The Power of Demonstrations

Abstract

People take to the streets for several reasons. Advancing their demands to the authorities is an obvious one. Establishing communication channels among participants and thus helping to buttress a collective identity is another, latent one. Both combined express the power of protest. In what follows, I focus on the group-integrative function of protest. First, I conceptualize the notion of ritual and import it to the field of collective action. Then, I illustrate my argument by analyzing the extraordinary level of protest in the Basque Country. Mass protest rituals performed by a radical nationalist actor allow its participants to visualize themselves in movement and thus create and reinforce enduring bonds of solidarity. Occasionally, the argument about the relevance of a ritualized physical gathering might be extended to other revolutionary movements which push and threaten to transcend the limits of the system, be it because they substantially alter its morphology, because they challenge its foundational values, or both. Owing to the generalized disapproval these groups engender in wider society, revolutionary movements are in greater need of preserving group boundaries. Protest rituals are an important, sometimes essential, way of accomplishing such a task.