Globalization and the policing of protest: the case of APEC 1997

The policing of protest at international events conflicts with the political and policing culture of the host nation. Previous research shows a trend toward softer, more tolerant styles of policing protest within various Western democracies. We present a case study of an exception: the repression of protest at an international event in which one Western democracy hosted rulers of less democratic regimes in a ritual celebration of economic globalization. We explore reasons why, in the face of protests about undemocratic regimes elsewhere, the Canadian government and police were willing to use blatantly undemocratic tactics popularly believed to be more characteristic of those other regimes. Implications are discussed concerning protest policing, economic globalization, the nation-state and social movements.     

Securitizing America: Strategic Incapacitation and the Policing of Protest Since the 11 September 2001 Terrorist Attacks

During the 1970s, the predominant strategy of protest policing shifted from ‘escalated force’ and repression of protesters to one of ‘negotiated management’ and mutual cooperation with protesters. Following the failures of negotiated management at the 1999 World Trade Organization demonstrations in Seattle, law enforcement quickly developed a new social control strategy, referred to here as ‘strategic incapacitation’. The US police response to the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks quickened the pace of police adoption of this new strategy, which emphasizes the goals of ‘securitizing society’ and isolating or neutralizing the sources of potential disruption. These goals are accomplished through (1) the use of surveillance and information sharing as a way to assess and monitor risks, (2) the use of pre‐emptive arrests and less‐lethal weapons to selectively disrupt or incapacitate protesters that engage in disruptive protest tactics or might do so, and (3) the extensive control of space in order to isolate and contain disruptive protesters actual or potential. In a comparative fashion, this paper examines the shifts in United States policing strategies over the last 50 years and uses illustrative cases from national conventions, the global justice movement and the anti‐war movement to show how strategic incapacitation has become a leading social control strategy used in the policing of protests since 9/11. It concludes by identifying promising questions for future research.     

Unpacking the effects of repression: the evolution of Islamist repertoires of contention in Egypt after the fall of President Morsi

The military coup against president Morsi in July 2013 sparked the largest wave of Islamist mobilization in Egypt’s modern history. As the ousted president’s supporters took to the street in what became known as the ‘anti-coup’ movement, they were met with fierce repression. This article retraces the contentious dynamics in the summer of 2013 in a nested research design and with a focus on contentious repertoires. Drawing on data for over 2400 protest events and debunking the myth of a swift defeat of the anti-coup protests, we show how repression, besides affecting protest levels, markedly changed the quality of contention. Most notably, three transformative events involving massive repressive violence impacted on protest spaces, tactics and timing: rather than binary notions of escalation vs. demobilization, adaptive mechanisms of decentralization, diversification and substitution dominated the anti-coup movement’s reaction to repression. Centralized mass protests evolved into smaller, more flexible, and highly decentralized forms that were better fit to skirt the regime’s repression efforts. Our findings have important implications for the theorization of the protest–repression-nexus. They prompt scholars to conceive of repression and backlash as multi-layered phenomena and study their effects in a disaggregate framework.     

What is the right way to protest? On the process of justification of protest,and its relationship to the propensity to participate in different types of protest

This study explores how citizens in Spain perceive different tactics employed in anti-austerity protests in 2011–2013, and tests the model of the process of justification of protest. This model combines the elements of Gamson’s collective action frames theory (effectiveness, anger and grievances, operationalized as appraisal of harm) with the concept of legitimacy. It also links justification to the intention to participate. We empirically differentiate between three protest tactics: normative demonstrations, non-normative peaceful strategies, and non-normative violent actions. We find that demonstrations are perceived to be more legitimate, but less effective than non-normative peaceful protests. Violent strategies, on the other hand, are seen to be more effective than legitimate. We postulate and find that legitimacy and effectiveness partially or fully mediate the impact of political ideology, anger, and appraisal of harm on the probability of participation in non-normative protest. Finally, we establish meaningful differences in the predictors of the likelihood of joining normative, non-normative peaceful, or non-normative violent protests. Overall, our results suggest that the study of justification of collective action and especially, the inclusion of the notion of legitimacy, enriches our understanding of the popular approval of and propensity to participate in different forms of collective protest.     

