Self‐Organised Practices of Social Participation; or How Individualisation is Collectively Contested in the Raval

Olaf Tietje
Additional contact information
Olaf Tietje: Department of Sociology, LMU Munich, Germany

Social Inclusion, 2025, vol. 13

Abstract: In this article, I focus on current developments in the Raval district of the Spanish metropolis of Barcelona and show how social participation can be made possible despite hostility. Social participation is the opportunity for subjects to take part in society and, in this way, to experience “belonging to society.” “Belonging to a society” means experiencing both active and passive opportunities to shape and use socially founded and politically constituted community relationships and infrastructures. The example of the Raval shows how neighbours can be activated as a collective through self‐organised practices of social participation. In the context of a welfare state in transformation, social participation is partly being transferred from the state to civil society actors. Focusing on the issues of housing, security, and care, this article shows how, on the one hand, this transferring of responsibility contradicts individualisation and creates something in common. On this basis, the residents can find collective answers to individualised problems and improve social participation. On the other hand, it shifts the weight of social responsibility unto civil society, which means that social participation is no longer guaranteed by the state and, as in the case of the Raval, becomes dependent on more or less randomly developed structures in the social environment.

Keywords: Barcelona; collectivising; hostility; neighbourhood; self‐organisation; social environment; social participation; Spain (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cogitatiopress.com/socialinclusion/article/view/9090 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cog:socinc:v13:y:2025:a:9090

DOI: 10.17645/si.9090

Access Statistics for this article

Social Inclusion is currently edited by Mariana Pires

More articles in Social Inclusion from Cogitatio Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by António Vieira () and IT Department ().