Pollyanna Ruiz

Articulating dissent : protest and the public sphere

Articulating Dissent analyses the new communicative strategies of coalition protest movements and how these impact on a mainstream media unaccustomed to fractured articulations of dissent. Pollyanna Ruiz shows how new coalitions such as Occupy, anti-war movements and anti-cuts groups, as well as older movements such as the anti-globalisation and Womens movement, are dismissed in mainstream politics and the media for not communicating ‘unified positions’. She argues that it is in the nature of these modern protest movements that they represent very different protest traditions, such as those dedicated to non-violent direct action and those who advocate more confrontational forms of intervention. Articulating Dissent investigates the ways in which this diversity, so inherent in coalition protest, effects the movement of ideas from the political margins to the mainstream. In doing so this book offers an insightful and original analysis of the protest coalition as a developing political form.

Resisting relocation and reconceptualising authenticity: the experiential and emotional values of the Southbank Undercroft, London, UK

Abstract In 2013 the Southbank Centre proposed the redevelopment of a complex of buildings including a famous skate spot known as the Undercroft. The 2013–14 campaign to protect the Undercroft drew strongly on heritage arguments, encapsulated in the tagline, ‘You Can’t Move History: You Can Secure the Future’. The campaign, which was ultimately successful as the Undercroft remains open and skateable, provides a lens through which three key areas of heritage theory and practice can be examined. Firstly, the campaign uses the term ‘found space’ to reconceptualise authenticity and places a greater emphasis on embodied experiences of, and emotional attachments to, historic urban spaces. Secondly, the concept of found space opens up a discussion surrounding the role of citizen expertise in understanding the experiential and emotional values of historic urban spaces. Finally, the paper concludes by considering the place for found space and citizen expertise within current heritage discourse and practice. The paper is accompanied by the award-winning film ‘You Can’t Move History’ which was produced by the research team in collaboration with Paul Richards from BrazenBunch and directed by skater, turned filmmaker, Winstan Whitter.

Power revealed: masked police officers in the public sphere

Demonstrations which spill over into conflict have always required the police to distinguish between members of the public exercising their right to protest and members of the public engaging in criminal activity, i.e. between ‘good protesters’ and ‘bad protesters’. Journalists who depended heavily upon official sources when constructing news narratives have historically reproduced these distinctions and, as a result, images of violent protesters have frequently been used to delegitimize their claims. However a number of high profile investigations into the policing of protest in the UK mean that police officers are also being subjected to distinctions made by inquiry panels between ‘good police officers’ and ‘bad police officers’. Thus a new trope is emerging in popular print and online news narratives in which the actions of the police rather than protesters are becoming the object of the public’s attention. These dynamics are explored with reference to the ways in which confrontations between protesters and police were pictured in the aftermath of Ian Tomlinson’s death. The article focuses in particular on the way in which images highlighting acts of concealment became a significant strand in online and offline news narrative as they developed in the years between Tomlinson’s death in 2009 and the civil suit brought against PC Harwood in 2012. The author argues that images of police officers in militarized helmets and without identity tags become synonymous with the opacity that initially characterized the police force’s response to the death of Tomlinson. She concludes by suggesting that this lack of transparency contrasted with the extended visibility offered by mobile phone footage of the demonstration and contributed to the police’s inability to frame G20 protesters as violent agitators.

Performing Protest: Occupation, Antagonism and Radical Democracy

According to Jurgen Habermas, the public sphere is brought into being every time private individuals gather publicly to ‘confer in an unrestricted fashion … about matters of general interest’. (Habermas, 1974, New German Critique, Vol. 3, pp. 49–55, p. 49.) The notion of a single universally accessible and power-free zone has been problematised by a great number of scholars. (For an introduction to these debates see Fraser, Nancy, 1990, Social Text, Vol. 8–9 pp. 56–80; Curran, 1991, Communication and Citizenship; as well as McKee, 2005, The Public Sphere an Introduction.) Nancy Fraser, for example, suggests that the concept of a single public sphere should be replaced by the notion of multiple spheres, some of which are large and ‘official’, some of which are smaller and ‘subaltern’. (Fraser, 1990, Social Text, Vol. 8–9 pp. 56–80.) Whilst this model offers a framework within which one can reflect upon the formulation and circulation of a multiplicity of counter-discourses, the relationship between all-encompassing official spaces and alternative spaces becomes correspondingly more complex. There is a fracturing of interests which, while potentially politically productive, can also contribute to the ‘thinness’ of democracy under the economic and social constraints created by the dynamics of neo-liberalism. (See Massey, 2010, Soundings number 45 pp. 6–18.)