Dynamics of (dis)empowerment in recent social movement participation: Collective identity and social change

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Dynamics of (dis)empowerment in recent social
movement participation Collective identity and
social change

• John Drury
• University of Sussex, UK

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Rise of anti-globalization/anti-capitalist
movement (1999-2001)

• People interested in political issues
• Unity of a variety of struggles
• Social change back on the agenda

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"Identity and Socio-Political Participation
network

• Our concerns include
• the interrelationships of issues of identity
  and socio-political participation in the context
  of migration and globalization.
• With regard to identity, the focus is on
  collective identity, while issues of
  socio-political participation include processes
  of collective claims making and protest by both
  minority and majority groups.

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Trajectory of the anti-globalization/anti-capital
ist movement

• Development
• UK anti-roads movement (1992-1998)
• Movement against Criminal Justice Bill
  (1994-1995)
• Reclaim the Streets (1995-1999)
• J18 (1999)
• Seattle, Quebec, Gothenburg, Prague, Genoa
• 9/11 (2001) and the anti-war movement
• Antiglob/anti-cap movement today G8 protests,
  e.g.
• Gleneagles (Scotland) 2005
• Berlin 2007

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Issues of theoretical interest

• 1. Escalation, generalization (empowerment)

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Issues of theoretical interest

• 1. Escalation, generalization (empowerment)
• 2. Decline (disengagement, disempowerment)

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Issues of theoretical interest

• 1. Escalation, generalization (empowerment)
• 2. Decline (disengagement, disempowerment)
• 3. Vestigial participation (motivation of
  activists)

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Theoretical grounding for the issues of interest

• Identity

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What kind of model of identity do we need?

• Identity as collective
• Identity changes as a function of social
  relations
• Identity as a definition of proper and possible
  practice in social relations
• Linking these identity as both input and outcome
  in collective action

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1. Explaining empowerment

• Empowerment development of a social-psychological
  state of confidence in ones ability to
  challenge existing relations of domination
• Neglect in the literature
• agency (power, empowerment) as a function of
  politicized collective identity
• Despite its importance (both subjectively and
  theoretically), this agency or empowerment
  function has been under-researched.
• (Simon Klandermans, 2001)
• Research has concentrated on subjective power as
  a precondition for action But its also of
  interest as an outcome

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1. Explaining empowerment

• The No M11 Link Road Campaign (1993-4)
• Participant observation framework
• Interviews (contemporaneous, post-hoc)
• Soundtrack recordings
• Notes
• Campaign documents
• News reports
• Official materials
• Acknowledgements Steve Reicher

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1. Explaining empowerment

• George Green tree-dressing ceremony
• Activists attempt to involve more locals
• Contractors erection of fences round Green and
  tree
• Incursions into site
• Security capitulate
• Fences demolished
• Green reclaimed and restored

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Empowerment an analysis

• (i) A common categorization in relation to an
  outgroup
• Int Can you tell me a bit about your experiences
  yesterday, first of all what was it about?
• P3 Well we were just trying to get on to the
  land that - cos it's our land really (if you
  think about it), it's everybody's land, and they
  were fencing it off from everybody. We thought we
  had the right to come in here

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• P4 And there was all sorts of Wanstead people
  here, and it I think that's what made it so
  powerful, it wasn't just the - I mean I don't
  know what you call them - the protesters in
  inverted commas, it was everybody seemed to have
  heard about it and was actually reclaiming the
  Green

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• (ii) Expectations of support
• P4 I decided, well, everyone else was doing it,
  I'd join in

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Empowerment an analysis

• Unity and support empowerment processes found
  previously in anti-poll tax riots, student
  protests about fees, and football-crowd related
  disorder
• BUT what hadnt been addressed in these previous
  studies was the experiential outcome of acting on
  this sense of unity and support
• The act of pushing the fences down and
  reclaiming common land itself was empowering

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Empowerment as an after-effect

• P5 It was almost it was almost as if that kind
  of sent a kind of wave of- a wave of kind of
  empowerment through a lot of people, including
  protesters. I think a lot of people suddenly
  realized that they could actually- they could
  actually take take some responsibility for what
  was going on and actually take control. A lot
  of people have just powered on since then, they
  really have.
• Int Finally what is the most you think this er
  this campaign can achieve?
• P21 Stopping the road
• Int You think it can
• P21 yeah

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• (iii) Collective self-objectification
• Imposition of collective definition of proper
  practice (identity) over against established
  power.
• World changed in line with identity as evidence
  of power of identity
• CSO in some ways consistent with
• Marx
• Efficacy
• Self-realization
• But in context of intergroup struggle

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Explaining empowermentStudy 1 summary
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The dynamics of empowerment as a model of
possible social change

• Where crowd actions were successful, it was
  therefore now in terms of a wider political
  context than they were originally perceived and
  intended
• (i) An increased sense of what one can do
• (ii) Generalized to more situations, outgroups
  and contexts
• (iii) Applied to an ever broadening collective
• A virtuous cycle of empowerment

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From empowerment to disempowerment A rationale
for Study 2

• Methodology
• In terms of data, we had read CSO off from
  behaviour
• We now wanted now a more phenomenological study
  of empowerment in collective action
• Theory development
• Such a study should tell us something about
  processes of disempowerment if CSO is
  empowering, then lack of failure of CSO should be
  disempowering.