HOW DO VOLUNTARY ORGANIZATIONS FOSTER PROTEST? THE ROLE OF ORGANIZATIONAL INVOLVEMENT ON INDIVIDUAL PROTEST PARTICIPATION

Prior research shows that members of voluntary organizations are more likely to protest than nonmembers. But why, among members, do some protest while others do not? I explore whether organizational involvement—the extent in which members engage in the “life” of their organizations—affects protest. I identify four dimensions of involvement—time and money contributions, participation in activities, psychological attachment, and embeddedness in interpersonal communication networks. Only the first dimension has robust effects on protest, and they are nonlinear: intermediate contributors have the highest protest rates. The three other dimensions substantially increase protest only under specific “involvement profiles.”     

Making It “Count”: Mental Weighing and Identity Attribution

Research on identity suggests that a critical factor in identity concerns presentation or the behaviors actors perform in order to convince others of their identity. Yet identity also involves the attributions others make on the basis of these behaviors. In this paper, I argue that all acts do not fare equally in the process of attribution. Rather, individuals making attributions engage in a process of mental weighing as a way to determine which acts “count” toward identity and to what extent. While various components of the act contribute to its social weight—its presence or absence, markedness, frequency, context, and the manner in which it is performed—the lens through which the attributer views the act also influences the weighing process.     

THIS PROTEST WILL BE TWEETED

This article examines the use of Twitter at protests surrounding the G20 meetings held in Pittsburgh, PA in September 2009. Based on work on information communication technologies and protest, and on more recent work on Twitter usage at protests, we develop several hypotheses about the content of tweets during protests. Most significantly, we argue that Twitter is a widely available mobile social networking tool that can be used to reduce information asymmetries between protesters and police. Examining the content of 30,296 tweets over a nine-day period, we find that protesters frequently used Twitter to share information, including information about protest locations, as well as the location and actions of police, which is information that was formerly monopolized by the police. Twitter use may be creating a new dynamic in protester and police interaction toward information symmetries. We conclude by identifying implications for policing practices and for protesters.     

The Political and Civic Lives of Public Sector Workers: Unions and “Public Service Motivation”*

Public sector employees are highly engaged in civic and political life, from voting to volunteering. Scholars have theorized that this political activity stems from “public service motivation,” or the selection of publicly oriented individuals into public work. We build on this work by analyzing the role of public sector unions in shaping participation. Unions are central mobilizing organizations in political life, and one in three public sector workers are unionized. Special supplements of the Current Population Survey provide data on various forms of participation, sector, union membership, and union coverage. Logistic regressions find that unionized public sector workers have much higher odds of engaging in a range of activities compared to non‐union public workers, including protest, electoral politics, and political communication. Union membership impacts service work to a lesser extent, suggesting that unions are more central to political lives. These findings have implications for the consequences of union decline, including the class, race, and gender composition of who participates in democratic life.     

Protesting the police: anti-police brutality claims as a predictor of police repression of protest

Police face a unique dilemma when policing protests that explicitly target them, such as the anti-police brutality protests that have swept the United States recently. Because extant research finds that police response to protests is largely a function of the threat – and especially the threat to police – posed by a protest, police may repress these protests more than other protests, as they may constitute a challenge to their legitimacy as a profession. Other research suggests police agencies are strongly motivated by reputational concerns, suggesting they may treat these protests with special caution to avoid further public scrutiny. Using data on over 7,000 protests events in New York over a 35-year period from 1960 to 1995, I test these competing hypotheses and find that police respond to protests making anti-police brutality claims much more aggressively than other protests, after controlling for indicators of threat and weakness used in previous studies. Police are about twice as likely to show up to anti-police brutality protests compared with otherwise similar protests making other claims and, once there, they intervene (either make arrests, use force or violence against protesters, or both) at nearly half of these protests, compared to about one in three protests making other claims.     

“That's not Grassfed!” Identity Formation,Maintenance, and Co‐Optation in Oklahoma's Grassfed Livestock Movement

Using interview data from thirty‐one grassfed ranchers across Oklahoma, we adapt a culturally focused social movement framework to explore a regional grassfed livestock movement. Drawing on social movement and agrifood literature, we examine how grassfed actors forge a cohesive grassfed collective identity and how collective identity processes inspire engagement in forms of individualized, cultural protest. We address how collective identity politicizes movement actors, moving them to prioritize cultural issues of the grassfed movement and development of a grassfed activist identity, sometimes above other tangible, economic rewards. We also consider how grassfed ranchers are restricting the boundaries of movement membership in response to increased interest in alternative agricultural practices by new producers and by agrifood elites, and how they use market‐oriented tactics to enforce those boundaries. In doing so we draw parallels to conventionalization processes in the organic sector. By emphasizing the identity work of grassfed producer‐activists, we provide new perspectives on an emerging agricultural movement gaining traction in the US and abroad.     

