The “Occupy” movements have brought to the fore the importance, often neglected, of the spatial dimension of social movements. A recent collective work allows us to rekindle the questioning of the diversity of these uses of space in political protests.
The spatial dimension of social life, and in particular of mobilizations, remains insufficiently analyzed in the social sciences. It is this gap that this work aims to address, which brings together researchers from different disciplines – political sciences, anthropology, sociology, geography – to show the interest of a spatialized analysis of social movements. The areas mobilized through the different contributions thus show the role of space in structuring mobilizations at different scales – local, national, transnational – and in different political contexts.
Starting from the paradox of “the high visibility of mobilizations through the physical space they occupy and, on the other hand, (the) low interest in the effects of these spaces on mobilizations in academic works” (p. 10), the authors criticize analyzes tending to make space nothing more than a “simple decoration” (p. 11) or a “neutral support” (p. 23) of social activity. In contrast to this approach, they consider space in a way that is both dynamic and multidimensional, focusing on describing the appropriations and plural representations of places. Space is seen as an issue of objective and subjective struggles, representing a constraint at the same time as a resource for the mobilized actors.
Symbolism of space and symbolic space
Space primarily serves as symbolic resources. Anahi Alviso-Marino observed the mobilization in Change Square in Sanaa (Yemen) in 2011 and its inscription in space by mobilizing in particular photographic sources. It highlights the way in which pro- and anti-government activists use and mobilize symbolic spaces because of their history, their political connotation or their prestigious function (squares, campuses, etc.) to assert their affiliations, their allegiances and their demands. The photographs and their circulation on social networks thus contribute to erecting the obelisk of Place du Change as a symbol of mobilization against the regime.
Marie-Laure Geoffray similarly shows how, in 2003 in Havana, the shift in the location of mobilization from the periphery to the center of the city and the transnationalization of support for the movement of wives and mothers of political prisoners, called the Ladies in white because of their clothing, forced the Cuban authorities to give in and release them. Spatial extension here contributes to making a movement initially repressed in an authoritarian context visible locally and internationally.
In his study on the strike at the French Joint company in Saint Brieuc in 1972, Tudi Kernalegenn also underlines how a local social conflict gradually spread to the regional, then national, scale. The author describes the way in which the geographical extension of the movement leads to a general rise in demands by actors allied with workers – unions, political parties – and the transition from a union framing to a regionalist framing of the conflict by those mobilized. .
An issue of struggle
Beyond its symbolic dimension, space is an issue of struggle between mobilized actors, but also between them and the authorities. Héloïse Nez presents the results of her observations in the assemblies of Spanish Indignados. It shows that the spatial organization of the conditions of the debate clearly contributes to shaping it. The choice and arrangement of the debate venue generate a set of opportunities (visibility, large crowds) and constraints (noise, sharing of space, weather). The latter are at the origin of the progressive withdrawal of actors towards private and closed places, which in turn modify the sociology of the participants and the conditions of speaking.
Pushing the reasoning further by studying the functioning of the cells of the French Socialist Party, Martin Baloge analyzes how space can be both an issue and a technique of control and discipline of partisan criticism. Party executives “manage to contain militant criticism during public meetings by mobilizing a set of techniques adapted according to the spatial configurations they must manage” (p. 239). Space is thus alternately or simultaneously the means by which partisan hierarchies are remembered and/or a tool for keeping recalcitrant activists within the fold of the leadership.
Franck Gaudichaud demonstrates how left-wing activism under the presidency of Salvador Allende (1970-1973) in Chile participated in the emergence and crystallization of a strong activist identity in an urban environment. This identity is notably the result of the distribution of working-class housing and industries which form what has been called the “red belts” in Chilean cities. The author establishes a map of “spaces no longer just of struggles but in struggle, where collective action is done by and for the territory, around and in the workplace” (p. 138), pointing out the importance urban circulation in mobilization processes but also the role that space plays in the organization of political action and in maintaining individual and collective commitment.
From local space to global space
Finally, the book devotes a section of reflection to the mobility of activists and causes in space. Far from being limited to limited places, mobilizations and their actors cross physical and social spaces. Sylvie Ollitraut’s text on Greenpeace volunteers and organic farmers describes the way in which these individuals “resolutely engage in localized forms of environmental protest while being aware that they represent a strongly internationalized cause” ( p.293). The article thus endeavors to show the back and forths, both physical and discursive, between local and global operated by environmental activists.
Julie Mais, for her part, questions the successive or concomitant commitments of teachers from Oaxaca in Mexico during their socio-spatial trajectories. The challenge for them is to make the link between different spaces which are an opportunity for exchanges of activist skills and organizational resources between mobilized actors. These movements are also implemented by the unemployed mobilized in the Argentinian city of Rosario that Charlotte Pujol studies. The “spatial subversions” (p. 345) that they implement lead them to renew their relationship with space and to reclaim their condition as illegitimate and stigmatized urban dwellers. The occupation of space then goes beyond the purely geographical framework and finds political and social echoes. Finally, Doris Buu-Sao analyzes the plurality of identities within Indian activism linked to the back and forth between urban centers and rural areas of Peru. The ethnicization of indigenous mobilization initially leads to the rejection of oil and mining projects in the provinces. However, a detailed analysis of the paths of student leaders shows that in reality alliances and identities vary depending on the spaces involved. Accommodations are detectable between natives and exploiting companies for reasons of subsistence, thus suggesting a tension between the different physical spaces invested (city-campus/zone of origin) and the spheres of individual lives (activism/private sphere).
Question methods
Despite its multiple contributions, the work is not exempt from some shortcomings. First of all, the bibliography does not include all of the references cited in the body of the different contributions, which makes reading more difficult. Then, although the question is constantly in the background of the reflection, the contributions, apart from those of Marie-Laure Geoffray and Anahi Alviso-Marino, do not sufficiently reflect the other side of the “places of anger” : the spatialization of repression exercised by the authorities. How are the different tactics of use of space by the mobilized actors and the police linked together? This question appears central to account for the evolution of certain movements (withdrawal, maintenance, expansion) and thus grasp, from an original angle, the complex interactions between the mobilized actors and the authorities around the use of space. Finally, the comparison of all these areas at different scales could have made it possible to initiate a discussion around the various methods used to account for the relationships between mobilizations and space. The multiple tools – cartography, ethnography, photography – deployed by the contributors suggest the benefit that would be gained from thinking collectively and in a transdisciplinary manner about this question. It remains that this work makes an important contribution to addressing the spatial dimension of social movements.