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Andy Merrifield - The Politics of the Encounter: Urban Theory and Protest under Planetary Urbanization (Geographies of Justice and Social Transformation Ser.) - 9780820345291 - V9780820345291
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The Politics of the Encounter: Urban Theory and Protest under Planetary Urbanization (Geographies of Justice and Social Transformation Ser.)

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Description for The Politics of the Encounter: Urban Theory and Protest under Planetary Urbanization (Geographies of Justice and Social Transformation Ser.) Hardcover. Series: Geographies of Justice and Social Transformation. Num Pages: 184 pages. BIC Classification: JFSG; JHBA. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 229 x 152 x 15. Weight in Grams: 318.

The Politics of the Encounter is a spirited interrogation of the city as a site of both theoretical inquiry and global social struggle. The city, writes Andy Merrifield, remains "important, virtually and materially, for progressive politics." And yet, he notes, more than forty years have passed since Henri Lefebvre advanced the powerful ideas that still undergird much of our thinking about urbanization and urban society. Merrifield rethinks the city in light of the vast changes to our planet since 1970, when Lefebvre's seminal Urban Revolution was first published. At the same time, he expands on Lefebvre's notion of "the right to the city," which was first conceived in the wake of the 1968 student uprising in Paris.

We need to think less of cities as "entities with borders and clear demarcations between what's inside and what's outside" and emphasize instead the effects of "planetary urbanization," a concept of Lefebvre's that Merrifield makes relevant for the ways we now experience the urban. The city—from Tahrir Square to Occupy Wall Street—seems to be the critical zone in which a new social protest is unfolding, yet dissenters' aspirations are transcending the scale of the city physically and philosophically. Consequently, we must shift our perspective from "the right to the city" to "the politics of the encounter," says Merrifield. We must ask how revolutionary crowds form, where they draw their energies from, what kind of spaces they occur in—and what kind of new spaces they produce.

Product Details

Format
Hardback
Publication date
2013
Publisher
University of Georgia Press
Condition
New
Series
Geographies of Justice and Social Transformation
Number of Pages
184
Place of Publication
Georgia, United States
ISBN
9780820345291
SKU
V9780820345291
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 15 to 20 working days
Ref
99-2

About Andy Merrifield
ANDY MERRIFIELD is an independent scholar based in the United Kingdom and France. His books include Magical Marxism: Subversive Politics and the Imagination, The Wisdom of Donkeys: Finding Tranquility in a Chaotic World, Metromarxism: A Marxist Tale of the City, and Dialectical Urbanism.

Reviews for The Politics of the Encounter: Urban Theory and Protest under Planetary Urbanization (Geographies of Justice and Social Transformation Ser.)
What happens when you scale up the familiar to the planetary level? Unexpected alignments and shocking truths come into focus. The spaces for citizenship and the spaces for poverty take on shape, as do the spaces of power and indifference. This is a great little book.
Saskia Sassen
Cities in a World Economy
Dip into any page of Merrifield's idiosyncratic and learned commentary on urbanity and politics and you'll take away memorable insights. Henri Lefebvre would surely have approved of this fulsome effort to extend and recalibrate his thoughts.
Andrew Ross
author of Bird on Fire: Lessons from the World's Least Sustainable City

Goodreads reviews for The Politics of the Encounter: Urban Theory and Protest under Planetary Urbanization (Geographies of Justice and Social Transformation Ser.)


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