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The Human Rights City: New York, San Francisco, Barcelona The Human Rights City We are used to thinking of human rights as a matter for state governments to deal with. Much less investigated is the question of what cities do with them, even though urban communities and municipalities have been dis- cussing human rights for quite some time. In this volume, Grigolo borrows the concept of ‘the human rights city’ to invite us to think about a new urban utopia: a place where human rights strive to guide urban life. By turning the question of the meaning and use of human rights in cities into the object of critical investigation, this book tracks the genesis, institutionalisation and implementation of human rights in cities, focussing on New York, San Francisco and Barcelona. Touching also upon matters such as women’s rights, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights and migrant rights, The Human Rights City emphasises how human rights can serve urban justice but also a neoliberal practice of the city. This book is a useful resource for scholars and students interested in fields such as Sociology of Human Rights, Sociology of Law, International Law, Urban Sociology, Political Sociology and Social Policies. Michele Grigolo is a lecturer in Sociology at Nottingham Trent University, UK. Routledge Advances in Sociology 253 Cinematic Tourist Mobilities and the Plight of Development On Atmospheres, Affects and Environments Rodanthi Tzanelli 254 Bicycle Utopias Imagining Fast and Slow Cycling Futures Cosmin Popan 255 Islamophobia in Muslim Majority Societies Edited by Enes Bayrakli and Farid Hafez 256 Equine Cultures in Transition Ethical Questions Edited by Jonna Bornemark, Petra Andersson, Ulla Ekström von Essen 257 Loneliness A Social Problem Keming Yang 258 Queer Community Identities, Intimacies and Ideology Neal Carnes 259 Comparative Sociology of Examinations and Educational Institutions Edited by Fumiya Onaka 260 The Human Rights City New York, San Francisco, Barcelona Michele Grigolo For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Advances-in-Sociology/book-series/SE0511 The Human Rights City New York, San Francisco, Barcelona Michele Grigolo First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Michele Grigolo The right of Michele Grigolo to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Grigolo, Michele, author. Title: The human rights city / Michele Grigolo. Description: 1 Edition. | New York : Routledge, 2019. | Series: Routledge advances in sociology | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018051767 | ISBN 9781138644892 (hardback) | ISBN 9781315628530 (eBook) Subjects: LCSH: Human rights. | Urban policy. | Municipal government. Classification: LCC JC571 .G7828 2019 | DDC 323.09173/2—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018051767 ISBN: 978-1-138-64489-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-62853-0 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by codeMantra For Professor Walter Stafford. Contents Acknowledgements ix 1 Introducing the human rights city 1 2 Tracking the human rights city 32 3 Institutionalising human rights in the city 63 4 The urban politics of human rights 98 5 Anti-discrimination policy in New York and Barcelona 129 6 Implementing human rights in San Francisco and Barcelona 154 7 A sociology of the human rights city 176 References 195 Index 217 Acknowledgements This book is a turning point in a long journey I have undertaken in the study of human rights and cities. Research used for this book has benefitted from funding from the European Commission, the Spanish Government, the European University Institute (Florence), the Portuguese Federation of Science and Technology and Nottingham Trent University. I am thankful to Andrea Gattini, Antonio Papisca, Michael Keating, Virginie Guiraudon, Yasemin Soysal and Lydia Morris for their feedback and support over the years, before and after the realisation of this book. I am grateful to Gi- useppe Allegretti, Laura Centemeri, Mihaela Mihai and Mathias Thaler and Boaventura de Sousa Santos and the Centre for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra for helping me shape and refine the sociological lens that informs this book. I would like to thank Eva Chueca for the opportu- nity to connect my research to practice, starting from the Inclusive Cities project of United Cities and Local Governments. Nottingham Trent Uni- versity should get the final credit for supporting me during the realisation of this book over busy academic years and in particular Jason Pandya-Wood, Azrini Wahidin, Simon Holdaway, Robert Dingwall, Eric Baumgartner, James Hunter and Kate Stewart. I am especially grateful to Barbara Oomen and Martha Davis for shar- ing with me the pleasure and challenge of editing the contributions to the volume Global Urban Justice: The Rise of Human Rights Cities, where some ideas fully developed in this book were originally put forward. A number of other people, dear colleagues as well as friends, have stimu- lated ideas that have now found full expression in this book or simply made my life pleasant and more bearable while I was doing research and complet- ing this book. They know who they are. I am especially thankful to Alice, Martina, Elena, Peppe, Costanza and Mathias Möschel. Thank you Mike, Mark, Stefanie, Sharon, Sarah, Frances and Ian for being around in the office, for the chatting and laughing, and your encouragement. x Acknowledgements I would like to thank Martha Davis and Alice Mattoni for commenting on specific chapters of this book. Their insights into the structure and con- tent of this book have been very helpful and highly appreciated. I am extremely grateful to the many people in New York, San Francisco and Barcelona who opened the doors of their organisations and spent time with me explaining their work. Among these, I wish to mention Patricia Gatling, Emily Murase, Krishanti Dharmaraj, Jaume Saura, Aida Guillén, Rosa Bada, Roser Veciana, Agustí Soler, Guadalupe Pulido Gustavo Czech-Bergtholt Tejeria and Cristina Monteys. I am especially grateful to the director and staff of the Barcelona Office for Non-Discrimination for the warm support they have provided to this research through the years. I hope this book, while reflecting my ideas, does justice to their work. Responsibility for misleading interpretations and factual mistakes in the book is solely of the author. Finally, I wish to thank my family for their support over the years, and especially my parents who make me feel home again every time I visit them. Thank you, Silvia and Elisabetta, for a life together. Thank you, Daniel, for believing in me and in this book (and for helping me proof read the Catalan and Castilian used in this book!). You are the good force that has put music in my life and got me where I am now. 1 Introducing the human rights city This book is about what I call the human rights city. In the human rights city, people and institutions of the city are expected to act in accordance with hu- man rights. Drawing on a sociological approach to rights as social construc- tions, this book investigates the establishment and diffusion of human rights across and in cities. The empirical focus is on New York, San Francisco and Barcelona, around issues of gender, sexuality, race and migration, as well as urban space. These cases show how human rights cities develop a practice of rights which, while being informed by international human rights as fil- tered and mediated by state practices of rights, is at the same time oriented by and towards the city. This book looks critically into human rights cities by exposing the association between human rights, the government of the city and neoliberalism. The first section of this chapter positions the book within the broader, emerging literature on human rights, cities and local governments, providing a definition of human rights city. Moving from this premise, the second and third parts sketch the sociological approach to the human rights city as practice, while the fourth part examines the more gen- eral conditions under which the practice has emerged. The fifth part presents the methodology and case studies of the book. The last section provides a chapter overview. Searching for human rights (and) cities Over the last decade, there has been an increasing interest within human rights scholarship in exploring the nexus between human rights and cities (Grigolo 2010). This nexus is not always explicitly tackled but is often implied in studies that, while typically looking at the ‘local’ as a site of human rights (De Feyter et al. 2011; Marx et al. 2015), have begun to focus their attention on cities, local governments and how they implement human rights. Within the field of international relations moving from a constructivist approach, Shawki (2011) focusses on how alliances between activists and local govern- ments can advance the cause of human rights, municipalities being identified here also as norm entrepreneurs. The same study emphasises how cities pro- vide yet another example of the ‘translation’ of global norms into local prac- tice (see Merry 2006).
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