Community and urban movements

Empirically and theoretically, this paper considers the link between the urban community, as a social base, and the emergence of urban movements. It examines whether different urban communities lead to different urban movements, specifically whether cohesive communities lead to powerful movements. Using an Australian case study, the first part of the paper tests this relationship empirically. The findings given raise doubts about whether cohesiveness is a necessary pre-condition for widespread mobilisation, as well as questioning the theoretical validity of ‘urban community’and ‘community’as sociological concepts. There is an apparent need to discard these concepts when referring to contemporary Western societies and a concomitant need to develop concepts which more appropriately identify the social organisation of urban households and residential areas. The second part of the paper discusses these theoretical issues. It presents an argument on the way household and residential organisations change as the city changes and how they differ if urbanisation differs between regions and between nations. This argument provides a more appropriate framework for examining the nature of the relationship between social bases and urban movements and it contributes a more useful explanation for the case study.