The social capital of urban activism

Katherine VanHoose and Federico Savini

City, 2017, vol. 21, issue 3-4, 293-311

Abstract: Practices of urban activism are increasingly viewed as a new form of engaged citizenship. Because of their insurgent and informal nature, however, these initiatives are at risk of marginalization from exclusionary urban policy processes. Employing the concept of social capital, this paper analyzes the internal organization of two activist communities and their capacity to connect with and influence public and formal institutions. Through a cross-national comparison of two case studies, we show that such groups are likely to achieve end goals when they feature selective membership, maintain a common purpose and identity, and make strategic use of intermediaries and experts to create bridges to external institutions and resources. We conclude by arguing that, today, urban activists face a fundamental trade-off between inclusiveness and instrumentalism.

Date: 2017
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13604813.2017.1325207 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:cityxx:v:21:y:2017:i:3-4:p:293-311

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CCIT20

DOI: 10.1080/13604813.2017.1325207

Access Statistics for this article

City is currently edited by Bob Catterall

More articles in City from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().