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Empowerment and disempowerment Study 2

• Interviews with 37 interviewees (activists)
  range of backgrounds
• Each described two or more empowering events,
  two or more disempowering events (causes and
  consequences)
• Third national demonstration against the Criminal
  Justice Bill (1994) - 3
• M41 Reclaim the Streets party (1996) - 9  
• June 18th Carnival against Capital (1999) - 6 
• Mayday (2000) - 6 
• Mayday (2001) - 5
• Genoa anti-capitalist mobilization against G8
  (2001) - 4
• Acknowledgements Chris Cocking, Joseph Beale,
  Charlotte Hanson Faye Rapley

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J18 (City of London, 1999)
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CSO and unity/support

• basically we took over the city of London, and
  yeah so that was very empowering to see loads of
  people on the streets who werent running around
  in suits going about their day to day business,
  and like having a big party in the middle of the
  city and breaking lots of things too, and you
  know it was fairly out of control, but that was
  fine. It was like wed totally taken over for the
  day.
• (J18)
• there was a real sense of erm, togetherness and
  you know people looking out for each other
• (Genoa)
• Yeah, cos it was like saying there were people
  there who would back you up if you got into
  trouble.
• (Corn Exchange protest)

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Disempowerment through lack of CSO

• I just knew that it was a complete waste of time
  really, it was just like, you know radical
  tourism sort of thing- everyone getting to the
  place, getting together, showing how hard they
  are, smash up a few shops and then going home
  again, and that is the reasons for that, feeling
  that since Mayday Ive started to think about
  how these one day events relate to social
  movements or not. You know cos if they dont,
  they become ritualistic and dull and all that
  happened in Genoa on the previous day- well
  actually on both days. They just faced the state
  on their own, and they cant do anything.
• (Genoa)
• I didnt feel like Id really done anything and I
  thought that You know sometimes if you go, you
  can come away from these things, and you can
  think yeah we really showed them or something,
  and feel a lot better about yourself, and I just
  thought the Police had just totally controlled
  the situation, and it pissed me off.
• (Mayday 2001)

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Decline and vestigial participation Coping with
ineffective events

• Yeah, well I always see this as a learning
  experience, so I can take lessons each time- you
  have to, and I just chalked that one up to
  experience
• (Brighton RTS)
• J Did this have any effect on you?
• Int 2 No apart from the fact that it just, no
  not in the long term, in the short term and
  subjectively it was demoralizing and upsetting
• (Mayday 2001)

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Study 3 Motivation in the face of potential
disempowerment

• Hypotheses to explain motivation in the face of
  events interpretable as defeats
• Activist identity (as a socially and culturally
  given set of practices with knowledge etc.) as
  providing possible resources
• Knowledge
• Others in group to support interpretations,
  sustain the identity

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Study 3 Gleneagles G8 protest 2005

• Decline after Genoa, burn out, war
• But continued activism among some how why
  continue in the face of defeat?
• An opportunity to examine possible processes of
  empowerment, disempowerment and motivation
  strategies in situ.
• Acknowledgement Dermot Barr

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Study 3Vestigial participation (motivation of
activists)

• Gleneagles direct actions
• Mixture of protestors
• Attempts to blockade summit
• Fragmented protests
• Camp as base

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Study 3 Methods

• Participant Observation framework
• Semi structured interviews with 40 people
• Cross-sectional and longitudinal
• Opportunity sample

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Time 1 identities

• D How would you describe the people that are
  protesting, going up now and have gone up
  recently?
• I think its a fairly mixed bag, youve got
  people here who are protesting against G8, I
  suppose youve got your kind of anarchists and
  the anti-capitalist movement, and youve got
  things like Make Poverty History which is going
  up to kind of just reform as opposed to
  completely over-rule. So its quite mixed, and
  it is in ages as well, mixed ages, completely
  mixed bag of people.
• Time 1 T1S2I2 So

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Discussion and definition of success/failure
varies with time

