Space Invaders

Radical Geographies of Protest

Paul Routledge

• Publisher: Pluto Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780745336244
• eBook ISBN: 9781786801111
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Human Geography
• Index: Social Sciences

Space Invaders argues for the importance of a radical geographic perspective in enabling us to make sense of protests and social movements around the world. Under conditions of increasing global economic inequalities, we are witnessing the flourishing of grassroots people's movements fighting for improved rights. Whether it be the alter-globalisation mobilisations of the turn of the century, the flurry of Occupy protests, or the current wave of anti-austerity mobilisations taking place, there is a geographical logic to all forms of protest whether that be through transforming landscapes, occupying enemy territory or developing solidarity and communication networks. Paul Routledge takes a primarily auto-ethnographical perspective, drawing upon his extensive experience over the past thirty years working with various forms of protest in Europe, Asia and Latin America, to provide an account of how a radical geographical imagination can inform our understanding and the prosecution of protest.

1

Radical Geographies of Protest

Spatial Strategies, Sites of Intervention and Scholar Activism

Protestors are space invaders. In the course of protests, all kinds of spaces – such as homes, corporate offices, streets and factories – are used, occupied, defended and abandoned. Particular places provide protestors with opportunities and constraints as they wage their struggles. Places can influence the character of protests as well as being transformed by them. Protestors make space, and in so doing they can imbue places with different meanings and feelings. In short, protest always has a geographical character and this has implications for the emergence, character, impact and outcomes of particular struggles.

Protests form part of a broader set of interactions, repertoires and processes that are termed ‘contentious politics’, which can include strike waves, revolutions, armed conflict, civil wars, guerrilla insurgencies and democratic processes involving political actors and governments.¹ Protests are prosecuted by a spectrum of different societal actors including individuals, groups and, of particular interest to this book, social movements – that is, organisations of varying size that share a collective identity and solidarity, are engaged in forms of conflict in opposition to an adversary (such as a government or corporation), and attempt to challenge or transform particular elements within a social system (such as governments, laws, policies, cultural codes and so on).²

Whether it be the alter-globalisation mobilisations of the turn of the century, the flurry of Occupy protests that peppered the planet a few years ago, the recent wave of anti-austerity mobilisations or ongoing protests against the construction of dams or the spread of agribusiness, there is a geographical logic to all forms of protest. Through a discussion of different case studies, I will explain how an understanding of ‘radical’ geography – an approach to geography that is motivated by concerns for social and environmental justice within a global capitalist economy – enables us to make sense of protests around the world, and provides a series of geographical strategies of use to protestors.

This book will consider two distinct yet interrelated geographical logics that are critical in overall strategic approaches to the prosecution of protest: a primary logic of spatial strategies, by which the character of protest is informed by, and shapes, the geographical contexts in which it takes place; and a secondary logic concerning key sites of intervention, physical and conceptual targets within a system that are directly related to a protest’s concerns, goals or broader strategies. Taken together, these ‘logics’ provide an innovative approach to protest that enables us to understand why such mobilisations occur where they do, and provides useful insights for students and activists wishing to make sense of the world of protest and build effective campaigns.

In this chapter I will discuss what is meant by geography, and in particular, radical geography and the contributions that it has made to social movement theory. I will also consider the practice of scholar activism, and issues of ethics and representation concerning collaborating with and writing about political struggles. Following a discussion of politics, protest and power, I will introduce six spatial strategies and nine sites of intervention that I use to interpret political protest from a radical geographical perspective.

GEOGRAPHY AND THE RADICAL IMAGINATION

Human geography is concerned with the people and places that make up the world, their similarities and differences, their connections (or lack thereof) and the processes by which our world is structured into identifiable places and peoples. Two key geographical concepts used throughout this book are place and space. Place refers to a particular geographical locale distinguished by the cultural or subjective meanings through which it is constructed and differentiated (from other locales). These meanings can change over time, and places are always connected to other locales regionally, nationally and internationally through flows of people, investment, ideas, products and so on. Space refers to the ongoing flows, forms and social relations of the world in which we find ourselves. Space is never static, but rather plural, multiple and subject to transformation.³

At root is the recognition that everything happens somewhere, and that, for geographers, this is important. For example, where we are in the world is fundamental to what we see (or do not see), what problems we face, what languages we speak and think in, what we do, what chances we have in life, who we interact with and so on. In the language of human geography, we say that human and non-human things exist in and through space: in very mundane ways, all of us live in homes that organise the world into private and public realms; we live in settlements that we name and categorise by whether they are villages, neighbourhoods, towns and cities and so on; we belong to and reside in specific territories (such as nation states) that are differentiated from others in particular ways; and we move between places and across territories due to work, leisure, migration and so forth. In other words, spaces have a material reality and a symbolic significance that are important to how we experience and engage with the world.⁴

In addition, the various processes that generate social differences and inequalities (regarding health, gender, race, class and so on) are a product of how power and resources are distributed, manipulated and struggled over, which themselves are geographical in character. Such disparities have real impacts on geographical processes such as the location and provision of schools and hospitals (and hence access to doctors and education), transport provision (and hence people’s journey times) and the location of waste. In short, geographical (or spatial) patterns produce, and are produced by, social relations and socio-economic processes.⁵

