Stickin’ it to the man: The geographies of protest stickers

Abstract

Stickers are a frequent sight on city streets, adorning street furniture and walls around the world. They serve a range of purposes, including advertising, graffiti, and street art. Many stickers, however, are dedicated to resistance; they promote protest marches or rallies, radical or subversive opinions, and protest groups and social movements. Small, self-adhesive pieces of paper, vinyl, or plastic, protest stickers range from the hand drawn to the professionally printed. Cheap to produce and easy to distribute, they are a common tactic in the repertoires of activists across the Global North. Despite their ubiquity, protest stickers have been overlooked by academics from across the social sciences and humanities. Using methodologies connected to both material and visual cultures, this paper utilises analysis of an archive of more than 5,000 photographs of protest stickers taken over six years in 53 locations to argue that protest stickers should be significant tools in attempts to understand the geographies of resistance, public space, and the right to the city. This paper explores what protest stickers are, the purposes they serve, how they communicate their messages, where they are located, and how they circulate. Finally, I propose a future research agenda including four key areas that should be pursued in order to better understand the relationships between protest stickers, public space, and the geographies of resistance.

Sociolinguistic Variation in Urban Linguistic Landscapes

“…The study is linked to previous research on social protest and activism in LLs, including analyses of the LLs of public manifestations conducted by Kasanga (2014), Hanauer (2015), Barni & Bagna (2016) and Ben Said & Kasanga (2016), for example. More specifically, it relates to previous studies on the transgressive layers of activism, such as Vigsø (2010) and Awcock (2021), who analyse political and extremist messages on stickers, as well as Reershemius (2019), who investigates a broader range of stickers in their local urban contexts. It has been observed in previous research that transgressive stickers are particularly frequent in urban centres (Awcock 2021), and specifically in their transit areas (Reershemius 2019).…”

“…More specifically, it relates to previous studies on the transgressive layers of activism, such as Vigsø (2010) and Awcock (2021), who analyse political and extremist messages on stickers, as well as Reershemius (2019), who investigates a broader range of stickers in their local urban contexts. It has been observed in previous research that transgressive stickers are particularly frequent in urban centres (Awcock 2021), and specifically in their transit areas (Reershemius 2019). When these stickers convey political messages, the transgressive stance taking constitutes a transient discursive arena encompassing a multitude of societal opinions (Awcock 2021).…”

Platforms and/as urban communication: Mediums, content, context

“…In the summer of 2019, posters were put up around Toronto, including on elements of public utility infrastructure such as lampposts (Figure 3), calling on couriers delivering meals through the Foodora platform to vote to unionise (McBride, 2019). As Awcock argues, materialities such as stickers and, by extension, posters placed around cities are ephemeral and temporary, but nevertheless ‘collectively … represent a democratic’ call to ‘participat[e] in urban debates’ (2021, p. 525). Led by Foodsters United, which has since rebranded as Gig Workers United (Canadian Union of Postal Workers, 2021), this campaign was successful.…”

2021 winner

“…and Hannah Awcock (University of Edinburgh) for “Stickin' it to the man: The geographies of protest stickers” ( Area 2021, 53, pp. 522–530).

An intricately researched and argued paper that demonstrates the potential for Area papers to pull together high quality research and punchy conceptual arguments in a condensed format.

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