The Polis is dead, or is it? : political activism in post-political cities

Political Activism in Post-Political Cities

Klemens Schmidt

dr. N. Verloo

dr. V.D. Mamadouh

Research article submitted for

Research Master Urban Studies

University of Amsterdam

Submission date

Political Activism in Post-Political Cities

Klemens Schmidt

Abstract

Contemporary cities are described to be post-political, meaning that “real politics”, un-derstood as conflictual negotiations of competing notions, is declining and replaced by a consensual police order. This paper makes use of Arendt’s conceptualisation of politi-cal action, Lefebvre’s understanding of space as a socially constructed entity and social movement literature on political opportunities and framing processes to rethink the re-lationship between the urban and the political. By looking at two instances of political activism in a comparative manner, the “Ne da(vi)mo Beograd”-movement in Belgrade and protests leading up to the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, it analyses how activism emerges, in what way it manoeuvres through the post-political realm and how it affects the urban political arena. Three things are argued in this paper. First, the two cases of political activism are confronted with post-political foreclosure. Second, urban space in Glasgow and Belgrade provides a political opportunity in a way that allows po-litical activism to politicise particularity. Third, counter-framing is important to connect the particular to more universal claims. As a result, this paper tries to contribute to a more diversified perspective of political activism in post-political cities and shows that politics and space are, in fact, intertwined.

Keywords

Introduction

In the morning of March 24th, 2011, 100 police officers forcefully evicted Margaret Ja-conelli and her family from her home in the Glasgow East End following a Compulsory Purchase Order, after she had battled almost a decade against eviction and for an ade-quate compensation. The reason for the eviction and clearance of the whole neighbour-hood was the decision to build the Athletes Village for the 2014 Commonwealth Games, which Glasgow hosted, at this site. Glasgow City Council expected that “the event would be a catalyst for a physical, social and economic transformation of the city’s east end” (Clyde Gateway 2016: 1). As a result, besides the campaign of Margaret Jaconelli and her family, several other localised activist initiatives, such as “Save the Accord” and “Glasgow against ATOS”, emerged to challenge the proposed legacy for the East End, asking “whose legacy” (Glasgow Games Monitor 2012: 1) and “what kind of legacy” it is. In the last three decades tendencies in urban governance that David Harvey (1989) called urban entrepreneurialism have only intensified. Urban entrepreneurialism, which seems to be a dominant discourse in urban development is “embedded in the logic of capitalist spatial development in which competition seems to operate not as a beneficial hidden hand, but as an external coercive law forcing the lowest common denominator of social responsibility and welfare provision as an external coercive force” (Harvey 1989: 12). Hence, urban governance and urban development can be characterised as being tightly connected to capital accumulation and economic development. Additionally, sev-eral scholars (Dikeç 2005; Mouffe 2005; Rancière 2004; Swyngedouw 2007) claim that the political sphere in the neoliberal age is of a different (if not to say worse) quality than before. There seems to be a decline of “real politics”, understood as dissent and conflict, or in other words: “The polis is dead. Long live the creative city!” (Swyngedouw 2007: 59). It is claimed that in contemporary post-political cities (urban) politics are increasingly privatised, deregulated, and decentralised. As a result, consensus is replac-ing any conflictual element, a key aspect of the concept of democracy in more “agonistic approaches” to understand the political (cf. Mouffe 2005).

Yet, recent years have shown several cities around the world being sites of protests, uprisings and collective actions for diverse reasons, ranging from police violence and racial discrimination in Paris and its banlieues (see for example Dikeç 2016), or the demolition of a public park in Istanbul (see for example Farro and Demirhisar 2014), to the modern form of capitalist accumulation which was the reason for the emergence of the Occupy Movement in over 950 cities worldwide (see for example Castells 2015).

This research project situates itself in the seemingly contradictory relationship between the theoretical perspective of declining politics in the post-political city and empirical data of collective action in recent years. By looking at two cases of collective action against urban redevelopment, the “Ne da(vi)mo Beograd”-movement in Belgrade and protests against urban regeneration in Glasgow East in the course of the Commonwealth Games, this paper seeks to answer the following research questions: How does political

ac-tivism emerge in contemporary post-political cities? How is political acac-tivism performed? How does political activism affect urban regeneration policies?

Both exploratory elements, such as different forms, strategies, methods and goals of collective action, and explanatory elements that include possible reasons for collective action and possible (urban) grounds in which collective action can flourish will be con-sidered to answer the posed research questions. By discussing theoretical foundations and empirical material from the case studies this research project is especially looking at political activism that targets urban regeneration projects and, hence, tries to elaborate on the relationship between the urban and the political.

In the following part, theoretical concepts that form the basis of this paper, such as politics, the relation between police and politics, as well as political spaces are discussed and clarified. Here, classic notions of Hannah Arendt (1973) and Henri Lefebvre (1991), as well as drawing from social movement literature on political opportunities shall provide a greater understanding of how to study political performances, relating politics and space. In the second part methodological considerations are presented. A qualitative, comparative approach was regarded most fruitful to answer the research questions posed above and to get a deeper understanding of the two cases of political activism. More precisely, semi-structured, problem-centred interviews, as well as material provided by the movements, such as manifestos, posters, and webpages were analysed using the theoretical thematic analysis approach (cf. Braun and Clarke 2006). The last part of this paper is going to discuss and analyse the findings in greater detail.

