Blog | Protest

1. October 2024

Urban Battlegrounds: Non-Violent Resistance in Occupied Cities 

Iryna Ignatieva

This blogpost reveals how Ukrainian cities under occupation have become unexpected battlegrounds of non-violent resistance. Amidst surveillance and oppression, civilians employ ingenious tactics to defy the occupying forces, reclaiming urban spaces with symbols of hope and resilience. This exploration delves into the strategies of silent protest and civic defiance that transform everyday streets into arenas of courage and solidarity.

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16. February 2024

“Space and power from a gender and intersectional perspective” – A report on an interdisciplinary workshop

Magdalena Moreno

The workshop “Space and Power from a Gender and Intersectional Perspective” was part of the International Participatory Summer School on “Power and Space”, which took place from September 13th to […]

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10. November 2023

Exploring Power and Space: A Recap of the CRC 1265 Summer School

Francesca Ceola | Nicole Oetke | Zoé Perko

How is power reflected in space and how is it recreated? How can practices contribute to (re)defining power relations in different spaces? These questions and many more were discussed during the International Participatory Summer School on “Power and Space”. The school brought together scholars from four continents across a wide range of disciplines. Organized by a team of doctoral researchers of the CRC, the school took a participatory approach by combining participant-led workshops and presentations with keynotes and workshops led by activists, scholars, and artists. Within this framework, participants reflected on theories of power and space, as well as their own positionality. Through excursions in Berlin, the school moved beyond the academic space, enabling participants to experience physical and political spaces in the city.

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3. February 2023

Between Reclamation and Desolation: The Spatiality of Climate Activism in Lützerath and Keyenberg

Zozan Baran | Dr. Daniela Stoltenberg

After years of contention, Lützerath is completely demolished. In January 2023, police cleared the squatted village of climate activists near the open pit lignite mine Garzweiler II, with bulldozers following on their heels. These events make Lützerath the 22nd village or settlement to be resettled and demolished for mining purposes in the Garzweiler region alone, although none of the others have received comparable attention.

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25. November 2022

Aesthetics of Resistance: The Ways of Spatializing Women’s Ecological Struggle in Turkey

Özden Senem Erol

The environmental movement of Turkey has three decades of history. A culture of resistance was transferred from the first women's ecological resistance that attracted attention in the Bergama peasant movement to today's struggling women.[1] One of the areas of resistance discussed in this article is the Mount Ida (Kazdağları) Resistance, which is one of the most reported ecological struggles in the press in recent years in Turkey. [2]  Global companies came to this significant area, within the borders of Turkey's Marmara and Aegean regions, to search for gold with cyanide and destroy some regions with the state's approval. Resistance temporarily stopped the destruction and cutting of trees in the area.

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28. October 2022

Who owns Furuset? – Local spatial strategies in the face of anti-Muslim agitations

Carsten Schuerhoff

The far-right and anti-Muslim organization SIAN has repeatedly staged demonstrations as well as public Qu’ran-burnings in Norwegian cities in recent years. In August 2020, the organization held a demonstration at the Furuset center, which includes a subway station, a shopping center, a branch of the city library and the district administration. Furuset is part of and the central place in Alna municipal district in Oslo. In this area the population is shaped by migration, religious diversity, and socio-economic challenges. This blog post discusses how local people reacted to the demonstration and how, in the process, local identities and spaces were intersectionally negotiated, defended, and created.

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14. October 2022

Legibility, contradictions and situated intersections in counterpublic spaces of Berlin

Dr. Christy Kulz | Dr. Martin Fuller

This blogpost explores how counterpublic spaces act as intrinsically intersectional spaces shaped by power, history and emotion. In his celebrated 2019 book Afropean: Notes from Black Europe, Johny Pitts sets off by train from Sheffield on a five-month journey across continental Europe. Pitts’ mission seeks to explore the everyday life of black European experiences, beyond the “standoffish academic vernacular” (2019: 5) and to look for instances of “reverse colonialism” that highlight the long-term social and cultural presence and influence of blackness on European culture.

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5. March 2021

Cities in the making: urban politics, agroecology, and peripheral urbanization

Nicolas Goez

Izidora, a so-called “informal” settlement in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, is a laboratory of urban politics and sustainable urbanization technologies. As a self-constructed neighbourhood, it is marked by inequalities as well as conflicts with the municipal authorities. In this text, I portray the politics of Izidora’s dwellers, as they appropriate different agroecological practices, enmesh them in their struggle for housing and citizenship, and pursue an emancipatory logic of urban planning. Activist coalitions with intersectional agendas and political articulations of alternative forms of urban agriculture in Belo Horizonte’s peripheries have led to the creation of Izidora, as well as an array of new urban imaginaries. This text is about Izidora and the politics of a city in the making.

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