The Occupy Movement and the Top 1% in Canada

The Occupy movement catalyzed public debate on the issue of growing income inequality. This paper examines recent patterns of inequality in Canada, paying particular attention to changes in the characteristics of the top 1% of income earners. At the national level, the gap between the top percentile and the other 99% has widened considerably: in 2006, 11% of the nation's income was concentrated in the hands of top earners (whose mean income of $344,000 is 11 times that of the average Canadian) compared with 7.7% just 15 years earlier. Beneath such national‐level figures lie important geographical differences in the income hierarchy: the thresholds, average incomes and socio‐economic characteristics of the top 1% vary widely across provinces and cities. Among the most important spatial shifts observed is the growing concentration of high‐income groups in energy‐rich Western Canada, where Calgary has become the most unequal city in the country.     

Postsecularity,Political Resistance,and Protest in the Occupy Movement

This paper examines and critically interprets the interrelations between religion and the Occupy movements of 2011. It presents three main arguments. First, through an examination of the Occupy Movement in the UK and USA—and in particular of the two most prominent Occupy camps (Wall Street and London Stock Exchange)—the paper traces the emergence of postsecularity evidenced in the rapprochement of religious and secular actors, discourses, and practices in the event‐spaces of Occupy. Second, it examines the specific set of challenges that Occupy has posed to the Christian church in the UK and USA, arguing that religious participation in the camps served at least in part to identify wider areas of religious faith that are themselves in need of redemption. Third, the paper considers the challenges posed by religious groups to Occupy, not least in the emphasis on postmaterial values in pathways to resistance against contemporary capitalism.     

Creating a Nation of Joiners: Democracy and Civil Society in Early National Massachusetts

Abstract

The Occupy Wall Street protest that has spread to other cities across the United States in the autumn of 2011 bears striking similarities to the American Railway Union's strike against the Pullman Palace Car Company near Chicago in 1894, led by Eugene Debs. That protest movement laid the foundations for progressive reforms in the early twentieth century.     

The Anarchism of the Occupy Movement

Occupy has been criticised for a lack of organisation and ideological direction, its persistent failure to articulate practical reforms and its anarchism. Occupy's extensive influence calls for scholarly analysis of its underlying ideas and its praxis. This article develops a conceptual understanding of the movement and argues that the criticisms above overlook both how the movement's participants rationalise its praxis and the consistently anarchist forms of this praxis. The article draws on recent scholarship that distinguishes between ideological anarchism and anarchical forms of praxis inspired by anarchist principles. It argues that Occupy's praxis is anarchical. Though not ideologically anarchist, Occupy expresses a commitment to anarchist ideals. The article develops a particular conception of anarchism and in this context, discusses Occupy's anti-capitalist position, reflected in its catchcry ‘we are the 99 per cent’. It concludes by explicating the anarchical elements of Occupy's praxis.

占领运动被批评缺少组织和思想方向,总是提不出实际改革的诉求,再就是无政府主义。占领运动的广泛影响需要对其背后的思想和实践进行学术分析。本文作者从观念上对占领运动有所理解,认为那些批评忽视了运动的参与者其实是在使其实践,使其无政府形态的实践理性化。本文根据近年的学术研究,对思想上的无政府主义和无政府主义原则所启发的无政府式实践做了区分。作者认为占领运动的实践是无政府的,思想上却不是无政府的。但尽管思想上不是无政府,占领运动却表达了无政府的理想。本文提出了一种独特的无政府主义概念,并藉此讨论了占领运动反资本主义的立场,反思了“我们是百分之九十九”的口号。本文最后阐述了占领运动实践的无政府主义元素。     

Taking Space: Moments of Rupture and Everyday Life in Occupy London

Taking space has been a common feature of recent social movements worldwide, and was a defining act of the Occupy movement. This article examines the taking of two spaces by Occupy London in October 2011, and argues that there was a tension between taking space as a moment of rupture, lived space‐times of intensity that provide an opening to new possibilities, and everyday life, the routines and rhythms through which social life is reproduced. My argument builds on the work of Lefebvre, bringing together his conceptualisation of “moments” and everyday life, and his radical theory of the production of space. I argue that examining the tensions over taking space provides a useful angle to explore some of the challenges faced by the Occupy movement, such as an unequal division of labour on camp, and may help in negotiating them.     

“Go get a job right after you take a bath”: Occupy Wall Street as Matter Out of Place

Anthropological studies of purity reveal how notions of cleanliness influence political and social life. During its 2011 Zuccotti Park occupation in Lower Manhattan, Occupy Wall Street (OWS) contested spatial and symbolic manifestations of neoliberalism by re‐inserting Otherness into sanitized and privatized space. But the demonstration provoked reactions from politicians and news media that entwined discourses of cleanliness and productivity (such as Newt Gingrich's riposte to the protestors: “Go get a job right after you take a bath”). This ethnographic study argues that such representations had spatial and political effects. In particular, our account illuminates the plural agency of Occupiers, where resistance to depictions of dirt and idleness existed alongside the use of such discourses to discipline each other. We trace a discursive legacy of these events as notions of productivity and cleanliness have circulated within activist responses to 2012's Superstorm Sandy and the 2014 Flood Wall Street mobilization.