Social protests

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (2019) 39 (2): 313–327
The article, based on two years of fieldwork, examines the meaning of displacement for Palestinian citizens of Israel who live in Jaffa. Specifically, it focuses on one key site, the Clock Tower Square, historically a hub of Palestinian urban economy. The discussion follows a group of local Palestinian activists who consciously chose the square to stage protests, thus reclaiming Arab Jaffa's material heritage and directly challenging recent histories of spatial expropriation by the Israeli state, the Tel Aviv municipality, and real estate developers. The analysis below also proposes a multiscalar understanding of these protests as a reclamation of Jaffa's Arab heritage as well as an act of remapping the nation and its colonized homeland. In this sense, the Clock Tower Square activists produce “wishful landscapes” that work to undermine the colonizer's project of normalizing occupation.

In recent years, the period between ca. 1280 and 1330 has attracted a growing interest among scholars who study Italian communes. As regards in particular the greatest popular communes, a specific attention to institutional dynamics has allowed to develop a complex model to explain the transformations of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. However, there remain some difficulties in understanding fully the nature of the political conflicts that marked that phase. Popolani and magnati, guelphs and ghibellines, popolo grasso and popolo minuto, bianchi and neri: urban communities were traversed by multiple and overlapping lines of fracture, in a process of decomposition and recomposition of political identities in which horizontal “class” solidarities, family solidarities, conflicts of interest, clientelist logics and ideological claims acted simultaneously. The article puts forward the idea that a better understanding of these conflicts, of their protagonists – groups, families, individuals – and their political and discursive strategies would improve our ability to read the institutional evolution of the popular communes between the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth centuries.

The paper examines the dynamics of social protests in Lebanon from
October 2019 till March-May 2020 when the government imposed unprecedentedly rigorous restrictive measures to combat the spread of COVID-19 infection. The paper identifi es the underlying causes of the protests. The author stresses that from the very beginning socio-economic demands of protestors addressed to the executive power (particularly, to grapple with the rising income inequality) were accompanied by calls for democratization on the secular principles and elimination of political confessionalism. At the same time, the author outlines certain specifics of popular uprisings in Lebanon that distinguish them from simultaneous protests in other countries, namely their supra-ethnic, supra-religious and non-partisan character and their remarkable coherence and coordination, given the lack of overall leadership. The author emphasizes that the subsequent change of government has not brought, however, signifi cant changes the protestors hoped for. The new Cabinet was not free from traditional confessional and political bias, whereas legal and administrative measures undertaken by the new government to combat the pandemic were, apparently, also aimed at ‘freezing’ the current situation favorable for both the parliamentary majority and the government. In particular, the recent laws and regulations reflect the Government’s desire to prevent the resumption of protests equivalent to those of the fall of 2019. All these measures did not face serious resistance, even though the economic situation of the population has worsened, and many people have lost their livelihoods. However, the fear of the COVID-19 has proved to be a more efficient means of preventing protests than any punitive measure. The author concludes that the dynamics of inter-party competition even under strict quasi-quarantine measures shows that the hopes of protestors for a genuine transition from a traditional clan and confessional structure of the Lebanese political system to the standards and principles of a developed democracy proved futile.

This essay contributes to participatory critical rhetoric (PCR) by offering a Rancièrian
aesthetic approach to the rhetoric of social protest at the 2014 People’s Climate March
(PCM). Although the PCM has been praised for its democratic commitments to social
change, I argue that police reinforced a consensual aesthetic order that acquiesced with
the status quo by partitioning sensibilities of space and mobility. Demarcating acceptable
spaces for protest and requiring marchers to keep moving at all times enforced a
hierarchical aesthetic order that limited possibilities of dissensus. However, there was
one ephemeral moment of dissensus when all of the protesters stopped and observed a
moment of silence. This rhetorical performance temporarily ruptured dominant intelligibilities of police order and consummated new subjectivities, demonstrating the
radical possibilities of dissensus through silence for climate change advocacy.

