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Breaking Laws: Violence and Civil Disobedience in Protest
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This book questions the complex relationship between social movements and violence through two contrasted lenses, first through the short-lived radical left wing post '69 revolutionary violence and secondly in the present diffusion of civil disobedience actions, often at the border between non-violence and violence. This book shows how and why violence occurs or does not, and what different meanings it can take. The short-lived extreme left revolutionary groups that grew out of May '68 and the opposition to the Vietnam War (such as the German Red Army Faction, the Italian Red Brigades, and the Japanese Red Army) are without any doubt on the violent side. More ambiguous are the burgeoning contemporary forms of "civil" disobedience, breaking the law with the aim of changing it. In theory, these efforts are associated with nonviolence and self-restraint. In practice, the line is more difficult to trace, as much depends on how political players define and frame political violence and political legitimacy.
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... As a consequence a continuous self-organization is necessary for organizing protest as a movement does not operate on a defined and persistent membership. While temporality and fluidity characterizes the self-organization of a social movement, occupations as a form of protest, including civil disobedience (Geis, 2021;Ollitrault & Hayes, 2019;Roithner, 2016), may counteract these characteristics: In case of longterm occupations, a self-organization of everyday life and political activism is necessary. Moreover, while mostly protest has been perceived as a legitimate expression of the will of the citizens, civil disobedience challenges the state through its illegitimacy and its deliberate act of breaking the law (Roithner, 2016). ...
... Social movement theory addresses self-organizations in many ways: Mostly from the perspective of resource mobilization scholars examined the role of material and non-material resources for organizing protest and their repertoire to protest (Della Porta & Diani, 1999;McCarthy & Zald, 1977). Occupations are a particular repertoire to protest as they manifest themselves as a form of civil disobedience (Geis, 2021;Ollitrault & Hayes, 2019). Occupations can be temporary or permanent; they can be spontaneous or planned. ...
Bangladesh has a strong tradition of self-help during natural disasters, a remarkable amount of social movement activism, and a large number of non-governmental organisations supporting people in micro-credit schemes. In this article, we shed light on the hitherto neglected field of self-organisation initiatives among the indigenous population in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) region of Bangladesh. We critically evaluate organisational types initiated and formed by community members themselves and analyse one particular form, the samaj organisation among the Tanchangya. Based on an analysis of samaj’s defining characteristics and features, and its significance for self-regulation in indigenous communities, we compare our findings with writings on samajes of Bengali Muslims and Hindus. In our case, the local Buddhist temple and social events are major arenas where the duties and responsibilities associated with samaj membership become apparent. Rather than constituting the ‘traditional’ counterpart to ‘modern’ institutions, samaj continues to represent a specific and informal mode of community-formation which continues to take over important social, ritual, and political functions within the contemporary society shaped by nationalist state-formation. We conclude by arguing that samaj among the Tanchangya is constituted by reciprocative and redistributive practices which strengthen a collective sense of belonging.
... Here, breaking the law is justified by these claims to historical legitimacy, by the proven results that arrest can bring, and by the intolerable urgency of the situation. This intolerable urgency stands in contrast to the slow, openended, and provisional character of what could be called "democratic time": because this is an emergency, citizens do not have time to wait for the established processes of negotiation and interest mediation and are therefore justified in disrupting representative democratic process (see Humphrey 2006;Sommier, Hayes, and Ollitrault 2019). ...
This article discusses the contrasting “temporal regimes” of Extinction Rebellion and the concept of a feminist green new deal. The authors discuss the former’s emphasis on emergency to stimulate disobedient action, particularly out of concern for one’s future children and grandchildren. They argue that, while this emphasis has successfully catalyzed public agency, this agency remains socially narrow, as emergency thinking subordinates the political time central to inclusive movement building, while the personalization of intergenerational concern risks reproducing privilege and asset protection. As a result, actually existing material and symbolic inequalities are characteristically decentered. The authors contrast this with the times-capes of calls for a feminist green new deal, which eschew both crisis narratives and reprocentric futurism. In troubled times, they conclude, it is more productive to reconsider not just when but how to address the demands of climate breakdown.
