Introduction

Extract

This special issue on the working classes and urban public space presents readers with an opportunity to view new scholarship at the intersection of urban and working-class history and to explore the spatial dimensions of class, race, and gender analysis. The authors of the essays present us with important case studies of how the working classes in Latin America, Europe, and the United States defined, contested, and occupied public spaces, urban terrain designated for common or public transportation, communication, and economic exchange uses. In doing so, they define and implement the concepts of public space and the public sphere from a range of theoretical and methodological approaches, including those of urban sociology and cultural analysis. In all of the essays, public space has both political and rhetorical dimensions. Further, the essays analyze how working-classmen and women claimed these spaces–markets, streets, public squares, and churches–for their own use and how they defended this class terrain politically through public protest and debate.