Space Invaders
Radical Geography
Series Editors:
Kate Derickson, Danny Dorling and Jenny Pickerill
Also available:
In Their Place
The Imagined Geographies of Poverty
Stephen Crossley
Space Invaders
Radical Geographies of Protest
Paul Routledge
First published 2017 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright Paul Routledge 2017
The right of Paul Routledge to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 3629 9 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 3624 4 Paperback
ISBN 978 1 7868 0110 4 PDF eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0112 8 Kindle eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0111 1 EPUB eBook
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England
Simultaneously printed in the United Kingdom and United States of America
Contents
Figures
Scholar activism involving activists from the Assembly of the Poor, Chiang Mai, Thailand, 2004
Know your place: women blow conch shells to alert villagers, Baliapal, India, 1989
Make some space: Carhenge, Pollok Free State, Glasgow, 1994
Stay mobile: climate justice activists swarm the streets of Paris, 2015
Wage wars of words: Narmada Bachao Andolan poster critiquing the dams, Narmada Valley, India, 2000
Extend your reach: peasant activists from Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan lead a Climate Caravan demonstration in Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2011
Feel out of place: the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army, Faslane submarine base, Scotland, July 2005
Site of decision, circulation and potential: climate justice peoples assembly outside the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2009
Acknowledgements
This book is the product of a host of relationships, collaborations and inspirations over the past 30 years. It would not have been possible without the love and support of Teresa Flavin, the keen eye of Dave Featherstone, the pleasures of collaboration with Andy Cumbers and Kate Derickson, the strange beauty of Pollok Free State, the word power of Narmada Bachao Andolan, the internationalism of Peoples Global Action, the direct action of the Bangladesh Krishok Federation, the joyous rebellion of the Clown Army and the creativity of Climate Games. I also want to thank my editors and my once and present colleagues in geography at the Universities of Glasgow and Leeds for the many discussions, comments and reflections that have improved my work over the years.
Series Preface
The Radical Geography series consists of accessible books which use geographical perspectives to understand issues of social and political concern. These short books include critiques of existing government policies and alternatives to staid ways of thinking about our societies. They feature stories of radical social and political activism, guides to achieving change, and arguments about why we need to think differently on many contemporary issues if we are to live better together on this planet.
A geographical perspective involves seeing the connections within and between places, as well as considering the role of space and scale to develop a new and better understanding of current problems. Written largely by academic geographers, books in the series deliberately target issues of political, environmental and social concern. The series showcases clear explications of geographical approaches to social problems, and it has a particular interest in action currently being undertaken to achieve positive change that is radical, achievable, real and relevant.
The target audience ranges from undergraduates to experienced scholars, as well as from activists to conventional policy-makers, but these books are also for people interested in the world who do not already have a radical outlook and who want to be engaged and informed by a short, well written and thought-provoking book.
Kate Derickson, Danny Dorling and Jenny Pickerill
Series Editors
1
Radical Geographies of Protest
Spatial Strategies, Sites of Intervention and Scholar Activism
Protestors are space invaders. In the course of protests, all kinds of spaces such as homes, corporate offices, streets and factories are used, occupied, defended and abandoned. Particular places provide protestors with opportunities and constraints as they wage their struggles. Places can influence the character of protests as well as being transformed by them. Protestors make space, and in so doing they can imbue places with different meanings and feelings. In short, protest always has a geographical character and this has implications for the emergence, character, impact and outcomes of particular struggles.
Protests form part of a broader set of interactions, repertoires and processes that are termed contentious politics, which can include strike waves, revolutions, armed conflict, civil wars, guerrilla insurgencies and democratic processes involving political actors and governments.
Whether it be the alter-globalisation mobilisations of the turn of the century, the flurry of Occupy protests that peppered the planet a few years ago, the recent wave of anti-austerity mobilisations or ongoing protests against the construction of dams or the spread of agribusiness, there is a geographical logic to all forms of protest. Through a discussion of different case studies, I will explain how an understanding of radical geography an approach to geography that is motivated by concerns for social and environmental justice within a global capitalist economy enables us to make sense of protests around the world, and provides a series of geographical strategies of use to protestors.
This book will consider two distinct yet interrelated geographical logics that are critical in overall strategic approaches to the prosecution of protest: a primary logic of spatial strategies, by which the character of protest is informed by, and shapes, the geographical contexts in which it takes place; and a secondary logic concerning key sites of intervention, physical and conceptual targets within a system that are directly related to a protests concerns, goals or broader strategies. Taken together, these logics provide an innovative approach to protest that enables us to understand why such mobilisations occur where they do, and provides useful insights for students and activists wishing to make sense of the world of protest and build effective campaigns.
In this chapter I will discuss what is meant by geography, and in particular, radical geography and the contributions that it has made to social movement theory. I will also consider the practice of scholar activism, and issues of ethics and representation concerning collaborating with and writing about political struggles. Following a discussion of politics, protest and power, I will introduce six spatial strategies and nine sites of intervention that I use to interpret political protest from a radical geographical perspective.
