The idea for this book arose out of a session organized by Dr Johannes Novy, Prof. Susan Fainstein and Dr Claire Colomb at the annual conference of the Research Committee 21 (RC21) on the Sociology of Urban and Regional Development of the International Sociological Association in Berlin in August 2013. The success of the session, which attracted many paper proposals, inspired the two editors to invite contributions from a wider range of scholars through a call for proposals launched in early 2014, with a view to prepare an edited volume on the subject of protest and resistance in the tourist city.
We would like to acknowledge the financial support received from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG – German Research Foundation) which, through a small grant, funded the organization of a thematic symposium on ‘Protest and Resistance in the Tourist City’ in Berlin in November 2014. The event comprised a public symposium and an internal workshop which allowed us to bring together most of the authors who contributed to the book and discuss the themes developed in this volume. Other institutions were instrumental in supporting the symposium. In particular, we wish to thank the Center for Metropolitan Studies (CMS) at the Technische Universität Berlin for hosting the event. Logistical support also came from the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg (BTU), while the socio-cultural centre ‘Regenbogenfabrik’ in Berlin-Kreuzberg and the newspaper die tageszeitung (taz) acted as partners in the organization of two public cultural events on urban tourism in Berlin and Barcelona aimed at a more general audience. The help and contributions of several individuals also needs to be acknowledged: Eyke Vonderau, Katharina Knaus, and Bryn Veditz (all CMS), Gudrun Dahlick, Judith Jahn and Christian Kehrt (all BTU), Christine Ziegler (Regenbogenfabrik Berlin), Edith Kresta (taz), Martin Düspohl (Kreuzberg Museum), Julian Schwarze (Bündnis 90/Grüne Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg), Monika Hermann (District Mayor of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg), Eduardo Chibás (documentary film-maker, Barcelona), Nana A. T. Rebhan (documentary film-maker, Berlin), Martin Selby (Coventry University) and Fabian Frenzel (University of Leicester) all deserve our gratitude for their contributions to the Berlin symposium which laid the ground for this book.
Much appreciation also goes to several valued colleagues and friends with whom we have discussed the themes addressed in this book informally on various occasions, and who have provided us with helpful insights and ideas, in particular: Prof. Susan Fainstein (New York), Sandra Huning (Berlin/Dortmund), Reme Gomez and Albert Arias-Sans (Barcelona).
We would like to thank Emma Travis (Commissioning Editor for the Contemporary Geographies of Leisure, Tourism and Mobility series) and Philippa Mullins (Editorial Assistant for Tourism) for their patience and encouragement in the development of this book.
Our thanks, too, to the various individuals who have allowed us to reproduce their photographs of protests and urban landscapes around the world for this book.
Last but not least we wish to thank the contributors of the book for the work they have put in their chapters, their cooperation and their good-natured responses to our many detailed requests for revisions.