Call for Papers: Geographies of activism and protest

Protest: Analysing Current Trends, 2014

The politics of the twenty-first century is marked by dissent, tumult and calls for radical change, whether through food riots, anti-war protests, anti-government tirades, anti-blasphemy marches, anti-austerity demonstrations, anti-authoritarian movements and anti-capitalist occupations. Interestingly, contemporary political protests are borne of both the Right and Left and are staged in both the Global North and South. Globally, different instances of protest have drawn attention to the deep fissures which challenge the idea of globalisation as a force for peace. Given the diversity of these protests, it is necessary to examine the particular nature of grievances, the sort of change which is sought and the extent to which localised protest can have global implications. The contributions in this book draw on the theoretical work of Hardt and Negri, David Graeber and Judith Butler, among others, in order explore the nature of hegemony, the Occupy movement, the Arab Spring, the responses of authorities to protest and emotion and public performance in, and representation of, protest. The book concludes with David Graeber’s reply to reviews of his recent The Democracy Project: A History, A Crisis, A Movement.

https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/european-government-politics-and-policy/street-citizens-protest-politics-and-social-movement-activism-age-globalization What is protest politics and social movement activism today? What are their main features? To what extent can street citizens be seen as a force driving social and political change? Through analyses of original survey data on activists themselves, Marco Giugni and Maria Grasso explain the character of contemporary protest politics that we see today; the diverse motivations, social characteristics, values and networks that draw activists to engage politically to tackle the pressing social problems of our time. The study analyzes left-wing protest culture as well as the characteristics of protest politics, from the motivations of street citizens to how they become engaged in demonstrations to the causes they defend and the issues they promote, from their mobilizing structures to their political attitudes and values, as well as other key aspects such as their sense of identity within social movements, their perceived effectiveness, and the role of emotions for protest participation. Advance praise: 'Using a rich database, which covers protesters marching on different issues, in several years, in various countries, Marco Giugni and Maria Grasso illuminate the paths of (contentious) participation by Europeans, the social bases for the protest, the interaction between protest and institutional politics, the micro-dynamics of mobilization, the emotional dimension of protests and demonstrators’ motivations.' Donatella della Porta, Director of the Center on Social Movement Studies (Cosmos) and Dean of the Institute for Humanities, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa Advance praise: 'In this unprecedented book, Giugni and Grasso give us the most comprehensive, comparative study of protest participation produced to date. Drawing on surveys from some 15,000 individuals involved in seventy-two protests in seven countries, the authors paint a rich portrait of the similarities and differences in the characteristics and motivations of those who protest in different movements and in varying national contexts. A must read for all social movement scholars.' Doug McAdam, co-author of Deeply Divided: Racial Politics and Social Movements in Postwar America

Social Movement Studies, 2020

Comparative research has been rare in social movement studies and scholars who embark on this path are confronted with several analytical and methodological challenges. This paper offers an avenue for developing comparative analytics using 'local spaces of protest' as path for comparison. We first situate this concept vis-à-vis other models available (field, space, arena, networks). We then define the three dimensions of 'spaces of protest': specific aim prompting collective action; particular distribution of political actions along different poles (electoral, protest, concerted and participation) and specific scales of protest (local, societal or/and global/glocal). By invoking critical geography to enhance the definition of place and scales of actions, we propose a systematic setup for comparison. The last part of the paper shows how this notion allows for the comparison of local social forums (gatherings of activists fighting against neoliberal globalization) in two societies, France and Québec. The data presented have been gathered during extensive fieldwork and semi-structured interviews conducted between 2010 and 2011.

Contention. The Multidisciplinary Journal of Social Protest, 2020

Introduction to Special Section: The Spatiality of Protest in Contention: The Multisdisciplinary Journal of Social Protest.

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

Capital & Class, 2006

Geography Compass, 2007

This article aims to provide a review of how geographical concepts can help us better understand the development and effects of social movements. Geographers have been rather slow to analyze the specific processes and mechanisms that make it possible for people to cooperate and engage in sustained political struggles with rich and powerful adversaries. Not only has this inattention to social movements deprived the discipline of robust conceptual tools for analyzing contentious politics, it has also limited the discipline's abilities to contend with broader theoretical issues concerning collective action and agency in the political arena. Recent research into social movements has begun to fill this void. The article maintains that the most fruitful strategy for conceptualizing the geographical underpinnings of social movements would be to examine how issues of space, scale, and place affect the processes already identified in the established sociological and political science literature on social movements.

2020

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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.

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.