9781800089815
9781800089808
A global, comparative history of tenants’ movements.
Since the late nineteenth century, tenants across various historical and geographic contexts have engaged in collective action, including rent strikes, to improve their standard of living. Rent Strikes brings together an international cohort of researchers to identify common patterns and global trajectories in this rich history, spanning from the early twentieth century to the COVID-19 pandemic. Encompassing various continents and periods, it explores tenants’ struggles on both the local and national levels in North and Latin America, Northern and Southern Europe, and Oceania. Not only does this volume expand the scope of previous studies to consider the role of ethnicity, nationality, and gender in tenant mobilization, but it also aims to engage a wider audience beyond academia, including activists, policymakers, and the general public interested in housing.
Since the late nineteenth century, tenants across various historical and geographic contexts have engaged in collective action, including rent strikes, to improve their standard of living. Rent Strikes brings together an international cohort of researchers to identify common patterns and global trajectories in this rich history, spanning from the early twentieth century to the COVID-19 pandemic. Encompassing various continents and periods, it explores tenants’ struggles on both the local and national levels in North and Latin America, Northern and Southern Europe, and Oceania. Not only does this volume expand the scope of previous studies to consider the role of ethnicity, nationality, and gender in tenant mobilization, but it also aims to engage a wider audience beyond academia, including activists, policymakers, and the general public interested in housing.
Table of Contents
List of contributors
1 Rent contention throughout history and across borders
Lucas Poy and Hannes Rolf
2 Rent strikes, tenant organising and the cultural politics of inflation in the post-World War I United States
Mark W. Robbins
3 Shop strike! Rent control, moral economy and tenants’ mobilisation in Athens, 1914-1936
Nikos Potamianos
4 Women’s activism, trade union hesitancy and state repression in the 1907 tenant strike in Buenos Aires
Lucas Poy and Alejandro Belkin
5 The left, the labour movement and Afro-Caribbean migrants in the Panama tenant strikes of 1925 and 1932 Jacob A. Zumoff
6 The Swedish rent model: collective bargaining and the institutionalisation of rent struggle in post-war Sweden
Hannes Rolf
7 ‘Autogestion des luttes’: immigrant rent strikes in France, 1975–1980
Nathan Crompton
8 The Leiden rent strikes of the 1970s: national politics, Middletown Maoism and the rise of the Socialist Party in the Netherlands
Bart van der Steen
9 West Berlin’s tenant movement and the crisis of the Fordist city in the 1970s
Lisa Vollmer
10 Women’s experiences of fight for housing in Harlem and Magliana through autobiographical narratives
Giulia Novaro and Eugenia Crosetti
11 ‘Watch out sharks!’ Mobilisations against the rental market in the favelas of Belo Horizonte (Brazil) in the early 1960s
Samuel Oliveira and Philippe Urvoy
12 A century of renter activism in Aotearoa New Zealand
Elinor Chisholm
13 Lockdown tenants: household resistance against rentier capital during the 2020 rent strike in Spain
Marta Ill-Raga and Jordi Bonshoms-Guzman
14 Conclusion
Lucas Poy and Hannes Rolf
1 Rent contention throughout history and across borders
Lucas Poy and Hannes Rolf
2 Rent strikes, tenant organising and the cultural politics of inflation in the post-World War I United States
Mark W. Robbins
3 Shop strike! Rent control, moral economy and tenants’ mobilisation in Athens, 1914-1936
Nikos Potamianos
4 Women’s activism, trade union hesitancy and state repression in the 1907 tenant strike in Buenos Aires
Lucas Poy and Alejandro Belkin
5 The left, the labour movement and Afro-Caribbean migrants in the Panama tenant strikes of 1925 and 1932 Jacob A. Zumoff
6 The Swedish rent model: collective bargaining and the institutionalisation of rent struggle in post-war Sweden
Hannes Rolf
7 ‘Autogestion des luttes’: immigrant rent strikes in France, 1975–1980
Nathan Crompton
8 The Leiden rent strikes of the 1970s: national politics, Middletown Maoism and the rise of the Socialist Party in the Netherlands
Bart van der Steen
9 West Berlin’s tenant movement and the crisis of the Fordist city in the 1970s
Lisa Vollmer
10 Women’s experiences of fight for housing in Harlem and Magliana through autobiographical narratives
Giulia Novaro and Eugenia Crosetti
11 ‘Watch out sharks!’ Mobilisations against the rental market in the favelas of Belo Horizonte (Brazil) in the early 1960s
Samuel Oliveira and Philippe Urvoy
12 A century of renter activism in Aotearoa New Zealand
Elinor Chisholm
13 Lockdown tenants: household resistance against rentier capital during the 2020 rent strike in Spain
Marta Ill-Raga and Jordi Bonshoms-Guzman
14 Conclusion
Lucas Poy and Hannes Rolf