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ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL
MOVEMENTS
RESEARCH IN SOCIAL
MOVEMENTS, CONFLICTS
AND CHANGE
Series Editor: Patrick G. Coy
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ADVANCES IN THE
VISUAL ANALYSIS OF
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
EDITED BY
NICOLE DOERR
Mount Holyoke College, MA, USA
ALICE MATTONI
European University Institute, Florence, Italy
SIMON TEUNE
Social Science Research Center Berlin, Germany
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CONTENTS
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
vii
FOREWORD
ix
xi
27
55
81
vi
CONTENTS
105
137
147
175
209
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Tina Askanius
Priska Daphi
Nicole Doerr
Patricia Ewick
James C. Franklin
Anja Le
Eeva Luhtakallio
Alice Mattoni
Kirsty McLaren
vii
viii
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Thomas Olesen
Marc W. Steinberg
Simon Teune
Peter Ullrich
FOREWORD
Like any established and mature body of scholarship, social movements
research has changed, evolved, and grown over its decades. Now a robust
and vibrant eld in its own right, it has seen interpretive paradigms and
theoretical frameworks come and go, and in some cases come again. A
variety of frameworks and approaches have been used, emphasizing
collective behavior, mobilizing structures, resource mobilization, cultural
politics, social psychology, identities, cognition, framing, discourses, narratives, and emotions.
The 35 volumes that make up the 35-year history of the Research in Social
Movements, Conicts and Change series reect some of these changing
emphases, and more. In the last decade alone, for example, special thematicfocused volumes of the RSMCC series have been published on the following
topics: consensus decision making in social movements; authorities in
contention; new frontiers in conict resolution; new media and movements;
gender in conict resolution and social movements; and on nonviolent
action and social movements.
Now with this latest themed volume, the Research in Social Movements,
Conicts and Change series helps develop another innovative area of
scholarship: the visual analysis of social movements. Volume editors Nicole
Doerr, Alice Mattoni, and Simon Teune whose own research agendas
have done so much to open up this new area of scholarship have compiled
an impressive set of papers. Their volumes tripartite focus on how social
movements express themselves visually, on how they are represented in
various media, and on the social visibility issues that movements face charts
new pathways for future developments in social movements research.
Patrick G. Coy
Series Editor, Research in Social Movements, Conicts and Change
Professor and Director, Center for Applied Conict Management
Kent State University
ix
INTRODUCTION
The news of recent mobilizations in Arab, European, and North-American
countries quickly spread across the globe. Well before written reports
analyzing the unfolding mobilizations, images of protests circulated widely
through television channels, print newspapers, internet websites, and social
media platforms. Pictures and videos of squares full of people protesting
against their governments became the symbols of a new wave of contention
that quickly spread from Tunisia to many other countries. Pictures and
videos showing the gathering of people in Tahrir square (Egypt), Puerta del
Sol (Spain), and Zuccotti Park (United States) quickly became vivid tools
of countervisuality (Mirzoeff, 2011) that opposed the roaring grassroots
political participation of hundreds of thousands people to the silent
decisions taken in government and corporation buildings by small groups
of politicians and managers. The presence, and relevance, of images in
mobilizations of social movements is no novelty. Encounters with social
movements have always been intrinsically tied to the visual sense. Activists
articulate visual messages, their activities are represented in photos and
video sequences, and they are ultimately rendered visible, or invisible, in the
public sphere. Social movements produce and evoke images, either as a
result of a planned, explicit, and strategic effort, or accidentally, in an
unintended or undesired manner. At the same time, social movements are
perceived by external actors and dispersed audiences via images which are
produced both by themselves and others.
Scholars of social movements did not ignore visual aspects. They refer to
images to exemplify and illustrate their arguments. Yet systematic analyses
of the visual or an integration of visual analyses within broader frameworks
xi
xii
INTRODUCTION
is still rare (but see Philipps, 2012). Like other elds of social science, social
movement research is almost exclusively focused on texts1: the sources
scholars primarily use are interviews and surveys, documents and manifestos, newspaper coverage, laws, and ofcial reports. The neglect of the
visual is not an exclusive problem of social movement research. It reects
the more general perplexity of social scientists when confronted with images.
It was only in the early 1990s that the visual turn in the humanities and
cultural studies inspired a theoretical debate about the power of images in
political conict (Mitchell, 1994), representing the visual realm as a site of
struggle with a life of its own. It is not only a battleground for contentious
politics, but also a universe of culturally shared meaning. Visual theorists
in media studies and art history agree that images are associated with a
complex stock of cultural knowledge and experiences, frames and identications, and that they are interpreted, framed, and reframed by political
actors. The characteristic openness of visual forms requires a particularly
careful and hence challenging analysis to impart the profound and complex
meanings of images. Dealing with these contents requires methodological
skills that differ from those in the well-worn toolbox of social movement
analysis. The exploration of the visual by sociologists and political scientists
is still nascent. Visual analysis appears in curricula only sporadically.
