Reform,Rupture or Re-Imagination: Understanding the Purpose of an Occupation

Despite a resurgence in the use of occupations as a political tactic in the UK, there is little agreement on how they contribute to the realisation of a movement's goals. Drawing on the author's experience of occupations at University College London (UCL), this profile argues for an understanding of occupation according to a threefold model of transformational social change: symbiotic, ruptural and interstitial. As the occupations progressed, UCL activists' understanding of the collective action they had undertaken was expanded and transformed, with increasing emphasis placed on the ruptural and interstitial visions. These both reflected and reinforced a broader process of politicisation and radicalisation amongst the student body. The profile concludes by suggesting that no conception of the purpose of an occupation should be regarded as universally valid since an accommodation between competing strategic visions is both required and necessary.