The Occupy Movement and the Politics of Vulnerability

The Occupy movement has generated a significant amount of scholarly literature, most of which has focused on the movement's tactics or goals, or sought to explain its emergence. Nevertheless, we lack an explanation for the movement's broad appeal and mass support. In this article we present original research on Occupy in New York City, Detroit, and Berlin, which demonstrates that the movement's heterogeneous participants coalesced around the concept of vulnerability. Vulnerability is an inability to adapt to shocks and stresses, and it inhibits social reproduction and prohibits social mobility. Rather than specifically discussing the wealth of elites per se, Occupy participants consistently expressed the feeling that the current political economic system safeguards elites and increases the vulnerability of everyone else. We argue that the Occupy movement has reworked the relationship among a range of political struggles that were hitherto disconnected (i.e. ‘old’ and ‘new’ social movements) and rendered them complementary through the politics of vulnerability.     

Occupy's predicament: the moment and the prospects for the movement

Occupy Wall Street has stalled in its attempt to make a transition from a moment to a movement. It had a sizable impact upon the presidential election, driving America's political centre of gravity toward the left, but has been unable or unwilling to evolve beyond its original core into a ‘full‐service movement’ that welcomes contributions from a wide range of activists at varying levels of commitment and skill and plausibly campaigns for substantial reforms. In contrast to earlier American social movements of the twentieth century, the Occupy movement began with a large popular base of support. Propped up by that support, its ‘inner movement’ of core activists with strong anarchist and ‘horizontalist’ beliefs transformed the political environment even as they disdained formal reform demands and conducted decisions in a demanding, fully participatory manner. But the core was deeply suspicious of the ‘cooptive’ and ‘hierarchical’ tendencies of the unions and membership organizations – the ‘outer movement’ – whose supporters made up the bulk of the participants who turned out for Occupy's large demonstrations. The ‘inner movement's’ awkward fit with that ‘outer movement’ blocked transformation into an enduring structure capable of winning substantial reforms over time. When the encampments were dispersed by governmental authorities, the core lost its ability to convert electronic communications into the energy and community that derive from face‐to‐face contact. The outlook for the effectiveness of the movement is decidedly limited unless an alliance of disparate groups develops to press for reforms within the political system.     

Enclave deliberation and social movement mobilization: the DDays in Occupy Central

ABSTRACT

Scholars have called for a synergy between studies of deliberative democracy and social movements for their mutual enhancement. The existing literature generally applies the principle of deliberation to evaluate social movements, but few studies have examined the corresponding practice of deliberative democracy within a movement. The Occupy Central (OCLP) campaign in Hong Kong is a rare case in which the organizers incorporated Deliberation Days into a social movement; however, participant self-selection turned it into an instance of ‘enclave deliberation’. This paper studies the impact of enclave deliberation on social movements based on the case of the OCLP campaign and argues that enclave deliberation can be a powerful tool for mobilization, particularly for gaining public support and for recruiting core participants. However, the coherence and support of the movement can decline when enclave deliberation is used to make decisions for the general public, because enclave deliberation incorporates only a small spectrum of like-minded participants who might not seriously engage with opposing views. The findings of this study imply that enclave deliberation could facilitate mobilization, but it has its inherent limitations for decision-making in a movement. Given the selective nature of social movements, deliberation within social movements is likely to be enclave deliberation in most cases. This study thus has significant implications for the practice of deliberation in social movements in other contexts.     

Occupation as refrain: territory and beyond in Occupy London

Emerging with the wider ‘movements of the squares’ of 2011, Occupy London was defined by occupation, and by participants’ negotiation of what occupation meant. Its forms and meanings changed as London’s Occupiers moved between occupied sites, through uprootings by eviction, and into post-eviction attempts to extend Occupy’s territorial politics without the camps. This paper builds on three years of ethnography to consider occupation as an unfolding process, using Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the ‘refrain’. This describes territory in three ‘moments’: the marking of a fragile centre; the stabilization of a bounded ‘home’; and the breaching of boundaries, extending in progressive directions. This rubric is used to analyze London’s occupations, and their defining tension, between an expansive desire to ‘Occupy Everywhere’ – connecting to the wider ‘99 percent’ – and the tendency to become embedded in the protest camp ‘home’. The features of ‘home’ are analyzed using Foucault’s concept of ‘heterotopia’, highlighting an alterity with ambivalent consequences for Occupy’s project. The paper argues that despite a desire to ‘deterritorialize’ occupation, Occupy London stalled in the moment of ‘home’, a consequence of the camp’s status as the ‘common ground’ of an often disparate movement, and the reduction of productive capacities characterizing Occupy’s terminal downswing.     

