Provocations at the Limits of Urbanity: Historical Perspectives on Cold War Urban Social Movements

Recent literature on rebellion and social movements argues that the urban civic repertoire has become ever more important in challenging existing orders. This holds true for the Cold War years, and this chapter argues that cities and competing concepts of urbanity played a central role in the emergence of social movements. As hubs of contestation, provocation, and protest, modern cities functioned as nodes of cross-movement mobilisation. Drawing on a heuristic and ideal–typical reading of Manuel Castells’ theory of urban social movements, the latter emerge as attempts to snatch parts of the urban fabric from the clutches of large-scale economic and political interests that cause the destruction of socio-cultural habitats. Opting for the interpretational framework of urban social movements and their extraordinary politics addresses the intrinsic interrelationship between cities and social movements by virtue of the provocations that are bound to arise at the limits of urbanity. In terms of historical case studies, the chapter discusses the advertent and inadvertent provocation of the Dutch Provos and of the so-called Gammler (dropouts), looks at poverty and self-help as drivers of urban social movements, and considers concerted political efforts of taking the city into movement hands. This highlights how urban social movements engage in extraordinary politics. Many of their ideas and visions, however, eventually entered the realm of ordinary politics.