Street Protests Research Articles

Taking critique of psychiatry to the streets. Mad Pride parades and the Blue Caravan as work on multiplicity

This article focuses on performative articulations of critiques of psychiatry, with two forms of demonstration in particular: First, the Mad Pride Parades, which have been held in various German cities since 2013, and second actions by the "Blaue Karawane" in Bremen, amovement that emerged in the 1980s in the wake of the dissolution of apsychiatric clinic. Although they are situated in different temporal and local contexts, both rely on forms of street protest to question the demarcation between 'normal' and 'mad' and to promote the equal recognition of mental alterity. Adetailed examination of the forms of action highlights the importance of carnivalesque celebration, provocation and spectacle for both forms of psychiatric critique. We argue that these forms allow experiencing this critique and, at the same time, make drafts of adifferent-better-society tangible. To elaborate on these aspects, we draw on queer and gender theoretical considerations as well as on approaches from performance studies. Looking at Mad Pride parades and the Blaue Karawane in their respective contexts reveals similarities in the way in which critique of the exclusion of mental alterity is articulated, but also highlights differences in terms of affectedness, participation and argumentation.

Street protest in the first decade of illiberal Hungary: the case of Budapest

ABSTRACT The paper focuses on the anti-governmental protest movements in Budapest in a 10-year long period of the Orbán regime. A quantitative analysis of media reports reveals that the number of street protests remained significant, though with a decreasing intensity in the second half of the period. Empirical evidence on the fragmented and diverse protests suggests that (1) democracy remains of high importance, which is the main issue of dissent in authoritarian regimes; (2) national issues dominate the protests in Budapest due to the centralization of politics, and (3) western-type post-materialist issues are visible elements of the protest culture.

The Psychological Health of Iranian Citizens Protesting the Actions of Their Country's Morality Police: La santé psychologique des citoyens iraniens qui manifestent contre les actions de la police des mœurs de leur pays.

To determine the mental health of Iranian citizens protesting the actions of their country's Morality Police. Street protests across Iran were met with violent suppression that included security forces reportedly targeting protestors' eyes. A group of 63 Iranian protestors (58.7% female; mean age 32.0 [SD = 9.43] years, from all socio-economic classes) who had been part of street protests against the regime's morality police, was recruited by convenience sampling between May and August 2023 by journalists working underground in Iran. The study was conducted in Farsi by telephone (n = 60) and in-person (n = 3). Demographic and psychometric data were collected, the latter including symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD; Impact of Events Scale-Revised) and depression (Beck Depression Inventory-Revised), in Farsi-validated scales. Between-group comparisons were undertaken with one-way ANOVA and post-hoc Tukey comparisons. Significance was set at P < 0.05. The protestors comprised three groups: not wounded (n = 27: 59.26% female, mean age 34.44 [SD = 12.11] years), non-eye wound (n = 23; 60.87% female, mean age 32.61 [SD = 5.89] years) and eye-wound (n = 13; 53.85% female, mean age 27.54 [SD = 6.58] years). The eye wound group (blinded in one or both eyes) had less severe intrusion symptoms of PTSD (P = 0.048) and depression (P = 0.0001) than the non-eye wound group. The not wounded group had less severe symptoms of depression than the non-eye wound group (P = 0.003). Every protestor who had lost sight regarded their actions, notwithstanding their physical consequences, in a positive psychological light. Contrary to our a-prior hypothesis, Iranian protestors blinded in one or both eyes were faring better psychologically than protestors with non-eye wounds. Possible reasons for this included higher rates of psychological treatment and social support in the eye-wound group compared to the other two groups post-injury and the nascent development of posttraumatic growth.

Who Dominates the Coalition? Frame Salience and Public Support for Policy–Democracy Protest Coalitions under Authoritarian Rule

Abstract How does the public support a coalition in which pro-democracy advocates and policy-based protesters join forces in street protests? When policy-based and pro-democracy groups protest together, they create a collective action frame that includes a policy component and a democracy component. In this article, I develop the frame salience theory, arguing that support for a policy–democracy protest coalition depends on which component of the joint frame is perceived to be more dominant. I argue that in authoritarian regimes, the policy component typically dominates the coalition because it is more accessible and available to the public. This perception shifts public support for the alliance towards the baseline level of support for the policy movement. In other words, public support for the alliance defaults to the baseline level of support for the policy movement. I find evidence for my argument using a survey experiment administered to 1,209 Vietnamese respondents. This article highlights a dilemma pro-democracy groups face: joining policy-based movements may boost support, but sustaining democracy after the protest becomes challenging.

