New Urban Revolutions: Care, Activism and Citizenship

Question 1

How is the urban used as a space for resistance?

Answer 1

People use certain parts of the city to resist certain injustices.
Urbanisation proves a particular space for resistance, creates infrastructures with particular qualities. Resistance is made from the way in which people use those infrastructures. People might resist the formation of and inequalities around infrastructures.

Question 2

Explain the ‘right to the city’.

Answer 2

1) The right to ‘habitat’ (A place and the capacity to make a life) [The right to appropriation].
2) The right to ‘inhabit’ (The right to dwell, to have a right to be in a place [The right to participation].

Question 3

Explain the emotional politics of activism.

Answer 3

Affective and emotional protests
Activism, resistance and care
‘Quiet activism’
Spaces of activism do not always have clear cut boundaries from people’s personal lives.

‘these quieter politics of austerity - a smile, a nod, a mutter of encouragement, a brief conversation over a counter - were all significant ways of building relationality, a politics of togetherness, at a time of social and personal hardship’
(Marie-Hall, 2020)

Question 4

Explain the politics of care.

Answer 4

Which bodies does the burden of care fall on? e.g. women - unpaid work. Emotional and physical labour involved.

Activism argued to be a form of care as it seeks to change the world to improve the lives of people.