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. 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).

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.

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.

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.

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...