Temporal blindspots in Occupy Philadelphia

ABSTRACT

This paper analyzes the disjunctive temporalities of Occupy Philadelphia’s political constituencies. Drawing on both an ethnographic participant observation study of the Occupy Philadelphia movement and Philadelphia’s neoanarchist political communities, and on recent social scientific theorization of events, the paper argues that contradictory ideas about temporal timescales, momentum, duration, sequences, and rhythms of tactical and strategic action problematized interaction and coordination among movement participants. These points of coordinative disjuncture can be traced back to differences in participants’ ideas about prefigurative politics and strategic temporalities. Limning the temporal expectations and experiences of social movement participants, this paper contributes to the examination of both linkages and disjunctures between eventful temporalities experienced in moments of protest and in social movements with diverse timescales.     

‘Systemic thinking’, ‘regenerative culture’, and new forms of prefigurative politics: challenges for the global left

ABSTRACT

One of the aspects of the current crisis of the Left is an ‘epistemological blindness’ that prevents it from identifying opportunities for its own renewal. That includes the dismissal of the contribution of prefigurative forms of collective action which do not fit its institutionalized orthodoxies. Their most significant expression is a range of grassroots initiatives based on ‘systemic thinking’ and aimed at promoting a ‘regenerative culture’. It includes non-capitalist economic initiatives, such as those of the transition movement, social and solidarity economy and the Global Ecovillage Network, as well as of the temporary communities created by Occupy Wall Street movement and the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. They regard social polarization, patriarchy, and the crisis of democracy as interconnected dimensions of a civilizational dysfunction that asks for whole-systems solutions. Such approach, if adopted by the Left, may contribute to its renewal and political strengthening.     

Broadening the Land Question in Food Sovereignty to Northern Settings: A Case Study of Occupy the Farm

Abstract

Land access is an accepted corollary to food sovereignty, long promoted by the transnational agrarian movement La Via Campesina (LVC). LVC's land access politics have evolved with increased incorporation of diverse perspectives, but remain largely focused on achieving ‘integral agrarian reform’ in the global South. Here, I take a case where food sovereignty activists (‘Occupy the Farm’ (OTF)) occupied land owned by a public university in California, the USA, in order to broaden food sovereignty's land access considerations beyond the South, and to analyze conditions where political actions (including occupations) can help achieve changes in land access regimes. The OTF action was successful in challenging cultural norms about property and achieving access, partly due to the occupation having foregrounded multiple appealing narratives that invited participation and wider support. These narratives included agroecology versus biotechnologies; community/public access versus privatization; participatory versus bureaucratic governance structure; and green space/food production versus urban development. The article tests the use of the ‘land sovereignty’ frame in expanding food sovereignty's land politics, to encompass land contestation contexts globally and deal with the particular conditions surrounding lands. The case indicates that land occupations in the North are potentially useful—but uncertain, and very context-dependent—tactics to promote land and food sovereignty.     

