Protest Camps in International Context

"Since the proliferation of peace camps inspired by Greenham Common in the 1980s, the occupation of sites of political contestation has become a globally significant form of protest. This collection offers exciting and perceptive analyses of long-term site-specific political interventions around the world, and is a must-read for all those interested in social movements and contemporary politics." Sasha Roseneil, University of Essex

Dr Gavin Brown is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Leicester. He is a social and cultural geographer with an interest in individual and collective identities in relation to processes of social change. The main focus of his current work is a Leverhulme Trust funded project recording the historical geographies of British anti-apartheid activism in the 1980s. This project examines the transformative power of standing in solidarity with distant others. He has an international reputation for his work on the geographies of sexuality and his recent work has theorized the sexual politics of austerity.

Introduction: Past tents, present tents: On the importance of studying protest camps ~ Gavin Brown, Anna Feigenbaum, Fabian Frenzel and Patrick McCurdy;

Part 1: Assembling and Materializing;

Section Introduction: Assembling & materializing ~ Patrick McCurdy, Anna Feigenbaum, Fabian Frenzel, and Gavin Brown;

Textile geographies, plasticity as protest ~ Anders Rubing;

Emergent infrastructures: Solidarity, spontaneity and encounter at Istanbul’s Gezi Park uprising ~ Özge Yaka and Serhat Karakayali;

Protest spaces online and offline: The Indignant Movement in Syntagma Square ~ Anastasia Kavada and Orsalia Dimitriou;

Feeds from the square: Live streaming, live tweeting and the self-representation of protest camps ~ Paulo Gerbaudo;

Touching a nerve: A discussion on Hong Kong's umbrella movement ~ Wang Jieying (Klavier), Hope Reidun St. John, and Wong Miu Yin (Eliz);

Part 2: Occupying and Colonizing;

Section Introduction: Occupying and colonizing ~ Gavin Brown, Fabian Frenzel, Patrick McCurdy and Anna Feigenbaum;

Carry on camping? The British Camp for Climate Action as a political refrain ~ Bertie Russell, Raph Schlembach and Ben Lear;

Losing space in Occupy London: Fetishising the protest camp ~ Sam Halvorsen;

Occupation, decolonization, and reciprocal violence, or history responds to Occupy’s anti-colonial critics ~ A K Thompson;

Reoccupation and resurgence: Indigenous protest camps in Canada ~ Adam J. Barker and Russell Ross;

Democratic deficit in the Israeli tent protests: Chronicle of a failed intervention ~ Uri Gordon;

Euromaidan and the echoes of the Orange Revolution: Comparing social infrastructures and resistance practices of protest camps in Kiev (Ukraine) ~ Maryna Shevtsova;

Civil/political society, protest and fasting: The case of Anna Hazare and the 2011 anti-corruption campaign in India ~ Andrew Davies;

Part 3: Reproducing and Re-creating;

Section Introduction: Reproducing and re-creating ~ Fabian Frenzel, Anna Feigenbaum, Patrick McCurdy and Gavin Brown;

From ‘refugee population’ to political community: The Mustapha Mahmoud refugee protest camp ~ Elisa Pascucci;

The Marconi Occupation in São Paulo, Brazil: A social laboratory of common life ~ Marcella Arruda;

From protest camp to tent city: The ‘Free Cuvry’ Camp in Berlin-Kreuzberg ~ Niko Rollmann and Fabian Frenzel;

Security is no accident: Considering safe(r) spaces in the transnational Migrant Solidarity camps of Calais ~ Claire English;

Political education in protest camps: Spatializing dissensus and reconfiguring places of youth activist ritual in Mexico City ~ Nicholas Jon Crane;

Part 4: Conclusion;

Future tents: Protest camps and social movement organisation ~ Fabian Frenzel, Gavin Brown, Anna Feigenbaum and Patrick McCurdy.