NARRATIVES, VIOLENCE, AND SOCIAL CONFLICTS: THE CASE OF THE 1980S AUTONOMIST SQUATTER MOVEMENT

Abstract

The relationship between activism, repression, and violent escalation is central to social movement scholarship. The strategic reasons for movements to place “internal brakes” on violence have been mapped, but less is known about how movements create and enforce these brakes. This article argues that narratives play a central role in this process and demonstrates how narratives both enabled and limited violent activism in the 1980s autonomist squatter movement. Although activists acknowledged that the movement's strength relied on its ability to resist the authorities forcefully, there was also an acute awareness among many that violence could easily escalate into a lethal spiral. In response, activists developed narratives that defined the norms for the legitimate use of force and limited violent escalation. They devised narrative strategies to rein in more extremist fellow activists. Narratives often worked to set boundaries on violent activism effectively, but the decline of the movement in the late 1980s was characterized by transgressions into lethal violence and an inability to process or limit these transgressions narratively.