‘The outraged young’: young Europeans,civic engagement and the new media in a time of crisis

Public involvement in traditional political institutions has declined significantly over the past few decades, leading to what some have seen as a crisis in citizenship. This trend is most striking amongst young people, who have become increasingly alienated from mainstream electoral politics in Europe. Nevertheless, there is overwhelming evidence to show that younger citizens are not apathetic about ‘politics’ – they have their own views and engage in democracy in a wide variety of ways that seem relevant to their everyday lives. In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, young Europeans have borne the brunt of austerity in public spending: from spiralling youth unemployment, to cuts in youth services, to increased university tuition fees. In this context, the rise and proliferation of youth protest in Europe is hardly surprising. Indeed, youth activism has become a major feature of the European political landscape: from mass demonstrations of the ‘outraged young’ against political corruption and youth unemployment, to the Occupy movement against the excesses of global capitalism, to the emergence of new political parties. This article examines the role that the new media has played in the development of these protest movements across the continent. It argues that ‘digitally networked action’ has enabled a ‘quickening’ of youth participation – an intensification of political participation amongst young, highly educated citizens in search of a mouthpiece for their ‘indignation’.     

The reconfiguration of social movements in post-2011 Romania

ABSTRACT

Since 2011, a series of citizen mobilizations have emerged in Romania, from local replicas of the ‘Occupy’ movement to the 2017 and 2018 mass protests against corruption. In this article, we develop three arguments for a better understanding of the successive waves of protests that have shaken the Romanian social and political landscape since 2011. First, while each protest has a specific claim and target, the forms of commitments, repertoire of actions and relationship to politics point to clear continuities between protest events that should be analyzed as part of the same cycle of protests. Second, while some analyses have emphasized the specificities of the Romanian context, we maintain that the actors and dynamics of this cycle of protest are simultaneously deeply national, embedded in the mutations of Eastern European civil society, and in resonance with the post-2011 global wave of movements. Third, while it is indispensable to analyze these citizen mobilizations as a whole, it is equally important to understand that they result from the convergence of diverse activist cultures, from left-wing autonomist activists to right-wing citizens and even nationalist militants. Each of these activist cultures has its own logic of action and its vision of democracy and of politics.     

ON BEING BOUND TO EQUIVALENTIAL CHAINS

Taking up the test case of radical anti-globalization protest, this essay addresses Ernesto Laclau's theory of the democratic demand, reading it against Lacan's and Freud's conceptions of demand. I argue, largely drawing from Lacan's conception of enjoyment that a theory of the democratic demand must take into account the risk that a subject's enjoyment in positing a demand can overwhelm the potential political of the demand itself. In response to this risk, I argue that a theory of democracy should shift from a demand-driven politics centred around enjoying a specific subject position tied to ‘resistance’ towards a desire-driven politics that productively incorporates the ‘no’ as a means of articulating collective political aspirations.     

Anti-austerity between militant materialism and real democracy: exploring pragmatic prefigurativism

ABSTRACT

The anti-austerity movement that emerged in the wake of the 2008 global economic crisis and 2010 Eurozone crisis, and which forms part of the ‘age of austerity’ that came after those crises, was underpinned by a set of ideas and practices that we refer to here as ‘pragmatic prefigurativism’. Whilst the anti-austerity movements typically rejected formal ideologies such as Marxism and anarchism, nevertheless pragmatic prefigurativism can be understood as a ‘left convergence’ of sorts. The paper explores the features of this pragmatic prefigurativism, comparing the anti-austerity movements in the UK and Spain. In particular, we note the role of unresponsive institutions of democracy in prompting the move towards pragmatic prefigurativism, the adoption of techniques of direct democracy and direct action as the means through which to express a voice and to refuse austerity, and the pragmatic nature of the subsequent (re)turn to political institutions when this became a possibility.     

‘Goldman-Sachs doesn’t care if you raise chicken’: the challenges of resistant prefiguration

This article addresses debates in the ‘post-Occupy movement’ over the resistant potential of prefigurative politics, and asks how prefiguration can be conceptualized as resistance in relation to activists’ understanding of politics, power and social change. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with activists in New York City, it looks at anarchist politics after Occupy Wall Street (OWS). Here, the absence of spectacular moments of confrontation and the removal of OWS’s space of mobilization and organizing challenged activists to adjust their prefigurative politics to the shifting spaces post-Occupy. This paper advances our understanding of prefigurative politics by conceptualizing prefiguration as resistance in consideration of the elements of ‘intent’, ‘recognition’, ‘opposition/confrontation’ and ‘creation’. Following this, it introduces the ‘logic of subtraction’ as a concept to understand the resistant potential of prefiguration. Here, I argue that rather than being in an antagonistic relationship with dominant power, resistant prefiguration aims for the creation of alternatives while subtracting power from the state, capital or any other external authority in order to render it obsolete. This understanding allows for a nuanced consideration of the proactive and creative potential of prefiguration, as well as of the difficulties of prefigurative practices in shifting movement spaces.     

