Protest Logics Research Articles

Hybrid protest logics and relational dynamics against institutional decay: networked movements in Asia

ABSTRACT This introductory essay surveys a wave of mass movements in contemporary East and Southeast Asia. We identify three main aspects that drove and sustained this wave of societal pushback amidst institutional decay. We first discuss how democratic backsliding shapes the spread of mass mobilization in polities that are seen as regulated by the interest of power elites and their machinery of coercion and adaptation. We then critically examine the continued relevance of protest leadership by highlighting the relational dynamics between organizing with and without (formal) organizations. We further examine how network and coalition building in political and civil societies shaped the long-term trajectory of movement organizations to facilitate large-scale protests at critical times. This review draws on the contributions to this special issue and the recent literature on democratic backsliding and political activism. It provides a holistic survey of defensive mobilizations and the interactive mechanisms among the masses in the region and beyond.

Media and Protest Logics in the Digital Era: The Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong, by Francis L. F. Lee and Joseph M. Chan. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. vii+263 pp. £19.99 (cloth).

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsMedia and Protest Logics in the Digital Era: The Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong, by Francis L. F. Lee and Joseph M. Chan. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. vii+263 pp. £19.99 (cloth).Gary TangGary TangHang Seng University of Hong Kong Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The China Journal Volume 85January 2021 Published on behalf of the Australian Centre on China in the World at the Australian National University Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/709682 Views: 116Total views on this site For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Extending of the Legal Order During Pandemic: The Russian Perspective

The unprecedented measures of quarantine regulation have led philosophers and lawyers around the world to speak of the fragility of democratic freedoms and the return of the state of emergency as a political reality described in the writings of 20th century theorists. However, the imposed restrictions are considered in the works either in relation to the legal mechanism of their imposition, or through the prism of political philosophy. In addition, the Russian experience has not been sufficiently highlighted in the publications. This article attempts to synthesize legal analysis with political-legal philosophy in order to show that the extension of the legal order is always embedded in its logic. The first part of the article shows how what has been mentioned at the level of philosophical reflection and in relation to foreign legal orders that have been implemented in Russia, using the example of substantive legal practice. The second half of the text draws attention to the logic of protest which coincides with the logic of both the police and the state. Since the rights to which the protesters draw attention to have their source precisely in the existing legal order, both the actions of the law-enforcement authorities and the actions of the protesters are aimed at protecting it. The conclusion is that the danger of this situation is that the normative system could poten-tially replace social reality in the future.

THE CHANGING PRACTICE OF RIOTING: REVISITING REPERTOIRE TRANSITIONS IN BRITAIN, 1800–1939*

This article uses a systematic catalogue of 414 riots in Liverpool, Glasgow, and Manchester to examine the changing practice of rioting from 1800 to 1939. Three empirical findings emerge: first, over this period, riots went from being an autonomous tactic to one which was largely subordinated to other protest logics; second, the way rioters chose their targets changed: instead of targeting individuals with whom rioters had concrete relationships, they started targeting people as tokens of some wider type; third, throughout this period rioting remained a localized practice that reflected local traditions and dynamics. On the basis of these findings, I revisit the orthodox history of social movements and suggest we refine this narrative to explicitly acknowledge continuity in the repertoire of contention, regional variation, the uneven reach of the state, and to properly distinguish between individual practices like demonstrations, composite forms like social movements, and the repertoire as a whole.

From the Museum to the Street: Garry Winogrand’s Public Relations and the Actuality of Protest

Focusing on Garry Winogrand’s Public Relations (1977), this article explores the problematic encounter between street photography and protest during the Vietnam War era. In doing so, it considers the extent to which Winogrand’s engagement with protest altered the formalist discourse that had surrounded his practice and the ‘genre’ of street photography more broadly since the 1950s. It is suggested that, although Winogrand never abandoned his debt to this framework, the logic of protest also intensified its internal contradictions, prompting a new attitude towards the crowd, art institution, street and mass media. By exploring this shift, this article seeks to demonstrate that, while the various leftist critiques of Winogrand’s practice remain valid, Public Relations had certain affinities with the progressive artistic and political movements of the period.

Seeing through African protest logics: a longitudinal review of continuity and change in protests in Ghana

ABSTRACTProtests in Africa have a long history. Yet, for many years, western misconceptions in protest studies have hindered our understanding of the particularities and commonalities of African protests. In this study, we scrutinize the historical continuity and discontinuity of protests in Africa, using Ghana as a case. We situate a longitudinal analysis of protests in Ghana within the theoretical model of protest logics, using the institutional-analytical method. The study finds historical continuity largely in terms of proletarian (high cost of living, dispossession and inadequate infrastructure), republican (participatory governance and corruption) and corporatist (working conditions and unemployment) mobilisation themes in Ghana. These themes are underpinned by the processes of class struggle, accumulation by (urban) dispossession, neoliberalism, splintered urbanism, gentrification and corruption. The implication of this study is that contemporary protests in Africa would be influenced by issues such as high cost of living, participatory governance, erratic power supply, unemployment, poor road infrastructure and corruption. These issues should be prioritized in the agenda of African governments in order to avert spontaneous protests.

