Contention

This article seeks to make sense of why participants in square occupations point to the transformative character of their experience. Drawing from narrative research on the 2011 occupation of Syntagma Square in Athens, I argue that the transformative quality of the occupation lies in the spatialized emergence and practice of radical political imaginaries in these encampments, which signify a demarcation from and an alternative to the neoliberalizing of everyday life in Greece. By scrutinizing the spatial demarcation between the “upper” and “lower” parts of the Syntagma Square occupation, one can think more carefully about the conditions of possibility for the emergence of the radical imagination.

Social and political organizing and organization has a spatial dimension, and there is increasing interest in academic studies of organization to understand better how space and organization relate, interact, and conflict. There is a range of studies that look at business and workplace organization, but little evidence from social movement organization or what is sometimes referred to as alternative organization studies. This article addresses this gap by observing and analyzing the effects of spatial organization in social movements. It focuses particularly on protest camps, a form of social movement organization in which spatial organization is particularly important. It looks at the Resurrection City protest camp of 1968 to identify the development of spatial organization practices. They are carried onwards across social movements, as they resolve organizational desires for the social movement organization, such as enabling mass organization without resorting to formal membership or hierarchical structures. In summary, the article provides insight into the relationship between spatial and social organization.

Based on fieldwork carried out from 2017 and 2018, this article examines various attempts to both organize publicly and disrupt such attempts during the Iranian protests during that time. It argues that interference with spatial realities influenced the social coalitions built during the protests, impacting the capacity of actors to build such coalitions. The post-2009 adaptation of the state inhibited cross-class coalitions despite being challenged, while actors used spatial phrasing indicating they perceived spatial divisions to emulate political ones. Meanwhile, in the immediate aftermath of the December 2017 protests, further attempts to control protest actions impacted not only those who would be able to participate in such events in the future, but also those who felt represented by them and who would be likely to sympathize with them. Based on the spatial conditions under which coalitions form, I argue that asymmetrical contestations of spatiality determined the outcome of the December 2017 protests and may contribute to an understanding of how alliances in Iran will form in the future.

How has the Jordanian state sought to police protests through control of material space? How have other changes to the built environment limited possibilities for protests? This article articulates the beginnings of a new typology for understanding how changes to the built environment can create obstacles to protests. I identify three distinct changes that have affected spaces of protest: (1) the spatial expansion of the city to accommodate population growth, absorb two major waves of refugees since 2003, and facilitate massive foreign investment in urban megaprojects; (2) infrastructural development, including urban sprawl, new bypass roads and overpasses, and the services necessary for the construction of megaprojects; and (3) the policing of spaces where protests had previously taken place, in part by rendering them inaccessible. I draw on archival material, elite interviews, and ethnographic observation of protests in Amman, Jordan.

This article argues that the aesthetics of the oppressed—a series of artistic practices elaborated by Augusto Boal that comprises the theatre of the oppressed, the rainbow of desire technique, and legislative theatre—utilizes art in order to resist epistemic injustice and promote democratic freedom. By constraining people's ability to know and explore the potentialities of their bodies and desires, epistemic injustice perpetuates oppression and blocks the advent of democratic freedom. Whereas the theatre of the oppressed tackles corporal oppression, the rainbow of desire technique resists psychological oppression by encouraging the oppressed to critically examine their desires and self-knowledge. Finally, legislative theatre furthers democratic freedom by allowing citizens to protest against any epistemic injustice that might result from the enactment of laws made by representatives.