The post-political city

The theoretical frame of the post-political city, developed by Swyngedouw (2007, 2014, 2017), mostly draws from the notions of Rancière (2001, 2004), Mouffe (2005) and Žižek (1999). It is argued that the contemporary political sphere is deeply influenced by a “late-capitalist order” in a neoliberalising world resulting in a de-politicised praxis or “post-political arrangement” (Swyngedouw 2007: 59) or in other words: “The thesis thus amounts to asserting that the logical telos of capitalism makes it so that politics becomes, once again, out dated” (Rancière 2001).

Here, politics is understood in the classical (and sometimes romanticised) Greek way as a sphere of engagement, negotiation and conflict, where political subjects interact and where “political subjectification” (Swyngedouw 2007: 59) through (inter-)action happens. When claiming that the very concept of politics is about individuals taking part in democratic processes in a relational way, a reference is made not only to the Aristotelian understanding of politics, but also to Hannah Arendt’s (1973) conception of political action. According to Arendt, politics must be seen in its relation to human plurality and purposefulness (cf. Cane 2015: 60f). Political action, as opposed to private interests, is the public common good of citizens and constitutes a public realm in which political

beings negotiate. In other words, “[i]t is because of this already existing web of human relationships, with its innumerable, conflicting wills and intentions, that action almost never achieves its purpose; but it is also because of this medium, in which action alone is real” (Arendt 1973: 184). In short, the argument is that politics is not (just) the state but realised in the “commoning” of people in order to preserve public goods, such as justice, equality or the realisation of basic human rights. This is the point where an individual, with its personal interests, turns into a citizen striving for public well-being and the common good (cf. Arendt 1977).

Furthermore, there is a spatial aspect in Arendt’s conceptualisation of political action - the space of appearance. These public spaces are not fixed, neither historically or spatially, but re-produced through political action “wherever men are together in the manner of speech and action” (Arendt 1973: 198f). Spaces of appearance are necessarily political because it is where people relate and connect to each other with their speech and their actions, albeit possible inequalities (cf. Marquez 2012: 13). Hence, spaces of appearance are vital for the emergence and development of activist collective action since it is the spatial manifestation of their actions, disruptions and contestations.

If politics is understood in this litigious way, there is a lot of responsibility lying on the shoulders of collective action. Nevertheless, political theorists argue “that the post-political consensual police order revolves decidedly around embracing a populist gesture, [. . . ] and, ultimately, [must lead] to the foreclosure of any real spaces of engagement ” (Swyngedouw 2007: 59, emphasis added). The analytic ground lies in the conceptual division of police and politics, which both stand for different conceptualisations of the common as the basis of every democratic process. Rancière (cf. 2004: 6) gives an overview on defining how the common is organised within the two different types. Whereas police means organising, defining and ordering all parts of society, the purpose of politics is to break open this well-established order. Police, or “policy” as Swyngedouw (2007, p. 60) calls it, must not be misunderstood as a repressive mechanism of control, but as attempts to minimise conflictual elements by giving a fixed meaning to social phenomena leading to “a certain manner of partitioning the sensible” (Rancière 2001). Politics, on the other hand, aims at disrupting the given meaning, norms and values, and existing (unequal) social relations, to allow for the invisible to become visible, so that individuals that have no part in the established police order have a chance to become a part (cf. Dikeç 2012: 674). These disruptive moments of dissensus are about making visible what has not been visible to the public before (cf. Rancière 2004: 7). However, the post-political scenario suggests that antagonistic politics is replaced by a police order that is relying on consensus due to privatisation and decentralisation in neoliberal urban areas. Ultimately, this would mean the end of real political engagement. This paper takes this as starting point and will look at political engagement in post-political cities to see how political activism navigates through the urban political arena and makes use of space to formulate contestation.

three levels that are important for this paper. First, on an ontological level Beveridge and Koch (2017), for example, argue that the binary understanding of (urban) politics as police, on the one hand, and real politics, on the other hand, falls short to capture the various, sometimes contingent, forms of real-world politics, which this paper is going to look at. Second, when political agency is seen as bounded to the binary system of real politics and police, a number of political actions are deemed to have inferior political quality, because they do not fit the post-political conceptual scheme (cf. Beveridge and Koch 2017: 36f). Third, the theoretical claims of the post-political realm are seen as totalising (J. McCarthy 2013: 19), or “omnipotent and omnipresent” (Beveridge and Koch 2017: 38). Post-political tendencies are seen as global phenomenon that impacts on cities in the same way and to the same extent.

This paper situates itself between the poles of neoliberal tendencies of urban governance and forms of political contestation and is going to argue that although activism and collective action might be confronted with post-political conditions and a police order, the urban political arena does not automatically seize to exist. In the following possible linkages between the urban and the political shall be clarified in greater detail.

Political spaces

So far, it has been argued that “[t]his quarrel is politics” (Rancière 2004: 5). The ques-tion remains how political spaces can be conceptualised under post-political condiques-tions. Recent years have shown several cities around the world being sites of protests, upris-ings and political activism, which raises the question whether urban contexts are, in fact, more and more politicised by various activist groups around social justice, environmental and democratic issues.

Post-political scholars acknowledge that contemporary political movements voice “pro-found discontent with the present situation, and instituted, however fleetingly, new forms and choreographies of urban political acting” (Dikeç and Swyngedouw 2017: 2). What is important in this regard is that the urban is seen in its political light, “as a political arena” (Dikeç and Swyngedouw 2017: 4). The city is, in fact, not less but increasingly important for politics as a site where people engage with each other in a political way. Merrifield (2012: 271), for example, drawing from Althusser, suggests that “the urban confers the reality of the encounter, of the political encounter and of the possibility for more encounters”. The urban arena provides opportunities for political engagement that makes its physicality and materiality a subject of political discussion. Importantly, the relation between space and politics is not merely linear, but reciprocal. Although, urban space is vital for political encounters, political expression and direct actions, such as demonstrations or occupations, these acts and performances reproduce urban space as a political arena (cf. Hou 2012: 94). This interdependency of space and politics, and especially the social and relational aspect of space, is seen as essential for political

en-gagement in the post-political era and for political activism connected to capitalist real estate development in the cases of Glasgow and Belgrade.

