Producing Alternative Urban Spaces: Social Mobilisation and New Forms of Agency in the Spanish Housing Crisis (original) (raw)

This book is concerned with the social mobilisation in Spain provoked by the financial crisis which started in 2008 and became the biggest economic and political crisis since the restauration of democracy in the 1970s. Intrigued by the increasing social conflict provoked by this crisis, this thesis focuses specifically on the housing movement and on its intersections with some political coalitions that won many municipalities in 2015. Drawing on ethnographic research in two local chapters of the Platform of People Affected by Mortgages (PAH) and the coalitions that won the municipalities of Barcelona and A Coruña, this thesis analyses the influence on mobilisation of two definitory characteristics of these organisations: heterogeneity and decentralisation. In reflecting about these characteristics, the thesis investigates the dynamics that lead to the creation of a “space of activism” that articulates heterogeneous local struggles capable of opposing the capitalist organisation of space. The coming together of heterogeneous perceptions of everyday life proved to be the key in this contention. Nevertheless, the cases demonstrate when challenging capitalist imposition, heterogeneity has not only to be articulated, but also assembled in new representations of everyday life. The thesis argues that these new representations need the creation of multiple differential spaces to avoid jeopardising the cohesion of heterogeneity. The way in which the connection between those spaces is made, by avoiding dynamics of rescaling, has favoured the cohesion of the groups, reduced the tensions linked to dynamics of abstraction and generated a “space of activism” based on horizontality that poses a considerable challenge for capitalism to reimpose subjection. By stressing the importance of space as the product of the confrontation between the capitalist attempts to organise space and its resistances, the research contributes to the discussion about the ways in which social mobilisation can expand by exploring the potentialities and challenges of articulating heterogeneous local struggles.

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Social Movements and Urban Space

VIANA, Nildo. International Journal of Research in Geography (IJRG) Volume 1, Issue 2, 2015, PP 1-8 ISSN 2454-8685 (online), 2015