Private Life, Public Action
How Housing Politics Mobilized Citizens in Moscow
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Temple University Press,U.S.
Published:14th Nov '25
£24.99
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Renovation, an urban renewal plan in Moscow that was announced in the spring of 2017, proposed to demolish thousands of socialist-era apartment buildings. In a country where it is rare under an authoritarian government, residents supported or opposed the redevelopment by mobilizing and organizing into local alliances. They were often shocked by their neighbors who were excited about the new housing or those suspicious of being displaced.
Private Life, Public Action traces how residents impacted by the relocation plan became activists despite having little to no experience organizing or even forming political affiliations and opinions. Author Anna Zhelnina details the ways in which neighbors engaged in collective action, as well as the individual and structural changes these interactions caused.
Zhelnina develops the concept of “housing strategies” to explain how residents’ debates with their neighbors about housing were shaped by their private life strategies. She applies her findings about housing in Moscow to ongoing questions about political mobilization, demonstrating how public engagement is shaped by historical and social contexts.
Examining the intersection of housing, politics, and citizenship in contemporary Russia, Private Life, Public Action offers a new way to look at urban change.
In the series Politics, History, and Social Change
“Anna Zhelnina’s impressive research draws on social movement theory—especially the strategic interactionist perspective—to explain struggles over urban redevelopment in Putin’s Moscow. These struggles forced ordinary people to articulate and sometimes reevaluate their strategies for improving—or escaping—their current housing and physical environments. Zhelnina demonstrates how political contention develops out of individuals’ habitual life strategies and how these habits are transformed, in turn, by contentious politics.” — Jeff Goodwin , Professor of Sociology at New York University, and author of No Other Way Out: States and Revolutionary Movements, 1945–1991
“Private Life, Public Action is a brilliant work of urban sociology, offering a finely textured microsociological lens on housing, redevelopment, and activism in authoritarian Russia. Anna Zhelnina moves beyond simplistic accounts of protest, revealing the subtle everyday practices through which citizens engage the urban public. Her careful analysis illuminates the complex logics of grassroots action, resulting in an immensely rich and original portrait of urban mobilization in today’s Russia. A vital read for scholars of cities, society, and power.” — Matthias Bernt , Leibniz-Institute for Research on Society and Space, Erkner, Germany, and author of The Commodification Gap: Gentrification and Public Policy in London, Berlin and St. Petersburg
ISBN: 9781439926147
Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 15mm
Weight: 341g
228 pages