The basis to understand space as socially constructed dates back to Henri Lefebvre (1991) and is important for this paper in a twofold way. First, space is a social product and a result of constant negotiations and re-conceptualisations. Hence, second, space is not something that is independent from the political sphere as different political actors -local councils, home owners, social housing tenants, squatters, users of public spaces, etc. - debate about how a certain space should be conceptualised. In other words, similar to Arendt’s understanding of spaces of appearance, “[s]pace is not a scientific object removed from ideology or politics; it has always been political and strategic” (Lefebvre 1976: 31). Taking these theoretical claims into account, the question of how to politically engage becomes of importance. This paper is situated within the “urban political domain” (Dikeç and Swyngedouw 2017: 7), the interdependence of space and politics, and emphasises the political element of space and the spatial element of politics. By looking at two different forms of activism, it tries to answer following questions: How does activism make use of space politically? In what way are spatial aspects inheriting a political opportunity for the emergence of activist actions? How are these types of urban politics rooted in localised spatial aspects?

While the theoretical concept of political spaces provides a basis to understand how activism in the two cases is connected to space, drawing from social movement litera-ture allows for insights on the performance of activism and how it affects the political sphere. Previous research on emergence and form of political activism is centred around three major questions, which also guide this paper. First, which factors and political opportunities lead to the emergence of collective action? Second, in what way are they organised – informal or formal, centralised or decentralised? Third, how is collective action and activism portrayed, framed and legitimated? In short, the three concepts of interest that this paper aims to analyse regarding the two cases of activism are “political opportunities, mobilizing structures, and framing processes” (McAdam, J. D. McCarthy, and Zald 2008: 2).

For the emergence of collective action and social movements the wider political sys-tem and its susceptibility to and the type of interaction with political engagement is of importance. According to this perspective, it depends heavily on the political system, whether there is an opportunity for the formation of activism. Hence, political oppor-tunities are “consistent - but not necessarily formal, permanent, or national - signals to social or political actors which either encourage or discourage them to use their internal resources to form social movements” (Tarrow 2008: 54). In a very general understand-ing, arguing for structural political opportunities means that it is the political system that either increases or decreases the chances for collective action to flourish. Yet, not only political context accounts for the emergence of collective action, but also a more general approach “to examine the exogenous factors that could affect the development of a social movement” (Meyer 2004: 135). This research project deals with the question to

what extent urban space can be considered an exogenous factor that generates activism. Swyngedouw (2014: 130) calls this “politicising the particular”, meaning that “[t]he space of the political [...] is a particular that stands for the whole of the community and aspires towards universalisation”.

How collective action and activism are organised depends on what kind of mobilising structures they feature. Mobilising structures can be understood as “those collective ve-hicles, informal as well as formal, through which people mobilize and engage in collective action” (McAdam, J. D. McCarthy, and Zald 2008: 3). Hence, organisational forms of collective action can be situated along the spectrum of formality and centrality. On the one hand, social movements or “movement-dedicated mobilizing structures” (J. D. Mc-Carthy 2008: 144) are characterised by a more formal and centralised organisation. On the other hand, collective action might be more informal and decentralised within “micro-mobilisation contexts” (cf. McAdam 1988), which means that mobilising structures are based on everyday life activism and its networks (cf. J. D. McCarthy 2008: 143). This paper is going to analyse similarities and differences in terms of political performances and spatial strategies across different forms of activism.

Last, but not least, issues of framing and legitimising are important for the analysis of activism. By looking at how collective action is framed, social movement analysis can make sense of the reason for participating in activism. Hence, framing is understood as “conscious strategic efforts by groups of people to fashion shared understandings of the world and of themselves that legitimate and motivate collective action” (McAdam, J. D. McCarthy, and Zald 2008: 6). Yet, framing is not only important for participation in activism, but also in order to provide a certain counterpart against a dominant (political) discourse. Ultimately, collective action is about “struggles over meaning as they attempt to influence public policy” (J. D. McCarthy 2008: 291).

This paper is going to make use of the theoretical concepts of political opportuni-ties, mobilising structures and counter-framing processes to analyse how collective ac-tion against urban regeneraac-tion unfolded in Glasgow and Belgrade and what that means for political spaces in the contemporary post-political era. In short, three concepts are important to analyse the two cases of political activism in Belgrade and Glasgow. First, post-political aspects, with which the two forms of activism were confronted, are pre-sented. Second, spatial catalysts for political engagement in Glasgow and Belgrade are analysed and shall provide a greater understanding of the relationship between space and politics in the urban political arena. Third, strategies of counter-framing are of importance to recognise how political activism formulates more universal demands.

Case comparison

This research paper makes use of a comparative case study design, comparing two cases of collective action that target urban redevelopment projects – “Ne da(vi)mo Beograd”

(“Let’s not d(r)own Belgrade”), a movement that formed against the redevelopment of the Sava waterfront in Belgrade and protests that emerged against the redevelopment of Glasgow East for the 2014 Commonwealth Games. By using a holistic two case design (cf. Yin 2009: 53f) this research project combines explorative, such as strategies and goals of activism, and explanatory elements, such as possible reasons and possible (urban) grounds for activism, to enhance the understanding of collective action in the post-political city.

