SOCIOLOGY • ECOLOGY • URBAN STUDIES City the to Right the and Ecology Social
“This book is urgently needed — it focuses our attention on the historic and crucial task of reconnecting humans and the natural world and powerfully explores how a movement for the ecological and social commons can tame the destructive forces of capitalism.” — Paul Chatterton, School of Geography, University of Leeds
“The book features some of the very best of the current generation of writers and thinkers in the tradition of social ecology.” — Brian Tokar, author of Toward Climate Justice
“The combination of theory and social movements scholarship within general de- bates on contemporary political and ecological crises make this book a timely and signifcant contribution.” — Sutapa Chattopadhyay, University of Windsor
Cities are increasingly a major cause of, but also a potential solution for, environ- mental and social crises. Across the world, a new wave of urban social movements Venturini are arising: movements building economic, social, and political alternatives based on solidarity, equality, and participation. At the forefront of these, social ecology is
emerging as a rich body of ideas spanning disciplines as diverse as democracy, eco- •
nomics, and urbanism to technology, philosophy, and social development. De ğ
This anthology develops the debates that began at the Transnational Institute of irmenci Social Ecology’s (TRISE) conference in Thessaloniki about the dire need to rebuild our cities. It discusses the prospects of current urban movements; examines the
radical potential of the concept of “the Right to the City”; and looks at how activists, • scholars, and community movements can work together towards an ecological and Morales democratic future. A fruitful conversation between theory and practice, this book opens new ground for rethinking systemic urban change in a way that transforms how
we live, work, and create together. • •
9 781551 646817 Montréal/Chicago/London Paperback: 978-1-55164-681-7 TT412 www.blackrosebooks.com Hardcover: 978-1-55164-683-1 eBook: 978-1-55164-685-5 “This book is urgently needed — it focuses our attention on the historic and crucial task of reconnecting humans and the natural world they are deeply in- terconnected with. The book powerfully explores how a movement for the ecological and social commons can tame the destructive forces of capitalism.” — PAUL CHATTERTON, Professor of Urban Futures, School of Geog- raphy, University of Leeds
“Henri Lefebvre’s ‘Right to the City’ is an important, but nevertheless limited, idea, as Lefebvre himself did not pay due attention to the ecological dimension of social emancipation. Social Ecology and the Right to the City is a welcome step in the right direction, as it provides that motto with a powerful framework: Murray Bookchin’s neo-anarchist approach to social ecology.” — MARCELO LOPES DE SOUZA, Professor of Environmental Geog- raphy and Political Ecology, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
“This book constitutes an important contribution to the elaboration and articu- lation of the paradigm of social ecology. It could hardly be more timely, with the multiple, interconnected crises of capitalist modernity engulfing the world in ever-expanding, permanent war and ecological catastrophe. This volume provides abundant reason for hope that, as one of the chapters puts it, our ca- lamitous present is pregnant with a more sustainable, social-ecological future.” — THOMAS JEFFREY MILEY, University of Cambridge
“With a majority of the world’s population now living in urban areas, the city has re-emerged as a definitive focus for popular struggles and contemporary social movements. This book brings us to the epicenter of today’s municipal movements, exploring the recent evolution of urban alternatives, together with theoretical perspectives on the changing character of urban space. The book features some of the very best of the current generation of writers and thinkers in the tradition of social ecology, mainly from Europe and the Middle East, to critique capitalist false solutions and rekindle the promise of an urban future rooted in the commons, a moral economy, and visions of a radically different future.” — BRIAN TOKAR, author of Toward Climate Justice: Perspectives on the Climate Crisis and Social Change
“Not only is the book comprehensive but extremely useful for its interdiscipli- nary and global analyses. The combination of theory and social movements scholarship within general debates on contemporary political and ecological crises, due to the rise of hostile and narcissistic policies, make this book a timely and significant contribution.” — SUTAPA CHATTOPADHYAY, University of Windsor, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminology
Social Ecology and the Right to the City by Black Rose Books is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: The right to the city and social ecology : towards democratic and ecological cities / Federico Venturini, Emet Değirmenci, Inés Morales (editors) Names: Venturini, Federico, editor. | Değirmenci, Emet, editor. | Morales, Inés, 1976- editor. Description: Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190166010 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190166053 | ISBN 9781551646831 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781551646817 (softcover) | ISBN 9781551646855 (PDF) Subjects: LCSH: Sociology, Urban. | LCSH: Urban policy. | LCSH: Urban ecology (Sociology) | LCSH: City and town life. Classification: LCC HT151 .R54 2019 | DDC 307.76—dc23
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Cover art by James Mckay “A Dream of a Low Carbon Future”
This publicationis published in collaboration with the Transnational Institute of Social Ecology Social Ecology and the Right to the City Tow ards Ecological and Dem ocratic C ities
Edited by Federico Venturini, Emet Değ irmenci, Inés Morales
Montréal/Chicago/London CONTENTS
Introduction 1 Federico Venturini, Emet Değirmenci, and Inés Morales 1 About this Book 1 2 Getting Started: Understanding Ecological Disasters 1 and Inequality 3 Changing the World 3 4 The Role of the Activist-Researcher 5 5 Contributions to this Volume 6 6 Acknowledgements 9 7 8Part 1: Discovering Social Ecology 12 9The Legacy of Murray Bookchin 12 Brian Morris Introduction 12 The Modern Crisis 13 Social Ecology 16 Dialectical Naturalism and Ethics 21 The Politics of Libertarian Socialism 24
Social Ecology: A Philosophy for the Future 32 Dan Chodorkoff Theory and Practice 32 The Role of Education 33 Utopian Thinking 34 The Principles of Social Ecology 36 Opposition 40 Reconstruction 40 Politics 42
A Critique of The Limits to Growth from a Social Ecology 46 Perspective Emet Değirmenci A Green Growth Economy 47 The Right to the City and Space-Making 48 Commons for a “Steady-State Economy” 51 What Sorts of Growth do We Want? 53 Part 2: Engaging with the Right to the City 58 Is the Right to the City a Right or a Revolution? 58 Magali Fricaudet The Paradigm of the Urban Miracle, or How Global 58 Capitalism Has Reached Massive Consent Lefebvre and the Philosophy of Urban Revolution 60 The Emergence of the Right to the City as a Global 62 Claim for Socio-Spatial Justice Municipalities: At the Forefront of the Right to the 64 City? What if Urban Revolution Meant Permanent Insur- 67 rection?
Moving beyond the Right to the City: Urban Commoning in 71 Greece Theodoros Karyotis The Right to the City 71 The Urban Commons 74 Urban Struggles in Greece 76 The Subject of Social Mobilisation 80
Reconceptualising Rights and Spatial Justice through Social 86 Ecology Federico Venturini Introduction: Critically Exploring the Right to the 86 City Critically Exploring Spatial Justice 88 A Convergence of Concepts 89 Reconceptualising Citizenship, Justice, and Freedom 91 Reconceptualising the Right to the City and Spatial 93 Justice Conclusion 96
Part 3: The Kurdish Answer: Democratic Confederalism 101 The Evolution of the Kurdish Paradigm 101 Havin Guneser with Eleanor Finley The Early Years (1970–1989) 101 Soul-Searching within the PKK (1990–2010) 103 Ocalan’s Abduction and Captivity (1999–) 105 The Present: Where Do the Answers Lie? 107
The Democratization of Cities in North Kurdistan 110 Ercan Ayboga and Egit Pale The History of Cities in North Kurdistan 110 Cities Under the Governance of the Kurdish Free- 112 dom Movement Challenges 115 Urban Warfare and the New Wave of Gentrification 116
Part 4: Transforming Social Theory 118 Do We Need a New Theory of the State? 118 Metin Guven The Current Transition of World Leadership 118 The Heritage of Domination 120 The Axial Age and Later Developments 122 China in the Twenty-First Century 124 The Strength of the Chinese State Model 125 A New State Theory for the Struggles to Come 126
Direct Democracy, Social Ecology, and Public Time 128 Alexandros Schismenos Aspects of the Global Crisis of Significations 129 The Problems of the Internet Age 132 The Emergence of New Significations 134 The Political Significance of Public Time 136
The Present is Pregnant with a New Future 141 Olli Tammilehto Gradual versus Abrupt Change in Western Thought 141 Abrupt Social Changes in the Past and Present 142 Shadow Society and Abrupt Change 143 Regime Shift Theory in Biology and its Relevance to 145 Society Societal Phase Shift and Social Movements 147 Part 5: Walking with the Right to the City 155 Squatting as Claiming the Right to the City 155 Diana Bogado, Noel Manzano and Marta Solanas Introduction 155 Methodological Frame 156 Financial Urban Management and the Right to the 158 City in Brazil and Spain Squats and Occupations 160 The Struggle for Housing in Spain 162 The Social Housing Movements in Brazil 163 A Transnational Comparison between Brazilian and 164 Spanish Practices of Occupation and Squatting Conclusion: Towards an Internationalization of Ur- 165 ban Social Movements