This thesis examines the central driver of recent mobilizations to be the need felt by society to seek a reinterpretation of democracy. This need for change is seen to emerge due to the damages caused to the social fabric by the impact of economic globalization. It is argued that every social movement has its own particular reasons. However, in the current globalization era, everything is connected to each other and drivers of recent social movements are dependent on the ‘legitimation crisis’ of the political economy. This aspect is focused through a case study on the Gezi Park movement as part of the recent wave of social movements. While investigating these aspects, it appears necessary to go beyond the new social movement theory in order to observe accurately this even newer wave of mobilizations. These issues must be addressed, and if they would be, it is argued that recent social movements can be the pioneers of an honorable social and political system in the future.

Loadenthal, Michael. “Cells, Communiqués and Monikers: The Insurrectionary Networks of Anti-State Attack.” In Routledge Handbook of Radical Politics, edited by Uri Gordon and Ruth Kinna, 326–40. New York, NY: Routledge, 2019.

Abstract:
Spanning over a century, the insurrectionary spirit of anarchism has been on the forefront
of direct, unmediated attacks on the state and capital. Insurrectionary praxis is based on an ethic of informality, clandestinity and temporality, and as a result, its cells exist in secret only as long as deemed necessary for a particular action. Unlike social movement organisations and above-ground campaigns, the cells that populate the insurrectionary milieu are not something to ‘belong to’ but something to ‘act through’; a momentary assemblage of likeminded individuals united for a particular attack by voluntary association and through shared affinity.

While the modern cell networks gained visibly in Europe around the millennium,
their rapid replication has led to similarly styled formations in dozens of countries from the Americas to Asia. This franchised replication is aided by the use of adoptable monikers – static labels used to associate an attack with others, and to ideologically tag them as insurrectionary. Oftentimes, these are acronyms whose names communicate the politics of the attackers, such as the Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI), Conspiracy of Cells of Fire (CCF), International Revolutionary Front (IRF) as well as older, not explicitly insurrectionary monikers such as the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and Earth Liberation Front (ELF). The use of moniker-linked attacks, which form into a campaign of sorts, is a distinctive feature of the insurrectionary cells. For example, in June 2013, a Greek of the FAI cell bombed a vehicle belonging to a prison director overseeing the incarceration of comrades. This attack marked ‘act one’ of the Phoenix Project, and would be followed by thirteen additional attacks, spanning eight countries out over a twelve-month period. The Phoenix Project highlights the strength of the adoptable moniker, as through its usage, an arson targeting an Indonesian hotel and the sabotage of Italian fuel pumps can be united into a shared, global effort, and not understood as disparate acts of lone wolves. This chapter will explore how the insurrectionary anarchist networks utilise the cell model, the communiqué and the adoptable moniker to allow for the creation of a globally dispersed, decentralised, open involvement movement united in its rejection of capitalism, the state and those who would seek to control it.

Introducción:
Este trabajo tiene como objetivo presentar una revisión de literatura que de cuenta del fenómeno de las protestas sociales en Latinoamérica y los factores que determinan el aumento o disminución del uso de los mecanismos de protesta. Para ello, se presentará a continuación un estado del arte que permita evidenciar la explicación teórica que se puede extraer de la literatura referente a estos temas, con el objetivo de formular una pregunta de investigación que pretenda explicar las variaciones en el uso d la protesta tanto en Colombia como en otros dos países de Latinoamérica, que para este trabajo en particular serán Argentina y Venezuela. Finalmente, a raíz de la pregunta formulada, se busca generar una hipótesis que de cuenta de la variación de las protestas sociales en la región.