The strategy of comparison between the two cases incorporates individualising and universalising comparisons (cf. Brenner 2001: 136f) by highlighting both the specificity of the two instances of activism in Belgrade and Glasgow and universal processes that are at play. Two levels of comparison are of importance for the purpose of this paper. First, private market interests and capital accumulation through urban development play an important role in both cities, although there are different historical trajectories of the political systems. Both cases of activism deal with types of capitalist real estate devel-opment and try to contest and disrupt practices of capitalist urban develdevel-opment. Hence, this paper specifically deals with activism that targets urban regeneration projects.

Second, the cases have been selected based on their mobilising structures. Looking at how activism is organised and structured within the two cases, they can be seen as di-verse cases (cf. Gerring 2007: 97ff). Drawing from conceptualisations of social movement literature and especially resource mobilisation theory that categorises activism along “particular ‘social movement organizational’ forms” (J. D. McCarthy 2008: 141), the two cases represent different types of organisation. In the case of Belgrade, on the one hand, the social movement “Ne da(vi)mo Beograd” can be characterised as more cen-trally organised with a relatively small core group organising the protests. Furthermore, it has a single collective identity symbolised by a yellow duck1. In Glasgow, on the other hand, the organisation of protests is much more decentralised and localised, con-nected to specific “every-day experiences” and spatial elements. Different activist groups formed around different issues, leading to four major groups that organised against the Commonwealth Games. First, a campaign emerged against the eviction of Margaret Jaconelli and her family. Second, a group of activists called “Save the Accord” tried to prevent the demolition of a day-care centre for people with learning disabilities for a car park. Third, “Glasgow against ATOS” challenged the role of one of the major sponsors, ATOS, in conducting work capability assessments. Fourth, “Glasgow Games Monitor” tried to provide more detailed information on the transformation of the East End due to the Commonwealth Games and hosted a couple of events together with residents and organisations based in Glasgow East. In short, by comparing the two cases of activism, Glasgow and Belgrade, this paper aims to reveal a variety of the political in cities and to rethink political activism and its spatial aspect in the post-political context.

1

The Serbian word for “duck”, which is “patka”, also means fraud. In a humorous way “Ne da(vi)mo Beograd” plays with the image of the duck to underline their argument.

Data collection and analysis

In order to answer the questions that guide this paper, semi-structured and problem-centred interviews (cf. Witzel 2000) were considered as most adequate method for two major reasons. First, problem-centred interviews particularly focus on specific social phenomena or social problems, in this case activism in post-political cities. Second, the interviewer makes use of an interview guide that is designed in an open fashion to stimulate interviewees, whereas still being open to ad-hoc-questions. Yet, it leaves enough guidance “in order to further differentiate the topic” (Flick 2014: 223) and gives the interviewer a more active role in the interview. While topics, such as reasons for personal involvement, as well as key moments, goals and strategies of the protests, were covered in every interview, interviewees could also focus on more specific issues, such as dynamics within the group, that were of importance for them.

In total, 15 interviews, seven in Belgrade, eight in Glasgow, were conducted. Respon-dents have been chosen based on snowballing (cf. Small 2009: 14), meaning that the network of gatekeepers was used to gather more interviewees from different initiatives or having diverse roles within the initiatives. This should represent the spectrum of activist engagement from more to less active in the case of Belgrade and across different initiatives in the case of Glasgow. In Belgrade, activists from “Ne da(vi)mo Beograd”, as well as activists from other civil society organisations and urban planning professionals dealing with the redevelopment project have been interviewed. In Glasgow, interviews with ac-tivists from “Glasgow Games Monitor” and “Glasgow against ATOS”, as well as a policy adviser were conducted. Although the main focus of the analysis is on the activists’ per-spective, dealing with different viewpoints of both activists and policy advisers or urban planners seemed important to diversify the data. Websites, manifestos, and more visual material, such as flyers, posters, pictures and videos, of the various initiatives in Glasgow and Belgrade have been used for analysis to complement and enrich the data. Further-more, interviews conducted with urban planning professionals and policy advisers, as well as material from urban regeneration projects, such as annual reports and brochures, have been used to get a greater understanding of the dynamics of urban regeneration in Belgrade and Glasgow. This variety of data on both cases aims to provide more detailed and balanced information about the motivations to become active, the way the protests were organised, as well as possible connections between political actions and the urban arena. As a result, this kind of data triangulation (cf. Flick 2014: 183) shall increase the validity of the comparison.

The data analysis is based on “theoretical thematic analysis” (cf. Braun and Clarke 2006), a more top-down, theory-based, analyst-driven approach of analysing specific the-matic patterns in qualitative data. This does not “mean that themes ‘reside’ in the data, and if we just look hard enough they will ‘emerge’ like Venus on the half shell” (Ely et al. 1997: 208), but that the themes come from a more analytic way of looking at the data in regard of the research question, moving to a more interpretative level of theorisation.

Steps of thematic analysis move from a more initial and general understanding of and getting familiar with the data (cf. Braun and Clarke 2006: 87f) to a greater understand-ing of themes within the data by groupunderstand-ing initial codes, such as “key moments”, “goals”, “strategies” that were chosen according to the theoretical framework, to each theme and refining them even more (cf. Braun and Clarke 2006: 91f). As a result of this process, three themes were considered to be important for this paper: post-political condition, which is understood as being the frame, in which political activism operates, spatial catalysts for activism and strategies of counter-framing.

