Urban Landscapes, Gentrification, and Social Movements in Sweden
Kimberly A. CreasapIn the three largest cities in Sweden, social movement “scenes”—networks of social movement actors and the places they inhabit—challenge threats such as gentrification. The geography of the built environment influences their ability to lay claim to urban space and to local political processes. In Making a Scene, Kimberly Creasap emphasizes that it is the centrality, concentration, and visibility of these scenes that make them most effective. Whereas some scenes become embedded as part of everyday life—as in Malmö —in contrast, scenes in Göteborg and Stockholm often fail to become part of the fabric of urban neighborhoods.
Creasap investigates key spaces for scenes, from abandoned industrial areas and punk clubs to street festivals, bookstores, and social centers, to show how activists create sites and develop structures of resistance that are anti-capitalist, anti-fascist, anti-gentrification, queer, and feminist. She also charts the relationship between scenes and city spaces to show these autonomous social movements create their own cultural landscapes. Making a Scene encourages critical thinking about spatiality and place in the sociology of social movements and the role of social movements as important actors in urban development.
"Creasap offers the reader ethnographic glimpses and comparisons of the local social movement scenes in Sweden’s three major cities of Stockholm, Göteborg, and Malmö.... (Her) main argument serves as an important contribution to the scholarship on social movement scenes. This book also presents an important call for thinking more critically about spatiality in the sociology of social movements more generally."
—Social Forces
"Creasap's comparative analysis of autonomous movements across these three different urban spaces provides a nuanced contribution not just to social movement studies but to urban social science, as well.... Making a Scene provides important insights that will be invaluable for social movement scholars, political sociologists, and urban social scientists studying gentrification and neighborhood change."
—Mobilization
"This book contributes to the understanding of autonomist and anarchist movements in Sweden’s three major cities.... Creasap’s concise and clear writing style helps readers follow the storyline and makes the sociological picture of the activist scenes more palatable for a wider, non-academic audience. The book also enriches the literature by analysing urban activism and radical politics in Sweden at a very specific historical period.... (I)t represents a well-crafted research effort and offers important insights to consider when addressing theoretical questions at the intersection of urban sociology, urban movements, and far-left radical politics in the somewhat unique Swedish context."
—Acta Sociologica
"This slim sociological study provides welcome data on gentrification and oppositional social movements outside the US, while also providing a counterpoint to generalized readings of the overall success of the Swedish welfare state.... Summing Up: Recommended."
—Choice
"One of the strengths of Creasap’s book is how she manages to integrate such a structural perspective with an emphasis on collective agency.... Empirically, Creasap’s work is impressive.... The fact that this is the first systematic comparison of autonomous urban activism in three Swedish cities also contributes to making her empirical contribution substantial.... Creasap’s book is a valuable study of a particular period of Swedish urban activism in the 2000s."—The American Journal of Sociology
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