Comparing the South African and Brazilian student uprisings (2015–2016): Similarities, Circulations, and Distance

ABSTRACT South Africa and Brazil are notorious for having some of the highest levels of (racialised) inequality on the planet, and dysfunctional education systems failing millions in their aspirations for a better life. Over 2015-16, student protests erupted across Brazilian and South African schools and universities, challenging these conditions through strikes, occupations, on-campus and street protests, and intellectual production. This paper builds on a World-Systems theoretical framework to understand the similarities, circulation, and distance between the two contemporaneous movements. In Brazil, the ‘Primavera Secundarista' high school occupations dealt primarily with local political dynamics, such as school closures, and intersectional forms of oppression. In South Africa, the ‘Fallist' university mobilisations demanded free, decolonised education, alongside addressing issues of outsourcing and institutional racism. In the first section, I give a comparative overview of these student movements’ similarities, situating them in their context and highlighting the key concerns and political and pedagogical practices of student activists in each. While these movements did not generally engage with each other, there were some important points of interaction, discussed in the second section. While highlighting these points of connection, I also advance an argument in the third section for why there was nevertheless relatively little direct engagement between these contemporaneous movements that otherwise had so much in common. The points of connection and disconnection between these similar movements offers insights about the functioning of the contemporary World-System and the modes of transnational circulation between movements therein, with lessons for transnational understandings of social movements, especially South-South movements.

The Chilean Constitutional Convention: An Exercise for the Pluriverse

Abstract Neoliberal principles were codified in a constitution and implemented during a right-wing military dictatorship (1973–1990) in Chile producing important social inequalities, as well as cultural and ecological destruction. Resistance against the arrangements inherited from that period and deepened thereafter has been paramount to recent politics. In October 2019, considerable street protests were institutionally channeled into a constitutional process where a referendum was mandated to replace the dictatorship’s constitution. There were two attempts to write a new charter: one under a Constitutional Convention that took a decolonial character, and a second one dominated by a far-right council. Drawing on Loughlin’s “constitutional imagination,” the article poses that the Convention was a world-making exercise where social movements, independent candidates, Indigenous representatives, and their allies engaged in efforts for designing a pluriverse where many worlds could fit. I claim the Convention was a space where utopia and ideology met allowing for different worlds to work together for the first time in the political arena creating an incipient intercultural politics. As a text with world-making capacity, the draft from the Convention, although rejected in 2022, materializes a process from which stronger intersectional solidarity among feminist, Indigenous, and ecological movements should be forged.

Protests in urban environments: review and research agenda

Abstract Although knowledge about the role of space in the field of social movement studies is already well established, it is rarely discussed within the framework of urban spatial design (with some important exceptions). We consider not only how political power is related to architectural design in urban environments but also how it is performed (and contested) during protests within these spaces. We argue that urban spatial planning should address the dual nature of street demonstrations. Public assemblies are seen as symbols of democracy, but they are also disruptive and may turn into riots. This tension is evident along two design lines: facilitating and obstructing street demonstrations in a built-up urban environment. In our essay, we show that street protests are an immanent part of neoliberal democracy, and that cities cannot avoid street demonstrations or simply exclude them in the design process.

When street protests meet feminist activism in the A4 Revolution

when street protests meet feminist activism in the A4 Revolution

Testing the bidirectional causation among media attention and the protest scale: the case of Hong Kong

Media attention is crucial for the success of social movements. In contemporary hybrid media ecology, news media, social media, and on-site protests interact with each other during social movements. The present study investigated the relationships among the scale of street protests, attention from news media, and social media in the Anti-ELAB movement in Hong Kong. The results show that attention from pro-democracy and nonlocal media significantly influences fluctuations in the protest scale. Moreover, they closely correlate with changes in protest size, highlighting the importance of political parallelism in media coverage during contentious movements. We also found a two-way relationship between the degree of social media attention in the LIHKG forum and the scale of on-site protests. This suggests that social media not only serves as a platform for public discourse on protest events but that it also acts as a mobilizing force for participants. Additionally, our results indicate that news media has a significant influence on shaping attention trends on social media, thus confirming the effectiveness of traditional media in driving social movements in Hong Kong, even amid the rise of social media platforms.