Limitations of this top-down approach are the danger of generating prescribed data and imposing preconceived theoretical knowledge onto the data. Furthermore, it leaves relatively little space for bottom-up, more grounded data analysis, Yet, this type of approach was chosen “to provide a more detailed and nuanced account of one particular theme, or group of themes, within the data” (Braun and Clarke 2006: 83) – the question of how political activism is organised in post-political contexts.

The post-political condition and the “rigged game”

As a starting point, this paper looks at both protest movements, “Ne da(vi)mo Beograd” in Belgrade and the protests against the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, in the light of the post-political condition of urban politics. This means that “[n]ot only is the public arena evacuated from radical dissent, critique, and fundamental conflict, but the parameters of democratic governing itself are being shifted, announcing new forms of autocratic governmentality” (Swyngedouw 2007: 65).

In Glasgow, a couple of incidents can be understood as foreclosure of conflictual el-ements in the process towards implementing physical changes in the East End. When activists try to organise a meeting at a local community centre in Dalmarnock, the board of the centre cancels it. It refuses to host the meeting, which was supposed to be about an alleged housing crisis in Glasgow, and especially in Glasgow East, because, according to the board, it did not fit the criteria of the community centre, namely “raising the hopes and aspirations of our community and it’s residents” (Glasgow Games Monitor 2014). Furthermore, the community centre disagreed that there was a housing crisis in the East End and even if there was, the centre “would seek to involve the appropriate parties in order to deal with it as amicably as possible without creating unnecessary unrest” (Glas-gow Games Monitor 2014). In another incident, staff members of a University library refused to print flyers and posters for the protests, saying “we can’t photocopy these, we just can’t. This looks like it’s political” (Hannah2_{, activist: 14).}

These two incidents in Glasgow hint towards the fact that activists were confronted with a post-political situation in terms of political or public actors, such as the community centre, run by the local council, refusing to engage with activism in the neighbourhood.

It becomes apparent that there is a fear of getting caught in unrest or conflict. Rather, there is a form of governance that wants to deal with issues “as amicably as possible”, trying to generate consensus instead of conflict, leading to people not being able to voice their (controversial) opinion and effectively take part in the political process.

Similarly, in Belgrade, numerous critics of the redevelopment project mentioned the lack of effective public involvement. Although, public consultation is mandatory by law, so called “mesna zajednica” (neighbourhood committees), it was criticised that the decision-making process did not include the public debate at all, resembling a “rigged game” (Dana, urban planning professional: 28). Referring to urban redevelopment as a “rigged game” describes political processes, especially in urban planning, as having limited possibilities to effectively get involved although there seems to be a tradition of public hearings in urban planning procedures. This point was stressed by several respondents. One urban planning professional, for example, points out that “it was a farce of public participation, it was just formal and nothing real, of real meaning” (Zivko, urban planning professional: 4) or one activist from “Ne da(vi)mo Beograd” argues: “If you had a sound public debate, it wouldn’t end up with something that people feel so alienated with” (Niko, “Ne da(vi)mo Beograd”: 32). While there are regulations in place to let the public participate, it seems that those who feel affected by the urban redevelopment and have a stake in how the land is redeveloped, feel that they have no chance in voicing their opinion. The same activist nicely summarises the foreclosure of political engagement due to capitalist interests, when he states: “It’s not done any more the way it has been done. Now, the one who has the money, controls how it’s going to be developed. That’s the bottom line of the thing” (Niko, “Ne da(vi)mo Beograd”: 56). Most importantly, this might be connected to the lack of public debates around controversial issues, such as housing and urban regeneration, as some of the activists point out. Instead, the political debate is dominated by what one activist called “circus of spectacles” (Bruno, civil society activist: 34), describing the notion that the public discourse is swamped by populist good-news stories trying to hide any conflictual element.

This becomes even more apparent, when looking at political participation historically. Whereas public participation and public debate in former Yugoslavia is praised as ef-fectively including and valuing public opinion, tendencies of privatisation are blamed to result in an unbalanced public debate. The “rigged game” of urban planning in the case of the Belgrade waterfront can be understood as a post-political condition, in which public participation only has a marginal impact on the outcome. Instead, it can be argued that private interests have already succeeded in conceptualising urban change to their liking. The above shows that both forms of activism are confronted with post-political strate-gies to foreclose the political by suppressing real political engagement and participation. The rest of this paper is going focus on both spatial catalysts for protests and counter-framing strategies of activism to make use of those spatial aspects to participate within the urban political arena.

Spatial game changers

One of the biggest catalysts for the “Ne da(vi)mo Beograd”-movement in Belgrade, in terms of public support, was the so called “Savamala incident”, which happened on the regeneration site around the parliamentary elections in the night of April 24th, 2016. Heavily armed and masked men turned up at the riverside, dragged people out of their houses and started demolishing these houses with bulldozers. When Siniša Mali, acting mayor of Belgrade at that time, together with his police chief, denied any knowledge of the incidence, as well as any connection to the 4 billion Euro development project that was planned at the exact same spot, protests against the Belgrade Waterfront project climaxed. An activist puts it like this: “I mean, definitely the biggest game changer was the protest after the demolition. I mean, that’s when we became not like a group of people opposing the Waterfront, but a political entity that people have a different kind of expectation [of]” (Niko, “Ne da(vi)mo Beograd”: 25). The activist is referring to the spe-cific event and the impact it had on the dynamics of the protests against the regeneration project. It is this particular event that gave them leverage to become a “political entity” and to be part of the urban political arena in a more direct sense. Before the incident, “Ne da(vi)mo Beograd” tried to influence decision-making processes with direct actions, participated in public discussions and public hearings from the planning committee, but it was this incident at Savamala that provided space for more impactful direct actions, demonstrations and marches. It gave them the opportunity to stick direct actions to this specific event that they thought was characteristic for the whole regeneration project.

