Staging Democracy: The Aganaktismenoi of Greece and the Squares Movement(s)

Sotiropoulos, George

doi:10.3167/cont.2017.050106

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…In the special issue "Creative Practices/Resistant Acts" (5.1), an interdisciplinary cohort of scholars spoke to "the power of art and creative acts in fuelling global mobilizations, destabilizing hegemonic narratives of oppression, and reclaiming people's sense of empowerment, belonging, and identity" (Hussein and MacKenzie 2017: 2). In this special issue, the visual and material culture of contention was addressed in particular through Ayman El-Desouky's (2017) and Sotiropoulos's (2017) work on art in the occupation of the public square-Egypt's Tahrir and Greece's Syntagma, respectively.…”

Section: The Visual and Materials Culture Of Contentionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Meaning of Contention

et al. 2022

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Contention is everywhere nowadays, permeating the fabric of society and constituting an important element of many different social relationships. It is also a central topic across a wide range of social scientific disciplines. Following the most contentious decade in over a century, scholarship on the topic of “contention” is booming. Nonetheless, we still lack a conceptual approach to “contention” as a general academic term beyond the bounds of the study of “contentious politics.” What is the meaning of contention? Drawing on a decade of editorial and research work on contention, this article surveys the profound breadth and variety of academic research on the topic, ranging from politics, psychology, and sociology to material culture, criminology, and beyond. We outline the common conceptual thread across these various areas, where “contention” generally indicates conflictual collective contests concerning competing claims.

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Section: The Visual and Materials Culture Of Contentionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Meaning of Contention

et al. 2022

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“…Occupying urban spaces with symbols of power (e.g., civic square, government buildings, arterial road) is considered a general strategy for protesters to resist the government and make their voices heard [1,[7][8][9]. Contention over such symbolic space is regarded as a crucial way to challenge those in power [9,10]. In some cases, it can disrupt public services, particularly transportation and business in cities by the occupation [5], thus attracting the authority's attention and putting pressure on the government [11].…”

Section: Introduction 1the Role/properties Of Urban Space In Protestsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Built Environment in Urban Space Affect Protests: A Cross-Sectional Study in Hong Kong

Wu,

Lu,

Wang

et al. 2023

Sustainability

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The built environment is indispensable for conducting protests. However, we still know little about the role the built environment plays in either supporting or hindering protests. In this study, we investigated the relationship between built environment characteristics and the spatial distribution of 348 protests that occurred in Hong Kong from June 2019 to January 2020. We innovatively distinguished between peaceful and violent protests as well as legal and illegal (authorized vs. unauthorized) protests. Our study revealed several significant patterns. First, in general, areas with a higher level of building density, government and commerce point-of-interest (POI) density, metro accessibility, park density, and street greenery experienced more protesting activities. Second, illegal and violent protests, those which are less constrained by authorities and thus more likely to reflect the autonomous choices of the protestors, are more likely to occur in regions with more government and commercial buildings, high metro accessibility, and a high level of street greenery. Based on these findings, we also proposed a new framework to illustrate the relationship between certain built environment features and choice of protest locations, which we hope will provide preliminary guidance for future studies.

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“…In this sense, by drawing on my ethnographic observations of Faneromeni youth’s pause in the city center that simultaneously enveloped forms of dissenting action, I aim to theorize stasis as a form of resistance to neoliberal governmentality, with a particular focus on the urban context. In this attempt, I build on and contribute to recent literature that emphasizes the production of “new territorialities” as a key feature of urban resistance (Halvorsen, 2015; Harvey, 2012; Zibechi, 2012) and to literature that highlights the importance of spatial forms of resistance (Butler, 2011, 2013; Dirlik, 2011; Sotiropoulos, 2017; Vasudevan, 2015), such as occupation, for countering contemporary forms of power. Furthermore, in considering the potential of stasis as urban resistance, I draw on Lefebvre’s thought on the production of space (1991), territorial autogestion and the critical everyday.…”

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confidence: 99%

Agitative pauses, intentional moorings:Stasisas resistance

Christou

2021

Environ Plan D

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Stasis has reemerged in recent accounts of resistance. In this paper that draws from ethnographic research with a youth antiauthoritarian community in Cyprus and their long-term occupation of a city square, I provide a broader theorization of this multi-semantic concept that has hitherto been missing from accounts on stasis commonly found in literature on the squares movement(s). I argue that stasis constitutes a key form of resistance to modern forms of power by pausing the circulation of capitalism and scheduled time and subverting the production of subjectivities that support such circulation. By drawing on Nicole Loraux’s interpretation of stasis as “movement at rest,” I overturn the negative connotations often associated with stasis as (unwanted) immobility by showing how stasis can be a desired political action that includes forms of mobility and circulation within it. Developing this theorization further, I analyze stasis as a threshold to critical political subjectivization, as productive of ipostasis (existence) that enables the subjects under stasis to appear in political terms and exercise their right to politics. I thus contribute to recent literature on the political potential and existential necessity of occupying practices that allow for a politicizing of the urban everyday.

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Staging Democracy: The Aganaktismenoi of Greece and the Squares Movement(s)

Cited by 6 publications

References 4 publications

The Meaning of Contention

The Meaning of Contention

Built Environment in Urban Space Affect Protests: A Cross-Sectional Study in Hong Kong

Agitative pauses, intentional moorings:Stasisas resistance

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