Brazil Beginning in June 2013, Brazil was struck by a series of explosive, chaotic, and oft-violent protests. Rallying around the slogan " A Gigante Accordou " (" The Giant Has Awakened "), these protests were the largest displays of citizens taking to the street since the end of the military dictatorship in the 1980s. 1 Though the demonstrators raised multiple grievances including reckless public spending on mega-events like the Olym-pics and the World Cup, entrenched governmental corruption, and the arbitrary raising of public transportation fares, one of the most common claims was an intense dissatisfaction with the way the nation's news media were failing to represent the views of the Brazilian citizenry. When observing this situation, international commentators writing for media outlets from the Wall Street Journal to the Guardian observed that the protests were throwing into clear relief a dissatisfaction over oligopoly control of mainstream media and its impact on information access and news production. In turn, the protests offered what many international journalists called the " beginning of an alternative media sphere in Brazil. " 2 At the center of the shifting media landscape was a social media–based citizen journalism project calling itself " MídiaNINJA. " Launched in late 2012, NINJA (a Portuguese acronym for " Independent Narratives, Journalism, and Action) has received copious attention for using footage recorded on mobile phones and aired via social media to record police violence and unsanctioned arrests during the 2013 protests. Publically besmirching mainstream news conglomerates like the Globo Network, NINJA claims that it is opening up a new space for Brazilian citizens to make media. 3 While it officially " launched " in 2012, NINJA grew directly out of and was incubated by Fora do Eixo (FDE), a much larger arts and culture organization. While FDE initially focused more on organizing music festivals and public art installations than promoting citizen journalism, its explicit focus on opening chapters and sponsoring events outside of preexisting cultural hubs like Rio, São Paulo, and Recife laid a foundation that NINJA would use to establish many of its own regional centers. On the technological level, NINJA draws heavily on both the recording functions of smart phones and the distributional capabilities of social networking sites including TwitCasting, Twitter,

That author of this study draws attention to a case of resistance against the communist regime, which occurred in a Czech rural district almost 60 years ago. The work deals with peasants’ protest rally in front of the District National Committee building in Dobruška. In December 1949, local private farmers decided to respond to official inspections of their homesteads (which forced them to deliver disproportionately large amounts of produce within the framework of the Czechoslovak Communist Party’s agricultural policies) by organising a protest march to the District National Committee. A Czechoslovak national flag was raised at the head of the procession and around 300 people took part in the event. The state security authorities responded with the mass detention of selected farmers, whom it then portrayed as a group of subversives. This resulted in the political trial of 18 farmers, whom communist propaganda disparagingly described as the “village rich” or “kulaks.” The case was heard before the Prague State Court in Hradec Kralove. Prison sentences ranging from 13 to 25 years were given to six people who were identified as organisers, while sentences of 1 to 9 years were meted out to the others. Fourteen people had all their property confiscated while five were subsequently forced out of their homes as part of a nationwide security clampdown known as Operation K (“kulaks”). The study describes what motivated the farmers to resist and gives an account of what went on behind the scenes during the investigation. It also outlines how the treasonous group was fabricated and provides details of the hardships suffered by those who were convicted as well as the difficulties subsequently experienced in their district. The paper draws on documents from both central and regional archives.

The text is an analysis of the socio-political situation in Western Pomerania during the political crisis in the Polish People's Republic at the turn of 1971. Szczecin lay in the heart of the workers' protests, however, it was the events in Gdańsk that received the most spotlight at that time and later on. The article aims to gather and analyse information from primary sources on how the inhabitants of the country learned about social unrest in big cities, how they interpreted and commented on it, and how it all translated into social sentiments. Such an approach to the problem also provides an opportunity to carry out an analysis based on the dichotomy between the 'core' and 'peripheral' areas. This is possible due to the accessibility of appropriate primary sources, which in the examined cases are constituted mostly by the documentation gathered by the Security Service, so far used to a small extent. It should also be stressed that the documents on the events of December 1970 in the context of the country in Western Pomerania were rather scant. The analysis of the documentation demonstrates how important Szczecin and Gdańsk were for social sentiments in 1970 and 1971. The incidents in 'core' cities were closely observed, and the patterns of protesting were then copied by the country. The scale of those 'peripheral' protests was smaller, and they usually did not turn into street fights, but their impact was felt, heard and seen. The methods of protesting in the country involved distributing leaflets, making inscriptions, conversing on related topics and, above all, sharing a desire to bring about a socio-political change expressed by strikes and public protests. These occurrences showed how much the 'peripheral' areas were inspired by the 'core' ones. There is no doubt that December 1970 left a lasting mark on the memory of the inhabitants of the country in Western Pomerania.

