Grassroots Mobilization & Urban Change
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In The City and the Grassroots Manuel Castells attempts to build a theory of urban change on the basis of his research into several grassroots mobilization efforts including those of San Francisco's Mission District, the gay community in San Francisco, and the squatter settlements attached to major Latin American cities. From the outset Castells defines his quest in terms of the process of urbanization as an outcome of "social struggles and social bargaining" (p. xvii). His analyses of the case studies he performs generally support his theory which, he claims, emerged from the studies rather than, in the usual process, the theory antedating the investigation of cases. Castells successfully demonstrates that spatial forms are the products of human actions and that, at the local level on which his research was based, grassroots mobilization achieves success only when it takes spatial concerns into account. There are other essential elements in the success of such movements but without mastery of the spatial aspect of organization and protest, mobilization fails. The main shortcoming of his approach is that, in his enthusiasm for grassroots movements, he often fails to recognize how easily the dominant class can and does coopt members of such movements, thereby dividing and conquering. But on the larger world-historical scale Castells is generally convincing about the restructuring of space by the dominant class and the fact that the unpleasant results of this restructuri
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s was a response to structural crisis is another matter. It may, perhaps, be said that a mode of production will be retained so long as it is maximally profitable but that once its profitability slips, beyond repair, then a new mode of production will be put in its place. But how many modes of production can there be? Castells is undoubtedly correct in assuming that the emergent information mode was a response to the declining profitability of goods production in the industrialized nations. But the information mode also developed directly from the previous dominant mode. The management of capital, for example, became more involved as international corporations dominated the world economy and the sheer volume of information required for investment increased because of the same factor. Thus it seems incorrect to call the development of the information mode a response to the structural crisis. It is, perhaps, more accurate, to call it a result of the same forces that created that crisis.
None the less, Castell's point about the difference in the modes of production still holds. The new dominance of the information mode brought about the restructuring of space for new ends. Spatial "places" have been transformed into "flows
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Latin American, None Castell's, Mission District, San Francisco, San Francisco's, Europe United, Manuel Castells, information mode, dominant class, san francisco, cultural identity, restructuring space, centers production, mode production, latin american, California Press, development information mode, structural crisis, response structural crisis, response structural, spatial demands dominant, information mode response,
Approximate Word count = 1322
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)
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