Long after “People before Highways”: Social Movements and Expert Activism in Greater Boston, 1960–2016

Abstract

The study investigates the way local social movements respond to structural transformations in city politics. Drawing from archival research, published scholarship, and 51 in-depth interviews, we characterize the mobilization of experts into social movements in Greater Boston since the 1960s as a long-term shift from “protecting places” to “providing services.” Consonant with a shift from centralized to decentralized municipal government, we show how an initially unified resistance to urban renewal morphed into two diverging and opposing movements. One focused on housing affordability and relied on market-driven tactics; the other sought to enhance the “production of nature” through grassroots community organizing. These findings support two contributions to the scholarship on expert activism by showing that: (1) social movement organizations (SMOs) respond to structural shifts epistemologically, as well as organizationally; and (2) expert activism can alter the conditions and context of knowledge production in neighborhoods and the movements that rise in their defense.