Introduction: Theorizing the Spatiality of Protest (original) (raw)
Related papers
Spaces of Contention: spatialities and social movements
As social movements have become more complex, geographers are increasingly studying the spatial dynamics of collective resistance and sociologists and political scientists increasingly analysing the role of space, place and scale in contentious political activity. Occupying a position at the intersection of these disciplinary developments, this book brings together leading scholars to examine how social movements have employed spatial practices to respond to and shape changing social and political contexts. It is organized into three main sections: (1) Place, Space and Mobility: Sites of Mobilization and Regulation, (2) Scale and Territory: Structuring Collective Interests, Identities, and Resources, and (3) Networks: Connecting Actors and Resources across Space. It concludes by suggesting that different spatialities (place, scale, networks) interlink within one another in particular instances of collective action, playing distinctive yet complementary roles in shaping how these actions unfold in the political arena. By mapping state of the art conceptual and empirical terrain across Geography, Sociology, and Political Science, Spaces of Contention provides readers with a much needed guide to innovative research on the spatial constitution of social movements and how social movements tactically and strategically approach and produce space.
Social Movements "On the Head of A Pin"? The role of physical space in the protest process
For a long time now, the sociology of social movements has preferred to historicize the protest process rather than analyze its spatial and localized dimension. Using the example of the “rent strikes” in SONACOTRA households in the 1970s, this paper demonstrates the importance of putting collective action in the context of its physical environment. Although space must be reintroduced as a central dimension in collective action, this can only be done by examining the mechanisms used by individuals and groups in interaction with the space and the places they create, manage, or occupy. In fact, understanding how this particular game affects collective action is only possible through a localized analysis of the social strategies for creating, appropriating, and reappropriating space.
Spatial Practices: Modes of Action and Engagement with the City, 2020
Exploring the assertion that protests are an encapsulation of our right to the city, working against the culmination of measures put in place to curtail the impact of this public practice and its associated actions and agencies for participants. Expanding on observations realised at the Occupy LSX - London Stock Exchange (2011/12) protest camp as an exploratory framework, where the precarity over the role of dissent in contemporary neo-liberal societies becomes evident.
Space and place matters: A tool for the analysis of geolocated and mapped protests.
New Media & Society, 2016
Crowdmapping and geolocated protests form complex multilayered systems of communicated spaces and places that can only be partially grasped by the available literature. This article responds to these limitations by presenting a model for the analysis of the composition of space and place in networked geolocated activities. The model identifies the several forms of expression, opens four modes of analysis (representations, textures, structures, and connections), and allows the consideration of the communication devices involved, while highlighting the forms of power behind the social and cultural practices of protests and crowdmapping. The model is applied to the case of Voces25s, a protest action against the Spanish government’s austerity measures in September 2012, which relied heavily on interactive, networked maps. Furthermore, the raised sensitivity for space and place as forms of social (in)justice opens a fertile empirical research agenda in the area of the governance of communicative spaces.
Location Matters: The Rhetoric of Place in Protest
Quarterly Journal of Speech, 2011
Social movements often deploy place rhetorically in their protests. The rhetorical performance and (re)construction of places in protest can function in line with the goals of a social movement. Our essay offers a heuristic framework—place in protest—for theorizing the rhetorical force of place and its relationship to social movements. Through analysis of a variety of protest events, we demonstrate how the (re)construction of place may be considered a rhetorical tactic along with the tactics we traditionally associate with protest, such as speeches, marches, and signs. This essay has implications for the study of social movements, the rhetoricity of place, and how we study places.
The Spatiality of Control: ICT and Physical Space in Social Protest
Recent years have witnessed an increasing internationalization of claims as well as claimants with respect to social protest as a result of various notions of globalization and the spread of information and communication technologies (ICT) (Tilly and Wood, 2009). In this contribution, we will show how the rise of ICT goes along with a shift from a society of discipline to a society of control (Deleuze, 1992), or, more precisely, a superimposition of these two modes of power (cf. Savat, 2009b) and how this calls for a re-conception of space as an apparatus of control (cf. Agamben, 2001). We take a theoretically novel and critical stand by conceptually elaborating Tilly’s work on social movements (Tilly, 1999; 2003; Tilly and Wood, 2009) with DeLanda’s assemblage theory (2006) as well as taking the spatiality and technicity of social movements into consideration. We have chosen the transversality of protest assemblages as our entry point and discuss their shifting performances both with regard to their effectiveness to organize across space-time and their uses and production, of urban space. We illustrate our arguments with recent social protest events.
Large-scale protests have recently transformed urban common spaces into sites of resistance. Squares and urban places, monumentally designed as political and economic centres, have been reclaimed as places for discussion and decision-making, for increasing participation and intervention in the governance of the community. Through banners and signs, open assemblies, and other communicative practices in the encampments and interconnecting physical and virtual spaces, participants permanently reconfigure the spatial context discursively. The attempt to account for on-going social phenomena from the moment they first happen, and with an international perspective, undoubtedly represents a theoretical and methodological challenge. This volume focuses on this complex interplay between social, spatial, and communicative practices, drawing on complementary and alternative methods. Keywords: Occupy; large-scale protests; urban spaces; social movements; sites of resistance; communicative practices; desterritorialisation; reterritorialisation
2016
The recent wave of occupations highlighted how closely space and social movements are related. While this revived scholarly interest in the role of space during protests, little attention so far has been paid to the role of space in protests' long-term internal effects. Bringing together the literatures on transformative effects and space in social movements, the paper examines the role of protests' spatiality in their transformative effects, drawing on a narrow approach to space. The analysis focuses in particular on effects on collective identity building in social movements. Based on interviews and focus groups with activists in 2011, the paper examines the long-term effects of an incisive protest event of the Global Justice Movement (GJM) in Europe, the protests against the G8 summit in Genoa in 2001. The paper shows that this event's spatiality plays a crucial role in building movement identity several years later: it provides activists with interpretational devices to delineate the GJM's internal and external boundaries. The paper thus underlines that research on transformative effects can considerably profit from considering spatiality.
The Broken Voice: Field Observations on the New Spatializations of Dissent
What does it mean to dissent in a context that refuses a place for the voice? How does the physical arrangement of space determine the existence of opportunities for dissent? This presentation will reflect on how the collision of urban development with the social production of space creates conditions where the disruptive quality of dissent is challenged by the social and physical dynamics of the city. It deals with the need for spaces for the voice in places that have undergone political violence and extreme inequality, and how the very notions of normalcy and disruption are shifted in these spaces of radical heterogeneity. The reflection will also be oriented towards understanding how the production of space under these particular conditions determines the production of specific forms of dissent. In the fragmented, denied or reduced physicality of the new social and communal spaces, the relationship between the act of dissent and its performance in public spaces has become highly unbalanced. As bodily presence is diminished, clustered versions of the subjects have gained prominence: images, sounds, texts and information produced by the subject are construed as a new form of totality. Sign and action have been collapsed in the social imaginary, undermining the power of the voice, destroying the subsequent possibilities for action and for the expression of dissent. This reflection is performed under the light of artistic and non-artistic examples of dissent in the Southern Hemisphere; most prominently, the National Farmers Strike in Colombia and different practices of urban intervention and political fictions by art and activism collectives in Latin American cities.