The constitution of protest as sign in contemporary Ireland

Abstract

Charles Tilly has portrayed collective protests, from the middle of the nineteenth century on, as shows of strength and clashes of might. More recently it is contended that new forms of collective action have developed and, according to Alberto Melucci, they operate more and more as signs. This article looks at the strategies through which such protests are constituted, or constitute themselves, as signs. Five main strategies are identified: famous occasions or people are associated with the protest; visualisation; symbolisation; dramatisation and reliance on quirkiness. The paper also addresses the question of the message these protests communicate, mainly in terms of the issues they raise and the people they target. The systematic recording of collective protests in Ireland, from 1995 to 1998, provides the empirical basis for testing, in the Irish context, some of Melucci's ideas about the transformation of protests into signs.