Global Protests and Neoliberal Cities

Issue 2
About the Issue

Issue 2 of Spark deals with the theme of the upsurge of global protests in opposition to the neoliberal organisation of politics and economics, as reflected in the Arab Spring of 2011-2012, and the austerity measures enacted by governments around the world as a recovery response to the financial crash of 2008. Nagwa El Gazzar analysed the employment of social media technology among an increasingly-politicised Egyptian youth in her paper ‘The Role of Social Media Networks in Enhancing Political Change among Adolescents in Egypt’. Aspects of this issue explored architectural aspects of cities, and their role in facilitating or hindering the protests taking place therein. Simona De Simoni and Gabriele Proglio’s paper ‘On the streets of Turin, next to the Arab Spring’, and Tereza Galatoula’s paper ‘The Indignants of Athens as a Multitude of Singularities’ were revealing in this regard. Mauro Dilullo’s article ‘Global Resistance, Communism and Global Empire’ analysed an emergent yet partially-thwarted new political Left in theoretical terms, influenced by philosophical writers Maurice Blanchot, Antonio Negri, and Giorgio Agamben. Lucinda Dean reviews the book Cities Under Siege: The New Urban Militarism, by Stephen Graham, and Margot Buchanan reviews the collection Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy, edited by Larry Diamond and Mark F. Plattner.

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