Urban Grassroots Movements in Central and Eastern Europe [Hardcover]

What can we learn about collective action across Central and Eastern Europe by focusing on activism within urban spaces? This volume argues that the recent resurgence of urban grassroots mobilisation represents a new phase in the development of post-socialist civil societies and that these civil societies have significantly more vitality than is commonly perceived. The case studies here reflect the diversity and complexity of post-socialist urban movements, capturing also the extent to which the laboratory of urban politics is richly illustrative of the complex nexus of state-society-market relations within post-socialism. The grassroots campaigns and actions reflect the new social cleavages and increased polarisation as a consequence of neoliberal urbanisation and global integration, as well as the transformation of state power and authority in the region. Studying urban activism in Central and Eastern Europe is instructive for urban movements scholars generally, as it forces us to acknowledge the variety of forms that contention can take and the usefulness of embedding the study of urban movements within a larger understanding of civil society.

Preface; Introduction: the development of urban movements in Central and Eastern Europe, Kerstin Jacobsson; The playfulness of resistance: articulations of urban grassroots activism in post-socialist Vilnius, Beatriz Lindqvist; The ups and downs of a symbolic city: the architectural heritage protection movement in Bucharest, Ioana Florea; The elderly as a force for urban civil activism in Ukraine, Olena Leipnik; Urban grassroots, anti-politics and modernity: bike activism in Belgrade, Sabrina Kopf; Unsettling the urban in post-Yugoslav activisms: Right to the City and pride parades in Serbia and Croatia, Bojan Bili and Paul Stubbs; The performative logic of urban space contestation: two examples of local community mobilisation in St. Petel/