Spaces of Contention

Spatialities and Social Movements

Byron Miller, Walter Nicholls, Walter Nicholls

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317051756
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Géographie humaine

As social movements have become more complex, geographers are increasingly studying the spatial dynamics of collective resistance and sociologists and political scientists increasingly analyzing 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 organised 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.

PART I
Place and Space:
Sites of Mobilization

Chapter 1
Putting Protest in Place: Contested and
Liberated Spaces in Three Campaigns

Donatella della Porta, Maria Fabbri and Gianni Piazza

Putting protest in place: an introduction

Protest is defined in the sociology of social movements as a ‘resource of the powerless … they depend for success not upon direct utilization of power, but upon activating other groups to enter the political arena’ (Lipsky 1965: 1). A protest thereby induces indirect channels of communication in the mass-media and alliances with more influential actors. If the protest is a resource which some groups utilize during the decision-making process, it should not be viewed purely in instrumental terms. In fact, protest actions are ‘sites of contestation in which bodies, symbols, identities, practices and discourse are used to pursue or prevent changes in institutionalized power relations’ (Taylor and van Dyke 2004: 268). During the course of a protest both time and money is invested in risky activities, yet often resources of solidarity are also created or re-created. The protest in fact creates a sense of collective identity which is a condition for a collective action (Pizzorno, 1993). Many forms of protest ‘have profound effects on the group spirit of their participants’, since ‘in the end there is nothing as productive of solidarity as the experience of merging group purposes with the activities of everyday life’ (Rochon 1998: 115). For workers, strikes and occupations of factories have represented not only instruments for collective pressure but also arenas in which a sense of community is formed (Fantasia 1988) and the same has occurred with the occupation of schools and universities by students (Ortoleva 1988). Furthermore, in social movements the means used are very closely tied to the desired ends: ‘tactics represent important routines, emotionally and morally salient in these people’s lives’ (Jasper 1997: 237). If protest is shaped by the social, cultural and political structures where it develops, it also in turn affects those structures.

Space is part of the social structures that protest is influenced by and also shapes. If the analysis of space has long been a deep ‘silence’ in social movement studies (Sewell 2001), interest in the spatial dimension of protest has recently increased. In fact, it has been observed that:

Like time, space is not merely a variable or container of activism: it constitutes and structures relationships and networks (including the processes that produce gender, race and class identities); situates social and cultural life including repertoires of contention; is integral to the attribution of threats and opportunities; is implicit in many types of category formation; and is central to scale-jumping strategies that aim to alter discrepancies in power among political contestants (Martin and Miller 2003: 145).

For quite some time critical geographers have considered space as socially constructed. Following Lefebvre’s (1991) influential distinction, the relevance of three types of socially produced space for social movements has been pointed at: a) the perceived space (or special practices) refers to ‘the material spaces of everyday life where production and reproduction occurs’ (Martin and Miller 2003: 146); b) the conceived space refers to the representation of space as socially constructed through (dominant and alternative) discourses, meanings, signs; and c) the lived space, or representational space, where a) and b) interact.

In particular, reflection on social movements and protest has addressed places as ‘sites where people live, work and move, and where they form attachment, practise their relations with each other, and relate to the rest of the world’ (Leitner, Sheppard, and Sziarto 2008: 161). Places have material aspects as ‘by shaping social interaction and mobility, the materiality of space also shapes the nature and possibility of contention’ (ibid., emphasis added), but they are also imbued with meaning and power, as they are symbolically constructed, with symbolic cues that signal appropriate and inappropriate behaviours, ownership, etc. (what is in-place and what is out-of-place). In fact, a place emerges from ‘the coming together of the previously unrelated’ and is ‘open and internally multiple’ (Massey 2005: 141).

Social movements are certainly structured by the space in which they develop: ‘whether as a terrain to be occupied, an obstacle to be overcome, or as an enabler to have in mind, [space] matters in the production of collective action. Space is sometimes the site, other times the object and usually both the site and the object of contentious politics’ (Auyero 2006: 567). Protest happens in physical spaces: ‘Activists take advantage of or put up with special constraints’ (ibid.: 572). Spatial distance between potential participants thwarts mobilization, while co-presence facilitates it (Tilly 2003). The spatial imaginary (e.g. open versus closed space; public versus private space) of the activists as well as the spatial routines of daily life influence the availability to join protest as well as its forms (Sewell 2001; Wolford 2004). Following Agnew (1987), Oslender has looked at these spaces as constituted by a) location as ‘the physical geographical area and the way in which it is affected by economic and political processes’ (Oslender 2004: 961); b) locale as the ‘formal and informal settings in which everyday social interactions and relations are constituted,’ being ‘actively and routinely drawn upon by social actors in their everyday interactions and communications’ (ibid: 962); and c) sense of place as ‘the way in which human experiences and imagination appropriates the physical characteristics and qualities of geographical location’ (ibid.).

