UC Berkeley

This article analyzes the remarkable wave of metropolitan rebellions that inaugurated the 21st century around the world (2000-2016).  It argues that they fuel an emergent politics of city-making in which residents produce the city as a collective social and material product; in effect, a commons.  It focuses on the intersection of city-making, city-occupying, and rights-claiming that generates movements for insurgent urban citizenships.  It develops a critique of the so-called post-political in anthropological theory, analyzes recent urban uprisings in Brazil and Turkey, distinguishes between protest and insurgent movements, evaluates digital communication technologies as a new means to common the city, and suggests what urban citizenship brings to politics that the national does not.