This paper presented at The Kondiaf conference 2017  is a survey of the era of populism  in the US. By retracing  the genesis, rise, and fall of the  movement of agrarian  in the late nineteenth and early and  twentieth century it elucidates the historical background of a political concept of dubious renown..

Scholarship on LGBTQ rights in library and information science remains lamentably underdeveloped. This research excavates the hidden history of the American Library Association’s Task Force on Gay Liberation between 1971 and 1986. Despite rampant legal and extralegal discrimination, the TF’s members and their allies refused to remain invisible, second-class citizens; they embraced voluntary, grassroots, democratic action.
This research develops the concept of communities of protest information practices (PIPs). It adumbrates a framework comprising four PIPs that distinguished the TF’s work: performative, communal, constructive, and corrective. These practices constituted vital ontological and epistemological interventions in heteronormative librarianship. This research provides a robust conceptual framework to examine not only LGBTQ people, but also other marginalized groups’ protest work.

Guest editor of a special issue of the Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society 2(1) (2016), ‘Gender, Nationalism, and Citizenship in Anti-Authoritarian Protests in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine’.

https://www.ibidem.eu/en/zeitschriften/journal-of-soviet-and-post-soviet-politics-and-society/journal-of-soviet-and-post-soviet-politics-and-society-15134.html?___from_store=en

Souvent rabattue sur des stéréotypes réducteurs, la protection animale constitue une cause militante des plus anciennes et complexes. Du début du XIX e siècle jusqu'à nos jours, de multiples entrepreneurs de morale s'indignent du traitement que les hommes réservent aux bêtes et se mobilisent afin de corriger la brutalité de leurs contemporains. D'abord préoccupée par la cruauté à l'égard du bétail, ce n'est qu'à l'issue de longues péripéties que la protection animale s'étend aux animaux de compagnie et, bien plus tardivement encore, aux espèces sauvages et à leurs milieux naturels. En s'appuyant sur une comparaison franco-britannique, cet ouvrage retrace les inflexions successives à l'origine des multiples facettes qui caractérisent, aujourd'hui encore, la protection animale. Indissociables des évolutions de la philanthropie, bien antérieures à l'apparition des mots d'ordre de l'écologie, les mobilisations collectives en faveur du sort des animaux éclairent plusieurs processus cruciaux de notre histoire sociopolitique : évolution des sensibilités et des émotions socialement valorisées ; définition de la violence légitime ; constitution des normes visant à réformer les moeurs ; rivalité des élites se réclamant de diverses formes d'autorité ; influence des religions sur les engagements militants ; effets des discriminations de genre.

This article examines the activism of a specific subset of Chilean communist women – those whose loved ones were abducted and who mobilised to demand justice – against the Pinochet dictatorship. It focuses on a well-organised and well-publicised hunger strike inside the United Nations headquarters in Santiago, Chile, which denounced the dictatorship’s use of forced disappearance. It argues that these women’s prior political experience and contacts enabled them to organise demonstrations and make successful human rights claims in a changing global environment. In so doing, this article expands and re-politicises the cast of protagonists of the human rights revolution of the 1970s.
***
The Version of Record of this manuscript has been published and is available in Cold War History, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 169-186 - http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/14682745.2017.1404988

