The Methodology for Studying Urban Conflicts: Levels of Scaling

Abstract

The paper focuses on the methodology of multilevel analysis of urban conflicts. The proposed approach is an alternative to the macro view of urban change through the lens of neoliberal theories that dominates the field of urban studies. Based on the methodology of strategic interactionism, we posit that mobilization for the transformation of the urban environment is primarily related to participants’ perspectives and goals, as well as their interactions with each other in “arenas” (physically and institutionally limited locations) that are embedded within temporal frames (“events”) that highlight sets of interactions from the mundane routine actions. Arenas and events provide a conceptual framework for exploring the microfoundations of urban conflict. The advantage of microfoundations is that they are directly observable and can be documented in a variety of ways available to the researcher. But we also posit that perspectives, goals, and interactions are embedded in broader spatial and temporal structures — "fields" and "episodes" of conflicts. Conflict interactions themselves are unique in terms of specific arenas and events, but more broadly they add up to regularities that can be described analytically, opening up opportunities for comparison and generalization. Our methodology thus makes it possible to link directly observable microfoundations with an analytically characterized mesolevel: despite the fact that “fields” and “episodes” are the result of analytical abstraction and do not exist “physically”, their identification helps to better understand the strategic nature of the interactions and associate a set of goals and actions in a sequence with an identifiable outcome. It also helps to link the “intermediate outcomes'' of interactions in certain arenas to the outcome of the conflict. Simultaneous attention to the micro- and meso-levels of urban conflicts makes it possible to identify their structural (imbalance of resources, socio-political and economic hierarchies) and agent-based (goal-setting, strategic dilemmas, innovations, emotions) foundations. Using examples from our own research, we demonstrate how the presented conceptual apparatus can be translated into the specific instruments, methods, and analytical procedures.

Acknowledgements. The research is supported by the Russian Science Foundation grant (RSF № 18-78-10054-P) “Mechanisms of interests coordination in the urban development processes”.