Methods to understand images in political conict are far from readily
available. The exploratory status of a visual analysis of social movements is
also reected in the growing number of studies contributing to the eld.
They are tentative excursions into the unfamiliar terrain of visuals in social
movements.
xiii
Introduction
xiv
INTRODUCTION
Fashion and gestures, indeed, have the same dual addressees as symbols
and images. As a means of self-expression and as a carrier of a message to
spectators, the body is the enjeu protesters bring into political conicts.
Social movement activists use their bodies to expose and embody a deviant
mindset (Hebdidge, 1988; Wilson, 1990). The body is, more emphatically,
the medium through which politics is performed (Pabst, 2010). Drag
performances, for instance, have been analyzed as a way to challenge
hegemonic gender norms (Taylor & Rupp, 2004; Taylor, Rupp, & Gamson,
2004). At street demonstrations, clothing is a way to identify with a
particular social movement strand or a tactic. Black hooded sweaters,
sunglasses, and balaclavas are central accessories of the Black Bloc (Haunss,
forthcoming). Activists wearing such outts during demonstrations not only
mark their afliation to an antagonist protest milieu, they also signal their
preference for confrontational tactics (Juris, 2005) to other demonstrators as
well as to the police and journalists.
xv
Introduction
xvi
INTRODUCTION
Introduction
xvii
and valorization. While the third area of visual analysis raises new
questions for social movement scholars who have largely taken the tableau
of visible actors for granted, the rst two are closely linked to the
established canon of social movement analysis. If images and symbols are
an important resource for protest actors to express themselves, it makes
good sense to consider their impact on collective identities and emotions as
well as their role in framing and representing protest and in the
mobilization of resources. If images of protest affect audiences and target
groups, any analyses of political processes or approaches focusing on the
public sphere are well advised to consider the visual aspects of the struggles
under study.
The contributions to the special section in this volume primarily address
the rst area of research described above. Exploring the production and
framing of images, the contributions extend the reach of some of the
classical approaches to protest and social movements. In drawing on
interdisciplinary approaches and methods, all the chapters propose ways to
bridge the gap between the research traditions of political contention and
culture in movements.
The opening contribution in the special section focuses on the recent
uprising in Egypt, taking into consideration the power of visual framing in
transnational contexts. In bringing together frame analysis with the
sociology of emotion and memory studies, Thomas Olesen explores how
activists produce, diffuse, and adapt photographs to generate the broad
and universalized emotional resonance of injustice frames. In focusing on
the recent case of Khaled Said, a young Egyptian blogger beaten to death
by Egyptian police in June 2010, he illustrates how images make for moral
shock. The distressing post-mortem photograph of Said became a
powerful resource in the struggle against Mubaraks regime when activists
juxtaposed it with a portrait of the young blogger. The representation of
Said as a member of the young, urban middle class rendered the pictures
of him as an injustice symbol resonant with existing injustice frames in
Egyptian society. Olesens study thus shows how we may integrate classical
text-based approaches and the visual analysis of transnational diffusion:
theorizing and analyzing how distinct local visual injustice symbols are
transformed in the interaction between different regional, national, and
global publics allows movement scholars to understand political change
and transnational diffusion by comparing images and discourse in
interaction.
Addressing theorists of collective identity and strategy, Priska Daphi,
Peter Ullrich, and Anja Le trace how images used in protests against
xviii
INTRODUCTION
Introduction
xix
xx
INTRODUCTION
Introduction
xxi
xxii
INTRODUCTION
Introduction
xxiii
xxiv
INTRODUCTION
NOTE
1. This is not to say that images and texts are independent or mutually exclusive.
They refer to each other, as in metaphors or captions.