No se pueden analizar las protestas del estudiantado universitario sin partir de una premisa fundamental: el derecho a la libertad de expresión constituye una piedra angular en la existencia misma de una sociedad democrática pues es indispensable para la formación de la opinión pública y es una condición para que quienes deseen incidir sobre la colectividad y las políticas públicas, puedan desarrollarse plenamente i. Por su cercanía al nervio democrático, este derecho supone el ejercicio de otros derechos conexos reconocidos constitucional y convencionalmente, tales como el derecho de asociación y reunión, y el de manifestación pública y pacífica, consagrados en los artículos 72, 78 y 79 de la Constitución de la República, y en los artículos 13, 15 y 16 de la Convención Americana sobre Derechos Humanos, ratificada por el Estado hondureño el 5 de septiembre de 1977. El derecho a la libertad de expresión y todos los derechos conexos a él se constituyen en elementos vitales para el buen funcionamiento del sistema democrático, aunque ello no significa que sean derechos absolutos pues pueden estar sujetos a limitaciones. Así, el artículo 79 constitucional que reconoce el derecho a la manifestación pacífica establece que puede estar sujeto a un régimen de permiso especial con el único fin de garantizar el orden público. No obstante, el régimen que reglamenta este derecho no puede tener como objetivo crear una base para prohibir su ejercicio, por el contrario, la reglamentación que establece, por ejemplo, el aviso o notificación previa, debe tener como objetivo informar a la autoridad que corresponda para que tome las medidas conducentes a " facilitar el ejercicio del derecho sin entorpecer de manera significativa el desarrollo normal de las actividades del resto de la comunidad " ii. De la misma manera, los artículos 13 y 15 de la Convención Americana establecen que las restricciones a estos derechos deben estar expresamente fijadas por la ley y que sean necesarias para asegurar el respeto a los derechos de las demás personas o la protección de la seguridad nacional, el orden público o la salud o la moral pública. Ante la importancia de la manifestación pública para la consolidación de la vida democrática, el derecho a la libertad de expresión reviste un interés social imperativo, lo que deja al Estado un marco más estrecho para justificar su limitación. Por tanto, cualquier limitación al ejercicio del derecho de reunión y manifestación pública debe estar dirigida exclusivamente a evitar amenazas graves e inminentes, por lo que sería " insuficiente un peligro eventual y genérico, ya que no se podría entender al derecho de reunión como sinónimo de desorden público para restringirlo per se " iii. Además, cuando se justifique la implementación de limitaciones a la libertad de expresión para proteger derechos ajenos, es necesario que estos derechos se encuentren efectivamente lesionados o amenazados; del mismo modo, no se puede invocar el " orden público " como justificación para limitar la libertad de expresión si no existe una amenaza cierta y verificable de disturbios graves. Tampoco basta un mero desorden como justificación suficiente para que la policía pueda detener a los y las estudiantes que están protestando en forma pacífica; solamente si la conducta de las personas manifestantes es legal pero es razonable pensar que va a causar violencia al interferir con los derechos o libertades de otras personas, " entonces los agentes pueden tomar medidas para prevenirlas, siempre y cuando dicha conducta instigue o provoque violencia iv. En el mismo sentido, la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos ha señalado que el orden público no puede ser invocado para suprimir o desnaturalizar derechos, sino que debe ser interpretado de acuerdo a lo que demanda una sociedad democrática. De hecho, la defensa del orden

Esta investigación presenta la delincuencia como una expresión encubierta de malestar y conflicto en uno de los momentos de mayor tensión social de la España contemporánea, el primer tercio del siglo XX, en un distrito judicial agrario, el de Ciudad Real. Las causas judiciales contenidas en los Libros de Sentencias muestran una legalidad establecida en base a unas relaciones de desigualdad que se manifiestan en una constante: los infractores pertenecen a los sectores más desfavorecidos de la sociedad. Una amplia gama de delitos que se catalogan y analizan en torno a cuatro categorías conflictivas: el hurto, el engaño, la insubordinación y el uso de armas. En definitiva, unas acciones que en su mayoría desvelan las estrategias de supervivencia de las llamadas “clases subalternas”.

Cosa significa protestare per le strade, perché occupare uno spazio nella città? Veniamo da un recente risveglio, da anni che hanno riportato la politica nelle piazze e nelle strade. In tutto il mondo uomini e donne sono scesi in piazza manifestando un'urgenza condivisa di resistenza, di riappropriazione degli spazi e della capacità di agire e fare politica a partire dalle vite. Come comprendere la specificità di queste esperienze? Perché chiamarle rivolte urbane e non rivoluzioni? Quali sono gli strumenti per leggere una rivolta senza astrarre, generalizzare, neutralizzare? Stare per le strade è la pratica di 'stasis' che crea lo spazio per la rivolta e contemporaneamente dispone un modo affettivo di vivere lo spazio urbano. Durante una protesta, la corporeità è esposta in tutta la sua intensità appassionata e vulnerabile. Il corpo al centro permette di cogliere la relazione che questi eventi intessono con gli spazi urbani, il nuovo senso della politica che propongono e i rapporti tra uomini e donne nel momento della protesta.

