ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines how the characteristics of place and space influence the abilities of insurgents to mount collective challenges to their political opponents. It illustrates how political actors nourish solidarities, deepen bonds, and forge collective identities with recruits in their various places of socialization, all through socially regulated practices of mobility, assembly, and interaction. The book addresses the paradox of free speech in liberal democracies and how regulatory practices in the latter have, in effect, rendered politically dissident speech ineffectual. It aslo examines social movements explicitly aiming at a sense of belonging or a new sense of 'home', in particular the movement fighting against 'total institutions' for people with psychiatric and intellectual disabilities and the parallel story of the gay and lesbian movement. The book provides an analysis of how space plays a constituting role in social movement mobilization.
