This special issue,  with case studies from  Bogota (Colombia), Los Angeles (U.S.A.), Istanbul (Turkey) and Thessaloniki (Greece), explores theoretically the emergence of the cultural turn in contemporary social movements. This issue reveals the “possibilities” , i.e. tactics, strategies, poetics, and rhetorics that social movements and protests employ as people re-act within specific urban settings and against more or less authoritarian practices in neoliberal times.