The Hostile City of Love and Antibodies of Hate: Urban Contestations of Identity and Belonging - Paperback

by Ipek Demirsu (Author)

Demirsu offers an engaging comparative analysis of antagonistic social actors co-existing in Verona, a mid-sized city in northeast Italy renowned as the fortress of the far-right. This rich multidimensional analysis explores the intersection of space, identity, and social movements, by delving into the evolution of competing actors and their contending positions on identity and belonging as manifested through urban spaces.

While the city and its touristic heritage are promoted for a transnational identitarian network, the protracted struggles of grassroots actors demonstrate democratic potentials for the bottom-up realization of inclusive and pluralist possibilities in hostile settings. The book traces the ways in which collective identity and collective action of social actors are shaped by their relationship to the space in which they operate, with ramifications for places beyond.

Author Biography

Ipek Demirsu is a research fellow at the University of Milan, Department of Social and Political Sciences. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science (Sabanci University, 2015) and a second Ph.D. in Sociology (University of Padua, 2022). Among her various publications in international journals such as the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Ethnic and Racial Studies, and Global Networks, she is also the author of the monograph Counter-terrorism and the Prospects of Human Rights: Securitizing Difference and Dissent (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).