Civil society events: Ambiguities and the exertion of cultural power

The emerging civil society. Governing through leisure activism in Milan

“…Though such instances coexist, their combination in NCS follows a specific pattern that is typical of urban events (S. Citroni, 2020) and is crucial to account for the rapid growth and political relevance of this local civil society. It is a double pattern which, on the one hand, portrays NCS events as inclusive, associated to concerns that enjoy wide consensus within the new urban middle classes (such as environmental sustainability) and translated into convivial activities that are difficult to criticise in themselves.…”

“…As will be specified in more detail in the discussion section, we are not claiming here that NCS intentionally or strategically appears as universal and open while instead being covertly partial and purposefully exclusive. This is something that to some extent inevitably occurs, but it is also accentuated because of the urban events adopted as NCS's main repertoire of action: events act as effective weapons of cultural power, as they invite participation in pursuit of general goals while at the same time allowing events' organisers to subtly control the specific meanings of the goals they are pursuing, given that the latter are necessarily specified only when the events actually take place, through apparently irrelevant details (S. Citroni, 2020). Such forms of power, in the case of NCS, do not pertain solely to its urban events, but are also a feature of the functioning of this local civil society, which can be observed in other aspects, such as the process of the proliferation of Facebook sub-pages through which NSD grows with new activities and participants.…”

“…This legacy has positioned the city on the leading edge of more recent evolutions in urban governance, with the city government widely relying on social innovation initiatives, co-creation and co-design processes such as urban living labs and other emerging governing technologies (Evans et al, 2015). Although tailored in a variety of ways and associated with different labels and narratives, all these initiatives have allegedly strived to produce a shift from a top-down to a co-production paradigm of public policy design and implementation (Coppola, 2019b) based on the active inclusion of organised, although at times informal, groups of residents (S. Citroni, 2020).…”