ABSTRACT
Southeast Asia is one of the most rapidly urbanising regions in the continent, but many studies of civil society dynamics miss taking into account the spatial transformation that occurs along with urbanisation. Urbanisation, with its domineering technocracy, complicates the public sphere by framing development, which involves political decision-making that is entangled with social inequalities, as an undeniable technical requirement for progress. Therefore, a critical lens is necessary to study the linkage between the city and civil society, which includes tracing political dimensions in the social production of space. How does civil society activism relate to urbanisation in Southeast Asia? What are the roles of urban spaces in the shaping of social movements in Southeast Asia? This chapter offers a look at the relationship between civil society activism and urbanisation through two dimensions in which civil society and urbanisation intertwine in Southeast Asia: urban issues as social movement agendas; and city spaces and the built environment as contexts for civil society activism. Discussions in this chapter rely on materials from more than a decade of fieldwork observations in several cities of Southeast Asia.
