Space And Contentious Politics

Drawing upon the work of McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly, Lefebvre, and others, we argue that analysis of political contention dynamics can benefit from attention to the spatial constitution and context of social, political, and economic processes, and the ways in which these processes are spatially experienced and contested. We contend that spatial processes are inseparable from, and constitutive of, social processes. Starting from the central geographic concepts of space, place, and scale, we discuss how a spatial perspective can produce more illuminating understandings of how people perceive, shape, and act upon grievances and opportunities. We demonstrate the utility of a spatial perspective through an examination of ways in which space is implicated in the operation of several mechanisms identified by McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly. Finally, we introduce the papers included in this special issue on space and contentious politics, discussing the ways each author finds place, space, and scale to be bound up in the dynamics of political contention.