Silvia De Zordo, Joanna Mishtal, and Lorena Anton, editors. A Fragmented Landscape: Abortion Governance and Protest Logics in Europe.

Silvia De Zordo, Joanna Mishtal, and Lorena Anton, editors. A Fragmented Landscape: Abortion Governance and Protest Logics in Europe.

Dramaturgies of humour in the performance of protest

The article analyses three instances of artistic activism from the 21st century in terms of their dramaturgies of humour. The cases examined are the procession of “the human gorging society” by Viennese collective Rebelodrom in 2013, the 2012 lecture-performance “The Return of Border Brujo” by Chicano performance artist Guillermo Gomez-Pena and the ongoing Tracking Transience project by US-American artist Hasan Elahi. By extending the concept of dramaturgy from theatre theory to the study of protest and activism in the public sphere, and by interpreting the chosen artistic actions as protest, the article seeks to contribute to humour research from a perspective that focuses on its performative dimension, rather than on its functions or effects alone. The term “dramaturgies of humour” refers here to both principles of ordering as well as of unfolding an idea, which inform an act as humorous. In these instances of artistic activism, humour does not simply mark one characteristic or component of protest, but is indeed the embodied, performed means through which the protest is constituted. The article employs a reading of Mikhail Bakhtin’s work on the grotesque, and in doing so, adapts the concept originally developed in relation to literary texts to the study of artistic activism. Such a focus on the dramaturgies of humour leads to two notable insights: first, that protest using a ludic aesthetic creates and sustains a highly ambivalent relation between activists and their opponents, specifically through a playful questioning of the logic of protest in terms of opposition. Second, the dramaturgy of humour in protest reveals a strong historicity: each of the examples reference the past in sophisticated ways, and the shifting narratives of memory are integral to humour as a link between memory and imagination.

Protest Logics and the Mediation Opportunity Structure

Nesse artigo articulamos a pesquisa e a teoria sobre movimentos sociais e mídia e estudos de comunicação. É apresentada uma base conceitual de trabalho, relacionando-se tanto à teoria de movimentos sociais ao se referir ao enfoque de estrutura de oportunidade e às lógicas de ação contenciosa assim como aos estudos de mídia e comunicação através do conceito de mediação. Argumenta-se que a mediação é um conceito eficiente para abranger uma grande variedade de maneiras nas quais a mídia e os meios de comunicação são relevantes para os protestos e movimentos.

Digitally Enabled Social Change: Activism in the Internet Age By Jennifer Earl and Katrina Kimport The MIT Press. 2011. 272 pages. $32.77 cloth

Debates about the social consequences of rapid technological change frequently oscillate between utopian optimism and obdurate skepticism, both of which tend to fare poorly against the tests of time and empirical evidence. In Digitally Enabled Social Change, Jennifer Earl and Katrina Kimport strive for the middle ground between such extremes as they investigate the consequences of Internet technology—and specifically the web—for social movement mobilization. The book's key insight is that the novelty of web-mediated protest depends on how well activists leverage the web's distinct affordances, including its ability to reduce the costs of mobilization and to enable asynchronous participation without the need for physical copresence. When the web's advantages are fully exploited, many of the processes perceived by social movement scholars as essential for movement success cease to matter and, as a result, the fundamental logic of protest is transformed. Under such conditions, collective action can be organized by individuals or small groups rather than formal organizations, participants can express their grievances in a matter of minutes and at a time and place of their choosing rather than in the context of geographically circumscribed collective events, and the pool of potentially relevant objectives and protest targets can expand beyond standard political claims aimed at the state.

Protest logics and the mediation opportunity structure

This article aims to bridge a gap between social movement studies and media and communication studies. A conceptual framework is presented that integrates the political opportunity structure approach and the logics of contentious action with the concept of mediation. The author argues that mediation opportunity structure is a fruitful concept to encompass a wide variety of ways in which media and communication are relevant to protest and social movements. It refers to mainstream media representations of protest and movements, to movements ‘becoming the media’ and counter-spinning, as well as to media and communication practices that constitute protest and resistance in their own right. The manifold articulations of mediation illustrate that media and communication are not merely relevant to the symbolic and discursive realms in which social movements operate, but that they are also instrumental and material to realizing their immediate goals. Activists are becoming more aware and conscious of the mediation opportunity structure, through their lay-knowledge of how the mainstream media and technologies operate, partially adapting to them or appropriating them. The nature and degree of mediation opportunities for activists and the structural constraints impeding the opportunities varies according to the type of protest logic that is being used.

Crise de légitimité et évidence de la continuité politique

Crisis of legitimacy and evidence of political continuity. Political liberalization in Cameroon has to face the dichotomy of the growing loss of legitimacy of power and conservative adjustment. In this case , the crisis of legitimacy induces the logic of protest of the political order. However, the resulting challenge of the technologies of authoritarian managements, linked to the rise of people’s anger, failed to stabilize the system of political influence. Democratic protest was domesticated by the ruling order. Thus released the dialectic of order and disorder, of liberal outcry and authoritarian ruling means a conservative negotiation of the stakes and interests between the State and the political opposition. Actors of Cameroon’s political life will have to face complexities, contradictions and uncertainties for a long period of time.