Social movements are, however, also space producers: they manipulate places, producing new ones. Social movement activities grow in fact in what Paul Routledge has called terrains of resistance, that is, ‘sites of contestation and the multiplicity of relations between hegemonic and counter-hegemonic powers and discourses, between forces and relations of domination, subjection, exploitation and resistance’ (Routledge 1996: 516). Protest itself uses and produces space. In fact:

As a site of contestation, a terrain of resistance is not just a physical place but also a physical expression (e.g. the construction of barricades and trenches), which not only reflects a movement’s tactical ingenuity, but also endows space with an amalgam of meanings – be they symbolic, spiritual, ideological, cultural or political. A terrain of resistance is thus both metaphoric and literal. It constitutes the geographical ground upon which conflict takes place and its representational space with which to understand and interpret collective action (ibid: 517).

Protest itself constitutes a sense of space, as protest is typically embedded at the local level, but also more and more often it produces global frames. At the local level, attachment to place and culture, ecological and economic practices work as sources of alternative visions and practices (Escobar 2001), but global visions might develop in action as ‘[a] sense of place is a political construction, created from concrete, contingent practices, in particular circumstances’ (Drainville 2004: 40). As emotionally intense and cognitively innovative events, protests contribute to construct this ‘sense of place’ and also change the symbolic meaning of a place. Occupying spaces, assigning new meaning to them, but also creating new spaces, the dynamics of protest evolve around a territorial contestation of space-specific cultural codes: ‘Because different social groups endow space with an amalgam of different meanings and values, particular places frequently become sites of conflict where the social structures and relations of power, domination and resistance intersect’ (Routledge 1996: 519). Direct actions constitute performative terrains, transforming places in stages, where solidarity is generated by shared intense emotions (Juris 2008). Profanation, territorial offence and repairing ceremony take place during the interaction of protesters, counter protesters and the police (Mathieu 2008). And an effect of these battles is to change the symbolic meaning of places.

In what follows, we offer a brief introduction to the three campaigns and then show how these protests around the construction of large infrastructures not only demonstrate contestation of the use of a specific territory, with the elaboration of an alternative conception of that space, but also how new spaces were created as terrains of resistance. The symbolic contestation of the conception of space interacted with the physical occupation of some sites, that not only acquired high symbolic meaning but also had a strong effect on the protest itself, allowing for the development of intense relations up to the formation of shared (territorially based) identities. If the sense of the place (the local culture) influenced the protest, the protest produced itself a definition of the place as collective identities developed in ‘liberated’ as well as ‘contested’ spaces.

A tale of three campaigns: No TAV, No Bridge, No Dal Molin

The protest campaign against the construction of a 57 km tunnel as a part of a new High Speed Rail Line (TAV – Treno Alta Velocità) in Val di Susa (on the border with France) is a long lasting mobilization. Promoted in the 1990s by ecological associations and the mayors of the valley worried about the negative impact the excavation works would cause on the environment and the health of the residents, the mobilization has grown in the valley from 2000 onwards supported by No TAV citizens’ committees – able to mobilize the local community – and other actors (squatted social centres, rank-and-file unions, farmers’ associations, social forums, etc.). The protests became cross-issue and the protest actors networked with thousands of citizens participating in several demonstrations, on camp sites and on pickets (presidi) on the contested territories. In November 2005, the violence of the police, intervening to evict the occupants on the picket at the checking site, gave a national dimension to the protests, with large media coverage of the event followed by a series of rail and road blockades by No TAV in the valley and by solidarity demonstrations throughout Italy. The acute phase of the conflict ended with the partial success of the TAV opponents, the temporary suspension of works, the removal of building sites in June 2006, and the starting of negotiations between national government representatives and local politicians. Notwithstanding the ambiguity of the Prodi centre-left government (2006-2008) – the TAV remains in the political agenda – the building sites were not reopened, while the Berlusconi centre-right government reaffirms the willingness to restart the TAV implementation policy process by the end of 2009. The mobilization effort continues.