T.H.U.G.L.I.F.E.: Tupac Shakur as a Symbol of Black Rebellion for the “Pac Babies” of Black Lives Matter! 1

The late Bay Area Hip Hop legend Shock G stated that Tupac Shakur “rhymed from this pit of his stomach,” asserting that Tupac’s greatness was in the potency and relevance of his message more than the technical skill of his lyricism. Tattooed across the stomach that Tupac rhymed from was the acronym “T.H.U.G.L.I.F.E.” Tupac proclaimed that it stood for “The Hate You Gave Little Infants, Fucks Everyone,” a statement that reflected his worldview and echoed sentiments of those like Frantz Fanon, James Baldwin and Huey P. Newton who viewed youth as the centerpiece of the struggle for Black Liberation. Though Tupac was murdered in 1996, his lyrics and interviews resurfaced in the aftermath of the police killing of Oscar Grant in 2009 and introduced a generation born after his death to his thug persona and T.H.U.G.L.I.F.E. ideology as relavent, and accessible symbols of Black Rebellion. This article explores how Pac Babies, Black youth born after Tupac’s death, have adopted his Persona and Ideology to inform their entry into the Post Racial, social media era of the Black Freedom Struggle. I offer that, by providing T.H.U.G.L.I.F.E. as an alternative to the politics of respectability of the Civil Rights Movement and being resurrected as mythical super hero battling police violence, Tupac influenced both the street protests and social media engagement during the protest phase of "Black Lives Matter!".

Kardeş Türküler as ‘art action’: The multiple cultural heritages of Anatolia

Abstract This article focuses on Kardeş Türküler, a band that reflects the multiple cultural heritages of Anatolia in its concerts and albums. Kardeş Türküler has taken a unique stance in choosing to express itself from a culturally pluralistic perspective rather than following a single language or identity. Referring to Kardeş Türküler as ‘art action’, and utilising the non-reductive methods of John Street that focus on the two-way interaction between music and politics, I conducted in-depth interviews in 2017, 2020 and 2021 with the core members and the former coach of the group regarding its intellectual roots and internal modus operandi. There are three main reasons for Kardeş Türküler's deep engagement with music as protest: being against the cultural–artistic policies of the Republican period; the political meaning of making multilingual music in Turkiye; and Kardeş Türküler's engagement with post-neoliberal street protests such as the Gezi Park movement.

Street Fights and Social Reproduction: The Role of Health Mutualism in Berkeley’s People’s Park Struggle

Abstract: In the social movement literature, the relationship between the political work of collective survival and the politics of the streets remains undertheorized despite robust research on the significance of direct social actions (DSAs). This article revives the work of the Berkeley Free Church during the People’s Park struggles in 1969. Through waves of intense street conflict, the Berkeley Free Church ran grassroots health programs and helped launch a free healthcare clinic. The Free Church’s health programs served both those with daily needs and those needing urgent care in the streets when police responded to demonstrations with violence. This historical case adds complexity to the social movement literature because the Berkeley Free Church’s work reveals a dynamic, interconnected relationship: health mutualism became central to street protest, and street protest in turn made the goals of building projects of health mutualism more feasible.

Taniec na manifestacjach ulicznych jako forma regulacji autonomicznego układu nerwowego oraz sposób wyrażania emocji

The subject of this article is dancing at protests as a form of autonomic nervous system regulation and a way of expressing emotions. Selected results of a survey and interview conducted among people (n=42) dancing at the Women’s Strike demonstration in Warsaw on March 8, 2021 are presented. The protest described was one of many against the October 22, 2020 Constitutional Court ruling declaring abortion for severe fetal defect unconstitutional. In addition to discussing the results of the survey, the article also evaluates the content of respondents’ answers using research tools in the form of S.W. Porges’ polyvagal theory and the regulation zones developed from it by a group of researchers, including D.J. Siegel, as well as the concept of regulating emotions through movement. Dancing at a protest constitutes a zone of regulation, thanks to the activation of the social engagement system in the dancers. It provides protest participants with the opportunity for both self-regulation and co-regulation, producing a sense of safety. It leads to building social resilience, and by establishing a relationship with the body, it is also a way of expressing emotions. Furthermore, it has a community-building function, integrating those who dance and creating a social bond. Key-words: autonomic nervous system, vagus nerve, emotion regulation through movement, regulation zones, dancing at street protests, polyvagal theory, social engagement

From Frying Pan to Fire: Protest, War and the Forging of a Belarusian Nation

Abstract The mass street protests after Belarus’s 2020 presidential election failed to oust dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka. They nonetheless represented a political and national awakening of Belarusian society, with a level of popular engagement in politics unseen in Belarus during the preceding three decades. Eighteen months after the election crisis, Belarusians were plunged into a new crisis as their state provided a supporting role in Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine. This article identifies the main causes of the 2020 protests and their relationship to Belarusian national identity. It assesses the state of the national awakening three years after the 2020 election in the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Belarus’s role in that war; asking whether Belarus is still sovereign and whether loss of sovereignty is fatal for Belarusian national identity. It argues that Lukashenka’s position remains highly precarious and that the national awakening hangs in the balance.

Designerly resistance: Professional object design in support of Lebanon’s street protests

Design activism theory calls on designers to take responsibility for using their design skills to make real social change though influencing the mindset of their audience. This paper discusses the specific case of architect and designer Guillaume Crédoz who collaborated with the protestors during the 17 October Revolution in Lebanon to help them carry out acts of political disobedience against corruption and government injustice. The history of design lacks examples of professionally designed objects meant to mobilize the public within protest settings, and the examples of Crédoz demonstrate that such objects can be functional, engage the user, express discontent, and support oppositional attitudes in the name of a more just society. At the same time, they can effectively support protestors in their efforts to resist. Designers can play a supportive role in introducing change through functional objects with a disruptive aesthetic.

:Today Sardines Are Not for Sale: A Street Protest in Occupied Paris

:<i>Today Sardines Are Not for Sale: A Street Protest in Occupied Paris</i>

“WE WON’T BE DIVIDED, WE STAND UNITED!” MOVEMENTS’ PROTEST CLAIMS ON SOCIAL MEDIA

For social movement organizations to create impact, broadcasting the dWUNCness (diversity, worthiness, unity, numbers, and commitment) of protest is crucial. Public representations of dWUNC are inherent to social movements’ existence and increase the legitimacy of their acts. However, to what extent do social movement organizations claim dWUNC? Which dWUNC elements do they focus on? And, which protest and social movement features explain their dWUNC claims? In this study, I analyze Twitter and Facebook messages (N = 2,849) of social movement organizations (N = 186) about street protests (N = 232) staged in Brussels (Belgium). Descriptives show that in 67.7% (N =1,929) of their online protest messages, social movements speak in terms of dWUNC. Unity was frequently claimed, and dWUNC was communicated differently across social media platforms. Explanatory analyses show that social movements display dWUNC in and outside the boundaries of protest reality. Findings reveal the outcome of movements’ protest communication strategy in today's digital media landscape.

Долгосрочное влияние силы репрессий в онлайн- и офлайн-среде на численность участников поствыборных протестов (Кросс-страновое эмпирическое исследование)

Although the relationship between state coercive measures and protests has long been studied in Political Science, there are a number of gaps in the modern research studies about the impact of repressions on street protest activity. A serious flaw in these studies is their focus on the influence of repressions on the existing protest campaigns, with little attention to their long-term implications. The impact of repressions on the scale of protest and number of protesters, as well as the role of the Internet as a factor mediating the impact of state sanctions on protests, is understudied. The article attempts to bridge these gaps. The author has first examined theoretical arguments in support of three possible forms of correlation between the severity of repressions and street protest activity — negative, positive, and parabolic (n-shaped), after which he tests relevant hypotheses on a sample of country cases that share the same trigger for protest — suspicions of electoral fraud. To test these hypotheses, the author utilized data on the maximum strength of repressions against civil society organizations, participants in protests and authors of anti-government messages on the Internet in the pre-electoral years, as well as data on protests in the first week following the elections. The study confirmed the influence of repressions on future protest activity. At the same time, the relationship between the severity of repressions and the number of protest participants in the long term has a quadratic n-shaped form: at low and high levels of repression, the number of protesters is minimal, at medium — it is maximal. As for the impact of the Internet, it was not detected on data on repression in the offline environment, but it was revealed on data on the strength of sanctions for political activity on the Web: if the share of Internet users in a country is low, repressions decrease the number of protest participants; if it is high, repressions of medium strength correspond to the maximum number of protesters.

When something is happening but you don’t know what it is: mood and agency after a stolen election

AbstractThe street protests in Belarus following an allegedly stolen election provide a context for an examination of the expression of public mood. We argue that political moods involve pre-agentic intuition rather than cognitively formed agency; and that they constitute a vital, too often overlooked stage of democratic action. Focusing upon such moments entails an understanding of the ways in which early impressions of situations often rely upon peripheral awareness and pre-reflective heuristics. Understanding pre-agentic action poses a significant methodological challenge to researchers who must determine how best to make sense of human responses to situations that do not yet make sense to them. The article explores the transition from mood to agency; that is to say, from generalised affective feeling to political intention and action. We looked through thousands of photographs, video clips, textual messages, voices, smartphone screens, maps and official documents that circulated online during the Belarusian protests both prior to and after the election.

The Ordinariness of Ethics and the Extraordinariness of Revolution

In this article I present experiences of Egyptians too young to have taken part in the street protests and movement of the 2011 revolution. Today in their early twenties, they narrate their experiences during the early months of the uprising. None claimed to be revolutionaries then or now, but the revolution seems to animate them in complex and long-lasting ways. The January revolution failed to bring about change at the level of state power. Yet more is at stake than the political endgame. I turn my attention to how people narrate the revolution as a process of ethical reflection and self-formation through everyday relationships and settings that took on new meanings. These accounts challenge notions of what it means to participate in a revolution and where it is located and generate a conversation between the anthropology of ethics and the anthropology of revolutions.