The Politics of the Encounter: Urban Theory and Protest under Planetary Urbanization

by Andy Merrifield

The Politics of the Encounter is a spirited interrogation of the city as a site of both theoretical inquiry and global social struggle. The city, writes Andy Merrifield, remains "important, virtually and materially, for progressive politics." And yet, he notes, more than forty years have passed since Henri Lefebvre advanced the powerful ideas that still undergird much of our thinking about urbanization and urban society. Merrifield rethinks the city in light of the vast changes to our planet since 1970, when Lefebvre's seminal Urban Revolution was first published. At the same time, he expands on Lefebvre's notion of "the right to the city," which was first conceived in the wake of the 1968 student uprising in Paris.

We need to think less of cities as "entities with borders and clear demarcations between what's inside and what's outside" and emphasize instead the effects of "planetary urbanization," a concept of Lefebvre's that Merrifield makes relevant for the ways we now experience the urban. The city―from Tahrir Square to Occupy Wall Street―seems to be the critical zone in which a new social protest is unfolding, yet dissenters' aspirations are transcending the scale of the city physically and philosophically. Consequently, we must shift our perspective from "the right to the city" to "the politics of the encounter," says Merrifield. We must ask how revolutionary crowds form, where they draw their energies from, what kind of spaces they occur in―and what kind of new spaces they produce.

Genres: Geography

184 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Andy Merrifield, British author and professor.

Reviews

[Nils Jepson · Rating 4 out of 5]

love Merrifield's writing and i knew i would. also problematizes lefebvrian thinking to a pretty practical end goal: what purpose does the right to the city/centrality/urban have in an era of planetary urbanization, when the middle is swallowed up and shattered into fragments? occupy downtown? ok, well these banks have their assets everywhere...

i liked his end goal of creating circuits of revolution although i think many of his inspirations have faded (i.e. Arab Spring, Occupy). further, the practicality of his analysis is not always met with practicality of solution and i think a lot of anarchist-leaning points -- towards abstract systems of care and the fetish of the urban citizen (although he tries his best to problematize this too) -- are pretty misguided. he's right about the increasing prevalence of lumpen proletariat but i don't think this should mean abandoning socialism for a kind of spontaneous activism motivated by encounters and shared citizenship.

i think it means organizing along the second circuit of capital and thus along the spatial fixes of real estate capital and speculation; i.e. through solidarities of landlessness and tenancy. he hints at this in the final chapter, which rocks, but ignores the practicality of this type of organizing. new forms of organizing are needed as the workplace becomes dispersed and gigged but these new forms look a lot more like organizing along the social reproduction of labour then a series of goal-less rallies (which are, of course, still needed...)

lots of good literary stuff. shout out pynchon and berger -- my men. pollack-analysis was lacking and obvious.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lefebvre already recognized in the late 1960s the seeds of Trantor in our urban midst. With Asimov he's is seemingly calling for us to open out our perspective on thinking about urban life, daring us to open it out onto the largest remit possible, to grasp the totality of capitalist urbanization wholesale and whole-scale, to live with that startling immensity to make it our own. (2)