Protest Cycle,Political Violence and Social Movements in the Basque Country

A close look at the groups, organisations and social movements among which a terrorist organisation seeks refuge and support, will provide a fundamental and strategic view of its evolution. By means of the concept of a protest cycle, I analyse the relationship between political violence and social movements in the Basque Country. With the help of Tarrow's fundamental variables in the political structure, to which I have added the degree of consciousness‐raising and mobilisation in civil society, I aim to study the protest cycle of ETA's violence from its social origins at the start of the 1960s, through its consolidation in the 1970s, to its decline from the mid‐1980s onwards. The idea I will defend is that political violence should be seen as a form of collective action directed towards a mobilisation of society, and that its vicissitudes depend on the structure of interactions set up between the armed organisation, social movements and civil society.     

Squatting Social Centres in a Sicilian City: Liberated Spaces and Urban Protest Actors

The Social Centres in Italy are simultaneously “liberated spaces”, empty and unused large buildings squatted by groups of radical left/antagonist activists to self‐manage social and countercultural activities, and “political contentious places”. They are indeed urban but not only local protest actors, denouncing the scarcity of spaces of sociability outside of commercial circuits, campaigning against market‐oriented urban renewal, property speculation, and on other anti‐capitalistic issues addressed outside the occupied spaces. The long history of Social Centres in Catania, the second largest city of Sicily, is reconstructed and explained through the choices and actions made by the squatters/activists, depending on their political‐ideological orientation, on the one hand; and by the opportunities and constraints of the specific political and socio‐spatial structure, which they had to face, on the other. The Social Centres, CPO Experia, CSOA Guernica, CSA Auro, and more recently CSO Liotru, are the main analysed empirical cases.     

Peace Protest and Policy

The tremendous fluctuations in public mobilization against United States nuclear weapons policy, a relatively stable policy over four decades, present a difficult riddle to social scientists. Since the dawn of the nuclear age small groups of activists have consistently protested both the content of United States national security policy and the process by which it is made. Only occasionally, however, has this protest spread beyond a handful of relatively marginal groups, generated substantial public support, and reached mainstream political institutions. This article examines the political cycles of peace movement engagement and quiescence, and their relation to external political context, particularly public policy. I begin with a brief review of the relevant literature on the origins of the movements, noting parallels in the study of interest groups. Building on recent literature on political opportunity structure. I suggest a theoretical framework which emphasizes the interaction between activists choices and political context. I then describe the cycles of peace movement activism and quiescence on nuclear weapons issues in the United States using mass media sources to delineate periods of mobilization. I outline a number of policy variables which may help explain protest mobilization. My conclusions address the importance of policy and political context in explaining movement cycles and the potential influence of protest movements on policy.     

Social Mobilization in Protest of Trans‐boundary Highway Projects: Explaining Contrasting Implementation Outcomes

Trans‐boundary highways have increasingly complemented trade agreements as instruments of global economic integration, and both have incurred political protest. This article presents a comparative analysis of two recently proposed trans‐boundary highway projects, the Trans‐Texas Corridor from Mexico through Texas to Oklahoma in the USA, and the Inter‐Oceanic Highway in the southwestern Amazon where Bolivia, Brazil and Peru meet. The analysis focuses on the similar political contexts, justifications and funding models, as well as the contrasting political responses and implementation outcomes. The findings reveal important differences in the two cases, even among their ostensibly similar aspects, which are necessary to provide an adequate explanation as to why social mobilization stopped one project but not the other. The analysis bears implications for the social‐political study of trans‐boundary infrastructure as an instrument of economic globalization.     

Women and Law in Colonial India: A Social History

Book reviewed in this article: Women and Law in Colonial India: A Social History, by Srimati Basu.     

Play for Protest,Protest for Play: Artisan and Vendors' Resistance to Displacement in Mexico City

Play, laughter and theatrical forms of activism have been recently documented by scholars interested in the politics and spatiality of resistance. This article focuses on the playful techniques of resistance deployed by street vendors and artisans in Mexico City as a result of the displacement generated by a recently implemented policy popularly called Plazas Limpias (clean plazas). Through a case study Coyoacan, a tourist‐oriented neighbourhood known for its historical richness and aesthetic qualities, I show how street vendors and artisans who were removed from plazas in the area engaged in a number of playful resistance strategies which drew on the symbolic and material importance of place. I argue the street vendors and artisans deployed playful techniques of resistance for two reasons. First, play helped develop emotions that were crucial for the sustainability of the movement. Second, playful strategies of resistance were practiced because of the symbolic importance of Coyoacan as a place of creativity, play, performance, and art.     

Placemaking Through Protest: An Archaeology of the Lees Cross and Endcliffe Protest Camp, Derbyshire, England

The article describes the preliminary results of an archaeological survey of a protest camp occupied since 1999 in Derbyshire, England, and reflects briefly on the role of archaeology in researching contemporary activism and protests. The camp is structured by the everyday activities involved in living in the landscape, by the ‘manufactured vulnerability’ created using characteristics of the environment to contest an attempted eviction, and the public statements of protest that symbolise the campaign to the wider world. Through its longevity and the high profile of the wider anti-quarry campaign the camp is now a key element in the history of its landscape, and it is on these terms that it became the subject of archaeological research.     

Charity and Political Protest in French Popular Music

This article explores the cultural assumptions expressed in the self-proclaimed ‘alternative’ and ‘protest’ sector of French popular music, and how these become problematic when leading a charity concert. Liberté de circulation (1999) is a small-scale concert set up for the benefit of the Groupe d'Information et de Soutien des Travailleurs Immigrés (GISTI) in support of illegal immigrants, and its participants (artists and organisers) have a confused relationship with contestation and media exposure. While they convincingly wrap their pro-migration discourse in notions of solidarity and universality, they often confine themselves in artistic and production terms to a certain marginality, which fails the objective of raising funds and public awareness for the charity targeted. Drawing on a comparison between Liberté de Circulation and Les Enfoirés, a high-profile, televised charity show supporting the destitute, the article observes the problematic articulation of charity to political commitment and, in so doing, contributes to debate about the formation of cultural identities around the concept of ‘resistance’ in contemporary France. This discussion follows the pluridisciplinary method of popular music studies and includes an analysis of song lyrics, orchestration, artists' declarations in interviews and the media reception of charity concerts.     

Social Justice and Women of Color in Geography: Philosophical musings,trying again

This paper is a collection of thoughts regarding women of color in geography. It advances a social justice argument for why women of color should be in geography. I suggest that the cultural turn in geography has not yielded what many hoped for and what is missing in the miasma of postmodernist debates is a consideration of right and wrong; more importantly who benefits and who loses?

Justicia y Mujeres del Color en la Geografía: las reflexiones filosoficas, intentando otra vez

Este artículo es una colección de pensamientos con respecto a las mujeres de color en geografía. Esta artículo avanza un argumento de justicia social para que las mujeres de color debe estar en geografía. Sugiero que la inclinación cultural en geografía no ha producido lo que muchos geógrafos hubieran esperado y lo que falta en la niebla de debates post-modernistas es una consideración de bueno y malo; mas importante, de quien beneficia y quien pierda?