Between organization and spontaneity of protests: the 2010–2011 Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the role of social groups in mobilizing resources for protests in repressive contexts. In particular, it examines the impact of organizations and informal groups on individual engagement in the protests developed in 2010 in Tunisia and in 2011 in Egypt. The empirical analysis draws on the following data sources: the second wave of the Arab Barometer (2010–2011), two focus groups in Egypt conducted between 2011 and 2015 with members of trade unions and of Popular Committees who had participated in the 2011 protests in Egypt, eight semi-structured interviews conducted in 2017 to workers in Tunisia who had engaged in the 2010–2011 protests, and interviews conducted in January and February 2011 to 100 women in Tunisia within a study tackling police violence against women during the Tunisian uprisings.

Findings show that both in Egypt and Tunisia protests were neither spontaneous nor fully organized as formal organizations and informal and spontaneous groups strictly interconnected in sustaining protests. In Egypt, established Islamic charity networks provided the structural basis for Popular Committees to engage in the 2011 protests and the initially spontaneous workers’ groups, institutionalized through the legalization of EFITU, were crucial for national wide protests occurred throughout 2011. In Tunisia, the major trade union UGTT was essential for mobilizing workers in the initial stages of protests but was backed by informal and spontaneous groups of workers during the process of protest diffusion.

Results remark that the 2010–2011 Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings were therefore well-grounded on intermediate mobilizing structures capable to survive in the interstices of an authoritarian context. Findings suggest to consider that, in repressive context, spontaneous groups and more established and formal organizations continuously switch from one form to another, overlap, and transform themselves faster than they would do in democratic contexts.     

Worlding Miss World,Bangalore, 1996

This essay revisits the much-discussed swarm of protests surrounding the 1996 Miss World pageant in Bangalore, India. It suggests that behind the clamour of clashing opinions regarding the content of the pageant lay a deeper crisis, uninterrogated yet constantly palpable: the absence of a performative dispensation within which the then-nascent project of liberalisation could, paradoxically, be experienced as self-grounding. By organising its discussion around interviews with some of the people most directly involved in trying to manage the meaning of the event – through sponsorship, public relations, policing, and protest – the essay shows how a reconsideration of the pageant can help us understand the delicate relation between commercial publicity and sovereign authority in a globalising age.     

Who Protests in America: An Analysis of Three Political Alternatives—Inaction,Institutionalized Politics,or Protest

Theories of social movements and collective action typically present social protest as one of three alternatives available to the individual: inaction, institutionalized political action, or protest. These political alternatives are rarely considered simultaneously nor are they modeled explicitly. In this paper we make use of survey data from a representative sample of the United States population. We employ multinomial logistic regression to determine what differentiates those who protest from those who engage only in institutionalized politics and from those who engage in no political action. We find that those who engage in social protest are similar in many respects to those who engage actively in institutionalized politics, yet education on social and political issues, participation in community organizations, and frequent church attendance increases the likelihood that individuals will engage in protest relative to institutionalized politics.     

The biographical consequences of protest and activism: a systematic review and a new typology

Most research on activist participation has aimed to explain motives to engage in protest and collective action or becoming an activist. The outcomes, for the individual, have been neglected. Therefore, we set out to systematically document and organize the psychological and behavioural changes associated with activism into a typology of change. The review contains 57 papers describing changes. Psychological changes identified in the literature can be classified into 19 main forms: marital status, children, relationship ties, work-life/career, extended involvement, consumer behaviour, identity, empowerment, radicalization/politicization, legitimacy, sustained commitment, self-esteem, general well-being, ‘traits’, self-confidence, religion, organizing, knowledge and home skills. Our analysis highlights the lack of analysis of the relation between type of protest and type of change, and lack of research into the processes behind the various psychological changes. What is needed now is more precise investigation of the relationship between types of protests, social and psychological processes, and psychological outcomes. Further, more longitudinal studies are required to explore the relationship.     