Radical geographers are not interested in merely mapping such differences within or between regions, cities and so on, but rather in investigating why and how ‘context’ enables an explanation for such differences. Such a geographical interpretation of social life enables us to begin to understand the reasons for the emergence of protest in particular places. For example, the environmental justice movement began in Warren County, North Carolina, in 1973, after the decision by the US state government to build a landfill for contaminated soil following the dumping of 31,000 gallons of polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) by the Ward Transformers Company on the side of roads in fourteen counties in the state. The location of the landfill was Shocco, a predominantly poor rural town in Warren County whose residents were predominantly African American, with neither a mayor nor a city council. Residents feared that their groundwater would be contaminated by the toxic waste and so local community leaders organised protests against the construction of the landfill. Their protests attracted the support of civil rights groups across the nation and focused national attention on the interrelated issues of class, race and lack of political representation, and how they influenced environmental policy-making.⁶

Radical geographers are also committed to challenging relations of power and oppression in order to construct more socially and environmentally just ways of being and living. This means that radical geography has a particular interest in understanding practices and processes of social conflict and change, often in the form of social movements such as trade unions, farmers’ movements and environmental justice movements. At times, it also means that radical geographers are involved in these processes and practices themselves. At root, radical geography is concerned with the where of protest and how this influences or shapes the dynamics of contentious politics.

CONTENTIOUS POLITICS, SPACE AND POWER: SOCIAL MOVEMENT THEORY AND GEOGRAPHY

Since the 1960s, the majority of social movement research that has emerged out of Europe and North America has focused on four key themes.⁷ First, there has been research into the mechanisms by which the resources necessary for collective action are mobilised. Resource mobilisation theorists⁸ have investigated the availability of organisational and personal resources, the importance of leaders as political catalysts and the role of interpersonal and inter-organisational networks in the circulation of resources and the creation of solidarities.⁹

Second, there has been interest in the relationship between structural changes and transformations in patterns of social conflict. Research on ‘new social movements’ explored how feminist and environmental movements reflected shifting concerns in society away from the production of material goods (the traditional focus of trade unions and other class-based forms of collective action) to the production of knowledge.¹⁰ This also implied the construction of new forms of social conflict that focused on issues of cultural and political identity as well as the use of new technologies in protests.¹¹

Third, there has been research into the role of cultural representations in enabling collective action. This has investigated how processes of symbolic production and identity construction have acted as key frames by which collective action is interpreted and motivated.¹² Since the 1990s, the role of emotional responses in collective action has also been examined.¹³

Fourth, ‘political process’ research has investigated the effects of the political and institutional context on social movements’ development and evolution, focusing on the degrees of openness of formal political access, the degrees of (in)stability of political alignments, political conflicts within elite groups and the availability of potential allies.¹⁴

While these different approaches to understanding social movements have often implied the importance of geography, they have rarely explicitly investigated the implications of a spatial perspective.¹⁵ Therefore, over the past 25 years, geographers have begun to address this lacuna by considering issues of place, spatial inequalities, networks and scale, and everyday spaces of activism.¹⁶

The Politics of Place

It is within particular places where everyday politics is practised and made real. This is because the processes undertaken by macro-scale institutions such as governments are translated into being in particular places. Because different social groups endow space with an amalgam of different meanings and values, particular places frequently become sites of conflict, where, for example, government policies are contested and reworked by social movements.¹⁷ This is most evident in instances where different ethnic or nationalist groups contest the same political space (for example, Israel/Palestine).

Places can have a key role in shaping the claims, character and capacities of social movements, giving rise to particular ‘terrains of resistance’.¹⁸ Social movements frequently draw upon local knowledge cultural practices and vernacular languages to articulate their grievances. Indeed, particular activisms are embodied in and through particular places. This plays a distinct role in shaping both the political claims of actors and the perception of political opportunities, or what have been termed ‘place frames’.¹⁹ For example, the Zapatista insurgency (see Chapter 5) was informed and framed by the place-specific political and cultural economy of indigenous Mayan people in the Mexican state of Chiapas. Zapatista activists wear black ski masks, not only because the mask is an important cultural symbol in Mexico, but also because ski masks act to hide activists’ identities from the state and symbolise the fact that Mayan indigenous people have been historically invisible to the ruling elites of Mexico.²⁰

Spatial proximity between activists also enables strong social and cultural ties to be established (through trust and kinship networks, for example, and through shared language and traditions), which can then...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Radical Geographies of Protest: Spatial Strategies, Sites of Intervention and Scholar Activism
• 2 Know Your Place: Barricades, Rooftops and Being Steadfast
• 3 Make Some Space: Camps, Commons and Occupations
• 4 Stay Mobile: Packs and Swarms, Flash Mobs and Hacktivism
• 5 Wage Wars of Words: Testimonies, Communiqués and Culture Jamming
• 6 Extend Your Reach: Convergences, Conferences and Caravans
• 7 Feel Out Of Place: Ethical Spectacles, Zaps and Guerrilla Performances
• 8 Space Invaders: Power, Politics and Protest
• Notes
• Index