Annotated list of popular movement literature

Movements for the commons

John Walton: Urban conflict and social movements in poor countries, Paper, Cities in Transition Conference, Humboldt University 1997

An overview of commons movements in the South, from the easily tamed slum storming movements of the 50s and 60s, over the IMF riots of the late 70s to today’s movements for water, electricity and housing. The main benefit of this essay is that it is so clear and systematic and links changes (including the co-variation with trade union movements) with changes in the world situation. While you could still hope for “development”, all such movements tended to be entangled in paternalistic client ties with the state, says Walton, but after 1980 we are rid of that.

David Slater (ed): New social movements and the state in Latin America, CEDLA 1985

Discusses the concept of “new social movements” and whether it has any relevance to the South. The editor himself gives an introduction to the debate and seems to see two new tendencies: that popular movements all over the world raise broader themes than during the height of Fordism, and have less faith in the state. Most entertaining is Nico Vink’s chapter on the slum movement in São Paulo which, founded by liberation theologians, by engaging in small “environmental issues” such as water and sewage, eventually grew into the labor movement that overthrew the military regime.

John Walton & David Seddon: Free markets & food riots, Blackwell 1994

The book about IMF riots. Describes people’s response to the neoliberal austerity policy in the South after about 1975, generally and with a number of regional studies. The authors draw comparisons with eighteenth-century European bread revolts and find many similarities and few differences -- in both cases there is a broad class alliance’s resistance to the marketization of vital relationships, and in both cases the organization tends to be volatile, with some pronounced exceptions.

Ashwin Desai: We are the poors -- community struggles in post-apartheid South Africa, Monthly Review Press 2002.

About the township people’s defense against the new rulers, the ANC, whose main interest is to reduce the state budget. For townships, it’s about chasing away bailiffs who come to evict you and the privatized electricity and water companies who come to shut off electricity and water. Desai describes this both generally and with many examples. The book ends with how the neighborhood movements come together at the Anti-Racism Conference in Durban in 2002 and discovers how the fight against the global apartheid of the Washington Consensus is being waged all over the world.

Manuel Castells: The city and the grassroots, Edward Arnold 1983

Castells became famous for a completely unreadable book in Marxist jargon: The urban question, and has recently written a book in neo-orthodox jargon: The network society. In the meantime, he wrote this one, which is superb because, unlike the aforementioned, it is based entirely on the empirical evidence of about ten real urban movement mobilizations, from the Spanish comuneros movement in the 16th century to the Spanish Franco resistance in the 1970s expressed as demands for urban commons, with excursions across Europe and America. Castells refrains almost entirely from grandiose theorizing, but asks many exciting questions based on the concrete cases: When can atomized people in a city district feel that they have so much in common that they identify with the city/district? What is required for this to result in a mobilization against those in power?

Pierre Hamel et al (ed): Urban movements in a globalising world, Routledge 2000

A rather over-theorized depiction of commons movements in the industrial world. Personally, I like Margit Mayer best: Urban social movements in an era of globalization, which at least sorts out what exists, divided into movements against “urban competition” (ie city councils’ boasting and upper-middle-class projects) and poor people’s struggle for survival, with some empirical examples.

Ernst Stracke: Stadtzerstörung und Stadtteilkampf in Frankfurt am Main, Pahl-Rugenstein 1980

Tells about urban movements in a city that was unusually exposed to bureaucratization. The same coalition as everywhere -- those threatened with deportation, plus various youth movements practicing house occupations for lack of shelter -- tried to counter the destruction but didn’t do very well. Stracke does not allow himself to draw conclusions about why, and likewise he misses the connection with the opposition to the airfield expansion in the late seventies. Therefore, the whole story becomes a bit myopic, I think, which is a shame as there are so few books like this.

Hans Pruijt: Squatting in Europe, Erasmus Universiteit 2004,

A factual and short investigation that distinguishes about five different reasons for occupying houses and gives an account of each of them, with examples and how it is done, how it is organized, where it has taken place and what the problems are for each one.

Hans Pruijt: The impact of citizens’ protest on city planning in Amsterdam, Erasmus Universiteit 2004

An equally matter-of-fact brief description of Amsterdam's successful urban movement during the seventies, with some reflections on what made it successful (mainly that the exploitation zeal clashed with large parts of the social democratic welfare apparatus, which is why the power establishment split). I like Pruijt, no weirdness here.