Rights Begin in the Small Places Closest to Home: A Story 171 from Constitution Street Jemma Neville
Notes on the Contributors 178
Introduction Federico Venturini, Emet Değirmenci, and Inés Morales
“We have seen the future—and it doesn’t work” – Jerome Ross, ROAR Magazine
“We don’t want to manage the inferno, we want to disassemble it and build something new” – Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar, Pikara Magazine
“The ecological principle of unity in diversity grades into a richly mediated social principle; hence my use of the term social ecology” – Murray Bookchin, The Modern Crisis
About this Book This volume arose from proceedings of the conference The Right to the City and Social Ecology—Towards Ecological and Democratic Cities, held in Thessaloniki 1–3 September, 2017. The conference was organized by the Transnational Institute of Social Ecology (TRISE). TRISE is an association of activists and intellectuals based in Europe, who are concerned with current socio-ecological crises. It was founded in Greece in 2013 and focuses on research, education, and training. The asso- ciation initiates, supports and facilitates research on social ecology, urban social movements, and the democratization of society. Historically, its inspi- ration can be traced to Vermont, US, where the Institute for Social Ecology was co-founded by Murray Bookchin and Dan Chodorkoff in 1974. At the heart of the organization’s mission lies the theory of social ecology. Multiple definitions of social ecology exist. However, TRISE largely follows the innovative philosophy of Murray Bookchin, as well as other writers and activists who developed his work. TRISE aims to foster and develop social ecological analysis and practice that can be adopted for the struggles to come. This book answers this call, exploring the contemporary discourse surrounding urban rights—the right to the city—and presents a selection of new essays on social ecology. This volume seeks to bring the ideas of social ecology into conversation with the worldwide call for the right to the city, thereby challenging and extending existing discussions on both topics in a fruitful cross-fertilization. Theories and practices need to be discovered, engaged with, and transformed in order to build an effective culture of resistance.
Getting Started: Understanding Ecological Disasters and Inequality Social and ecological crises are intertwined and, as becomes more evident
1 Federico Venturini, Emet Değirmenci, and Inés Morales every day, they are exacerbated by the dominant social, economic, and po- litical systems. Human impacts on the planet are so evident and unique that more and more commentators are calling the geological time in which we live the “Anthropocene” era (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000), from “anthro- pos” (human) and “-cene”, from kainos (new or recent). The biosphere and geological time scale have been fundamentally transformed by human activ- ity and researchers have identified many processes that regulate the stability and resilience of the Earth’s systems and nine quantitative planetary boundaries (Steffen et al. 2015) that must not be crossed if humanity is to continue thriving. These include such trends as stratospheric ozone deple- tion, loss of biosphere integrity, chemical pollution and the release of novel entities, climate change, ocean acidification, freshwater consumption and the global hydrological cycle, land system change, nitrogen and phosphorus flows to the biosphere and oceans, and atmospheric aerosol loading. Cross- ing these boundaries threatens the existence of life on this planet as we know it, potentially bringing deep or even irreparable change. Of these boundaries, two (biodiversity loss and climate change) have already been crossed, while others are in imminent danger of being crossed. Bookchin expressed his concerns for the future of humanity and warned us that “if we do not do the impossible, we shall be faced with the unthinkable” (2005: 107). However, more appropriate still is the term “Capitalocene” (Moore 2016). The causes of current changes are determined not just simply by human intervention, but by the current system that permeates all aspects of our societies—capitalism. These pressing planetary environmental problems can be addressed only by facing the problems within society. Even the United Nations acknowledges that we live in a world of global inequality and poverty (United Nation Development Programme 2005; 2010). Oxfam (see Hardoon 2017: 2) has also collated some alarming statistics on economic inequality: