This presentation explores the impact and potential of the social economy as a site of urban struggle, political mobilisation and community organisation. It offers a critical account of the social economy and its place in urban and state restructuring and the remaking of the local in urban politics and resistive practices. Taking Belfast, in the north of Ireland, as an empirical focus, it examines the nature of post-conflict transition, the attraction of neoliberal (forms of) development and the options open to disadvantaged and divided communities. The presentation concludes by highlighting the inevitable entanglements and contradictions implicit in social economics and the scope of local alterity in the context of multiple urban crises.
Brendan Murtagh is a Reader in urban planning at the Queen’s University Belfast. He has researched and written widely on social economics, community development and urban regeneration, including a recent book on Social Economics and the Solidarity City (Routledge, 2019).
Contact
cyril.blondel@uni.luestelle.evrard@uni.lu
This guest lecture series is organised in partnership with the JSSJ Justice Spatiale / Spatial Justice Journal