Justus Uitermark: Framing urban injustices: the case of the Amsterdam squatter movement, Space & Polity vol 8 no 2, 2002

An article showing that Amsterdam’s squatters are still alive and well, fighting against and exploiting the authorities’ gentrification strategies. The article mainly focuses on how different movement goals can co-exist and reinforce each other due to the non-hierarchical form of the movement, but also provides a history that amuses, not least because it shows how all attempts to militarize the movement became self-defeating.

Squatting Europe Collective: Squatting in Europe: Radical spaces, urban struggles, Minor Compositions & Automedia 2013

About mostly precariously living squatters and their successes and setbacks in mainly Spain and Italy, especially after the financial crisis (although there is a background story). A little overview of what different strategies there can be, from just having a home to wanting to live in a more collective way. As well as some about what resources occupied houses can be for movements in general.

Talmadge Wright: Out of place: homeless mobilizations, subcities and contested landscapes, State University of New York Press 1992

About mobilizations of the homeless in two big American cities, but since the mobilizations themselves are rather brief, the most rewarding part of the book is what explains them: how the cities are adapted to the middle class -- “gentrification” -- by clearing out all the affordable housing and lavish luxury projects are focused on luxury consumption, while unemployment rises. According to Wright, the common factor is a changed industry composition in the big cities of the Northern countries: industry disappears and speculation, not least real estate speculation, comes into being.

Eleonora Pasotti: Resisting redevelopment – Protest in aspiring global cities, Cambridge University Press 2020

According to the applicant, the first systematic book on the fight against gentrification. Lists a number of successful and failed examples and tries to draw conclusions from this. The prime example is a neighborhood in Santiago de Chile which, despite the neoliberal hegemony, manages to stop this through a gigantic dig-where-you-stand project where the residents could pin-point their territory and show that they had the right on their side so effectively that even the authorities must back off. A more half-successful example, where the gentrifiers’ alleged pursuit of “creativity” was exploited, was Hamburg, where the resistance was able to mobilize a lot of artists for their cause for a long time - which, however, backfired when they were finally forced to submit to market logic. It is of course best if trade union movements support the resistance, but this is difficult in the Atlantic world where trade unions have weakened, easy however in Buenos Aires where the crisis in 2000 forced trade unions to side with other victims of the crisis.

Derek Wall: Earth First and the Anti-roads movement, Routledge 1999

How the fight against the British motorway program in the 90s grew out of a militant originally American deep ecology movement, and how this changed through close contacts and cooperation with local populations. Every single local battle gets its own story. In addition, there is a part about how the participants interpret this changed focus and little else about how they thought.

George McKay (ed): DIY culture; party and protest in nineties Britain, Verso 1998

DiY means Do it yourself, and the book is about the activist culture that, according to the editor, grew out of the opposition to Thatcher’s so-called poll tax and which aimed more at sabotaging the implementation than changing the legislation. Contains articles on highway resistance and rave culture and touches on other fronts such as e.g. animal rights activism in the introduction. The articles are written by participants but despite this surprisingly problematizing -- e.g. in questions around non-violence and class perspective, but also around DiY’s claim to be something completely new: threads going back to the situationists’ 50s and 60s are everywhere. You also get a lot of inside info on how it went when they organized the giant mass party on the M41 city motorway on 13 July 1996 and planted trees on it, as well as some tips on how these scandalous youth culture activists still manage to be quite successful in approaching the local community.

Marcos Ancelovici: Organizing against globalization: The case of ATTAC in France, Politics & Society Vol 30 No 3, 2002

A description of all the events in France that began with the general strike in December 1995 against social cuts. The author claims that this turned the entire political climate and made both ATTAC and the victory against the market fundamentalist EU constitution possible. Not least the secret is the unions’ continued strong involvement in the activist milieu.

Donatella della Porta (ed): Late Neoliberalism and its Discontents in the Economic Crisis: Comparing Social Movements in the European Periphery, Palgrave Macmillan 2017

The real mainstream of popular movement research about the movements that arose as a result of the financial crash in e.g. Iceland, Spain and Greece but also some other less dramatic examples. The quality of the articles varies widely because they are written by different people. But the basic facts are there.