Urban Social Movements in Jerusalem

Book excerpt: Hasson explores the development of eight urban protest organizations in Israel, revealing how social deprivation is transformed into organized patterns of activity. To investigate how and why urban movements evolve, he depicts the housing and social conditions in which members of Jerusalem's second generation found themselves. He follows their trajectories: analyzes the process of organization building and the formation of urban social movements; the conflict between charismatic, protest powers and the state; the routinization of charisma. He also traces the critical response of the state to these processes.