mobilisations, with a lot of NIMBY-style (not in my backyard) protests, and mobilisations on social issues covering the front pages. This setback has facilitated the reduction of legal standards the new social movements had been fighting for—such as environmental protection, participation rights in permit procedures, equal opportunities for women in situations, e.g. university employment, where windows of opportunity were now being closed, and where job loss contributes to the return of traditional gender roles—most visibly in East Germany. Stable institutions of social inclusion (social citizenship rights) are under pressure and being eroded. Even in the comparatively stable Western European welfare states they are being questioned under the conditions of a globalising economy. We witness the return of the ‘social question’, 150 years on and despite the stillexisting remnants of the welfare state.

More than ever we have to take into account the global character and embeddedness of most new social movement issues. Today, high national ecological standards are discussed as obstacles against production and trade, and not as innovative challenges to a growing environmental protection industry, as they were some years ago. The negative consequences of globalisation are even more dramatic in the case of social citizenship rights (‘social dumping’). Under the pressure and in the name of global competition we are experiencing an increasing deregulation of social and ecological standards. Transnational migration, the openness/closure of national borders and the rights of admission to national citizenship have become central issues on the political agenda of most advanced industrial countries and are a central focus of contemporary rightwing mobilisations (Koopmans and Kriesi 1997). In Germany migrants and refugees are a major target and are used as vanguards in the downgrading of social security standards.

Globalisation is more than an ideological passepartout. In terms of structural conditions, competitiveness on a global scale has become the central imperative for regional, national and subnational politics. Of course, there are different responses, but ‘flexibility’ in production, employment patterns and social regulations has become a common feature and has led to similar tendencies in many countries (breaking the social postwar compact, welfare retrenchments, etc.). At the same time there are ongoing controversies as to how decisive and specific these structural impacts of globalisation are. The new flexibility contributes to a growing diversity. No ‘best practice’—as in Fordist-Taylorist times—seems to be ahead. For some observers this confusing situation is not an expression of transition and transformation but a characteristic of the new capitalism of ‘flexible accumulation’ (for an overview, see Roth 1998a). Similar uncertainties about the impact of the globalising economy on local conditions are at stake in the ‘global city’ debate, with its polarising visions of citadel and ghetto or the tendency towards a ‘quartered city’ (Sassen 1998).

However, in terms of local and national policies we can observe a tendency towards global sourcing. Local policy improvements and adaptations (e.g. workfare models, third-sector politics, new forms of interest mediation or policing patterns, such as the New York zero tolerance strategy) attract an international audience looking for recommended examples. In Germany, for instance, it is a private foundation of a multinational company (Bertelsmann-Foundation) that launches worldwide competitions for the most efficient and democratic local administration or for local models which enhance active citizenship.

Even in the area of social movements there are trends towards an increasing international or transnational cooperation of movement organisations (NGO networks along the lines of UN summits, Agenda 21, international conferences of local anti-poverty alliances, etc.) and an intensified transnational diffusion of movement ideas, tactics and repertoires, especially within new social movements, but also in right-wing mobilisations. Specific local conflicts can more easily become a focus of international attention (for example, the ‘tree-sitters’ in Great Britain, the women of Greenham Common, Zapatistas in Chiapas and Ogoni versus Shell in Nigeria) due to new informational capacities (such as the Internet, etc.). But the diffusion of ideas and concepts is not necessarily tied to high tech nology. In the area of poor people’s movements we see, for example, an increase in street newspapers sold by homeless people. Despite specific local circumstances and structural conditions, the various degrees of transnational cooperation and cosmopolitan orientations in specific protests, we have many hints for a tighter articulation of the local and the global (Cvetkovich and Kellner 1997). In respect of their cognitive frames, action repertoires and transnational diffusion, social movements and protests are also part of a process of ‘glocalisation’ (a term coined by Swyngedouw 1992), combining local and global orientations, identities and perspectives.

While growing social inequalities are gaining momentum, the ‘new’ social movement issues (ecology, gender relations, peace, etc.) are also at stake (Crouch and Marquand 1995; Gills 1997). What we see today is a simultaneous and interconnected attack on the achievements of the old and new social movements. In studying social movements today we therefore have to consider both new social movement themes and social issues in a global perspective. Based on some empirical evidence from Germany I argue that it is time to bring together three concepts—new social movements, poor people’s movements and social citizenship rights—on a common level (l’enjeu in the sense of Touraine). There are several common denominators. From their beginnings, the new social movements have been inscribed with far greater social demands and a sense of utopia than usually perceived. They delineate the contours of a new ‘politics of the social’, which connects classic demands for social security with the claim to a democratic definition of lifestyles. Contemporary ‘poor people’s movements’ (centred, for example, around homelessness) are much closer to the mobilisation patterns and organisational forms of the new social movements than the debates of the 1970s and today would lead us to think. And the overlapping areas are clearly increasing (see, for example, the mobilisation of punks during the so-called days of chaos or the ‘Autonomous’).

Conservative attacks on the welfare state and even the social politics of the social democratic governments of the last two decades of the twentieth century force us to consider ‘social citizenship’ as contested terrain once again. Increasing social inequalities and exclusion have (again) become a focus of political mobilisations, but this time enriched by the utopias and perceptions of the new social movements. Now not only the dismantling of social rights that had already been won, but also the discriminating institutionalisation of these rights along national, ethnic and gender lines are their current issues (examples are the rights of single mothers, asylum seekers, migrants and refugees). Not least, contemporary ‘anti’-social movements are contributing in various forms to the articulation of the social through right-wing mobilisations against asylum-seekers and foreigners, neighbourhood watch initiatives, tax-payer revolts, etc.