“How Edge Are You?” Constructing Authentic Identities and Subcultural Boundaries in a Straightedge Internet Forum

We analyze how participants in an internet forum dedicated to the straightedge subculture articulate and express subcultural identities and boundaries, with particular attention to how they accomplish these tasks in a computer‐mediated context. Through participant observation, “focused discussions,” and interviews, we explore the complexity of identity‐making processes in terms of cyberspace and subculture, conceptualizing identification as occurring at the intersection of biography, subculture, and technology. We find that the internet influences how individuals participate in subcultural communities by analyzing their claims for authenticity and how they position themselves in relation to subcultural boundaries. This article provides insight into the dialectic relationship between participation in a subculture and in an internet community.     

Parental Marital Status and Young Adult Offspring's Attitudes About Marriage and Divorce

This study examined attitudes toward marriage and divorce among single young adults. Data were gathered from 310 traditional-aged college students regarding their perceived level of commitment to a future marriage and their likelihood to divorce should such a marriage become unsatisfying. Study results indicated that individuals who have experienced parental divorce reported lower levels of marital commitment and more prodivorce attitudes than their peers from intact families. These results suggest that attitudes toward marriage and divorce are partially preformulated beliefs individuals carry into their relationships. Implications for professionals working with young adults are discussed, along with directions for future research.     

“I'm the Next American Idol”: Cooling Out,Accounts, and Perseverance at Reality Talent Show Auditions

Drawing on fieldwork at American Idol auditions, I describe how contestants come to accept their fate after being cut from the competition. I revisit Goffman's metaphor of “cooling the mark out,” especially the cooling out strategy of offering people another chance to qualify for roles at which they failed. Contestants' desires to audition and audition again after failure are driven by meritocratic ideals. They develop accounts in line with these ideals to explain how despite being rejected they are talented and can still excel in the future. This study contributes to literature on “cooling out” by highlighting how people draw on larger systems of meaning—ideologies supporting meritocratic values in the case of Idol contestants—when making sense of their failures.     

The Turn from “What” to “How”: Garfinkel's Reach Beyond Description

John Heritage described Harold Garfinkel's central question as “how do social actors come to know, and know in common what they are doing and the circumstances in which they are doing it.” The case of Agnes illuminates the methods by which members produce intelligible actions and recognizable—even “natural”—gender orderliness. With this central interest as a starting point, this article offers some observations about transgender women in prison and their creative adaptation to life behind bars.     

Learning to “Deal” and “De‐escalate”: How Men in Nursing Manage Self and Patient Emotions

While prior research has explored how gender frames emotion management processes, little work has specifically examined the links between men's emotion management in a caring profession and theory on masculine emotionality. Stereotyped as less sensitive to their own and others' emotions, male nurses confront unique challenges in navigating the profession's emotional demands. Drawing on men's diaries and interviews, I examine emergent emotion‐based processes that characterize men's emotional labor—the strategies men use to manage their own and patient emotions on the job. In managing their own emotion, men's narratives reveal three distinct strategies: reframing the nurse role, distancing, and relinquishing situational control. In managing patient emotions, they frame control over their own emotions as a means for managing others and emphasize knowledge/education as a strategy for managing patient stress and anxiety. While both male and female nurses may engage these strategies, men's emotion management implicates the simultaneous reproduction and disruption of hegemonic masculinity and the reason/emotion dualisms that undergird the current gender system. Implications for masculinity and emotion management theory, as well as recruiting, training, and retaining male nurses are explored.     

From mobilization to improvisation: the lessons from Taiwan’s 2014 sunflower movement§

The recent global eruption of large protests calls for a rethinking of the question of movement participation. The conventional model of movement as organized mobilization led by pre-existing organizations and top–down leadership clearly fails as an adequate portrait. As an alternative, horizontality with its emphasis on direct democracy, decentralized decision-making, and prefigurative politics (the rejection of instrumental view of participation) emerges in the global justice movement. This article explores an intermediate pattern of movement participation between these two extremes. Analyzing the protest occupation of Taiwan’s national legislature in 2014, the so-called Sunflower Movement, I theorize the mechanism of improvisation, defined as ‘strategic responses without prior planning,’ as a vital process that facilitates coordination in a large-scale protest. Improvisation involves decentralized decision-making, but it proceeds as a means to a clearly defined and consensual movement goal. The creative collaboration by dispersed, but experienced activists plays a critical yet often neglected role during contentious confrontations against the government. Improvisation is capable of orchestrating large-scale protests because movement leadership is oft constrained by the lack of real-time information and their command is more effective when it provides room for improvisation from below.