In light of the renewed interest in the Black Panthers’ protest movement, 40 years after it had been founded  and on the background of summer 2011 social protest, I wish to return to the press photographs of the Black Panthers demonstrations and claim that the coverage of the protest in the popular newspapers in Israel produced a strict  alienation between the Israeli public and the demonstrators by using racial markers, precisely during a period in which racial markers were diminishing due to the six days war. I will compare between photographs from the 1967 war and from the Black Panthers’ demonstrations and expose the role of the latter as an attempt to recreate racial markers in the Israeli visual sphere after the war. As a result, I suggest to read the demonstrations photographs as a /display of racial differences, where the same male body which signified the erasure of racial boundaries in the 67 war photographs, functioned in the 71 protest photographs as a platform on which these differences were engraved

Throughout the twentieth century and the outset of the twenty-first, Puerto Rico's sociopolitical and pro-independence struggles from US colonial rule have been influenced by the emergence of mobilizations for environmental justice. This article suggests that our understanding of both environmental and anticolonial mobilizations can be broadened by considering Puerto Rico's sociopolitical and colonial reality, as well as emphasizing the criminalization processes that take place as an institutional reaction to social mobilization. The structure of the article follows a threefold analysis. In the first part, I describe the historical basis of Puerto Rico's colonial situation, including its environmental impact, outlining the intertwined nature of these two processes. The second part outlines the mechanisms of repression and criminalization developed by the US and Puerto Rican governments. Finally, part three analyses the Puerto Rican environmental conflicts between 1999 and 2012, as well as how pro-environmental civil disobedience became a criminal offence.

מה נותר ממחאת האהלים, ומהו חותמה על החברה והפוליטיקה בישראל? מאמר זה עונה לשאלות אלה תוך דיון במחאה שלאחר המחאה. המאמר סוקר את ההסברים למחאת האהלים ב-2011, ומציע לזהות שני שחקנים פוליטיים - הגמונים וכפיפים - הלוקחים חלק במשחק האגוני שערער על הסדר הנאוליברלי. קבוצת הפעולה לא נחמדים-לא נחמדות עומדת במרכזו של הניתוח הבוחן אותה לאור יחסה לזרם המרכזי של המחאה. המאמר מציע לראות בפעולתה ובמיקומה קריאת תגר על דפוסי הפעולה ועל הגבולות המוכרים של השיח הפוליטי בישראל, והזדמנות להרחבת גבולות הדיון באזרחות ובדמוקרטיה אל מעבר לשיח הליברלי, ולאימוץ תיאוריית הדמוקרטיה הרדיקלית כמסגרת מושגית להבנת המציאות הפוליטית העכשווית.

Na obra o autor explora o direito de reunião no direito brasileiro a partir de sua concreção na atividade policial. A norma escrita na constituição, nas leis e nos precedentes judiciais, são confrontados com casos práticos, evidenciando os desafios que envolvem a tradução do direito escrito para a realidade na vida das pessoas.

Although Social Media Activism has been widely investigated following the latest social uprisings worldwide, the processes through which online-based protests are brought offline did not catch scholars' attention. Therefore, this study aims at filling the research gap by looking for elements and conditions that make Social-Media movements shift offline and if there are such, what are they. In order to do so, the study uses a qualitative approach by analyzing the divergent perspectives in the recent literature related to the topic of Social Media Activism. The analysis identifies several categories as potential elements to explain how are Social Media-based protests driven to the streets?: types of activism and Participation, Social Media Activism's structure and Leadership, common participant's profile, political context, the place of mainstream media, the use of Social Media platforms. The findings reveal that marketing strategies is the key factor that brings online-based protests to the streets. The study concludes by suggesting that further research using a quantitative approach should be conducted.

