Introduction

Abstract

Since the 1990s, there has been a raft of case studies inquiring into the relation between space and protest in the field that has come to be known as social movement studies or social movement theory, whether it be resource in protesters’ tactical repertoires, a terrain that sets policing strategies, or an actant that influences movement-building. So why produce a special section on “the spatiality of protest” now? The first reason lies in what William Sewell observed almost 20 years ago, which is that “most studies bring in spatial considerations only episodically, when they seem important either for adequate description of contentious political events or for explaining why particular events occurred or unfolded as they did” (2001: 51). Despite efforts from within the field to push social movement studies further around the spatial turn (e.g., Martin and Miller 2003; Wilton and Cranford 2002), it appears as though little theoretical work about the spatiality of protest has been generated in the past 15 years.1 Within the field of social movement studies, the core concepts of opportunity structures, resources, and frames are far from “spatialized.” Curiously, the seemingly marginal theoretical interest in space is set against the fact that recent methodological and conceptual advances in social movement studies call for what is essentially a scalar analysis of protest (Nulman and Schlembach 2018).

Exploring transterranean activism as a research site beyond local protest sites

“…Here, public space as well as semi-private spaces and private areas become sites for protest activity and organization, allowing for dynamic interactions between multiple state and non-state actors. Spatial theories assume that space can impact the kinds of protests which emerge and how they play out, and are increasingly being used in protest research (Soudias and Sydiq, 2020). Yet these approaches, insofar they accommodate trans- or supranational sites of power struggles, still presuppose nation states and their boundaries.…”

“…Issues of space and place have gained an increasing interest in protest studies (Nicholls et al, 2013; Soudias and Sydiq, 2020). In this section, I will outline three currents in the literature which conceptualize where protests occur and how this affects the way they play out.…”