The opposition to the project of a bridge on the Messina Straits, between Sicily and Calabria, is also a long-lasting mobilization. Originating in the mid-1990s as a counter-informative campaign of a committee formed by intellectuals, environmental associations and green-radical left parties, the protest campaign started in the early 2000s, with the mobilization of citizens’ committees, social forums, social centres, ecologists and local parties opposed to the construction of the bridge, decided on by the Berlusconi government (2001-2006). The protests against the bridge involved cross-issue actors that go beyond the theme of environmental protection, also claiming to modernize existing infrastructures according to the principles of eco-compatibility. In November 2002, No Bridge activists and organizations participated at the European Social Forum in Florence: the discourse of protesters extended itself to a transnational dimension and the battle against the bridge became inserted into the framework of a more general struggle against neo-liberal globalization. During the summers of 2002, 2003 and 2004, the No Bridge activists organized national and international ‘Camps of struggle’ on the two coasts of the Straits, with the participation of hundreds of activists from Italy and abroad. From the end of 2004, the mobilization intensified with several mass demonstrations, reaching its peak on January 22, 2006 when 20,000 people participated in the National Procession against the Bridge in Messina, including a considerable delegation of protesters from Val di Susa, as a result of a twinning between No TAV and No Bridge. In the spring of 2006, the centre-left government suspended the implementation of the project, but in 2008 the new Berlusconi government resumed the policy process and announced the beginning of works on December 23, 2009. Consequently, the No Bridge campaign also intensified with mass demonstrations on August 8, in Messina and on December 19, on the Calabrian coast.

The No Dal Molin campaign has protested the expansion, doubling or new settlement of a US military base in the area named Dal Molin, located between the city of Vicenza and a neighbouring municipality, where the military zone and civilian airport coexist. The United States foresaw the reuniting of the 173rd Airborne Brigade there, but the plan involved the occupation of the civilian zone. The possibility of urban and environmental impact on a non-military area heightened the pacifist and anti-military frame of the protest, given that the territory is already highly militarized. The campaign stands out for its different areas of mobilization that acted together as a single unit at certain moments. The first phase of the initiative took the form of an informational campaign, but on October 26, 2006, in front of a guarded town council meeting to ratify the yes vote for the base, the ‘pignatte’ (‘cooking pots’) movement was born. The mobilization grew from January 2007 onwards, after the centre-left government declared that it would not oppose the plan: citizens marched, some activists occupied the tracks of the railway station, and a large picket tent for the occupation was put up near the Dal Molin area. Calls increased for unified national initiatives, which turned into vast pacifist gatherings. In the meantime, the local effort consisted of different initiatives: torchlight processions and the collection of signatures but also assemblies, festivals and summertime camp-outs in the picket area. During the local elections of 2008 the Dal Molin issue stood out as a key theme in the election campaign. Even in ‘a community split down the middle’ the centre-left candidate’s victory marked an end to non-cooperation with the local council, by calling for and managing a consultation with the public, after a series of legal developments. However, the resulting no vote against the plan was disregarded by national institutions, and today only news about clashes between the demonstrators and police seems able to reverse the dwindling media and public opinion attention. In this context, while the mayor declares to have ‘raised the white flag’ and pronounces the need to think about trade-offs, the mobilization holds fast to its united goal of saying no to the base.

Contested spaces

The deputy police commissioner glimpsed local politicians: my councillor and I were wearing the national flag, it was not the first time that the state turned on itself, but this time it was strange because it was the deputy commissioner that gave me orders to evacuate the streets in 5 minutes. They would have passed through anyway! At this point I began to call other politicians, various other people, asking them to come and join us. We are fortunate that we know the mountains well, the paths and mule tracks. After 10 minutes the deputy commissioner returned to ask us what we had decided, and I replied that we would not move and would defend our territory. At this point the police advanced with their shields above their heads. We conducted an entirely pacific resistance, with our hands in the air; we were retreating because we could not stand such a conflict, until behind us came reinforcements from everywhere, which helped us to resist the advance. So many people arrived that the police had to stop, and despite pushing us from the side were unable to move us. This went on until late in the evening, it was a very tough confrontation, from 7 in the morning till 8 in the evening, until the deputy commissioner, in agreement with the president of the Mountain Community, suspended their activities. At that point we decided to leave, as the police themselves ...