• Time 1
• D So is that what you would hope to achieve?
• Ultimately, it would be great to stop the thing
  from happening T1S2I2 So
• Time 2
• D What would you consider a success or a
  failure for the protests today?
• If we could just get a voice, that people be
  allowed to demonstrate in the way that they feel
  is appropriate. T3S2I5
• Time 3
• I think that their hopes where that they might
  postpone or shut down or cause trouble for the G8
  taking place. And I think it did to a certain
  extent it was more kind of taking back autonomy
  and power from that meeting SO

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(Dis)Empowerment varies across time

• T3S1I3 SO Time 2
• but to be honest I dont know whether to feel
  more empowered or less empowered, because its a
  kind of weird space were in because we dont
  really know whats happened today.
• So Time 3
• Then thats quite empowering so its either a
  case of having an immediate goal that you can see
  or knowing that you can work, that youve got
  people that youre unified with that you can work
  together to have an eventual goal that might be
  sometime in the future.

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Different understandings of the campsite

• N After)
• D The camp at Stirling, how important do you
  think that was.
• P(N) I think that was very important. The
  temporary autonomous zone, the zone that the camp
  took up, the area that the camp occupied becamae
  a, the small little island of sanity amongst our
  world, you really got to see an example of how
  society could be organised. So that made the
  ideals of what you were fighting for somewhat
  more tangible and therefore more real, because
  you had this little example of an alternative way
  of working.
• EMPOWERS (So After)
• D How important do you think the campsite was
  for the protests
• P(S) I think it was very important. I think it
  was actually like the very central part of the G8
  protests. Because actually what it did was allow
  activists to network with each other to
  understand each others kind of ideas and opinions
  but it was also it gave you quite a sort of sense
  of power cause actually you could see that you
  werent standing alone that you were standing
  with how ever many other people in one area.
• CAMP(alice after)
• And it was such a brilliant buzz on camp to see
  that we were living this kind of I dont know
  anarcho-syndiclist dream.

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Different understandings of the campsite

• Yeah Stirling yeah
• D And what did you think of the atmosphere there
  and how did that make you feel?
• P(D) It was quite on guard all the time,
  probably cause the police were obviously around
  all the time and there was quite a lot of am very
  like groupy very kind of cliquey different groups
  kind of planning different actions am so it made
  you feel like part of it if you were in your own
  group I guess but if you werent you felt kind
  of like on the outside
• CAMP (Sara After)
• There was a lot of fear within the camp which was
  unnecessary and it seemed like more people spent
  their time worrying than taking any action.

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The role of activist identity in its own right

• Female Yes, to network and you just want to be
  seen, want to get involved, and what you are
  fighting for is actually, youre on the right
  path or something, T3S1I2
• A After
• It will definitely change the way I feel about
  protesting and am just being part of , I dunno I
  dont want to label it as a counter culture or
  lifestyle or just something but its just
  something I can see myself sticking with for the
  rest of my life you know.
• I think that some of the demos that were the
  most empowering were not ones that were kind of
  about a far off goal they were things like the
  reclaim the streets demo because it was like
  right now this is our space and that was more
  empowering because actually right now you were
  doing exactly what you wanted to be doing. And
  you were achieving your objective by being on the
  demo So Time 3
• T3S1I2 A
• D Was it, tell me why youre involved in this.
• Im . . . why am I an activist? Because I
  fucking love it

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Study 3 Empowerment, disempowerment and
motivation at Gleneagles Some conclusions

• Activist identity operated as a motivational
  resource in the interpretation of potentially
  disempowering events.
• What counts as success can be disputed,
  contested, re-interpreted. Hence in studying CSO
  as a source of empowerment we need to pay
  attention to participants (changing)
  understandings of context and actions
• ? The motivational role of activist identity
  allows participants to carry on even when
  isolated it explains vestigial participation
• ? BUT evaluating events in terms of their ability
  to realise activist identity may increase their
  isolation as activist identity becomes seen
  as a ghetto or clique, excluding those who do not
  share the culture and background.

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Dynamics of (dis)empowerment a summary

• Intergroup relations ? shared self-categorization
  (identity) ? mutual support ? CSO empowerment.
• Lack of unity, support and CSO ? disempowerment
• BUT meaning of success (and hence CSO) is
  contestable. Collective identity provides
  resources and motivation for continued
  participation. (with possible unforseen
  consequences)

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Conclusions (Dis)empowerment and the past,
present and future of the anti-capitalist movement

1. Empowerment explains at least some of the
   escalation and development of the movement.
2. Disempowerment explains some of the decline.
3. Both empowerment and disempowerment are a
   function of collective identity itself, which
   provides rationales and motivations for action
   with others.
4. The anti-cap movement may rise again in some form
   (with new methods, generations of activists)
5. The same issues analysed here can apply to other
   social movements and can help us to explain how
   particular struggles become general movements for
   social change.

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• Thanks for your attention