Similarly, in Glasgow, one of the most prominent cases in the East End, as already mentioned above, was the forceful eviction of Margaret Jaconelli and her family from their home in the area that was supposed to become the Athletes Village for the Common-wealth Games. In the early years of 2000, leading up to the bid for the CommonCommon-wealth Games, almost all residents were cleared from the site that was supposed to be developed as the Athletes Village. Most of the housing in this part of Dalmarnock was poor quality social housing, which made it easier to relocate people to tenements with a better hous-ing stock. The only people that remained and fought eviction were a woman and her family, who were amongst the few people in this part of Glasgow East that were property owners. Their fight for appropriate compensation (the initial offer of the City Council was around £30000, which in the eyes of the family was not enough to buy a compara-ble house somewhere else) and against eviction was closely followed by local media and became one of the icons of activism in Glasgow East:

“it’s a kind of story that the Scottish media loves, like a battling granny fighting for her home and her family against the big baddie developers. So, that story started to get a lot of attention and a lot of people started to come. And also, it started to inspire local people. So, we spend a lot of time at Margaret’s house, while she was going through the process of eviction and

there was a lot of local people involved that tried to prevent that eviction.” (Martin, activist: 21)

A larger campaign started to grow around the family, which was mostly supported by people from the neighbourhood and other campaigns that were going on in the East End at that same time. One of those initiatives, “Save the Accord”, struggled to save a centre for people with learning disabilities from turning into a bus park for the Commonwealth Games. The campaign represented their every-day struggle that the day-care centre was shut down and that there was no adequate replacement, but it also addressed the issue of services getting closed down across the city, as one of the adult carers points out: “But Glasgow City Council are regressing. And what Glasgow City Council are doing, they’re not just regressing the services, they’re regressing people’s view of learning disabled people. And that’s what’s really, really bad” (Glasgow Games Monitor 2013).

These three instances of contestation, as different and individual as they are, all illus-trate what Žižek (1999: 35), amongst others, calls “politicising of the particular”. Both the family’s struggle against being evicted from their home and the demolition of the day-care centre in Glasgow East, as well as the ruthless destruction of residents’ houses in Savamala, Belgrade, can be understood in this way. By taking up and contesting the particular eviction of a family and the demolition of a day-care centre, the protests try to show the impact of wider processes – such as de-industrialisation, displacement and gentrification – in Glasgow East. By highlighting how people are evicted to make room for a large-scale urban redevelopment at one of the most profitable spots in Belgrade, the Sava riverside, “Ne da(vi)mo Beograd” connects this particular incident to a more general theme of privatisation of public land and a lack of political involvement. This means, it is both a politicisation of the particular and the general, of particular events and more general implications they carry. This interdependence between the particular and the general, based on a distinction made by Lefebvre (cf. 1991: 15f; see also Stanek 2008) becomes apparent in the linkage of the struggles on the ground and the broader urban transformation in both Belgrade and Glasgow. When activists use words such as “symbolic”, “catalyst”, and “game changer” to describe specific events that changed the dynamics of the protests, it hints towards particular urban spaces being charged with symbolic value and becoming “icons” for the protests. In that sense, activism aims at having an influence on how urban space is conceptualised and challenges the dominant meaning of spatial development. Hence, this linkage not only touches upon the relation between the urban and the political, but it also shows urban “spaces of appearance” in an Arendtian sense, where political actions, disruptions and contestations of activists manifest.

This is of special importance in the context of post-political urban governance since it demonstrates that although capitalist tendencies of real estate development have an immense impact on the urban arena, these spatial aspects inherit a symbolic political element that activism can draw from. Relating more general claims of the activists to

specific spatial events, such as the evictions and demolitions of homes and infrastructure, makes them more relatable for citizens and “inspires local people”.

In the case of “Ne da(vi)mo Beograd”, the redevelopment project itself is framed as something that is representative for how politics works, how the political process does not include the public and is not for the common good but benefits the political elite. It is described as an urban development that “regular people” do not have access to or cannot benefit from, as one activist points out: “Another thing is the idea, which lies behind that project and many other projects I worked against, which is to build, to develop something without public discussion and an undemocratic approach of the government” (Bruno, civil society activist: 8). By highlighting specific issues of political participation in the redevelopment project at the Belgrade waterfront, activists ask ques-tions about how people can effectively be involved in the process of redeveloping their environments, their livelihoods, their vicinities, and how they can participate in the po-litical processes that lead to changing the urban form. Activists mentioned that they are already supporting the implementation of local neighbourhood assemblies in other parts of the city, in which people can debate and decide “what’s being built in their backyard” (Niko, “Ne da(vi)mo Beograd”: 43). In this regard, Lefebvre’s and Arendt’s theoretical claims become important, since it is one of the major goals to give people the chance to become a political citizen and participate in the negotiation of how urban space should be conceptualised.

