Contesting Neoliberalism Urban Frontiers

by Leitner, Helga; Peck, Jamie; Sheppard, Eric

• ISBN13: 9781593853211
• ISBN10: 1593853211
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-10-13
• Publisher: The Guilford Press

Summary

Neoliberalism's "market revolution"--realized through practices like privatization, deregulation, fiscal devolution, and workfare programs--has had a transformative effect on contemporary cities. The consequences of market-oriented politics for urban life have been widely studied, but less attention has been given to how grassroots groups, nongovernmental organizations, and progressive city administrations are fighting back. In case studies written from a variety of theoretical and political perspectives, this book examines how struggles around such issues as affordable housing, public services and space, neighborhood sustainability, living wages, workers' rights, fair trade, and democratic governance are reshaping urban political geographies in North America and around the world.

Author Biography

Helga Leitner is Professor of Geography and a faculty member in the Institute for Global Studies and the Interdisciplinary Center for Global Change at the University of Minnesota. She has published two books and has written numerous articles and book chapters on the political economy of urban development, urban entrepreneurialism, the politics of immigration and citizenship, and environmental justice. Her current research interests include immigration and race in the contemporary United States, processes of neoliberalization, and the rise of social justice movements.
 
Jamie Peck is Professor of Geography and Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The author of Work-Place: The Social Regulation of Labor Markets and Workfare States, and coeditor of Remaking the Global Economy and Reading Economic Geography, he is currently researching the political economy of neoliberalization and the restructuring of low-wage labor markets.
 
Eric S. Sheppard is Professor of Geography and member of the Interdisciplinary Center for Global Change at the University of Minnesota. He is coauthor of The Capitalist Space Economy and A World of Difference: Society, Nature, Development, and coeditor of A Companion to Economic Geography and Scale and Geographic Inquiry. His current research examines contestations of neoliberalism and the geographical dynamics of trade and neoliberal globalization.

Table of Contents

1 Contesting Urban Futures: Decentering Neoliberalism	1	(25)
Helga Leitner, Eric S. Sheppard, Kristin Sziarto, and Anant Maringanti
2 Conceptualizing Neoliberalism, Thinking Thatcherism	26	(25)
Jamie Peck and Adam Tickell
3 Mexico's Neoliberal Transition: Authoritarian Shadows in an Era of Neoliberalism	51	(20)
Patricia Martin
4 The Places, People, and Politics of Partnership: After Neoliberalism in Aotearoa New Zealand	71	(19)
Wendy Larner and Maria Butler
5 Contesting the Neoliberalization of Urban Governance	90	(26)
Margit Mayer
6 Contesting the Neoliberal City? Theories of Neoliberalism and Urban Strategies of Contention	116	(23)
William Sites
7 Political Polemics and Local Practices of Community Organizing and Neoliberal Politics in South Africa	139	(18)
Sophie Oldfield and Kristian Stokke
8 Decommodifying Electricity in Postapartheid Johannesburg	157	(22)
Patrick Bond and Peter McInnes
9 Spaces of Resistance in Seattle and Cancun	179	(25)
Joel Wainwright
10 Articulating Neoliberalism: Diverse Economies and Everyday Life in Postsocialist Cities	204	(19)
Adrian Smith
11 Modes of Governance, Modes of Resistance: Contesting Neoliberalism in Calgary	223	(27)
Byron Miller
12 Closed Borders, Open Markets: Immigrant Day Laborers' Struggle for Economic Rights	250	(16)
Nik Theodore
13 Space Patrols—the New Peace-Keeping Functions of Nonprofits: Contesting Neoliberalism or the Urban Poor?	266	(25)
Volker Eick
14 From Possible Urban Worlds to the Contested Metropolis: Urban Research and Activism in the Age of Neoliberalism	291	(20)
Ute Lehrer and Roger Keil
15 Squaring Up to Neoliberalism	311	(17)
Helga Leitner, Jamie Peck, and Eric S. Sheppard
Index	328	(9)
About the Editors	337	(1)
Contributors	338