Occupying London

Burgum, Samuel

doi:10.4324/9781315265254

Cited by 17 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…Like other protest camps (e.g. Brown et al, 2017; Burgum, 2018; Gerbaudo, 2012), the Right to Live protest was organised through social media and by occupying a physical place in the centre of town.…”

Section: Right To Live Protest As Part Of Global Refugee Mobilisationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Place has significant meaning for all contentious politics, but this is especially true for protest camps (Brown et al, 2017; Burgum, 2018; Feigenbaum et al, 2013; Frenzel et al, 2014). Frenzel et al (2014, p. 465) discuss autonomy as an important dimension of protest camp infrastructure, describing it as an attempt to create ‘an exceptional space that explicitly stands against the surrounding status quo’.…”

Section: Building Up the Affective Infrastructurementioning

confidence: 99%

“…We argue that creating an exceptional space of protest always occurs against the backdrop of the affective meanings attached to a place and through the refiguration of place-related meanings. Similar to the Occupy London camp located outside of St Paul’s Cathedral (Burgum, 2018), Right to Live took place in a central location that allowed semi-permanence and a place that held symbolic meanings the activists could refigure. We follow Lilja (2017) in arguing that this refiguration of meanings as related to a place happens through an assemblage of bodies, affects and the material environment – furthermore, it always expresses in excess what is being said.…”

Section: Building Up the Affective Infrastructurementioning

confidence: 99%

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The affective infrastructure of a protest camp: Asylum seekers’ ‘Right to Live’ movement

Näre

Jokela

2022

The Sociological Review

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In this article, we develop the concept of affective infrastructure as the entanglement of affects, meanings and materiality to analyse protest camps as a specific organisational form of social and political movement. Drawing on two ethnographic research projects investigating an asylum seekers’ protest camp in Helsinki, Finland, we argue that affects can be understood as having an infrastructural quality. The article contributes to research on affective politics by empirically studying the affective infrastructure of a protest camp. We distinguish between three interrelated dimensions of the affective infrastructure of a protest camp. First, affects are mobilised to mediate place-related meanings, the alteration of which is crucial to all protest camps. Second, affects are involved in creating the social space and atmosphere necessary to sustain a long-lasting protest. Third, affects impress themselves on abstract objects and ideas that must be managed as a part of the protest’s political message. Affects not only join subjects and objects together but also divide them, illustrating that an infrastructure becomes visible when it staggers or fails.

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Section: Right To Live Protest As Part Of Global Refugee Mobilisationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Building Up the Affective Infrastructurementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Building Up the Affective Infrastructurementioning

confidence: 99%

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The affective infrastructure of a protest camp: Asylum seekers’ ‘Right to Live’ movement

Näre

Jokela

2022

The Sociological Review

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“…This was a place for reflecting upon the collective sacrifices made for an efficient city transport system, the ability to commute from the suburbs, and the slick infrastructure needed to grease the wheels of capital and commerce; not a place for the appearance of protest, discussion, and counter-narratives. 69 In 2019, as part of an exchange program with UCL and Brazilian activists and academics, I organized a walking tour from St Paul's Cathedral to Finsbury Square with the help of a.n.on 70 (an activist from Occupy Finsbury Square). As we began the tour on the steps of the cathedral, where that first general assembly had taken place in 2011, a.n.on (who always has their face covered) was pulled aside and questioned by City of London police.…”

Section: The City Is An Archivementioning

confidence: 99%

This City Is An Archive: Squatting History and Urban Authority

Burgum

2020

Journal of Urban History

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Since the archival turn, archives have been widely portrayed as “dominating” institutions, which has led to even community archives being defined as “anti-authority.” It is the contention of this paper that this approach misses (1) the way in which DIY archives provide territorial authority for marginalized communities, and (2) the radical potential of such counter-narratives in seeing the city itself as an archive. Outlining both the role of archival authority in community archives and the use of an archival imagination in approaching the city, the paper considers possibilities for urban movements and campaigns, bringing together examples from the Resistance Project, 56a Infoshop, Advisory Service for Squatters, Occupy London, and the Remembering Olive Collective. An approach is forwarded which, in light of the participatory turn in archival studies, reframes the city as an archive, to encourage attentiveness to authority and to produce a capacity to aspire.

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“…This article contributes to the empirical engagement with Occupy London (Burgum, 2018; Gledhill, 2012; Halvorsen, 2014, 2017; Köksal, 2012), and builds on early analysis of ‘the 99%’, which variously focuses on the relationship with democratic discourse (Calhoun, 2013; Della Porta, 2012; Graeber, 2013), class composition (Dean, 2012; Endnotes, 2013), public space (Bintliff, 2012), or contemporaneous populisms (Grigera, 2017; Kerton, 2012). It is positioned between analyses focusing on populist features (Gerbaudo, 2012, 2017; Mason, 2012) and those explicitly problematising the implied erasure of social difference in the name of representation (Arditi, 2012; Juris, Ronayne, Shokooh-Valle, & Wengronowitz, 2012; Thoburn, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Populism, inequality and representation: Negotiating ‘the 99%’ with Occupy London

Matthews

2019

The Sociological Review

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When Occupy London emerged with a global wave of protest movements in October 2011, it embodied and advanced discursive forms that have characterised the unsettling of political consensus following the financial crisis. The central claim that ‘We are the 99%’ staged a fundamental tension, between a populist appeal to the figure of ‘the people’, and a contrary orientation seeking to critique inequality while rejecting forms of representation and identity. This article – which draws on three years of ethnographic fieldwork with Occupy London (October 2011–October 2014) and a critical theorisation of the figure of ‘the people’ in radical movements – follows movement participants’ negotiation of the tension at the heart of the discourse of ‘the 99%’. It offers an account of the conflicting meanings and practices that emerged, arguing that the result was a creative contradiction that sustained the movement for a time, while setting the terms of its ultimate breakdown. Identifying the concept of ‘representation’ as the site of particular controversy, this is unpicked through a number of key figures (Pitkin, Marx, Spivak, Puchner, Deleuze and Guattari) as the basis for an empirical account of Occupy’s practice of assembly, which offered partial, imperfect ‘solutions’ to these tensions. The article concludes with some implications for the limits and possibilities of both a grassroots populism and a politics against representation, in the context of political developments since.

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Occupying London

Cited by 17 publications

References 0 publications

The affective infrastructure of a protest camp: Asylum seekers’ ‘Right to Live’ movement

The affective infrastructure of a protest camp: Asylum seekers’ ‘Right to Live’ movement

This City Is An Archive: Squatting History and Urban Authority

Populism, inequality and representation: Negotiating ‘the 99%’ with Occupy London

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