... Au fil des semaines, les deux mouvements ont eu en commun de s'ancrer dans le quotidien, grâce à l'occupation de « lieux totem » où ils savent pouvoir se retrouver (Deschézelles, Olive, 2019). En décidant de manifester sans se déclarer -à l'instar des cortèges de tête -(Chevrier, 2020), de s'installer sur les places ou les ronds-points, d'occuper des péages, des maisons du peuple ou d'autres bâtiments pour installer leurs « QG », en construisant des cabanes et des tentes de fortune pour se protéger du froid et organiser un quotidien s'installant dans la durée -faire à manger, dispenser des soins, préparer des tracts, etc.-, les deux mouvements questionnent les frontières entre répertoire d'action légal et désobéissance civile (Sommier, Hayes, et Ollitrault, 2019). Dans les deux cas, les installations de fortune et les occupations sont régulièrement détruites par les forces de l'ordre, puisparfois -reconstruites ailleurs. ...
... Of course, some XR activists continue to work in this way; but moving beyond this model is challenging. One reason for this is that breaking the law, being arrested, charged, and prosecuted, are stressful, time-consuming, and sometimes expensive activities which can have serious consequences for the personal and professional lives of those involved (Sommier, Hayes and Ollitrault 2019), even where the penalties ultimately imposed by the courts are relatively minor (as has typically been the case for XR activists, at least so far). As this statement made in court by a sixty year old former midwife makes clear, for many who were arrested during the XR protests, taking this kind of action was a major step: ...
Compiled by academics at three UK universities, this report presents a profile of participants in Extinction Rebellion’s (XR) mass civil disobedience actions in London in April and October 2019.
The report is compiled from three datasets: a protest survey of participants in each of these two XR actions, with 303 short face to face interviews and 232 mailed back questionnaires in total; observational analysis of court hearings of XR activists charged with minor public order offences following the April 2019 action, totalling a further 213 activists; and data from a previous survey of participants in two climate change marches 2009/10, which we use as a benchmark for interpreting our XR survey.
The project of European integration has undergone a succession of shocks, beginning with the Eurozone crisis, followed by reactions to the sudden growth of irregular migration, and, most recently, the coronavirus pandemic. These shocks have politicised questions related to the governance of borders and markets that for decades had been beyond the realm of contestation. For some time, these questions have been spilling over into domestic and European electoral politics, with the rise of “populist” and Eurosceptic parties. Increasingly, however, the crises have begun to reshape the liberal narratives that have been central to the European project. This book charts the rise of contestation over the meaning of “Europe”, particularly in light of the coronavirus crisis and Brexit. Drawing together cutting edge, interdisciplinary scholarship from across the continent, it questions not merely the traditional conflict between European and nationalist politics, but the impact of contestation on the assumed “cosmopolitan” values of Europe.
This chapter discusses ongoing debates over tactical choice and change, from Tilly's action repertoires model and protest event analysis to more recent actor‐centred approaches stressing the importance of identity and taste. It argues that while contentious politics approaches capture the macro‐level of analysis well, it is at the cost of a persuasive reading of micro‐level agency, prioritizing form over purpose and meaning‐making. The argument is illustrated with discussion of various actions, including a climate justice demonstration at the Paris COP21 Conference, cacerolazo protests in Latin America, and the symbolism of boycotts. It underlines the importance of spatial analysis, and the effects of temporal framing on our understanding of tactical development. The chapter concludes by discussing recent work on strategic fields, strategic adaptation, and strategic interaction, and emphasizes the importance of analysis of reflexive learning processes within movements.
First published in 1974, this collection of classic case studies in the ethnography of speaking had a formative influence on the field. No other volume has so successfully provided a broad, cross-cultural survey of the use, role and function of language and speech in social life. The essays deal with traditional societies in Native North, Middle, and South America, Africa, and Oceania, as well as English, French, and Yiddish speaking communities in Europe and North America and Afro-American communities in North America and the Caribbean. Now reissued, the collection includes a key introduction by the editors that traces the subsequent development of the ethnography of speaking and indicates directions for future research. The theoretical and methodological concepts and perspectives that illuminated the first edition are recognized anon and valued by many disciplines beyond that of linguistic anthropology. Scholars and students whose backgrounds may be in literature, speech communication, performance studies or ethnomusicology will equally welcome this edition.