REINVENTING THE LEFT. THE POLITICAL, CULTURAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL BASES OF PODEMOS.
With the worsening of the economic crisis, unemployment and social inequalities
in Europe, an analogy spreads between the economic and political crisis of the Thirties and
the current one. As in that period, it is argued, there is a risk that a systemic economic crisis
will lead to a general crisis of the political dimension and to authoritarian outcomes. Very
rarely it is envisaged that the crisis may have «progressive» outcomes. It is on this second
possible outcome of the interlacement between the political and the economic crisis that
this article focuses, analysing the Spanish case of Podemos. What is Podemos? Which are its
constitutive elements? How was it possible to build a party able to reach a wide consensus
(the 20%) in a very short time (two years)? Trying to reach a general definition of the main
features of this new party, the article investigates the elements at the basis of the emergence
of Podemos: its origin in the academia; the earlier creation of an autonomous web-Tv;
the role played by the Indignados movement; the theoretical foundations of this political
enterprise; its relationship with the left-wing Latin American governments.

Performances and performance cultures are often seen in our discipline as indicative of the political unconscious in the way they shape dramatizations of collective myths and identities. Yet they are also so much entangled with the present political agendas, the arts (and education) decrees and legislation, the support by local communities and audiences, and the general social and political climates in which they operate, respond to and aim to influence. In Turkey, for over a decade, politics and theatre are increasingly at odds with each other in a general climate that seeks to restrict freedom of speech and expression as well as the public representation and visibility of (political) identities that go beyond the homogeneity of an 'ethnically' Turkish nationhood and a (Sunni) Muslim denomination or cultural background. Moreover, right before the previous general elections and even more so after the failed coup attempt, the role of the state as a primary actor in identity politics has taken a nationalistic turn. Despite its ethnically diverse history and social reality, the homogeneous Turkish nation as predicated by the state leaves formally and publicly no space for cultural pluralism. Theatre and aesthetic protest take up an important social role in contesting mainstream notions of citizenship and in creating a space for plurality. In this keynote, I propose to do four things: 1. I will first focus on the current political climate in Turkey and look at its implications for the artist's response-ability (Lehmann 2006). 2. I will move on to reintroduce Turkey's protest culture after the Gezi uprisings and discuss how performativity in protest actions has the potential to be called a 'structure of feeling' (Williams 1977) with a wider history in political performance history. 3. I will unpack similarities and differences with protests and theatre cultures in the 1950s and 1980s. However, it must be said that my rereading of Turkey's history of aesthetic protest and the role of the artist within it will only reveal a very disparate story. 4. I will return to today's Turkey and pose some critical questions regarding the term ‘Gezi spirit’. I will conclude with the question whether or not the Gezi spirit is (or should be kept) alive and what it left us – as academics – to make sense of what is happening around us today.

This is the pre-print working paper version, see the full printed version: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_democracy/v025/25.3.onuch.html

The protests that began in Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv on 21 Novem- ber 2013 and became known as the EuroMaidan took even seasoned observers of East European politics by surprise. By December, around 800,000 “ordinary” Ukrainians were demonstrating in Kyiv and other cities across the country. The rapid rise of mass protests, especially at a time when the world’s established democracies are struggling with growing political apathy and declining voter turnout, appears as what Timur Kuran has called one of those moments “when out of never you have a revolution.”1 These episodes may help the cause of democ- racy, but they can also destabilize countries by polarizing citizens and boosting extremists. In order to gauge what a protest outbreak will mean for a country’s democratic prospects, it is crucial to understand who the bulk of the protesters are and what goals they hope to achieve. Here follows original survey data that may help to shed light on Euro- Maidan protest participation and its implications for democratic hopes in Ukraine.

Women's activism in Kuwait has historically intersected with nation building and regime perpetuation projects. The government has attempted to combine instances of modernity with growing political demands from the tribal and Islamist sectors, exploiting women's activism as part of its regime survival strategy.