Open networks and secret Facebook groups: exploring cycle effects on activists’ social media use in the 2010/11 UK student protests

Abstract

Much has been written in recent years about the growing impact of social media on social movements. While authors have extolled the virtues of Facebook and Twitter as organisational and informational tools for a range of movements from the Arab Spring to Occupy, evidence remains patchy as to under what conditions social media is most effective at engaging and mobilising the wider public. Drawing on the work of Tarrow, this article considers the impact of cycle effects on the effectiveness of social media as a mobilising and organising tool for the 2010/11 U.K. student protests. Although preceding the broader ‘movement of the squares’ contention cycle, the protests made similar use of social media for generating mass participation. Yet, its mobilising power was dependent on a number of temporal factors, including amplification through mainstream media and the urgency of its initial campaign goal. Moreover, towards the end of the cycle, activists were found to be using social media – via ‘secret’ Facebook groups – in ways that reinforced emerging group hierarchies, arguably contradicting their initial commitment to open-access networks and participatory democracy.     

Time to go home? The conflictual politics of diaspora return in the Burmese women’s movement

ABSTRACT

The initiation of political reforms and a peace process in Myanmar has fundamentally altered the conditions for Burmese diasporic politics, and diaspora groups that have mobilized in Myanmar’s neighbouring countries are beginning to return. This article explores how return to Myanmar is debated within the Burmese women’s movement, a significant and internationally renowned segment of the Burmese diaspora. Does return represent the fulfilment of diasporic dreams; a pragmatic choice in response to less than ideal circumstances; or a threat to the very identity and the feminist politics of the women’s movement? Contrasting these competing perspectives, the analysis offers insights into the ongoing negotiations and difficult choices involved in return, and reveals the process of return as highly conflictual and contentious. In particular, the analysis sheds light on the gendered dimensions of diaspora activism and return, demonstrating how opportunities for women's activism are challenged, debated and reshaped in relation to return.     

Psychological antecedents and motivational models of collective action: examining the role of perceived effectiveness in political protest participation

The present study examines Hong Kong citizens’ willingness to participate in the Occupy Central/Umbrella Movement. A representative adult survey (N = 816) was conducted before the Occupy Central protest in 2014. Regression analyses showed that the core psychological antecedents of political identity (psychological attachment to pro-democracy parties and Occupy activists), political efficacy (perceived effectiveness of individual and movement agency), ideology (dissatisfaction with the pace of democratization), and emotion (anger with the political environment) were significant predictors of likely participation. Measures of perceived effectiveness of the Occupy movement to achieve successful outcomes (i.e. its ability to influence public opinion, strengthen the pro-democracy cause in Hong Kong, and facilitate opinion expression) explained additional variance even after controlling for demographics and the core antecedents. An integrated motivational model of collective action was then tested using structural equation modeling. Findings are consistent with the extant literature. Moral convictions (democracy as a fundamental human value) served as an antecedent of identity, efficacy, ideology, and anger, while identity exhibited direct and indirect effects on participation through efficacy, ideology and anger. The model also pointed to a role for perceived effectiveness, supporting the idea that individuals are motivated by other potential outcomes of a protest beyond achieving its primary objective.     

Democracy and human development: recent legislation in India

Human Development (HD) requires that development must accompany fundamental human concerns that make life worth living. It is surprising that despite being a democracy, India performs poorly on HD. In this backdrop, four pieces of legislation of different orientations have been passed since 1998–99: ‘Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana’, the ‘Right to Information’, the ‘National Rural Employment Guarantee Act’ and the ‘Right to Education’. Where successful, they have empowered the beneficiaries. Though not expressed as such, nor exclusively directed to this end, these pieces of legislation are bound together with democracy's demand for HD: they are influenced externally by various aspects of globalisation; internally, development is continuously interrogated by democracy, competitive politics and social activism.     