These divergent moves towards a return of the social should not be interpreted as part of a natural history. This kind of thinking has become fashionable in contemporary globalisation discourse. As Werner Sombart told us at the beginning of the twentieth century, economy is again ‘our destiny’, but this time in the name of globalisation. And there is strong evidence for a ‘retreat of the state’, an ‘end of politics’, a ‘losing control’ and ‘hollowing out’ of the nation-state (Sassen 1996; Jessop 1994) when an orientation towards local, national or regional competitiveness becomes the centre of all politics (Hirsch 1995). Nevertheless, the existence of conflicting social movements, of protest and resistance, is a signal that there are still political alternatives behind the camouflage of the globalisation discourse. Indeed, it can be shown that we are not on the way to homogeneous universal solutions and best practices, but that instead the variety of national and local politics is increasing. This is especially the case in respect of welfare state politics. Esping-Andersen (1996) has shown that there are competing ways to deal with social exclusion and the ‘growth to limits’ of welfare state politics, and that it is still a question of political priorities to compare the costs and benefits of these different paths. The ‘return of the social’ is not just a throwback to the pauperism of the pre-welfare state, although many forms of exclusion take a well-known premodern form. The intensified use of repressive instruments—from workfare to imprisonment, from the ‘war against the poor’ to the growth of ‘gated communities’—which sometimes look like the exhibits of a medieval torture chamber, points in a similar direction. But at the same time we can see many experiments and empowerment processes going beyond the democratic, social and material limits of the postwar social compact. Such alternative visions are currently being debated as a transition from a welfare state to a ‘welfare society’ (Evers and Olk 1996). The return of the social can also be seen as a challenge to overcoming the work-centred, male breadwinner oriented model of social security, envisioning a welfare pluralism which does not only counter social exclusion but is responsive to the democratic, feminist and ecological challenges of the new social movements.

The hidden social agenda of the new social movements

In the debate on protest and social movements in Germany and most Western European countries the so-called ‘new social movements’ have been, and still are, central. This is not only a question of concept preferences, academic fashions and traditions (Cohen 1985). Today we can rely on solid data about the movement sector. Two research groups—one directed by Hanspeter Kriesi, working on The Netherlands, France, Germany and Switzerland, another at the Social Science Centre, Berlin, concentrating on Germany—systematically coded the newspaper coverage of protest events (for more information about protest event analysis, see Rucht et al. 1998). The results are convincing:

• In Germany the group of social movements that we usually call the new social movements have contributed to more than 60 per cent of all protest events since the 1970s. Similar results were shown for The Netherlands and for Switzerland, but not for France. Here the more traditional actors, such as farmers and workers, counted for more than half the protest events (Koopmans 1992; Kriesi et al. 1995; Rucht 1998).
• Network data, local studies and opinion polls have shown that the term ‘new social movements’ is not science fiction, but part of the self-image of many activists and movement groups. In every movement we find a core group of people with ‘overlapping memberships’, who are sensitive to all the other new social movement issues as well.
• Perhaps more surprising are the findings concerning the development of these movements. Of course, there are up and down swings within each movement and each mobilisation, but the aggregate data show that the overall level of movement activities has been increasing steadily since the 1960s. Even years with a comparatively low number of protest events show a higher level than the famous protest year of 1968. In the first years of the 1990s the level of mobilisation was still higher than in the 1980s and 1970s. For Germany, it is true that new social movements have been the main force in establishing protest politics as ‘normal’ politics in the eyes of much of the German population, and still offer very attractive forms of political action for younger people.
• Local studies show strong signs of an institutionalisation of movement politics: networks of groups, services, cafés are creating an infrastructure for mobilisation. Interestingly, this is not only the case in many cities in the West but also in the bigger East German cities—not least due to institutional and financial transfers from the West. Local red—green coalitions have contributed to the stability of this ‘alternative’ scene with subsidies and various forms of co-optation (Rucht et al. 1997).

The debate on new social movements often neglects the fact that these movements and mobilisations have articulated social issues and problems from their very beginnings—and not in the denouncing sense of middle-class politics and middle-class radicalism, in which particular class interests are presented as general interests, political forms are exclusive expressions of a certain class culture, and material needs are neglected (Parkin 1968; for a recent class approach, see Rose 1997). Since the 1960s there has been a dense and multilayered critique of social state policies and their limitations. And going beyond mere critique, there have been countless alternative initiatives, projects and models, stretching from social economy to social services. In fact, in Germany it has been mostly the new social movements and the Green Party that have contributed to reformulating progressive social policy alternatives (for example, with basic income, ‘politics of the social’ and ‘welfare society’ concepts).

The general perception, however, has been that new social movements, with their central topics of ecology, pacifism and feminism, differ from the classic labour movements in that they do not raise ‘social questions’ as relevant issues. The experience of relative social security has made it possible for them to place post-materi...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Tables
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Urban social movements—local thematics, global spaces
• Part I: Urban social movements: Global impacts and the new urban citizenship
• Part II: The urban economy in global context
• Part III: Urban social movements and the global future