Protest

Abstract

When social movement scholars write about protest, they typically reference protest events occurring in public spaces. These events encompass various types of protest activities such as marches, rallies, demonstrations, pickets, strikes, and vigils, which may occur as stand‐alone activities or in various combinations thereof, such as marching to the site of a rally or demonstration. Inasmuch as such events are often sponsored and organized by an anchoring social movement or coalition of movements, there is little question but that the analysis of protest events is fundamental to understanding aspects of the dynamics and operation of social movements. Yet, it is argued in this entry that the tendency to treat protest and protest events as parallel terms for the same phenomena constricts our understanding of protest in a number of ways. First, most protest events function as the public face of an existing movement or as the upsurge of an underlying animating sentiment pool. Much like the metaphoric tip of an iceberg, protest events generally signify a broader and deeper base of organizational and/or corresponding cognitive and affective support or sentimentality, which are too often overlooked. Second, a research focus on protest events also implies that protest which doesn't congeal into public, collective, embodied protest events rarely merits analytic attention. Thus, by yoking protest to protest events, as if they are the same, the broader character and multidimensionality of protest is glossed over and misconstrued.