The Globality of Whiteness in Post-Racial Visual Culture

This essay examines the spatial contours of post-racial visual culture. It argues that the ‘post-racial’ names the conditions under which racism operates flexibly within and beyond the logics of the colour line, while routinely disavowing its properly racial character through the symbolic deployment of multicultural humanitarianism. Even as it works through the figure of the ‘post-racial’ to bracket an engagement with the racialized rationale for the ‘nongeneralizability of human value’, the current US racial order has renovated the social structures that shore up whiteness as the privileged form humanity takes. The essay's point of departure is the iconic HOPE poster, produced by Shepard Fairey in 2008. It locates the poster's public display within a visual field subjected to neoliberal processes central to the constitution of a post-racial whiteness. It identifies two key moments in these processes. The first moment abstracts historical practices of materialist antiracism, such that racism becomes visualized as a manifestly individual subjective affair. In the second moment, post-racial visual culture repackages the visual logic of racial reference by displacing anti-black racism into morally benevolent categories suitable for humanitarian intervention, whose additional dematerialization is propped up by its migration to a digital terrain. To make this argument, the essay first offers a genealogy of the HOPE poster as it emerges from street art practices of commodity activism that obscure the structures of racial capitalism. It then treats the poster's central role in the ‘KONY 2012’ campaign, which redeployed this abstraction to recode the power of sight as a privileged form of US humanitarian violence. It concludes by considering the refusals by activists in the Occupy Wall Street movement to countenance a revised HOPE poster, even as the post-racial figure of ‘the protestor’ was lauded in corporate media.     

The Land Question in the Food Sovereignty Project

Abstract

This essay explores the changing landscape of food sovereignty politics in the shadow of the so-called ‘land grab’. While the food sovereignty movement emerged within a global agrarian crisis conjuncture triggered by northern dumping of foodstuffs, institutionalized in WTO trade rules, the twenty-first-century food, energy and financial crises intensify this crisis for the world's rural poor (inflating prices of staple foods and agri-inputs) deepening the process of dispossession. The circulation of food is compounded by global financial flows into enclosing land for industrial agriculture and/or speculation, challenging small producer rights across the world. Under these conditions, the terms of struggle for the food sovereignty movement are shifting towards a human rights politics on the ground as well as in global forums like the FAO's Committee on World Food Security. This includes in particular the need to develop a discursive politics to reframe what is at stake, namely the protection and support of a production model based on social co-operation, multi-functionality and ecologically restorative principles.     

Dancing Ourselves to Death: The Subject of Emma Goldman's Nietzschean Anarchism

Abstract

This article draws together two lively and provocative radical theorists, Emma Goldman and Friedrich Nietzsche, and suggests that a reading at their intersections can inspire political thought, action, and resistance in particular ways. The argument is framed through and productive of a particular archetype which emerges from a reading of these thinkers, that of The Dancer. Both Goldman and Nietzsche have been noted for their affect-laden reflections on dance, as an image of the subject which evades capture within the frameworks of discipline, morality, and ressentiment and which instead commits to a ceaseless and creative insurrection of- and- against the self. Here, I argue that through this image of The Dancer we can conceptualise a form of critical or anarchic subjectivity which can provocatively interpret and inspire radical political action. In the article I look at some of the ways in which dance has formed an important component of radical politics. However I also argue that dance as understood in the terms established through Goldman and Nietzsche moves beyond corporeal performance, indicating a more general ethos of the subject, one of perpetual movement, creativity, and auto-insurrection. I also reflect on the difficulties involved in the idea of ‘self-creation’; as we can see from the more problematic dimensions of Goldman's thought, creation is an ethically and ontologically ambiguous concept which, when affirmed too easily, can serve to mask the subtleties by which relations of domination persist. With this in mind, the article goes on to discuss what it might mean to ‘dance to death’, to negotiate the burden of transvaluation, limitless responsibility, and perpetual struggle which these two thinkers evoke, in the service of a creative and limitless radical political praxis.