social movement

From the Field

Holding Their Own: Gilets Jaunes’ Occupation of Public Space

Antoine Bernard de Raymond & Sylvain Bordiec & translated by Oliver Waine - 30 April 2021
The Gilets Jaunes (“Yellow Vests”) movement that emerged in France in the fall of 2018 was striking by dint of both...
From the Field

Algeria’s Hirak: When a Social Movement Puts Citizenship Under the Microscope

Islam Amine Derradji & Amel Gherbi & translated by Oliver Waine - 26 March 2021
The popular mobilization that rose up in Algeria in 2019 was not only a revolt against living conditions that had...
From the Field

When Progressive Mayors Aren’t Enough: Homes for All and Trans-Local Social Movements

H. Jacob Carlson & Marnie Brady & Gianpaolo Baiocchi - 13 November 2018
Progressive governments are often pulled away from their campaign promises by local growth-coalition interests or...
From the Field

The Leaderless Urban Social Movement as Problem and Solution

Caio Teixeira - 25 September 2018
Today, with urban uprisings driven by leaderless social movements, the future of the would-be progressive agenda...
From the Field

Marielle Franco and Brazilian Democracy at a Crossroads

Natália Alves & Isabella Gonçalves Miranda & Felipe Magalhães - 26 June 2018
Marielle Franco’s life and death raised questions about the limits of Brazil’s New Republic. It revealed the rising...
From the Field

You Can’t Kill Marielle

Meg Stalcup & Erika Robb Larkins - 29 May 2018
Marielle Franco was part of a new generation of progressive activists in Brazilian politics. She was assassinated...
From the Field

The Americanization of French social movements? Community organizing and its discontents in the banlieues

Julien Talpin - 29 June 2017
In this second of two articles, sociologist Julien Talpin discusses the importation to France of American...
From the Field

What’s the matter with the banlieues? Exploring the importation of the American community organizing tradition by French social movements

Julien Talpin - 22 June 2017
With the eclipse of the once-powerful Communist and Socialist Parties in France, and these parties’ traditional...
Essays

Counterpublic Spaces and Movement-Building

Oksana Mironova - 8 March 2017
To make themselves and their causes visible in traditional public arenas like streets and parks, social activists...
From the Field

Proclaiming “Veggie Pride” in Paris and New York

Elizabeth Cherry - 22 November 2016
How do animal-rights activists promote vegetarianism? Many activists use environmental and health arguments, but...
From the Field

The French Republic and the Paris Spring

Gregory Smithsimon - 6 September 2016
Has the French Spring arrived yet? Gregory Smithsimon documents La Nuit Debout, a self-named social movement that...
From the Field

A Geography of Revolt in Alexandria, Egypt’s Second Capital

Youssef El Chazli - 23 February 2016
How does the layout of a city affect how protest unfolds? How does urban space constrain and enable the choices...
Essays

A Right to the City in the Global South?

Marianne Morange & Amandine Spire & translated by Oliver Waine - 17 April 2015
The idea of the right to the city has been the subject of strongly renewed interest in academic milieux, activist...
Debates

Finance as a New Terrain for Progressive Urban Politics

Desiree Fields - 6 November 2014
Since the foreclosure crisis, inequalities have only deepened in the US, with most wealth accruing to the 1%....
Reviews

Haussmann: from modernity to revolution

Jean-Marie Huriot & translated by Oliver Waine - 15 May 2013
Jean-Marie Huriot shows how the latest work by geographer David Harvey to be translated into French sheds new light...
Reviews

Barcelona: local mobilisation or global desperation?

Charlotte Vorms & translated by Oliver Waine - 8 February 2012
What is the history behind today’s protest movements involving the occupation of urban public spaces? In the film...
Debates

Designing protests in urban public space

Tali Hatuka - 14 September 2011
Social and political protests in urban public spaces are multiplying in cities all around the world. Tali Hatuka...

Series

Black Power and Black Self-Determination in a New Time and New Spaces
Urban Wastes, Present and Future
New York Dossier: The Food Industry Faces the Covid‑19 Pandemic
Cities in the Age of Financialization
Contemporary Housing Struggles: Crises, Activism, and Critical Research
New York Tech Dossier: The Dark Side of New York’s Tech Economy
Progressive Mayors and Urban Social Movements
Land Rights in the Urban Global South
Climate Change and Social Change

Featured

From the Field

Covid-19 Transformed New York’s Destination Food Markets

Ivana Mellers - 5 October 2021
Ivana Mellers analyzes how New York’s destination markets—key spaces of economic and social interactions—coped during...
From the Field

Moving Inside City Limits: The Urban Mobility of Undocumented Youth

Stephen P. Ruszczyk - 4 June 2019
The urban context and public transportation shape how undocumented youths move within cities. In a comparison of...
Reviews

Filming Ethnic Diversity in New York

Stéphane Tonnelat & translated by Christina Mitrakos - 21 October 2016
Frederick Wiseman’s fortieth documentary film, In Jackson Heights (2015), returns to an urban theme explored in...
From the Field

Looking Inward, Across the Border

Harel Shapira - 19 April 2016
In the constellation of anti-immigrant politics in the United States, groups like the Minutemen, civilians who...
Essays

The Political Aesthetics of Drag

Shaka McGlotten - 13 October 2015
Drag, or the diverse art form and culture of performance that typically plays with gender and sex, is an integral...
Debates

Disarm the Police

Gregory Smithsimon - 29 September 2015
In the current political debates about discriminatory policing, there has been a lack of serious discussion of...

Other resources online

Cycles of Violence: Analysing Media Discourse in the Newspaper...

Mobile Lives Forum
How are cyclist and pedestrian deaths depicted in newspaper reports, and how do these reports help shape...

Lahti: The First Carbon-Rationing Experiment Applied to Local...

Mobile Lives Forum
The city of Lahti in Finland was the first to experiment with a carbon-trading scheme among its inhabitants to...

Is Rationing Carbon for Travel a Fair, Efficient, and Realistic...

Mobile Lives Forum
In the wake of the pandemic, a carbon tax at Europe’s borders is now on the agenda, but a domestic version for...

Reducing Carbon-Emitting Travel: A Factor of Social Cohesion and...

Mobile Lives Forum
As part of France’s Mission on the Future of the Economic Model of Public Transportation, commissioned by the French...

Strasbourg, An Example of a Cycling City

Mobile Lives Forum
Strasbourg is the leading city for cycling in France and a constant source of inspiration for all French cities...

The Trinity of Walking, Cycling and Public Transportation Must Be...

Mobile Lives Forum
While emissions from the transportation sector remain at a very high level, all hopes are currently pinned on the...
Centre national de recherche scientifique
Journal supported by the Institut des Sciences Humaines et Sociales (Institute of Human and Social Sciences) of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS)

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