We are still accepting papers for our session on cities
and social movements. See below:
Spaces of Contention: cities and the making of social
movements
Session Proposal for the International Sociological
Association, RC21 Meeting, Vancouver, British Columbia,
August 22-25 2007.
Walter Nicholls, Justin Beaumont & Byron Miller
Session Description:
What roles do cities play in large scale social movements?
In recent years we have witnessed the rise of a variety of
potent social justice mobilizations occurring in cities.
These campaigns have addressed issues ranging from living
wages to environmental justice. While these mobilizations
are certainly expressions of specific "urban" grievances,
they are also intimately linked to wider scale networks
that span across regional and national borders. This
session revives Manuel Castells’s "urban question" by
examining how cities contribute to structuring wider scale
social movements. The session does this by focusing on the
distinctive character of mobilizations occurring in cities
and examining how these particular mobilizations become
linked to one another through national and transnational
networks. We encourage contributors to explore the ways in
which particular urban mobilizations are embedded in
broader networks, how urban mobilizations contribute to
the general movement, and how tensions between the
particular and general help shape the content and form
contemporary social movements.
Pertinent Questions:
* How do cities influence the grievances and issues of
insurgents?
* How do movements respond to opportunities within local,
regional, national and international institutions?
* What are the advantages of organizing campaigns in
cities?
* In what ways are urban-based networks different from
national and transnational networks?
* Do population size, density, and degrees heterogeneity
have any influence on mobilization capacities?
* Do the resource mobilization capacities of actors differ
across spatial scales?
* Are concepts such as ‘nodes’ and ‘clusters’ relevant for
understanding multi-scalar social movements?
* What are the different ways of organizing networks
across spatial scales?
Please send expressions of interest as soon as possible
and short abstracts (200 words max.) by 23 April 2007 to:
Dr. Walter Nicholls, Department of Sociology, California
State University, Long Beach ([log in to unmask])
Dr. Justin Beaumont, Department of Urban Planning,
University of Groningen ([log in to unmask])
Dr. Byron Miller, Department of Geography, University of
Calgary ([log in to unmask])
^^^^^^
Dr. Walter J. Nicholls
Assistant Professor of Sociology
California State University, Long Beach
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