In the East End of Glasgow, the specific spatial events were connected to every-day experiences of people with the event-led urban regeneration. Both, the eviction of a family to build an Athletes Village, and the demolition of a day-care centre for adults with learning disabilities to build a car park for the Commonwealth Games are evidences for the every-day character of the issues at stake and the micro-mobilisations that formed against it. Again, activists emphasise that connecting the very specific issues that the regeneration project brought to the East End with more general trends functioned as a catalyst for the protests. Both, the trends of capitalist real estate development that have been going on in Glasgow East since the 1980s (cf. Middleton 1987), and similar processes in other cities that have seen event-led regeneration seemed to be important reference points for the activists. In a way, it

“transformed the struggle of one person protecting their own home into a full set of questions about land development, property development, about the way that the state operates, about law, a whole series of questions. [. . . ] But, when there’s somebody concretely staking that claim, you know, from a very, very poor, marginalised neighbourhood that people can identify with [. . . ], then you have a much richer way to tell that story and to talk about the actual impacts of it, in ways that are less kind of abstract to people” (Martin, activist: 23).

to disrupt the dominant discourse of urban regeneration and urban governance. The fact that the spatial catalysts in Glasgow were very much connected to micro-mobilisations of every-day experiences could be one of the reasons why it was a more fragmented and dispersed form of activism, rather than a more centralised type of movement as it was the case in Belgrade. In the following, strategies of connecting their claims and countering the dominant discourse shall be discussed in greater detail.

Legacy and dirty politics

As pointed out above, both forms of activism made use of specific spatial aspects to connect them to wider issues they wanted to address and to make it more palpable for supporters of the protests. In Glasgow East, one of the major parts of the Commonwealth Games regeneration project was to frame it not only as “Scotland’s biggest and most ambitious regeneration programme” (Clyde Gateway 2013), but also in connection to its “legacy” for the East End, which is nothing new for (sporting) mega-event regeneration projects. Framing mega-events within a legacy discourse legitimises public spending by emphasising factors, such as sustainability, economic prosperity and the overall benefit for the public. “In this context, legacy becomes a primary discursive means for legitimising massive public expenditure - especially when over-runs are often severe” (Gray 2015: 212).

Claims about the legacy of the Commonwealth Games are mostly connected to the historic situation of decline and dereliction of land in the East End. After the moderate success of previous regeneration initiatives, the Clyde Gateway project should finally bring the economic and social prosperity to the neighbourhoods of Glasgow East that also benefits the local residents. Another emphasis is on transforming the physicality and social structure of the East End with participation of the local communities: “Our regeneration efforts will only succeed if those who live and work in the local area support what is happening” (Clyde Gateway 2016: 2) or as one of the employees of Clyde Gateway puts it: “As long as the local people believe in what you’re doing and will champion what you’re doing and you’re responding to their wishes and desires, you stand a chance” (Glenn, Clyde Gateway: 29).

This sets the stage for counter-framing by activist groups connecting the specificity and particularity of the actions on the ground to a wider discourse about the legacy of the Commonwealth Games. Especially “Glasgow Games Monitor” emphasised their role in creating alternative discourses to challenge claims about the legacy. Most importantly, attention was brought to possible impacts on neighbourhood communities and processes of displacement, such as the eviction of the family from the Athletes Village site:

“Despite all the hype, the lessons from many previous ‘mega-events’ like the Commonwealth Games, is that they typically run over budget; that ‘regen-eration’ often causes displacement because of rising rents and prices; that

there are often harmful environmental costs due to construction and road-building; and overall, that these types of events are typically more about private property development and ‘city-building’ (building an image of the city) than about the needs of local people.” (Glasgow Games Monitor, 2011) Hence, when looking at the different activist groups and their claims, three topics or counter-frames become apparent in relation to the dominant legacy discourse, all asking “whose legacy is this?” (Glasgow Games Monitor 2012: 1): raising questions about affordable or social housing, displacement and gentrification in relation to the Athletes village, raising concerns about the provision of welfare services (care and worklessness) in relation to the demolition of the Accord centre and ATOS sponsoring the event, as well as challenging the built infrastructure, such as the Velodrome, which are seen as inadequate to serve the needs of local people.

One aspect that stands out in the case of Glasgow, compared to the case of Belgrade, is the issue of time. The pressure to finish necessary infrastructure and developments in time is used to deal with counter-framing and resistance and makes it harder to intervene and provide a different storyline. Several people stressed the point that their challenges of the legacy discourse were countered with the argument that there is a sensitive time frame that needs to be upheld. One of the activists, for example, described it as follows:

“It was really hard to puncture into the legacy discourse, because it’s so easy for the proponents to dress everything up in this kind of public good legacy kind of thing. And, I mean, I was just routinely called all sorts of names, ‘a naysayer’, ‘a voice in the wilderness’, or, [...] ‘this is the East End being desperately needing investment for all those years. Why would you stop that?’ And that’s a really difficult narrative to intervene in and shift, when [...] you look around and it’s like, ‘yeah, well, this place sure needs some help’.” (Shauna, activist: 31)

In Belgrade, on the other hand, it seems that attempts of alternative framing were much more centred around the political system in place. The reputation of local as well as national politics seems to be that it is of a corrupt nature. Several activists stressed the point that “politics have been labelled as something really dirty, and only those, who are dirty enough go into it, and so, it’s really to now tackle this notion that poli-tics is something that’s done by the immoral people, but that it will be something that everybody should take part in” (Niko, “Ne da(vi)mo Beograd”: 44). This seems espe-cially important when talking about public participation in urban regeneration, which, as pointed out before, seems to be a “rigged game” in the eyes of activists and urban planning professionals. Yet, when the movement enters the realm of politics and become a “political entity”, and especially now as it ran for local council, it might be seen as part of the very political culture it tries to overcome: “they will lose credibility [. . . ]. So,

they will need to create a new base, new ground for support of those that support them politically” (Bruno, civil society activist: 60). In a way, it is a two-sided coin. On the one side, the label of dirty politics might generate a fertile ground for political activism to grow the seeds of political, as well as urban change. On the other hand, it might constrain the growth of political activism, since it is seen as just another form of “that dirty politics”, which is done by “those politicians” who are not caring about the public good, but rather their own personal interest, and feathering their own nest. It’s exactly that field of tension that “Ne da(vi)mo Beograd” operates in and in which they try to flip the coin towards redefining how politics operate, namely as something that is not only done by political parties, but can and must be done by everyone:

“it’s really in a way difficult for us, we’re all [saying] ‘it’s not party-political gathering, but it is political’. You have to do a lot of this repetitive talk, so that people accept that they’re entering the realm of/ I mean, they are in the realm of politics if they like it or not. And, they have to, how do you say, embrace it. [. . . ] I mean, that’s like the task, the holy grail.” (Niko, “Ne da(vi)mo Beograd”, :46-48)

It seems that in Belgrade, the framing of politics as something that is dirty and corrupt is easily addressed in relation to the redevelopment of the Belgrade waterfront on the one hand, and easily relatable for the people of Belgrade, on the other hand. After all, the waterfront project is a deal made between the municipality, the Republic of Serbia and an investment firm from Abu Dhabi. Relating such a joint venture to corrupt politics that does not benefit the people, but rather the political elite, might resonate well with the “general public”.

Two things are interesting in this regard. First, by addressing this issue, the movement aims to overcome the very notion of politics being dirty and tries to bring it back to the people. This provides an understanding of how politics is seen within the movement of “Ne da(vi)mo Beograd”, namely in an Arendtian way, as something that citizens are ought to take part in for the common good. In this way, people shall become political subjects and political citizens. It is not just the state, but it is something that should work more deliberatively. Some activists pointed out that, in their understanding, politics is something everybody should at least have the chance to participate in. Second, they might add to the framing of politics as being something dirty, since they actively label the current politics as such. The question remains whether that helps the cause to generate public support for the protests in the end. As the movement enters the political realm, it might also be seen as being a part of this type of politics which is considered to be dirty.

Conclusion

This paper took the post-political framework as a starting point to analyse the emergence and development of political activism in contemporary cities. It asked whether cities in the current neoliberal era of real estate development are stripped from its political element. By looking at two different cases of political activism, “Ne da(vi)mo Beograd” as a more centrally organised movement and the protests in Glasgow East leading up to the Commonwealth Games as micro-mobilisation of everyday experiences, this paper tried to rethink the political in a city and what connection it has to urban space. On the one hand, political activism within post-political contexts raises questions about the point in which people become political and, following Arendt’s terminology, undergo the transition from private individuals to political citizens. On the other hand, it is vital to look at political activism in different urban contexts through the lens of Lefebvre and see it as a socially constructed and contentious entity about which different actors have diverging notions. Furthermore, this paper made use of social movement literature, more specifically political opportunities and framing processes to understand how the two instances of political activism emerged and developed.

The cases of activism in Glasgow and Belgrade show that different forms of activism – more centralised or more fragmented - politicise particular spatial aspects. It is important in this regard to not only limit political opportunities to political systems being more, or less, open towards political engagement, but also seeing urban space – a social and conflictual construct – as an opportunity to spark political engagement. Hence, the analysis presented in this paper has shown that space can entail an opportunity for activism and political movements in that it sparks the emergence and development of political activism and their identity. Hence, urban spaces can be characterised as “spaces of appearance” in an Arendtian sense, which embodies political actions and provides the opportunity for people to relate to each other and their political actions.

By making use of the specificity of the urban space in question – in terms of pointing out specific events in redevelopment projects, such as evictions or demolitions of vital infrastructure – and relating these specific events to wider discourses that movements or political activism want to tackle, urban space becomes a catalyst for political activism. In that sense, the protests become political, because they relate themselves to the po-litical system and popo-litical discourses. Here, popo-litical and historical trajectories of the two cases have an impact on how political activism unfolds and are of importance to un-derstand discursive strategies of political activism in order to tap into dominant framing processes. Glasgow, as a city with a long tradition of labour mobilisation, has also seen a great amount of event-led regeneration promising a prosperous legacy to low-income and stigmatised neighbourhoods. When local struggles in the wake of the Common-wealth Games are related to wider trends and counter-frames, such as gentrification and affordable housing issues, worklessness, and provision of welfare services, this historicity is of importance. In Belgrade, having only recently seen a shift towards the democratic

project, activists connect the reputation of politics as being corrupt and dirty to how the redevelopment project was planned and developed and the way the public was (not) involved. In a way, the main object of interest is not the redevelopment project itself, but the system of politics that needs to be overcome.

Without these spatial events, it might be more difficult for urban activism to relate specificities of urban redevelopment to wider discourses about privatisation of public space, social inequality, corrupt political systems or other issues that seem relevant to activists. Without such spatial events, it does not seem to be easy for political activism to bring across their arguments and generate a vast amount of support for their causes. On the contrary, making use of spatial aspect helps protests to get more tangible, easier to grasp, more relatable, but most of all more visible. In short, although cities might be more and more characterised by the influence of capitalist investment, urban en-trepreneurialism and the neoliberal agenda turning them into post-political entities, this does not necessarily strip urban space from its conflictual and inherently political aspect. This paper focused on two cases of political activism to show contingency in urban politics, which is seen as more than just political institutions. More case studies in diverse contexts need to be conducted in order to get a greater understanding of how space and politics are, in fact, entangled and what chances this incorporates for urban change in a post-political world.

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