Nicole Doerr
Alice Mattoni
Simon Teune
Editors
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PART I
SPECIAL TOPIC: ADVANCES
IN THE VISUAL ANALYSIS OF
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
THOMAS OLESEN
INTRODUCTION
Photographs, lm, and images have received relatively limited systematic
attention within the mainstream of social movement studies. This is
surprising considering how historically they have often played key roles in
various forms of political activism (e.g., Alexander, 2006, 2011a, 2011b;
Biggs, 2005; Butler, 2010; DeLuca, 1999; Doerr & Teune, 2011; Goldberg,
1991; Halfmann & Young, 2010; Hariman & Lucaites, 2007; Martin, 2005;
Schlegel, 1995; Sontag, 2003, 1979; Szasz, 1994). The issue of visuality in
political activism can be approached from various angles. In this chapter I
analyze how photographs may attain the status of visual injustice symbols.1
Photographs transformed into visual injustice symbols often involve death
and suffering caught on camera. I emphasize the verb caught because the
photographs I have in mind are not staged. Rather, they are snapshots of a
reality more or less accidentally witnessed by the photographer. A symbolic
perspective highlights how an activist-driven politicization of this class of
photographs involves an emotionally charged process of universalization. A
photograph of someones death or suffering is in the rst instance private and
particular. For such a moment to become a visual injustice symbol it must be
infused with meanings that point beyond this particularity. When this occurs
the photograph is moved from the private to the public realm and, from a
scientic point of view, enters the orbit of political sociology. With their
enormous capacity to contain, compress, and symbolize events or
ideologies, says Goldberg (1991, p. 135), photographs become the signs
and signposts of modern society.
As should be clear from the above remarks, the chapter balances political
and cultural approaches in its understanding of activism and photography.
THOMAS OLESEN
Injustice Frames
As noted by Elder and Cobb (1983, pp. 2829), a symbol is any object used
by human beings to index meanings that are not inherent in, nor discernible
from, the object itself. In other words, symbols always point beyond
themselves. To stay with the metaphor, a photograph that is unconnected
with values and ideas external to it points mainly to itself (but see the section
on emotional knowledge below for some qualication of this argument).
The photograph-cum-injustice symbol thus condenses existing and known
situations of injustice. The concept of the injustice frame offers a useful way
of theorizing this argument and for extending the above points regarding the
relationship between photography, activism, and society. An injustice
frame, according to Gamson and colleagues (Gamson et al., 1982, p. 123),
THOMAS OLESEN
Emotional Knowledge
Generally, visual injustice symbols are based on documentary photographs
involving some element of unjust bodily suffering. The suffering body,
Hauser thus argues (2000, p. 135), has an y impressive rhetorical
potential (see also Sontag, 2003; Taylor, 1998) that imbues this type of
photograph with a particularly powerful symbolic potential (this does not
imply that suffering bodies always have such an effect; in fact, a strong
tradition in photography theory claims that viewing suffering may also
generate numbness. I touch on this argument in the conclusion of the
chapter). The documentary dimension suggests that this class of photograph
involves an unltered representation of reality (i.e., they are not staged or
otherwise manipulated).6 In fact, the ability of a photograph to be
transformed into an injustice symbol is almost entirely dependent on its
10
THOMAS OLESEN
A Note on Methodology
This chapter employs a mix of sources. The primary source, however, is the
internet. It is so in a double sense. On the one hand, the internet has been a
central tool in locating and collecting relevant material such as reports and
newspaper articles. Also, the visual material presented in the chapter was
mainly found on the internet. On the other hand, a signicant part of the
process through which Khaled Said was transformed into an injustice
symbol took place on the internet, thus making it an object of study in its
own right. This is perhaps most evident in the case of the We Are All
Khaled Said Facebook page. Since this page was central in the symbolic
process, I accessed and read the entire page wall dating back to June 2010.
The wall provides invaluable information about Khaled Said-related activities as they evolved from June 2010 to January/February 2011. Similarly,
YouTube contains numerous commemorative videos that testify to the
symbolic nature of Khaled Said. Since this material has a permanent digital
presence we may consider the internet as a socialpolitical memory structure
(I return to this theme below). Additionally, I have relied on two secondary
sources. The rst is a radio documentary, The Facebook Martyr (Facebook
martyren) made by journalists at Danmarks Radio (DR).7 This exemplary
documentary contains several interviews with core individuals in the
symbolic process. This information was primarily used in the background
section. On the documentarys website there is a collection of interviews that
did not make it to the nal version of the documentary, as well as links to
numerous relevant documents. The second source is Wael Ghonims
personal account of the Egyptian Revolution, published in early 2012. As
I detail below Ghonim was the main force behind the Facebook page We
Are All Khaled Said, which became instrumental in the symbolic process
(see below).
11
12
THOMAS OLESEN
13
lifted the case from the private to the public sphere, but contained little
active contextualization and interpretation. Eltawels engagement was
decidedly public, as his intervention was made available on the web. His
efforts were primarily aimed at uncovering the circumstances behind Saids
death and countering the claims made by authorities in that regard. They
were, in other words, rather closely linked to the specic case. The We Are
All Khaled Said Facebook page in turn had a wider publicizing ambition,
as it actively sought to contextualize and universalize the case of Said by
linking it to already existing injustice frames in Egyptian society.
14
THOMAS OLESEN
15
75% are in the 1530 age group (Arab Social Media Report, 2011, p. 13).
The computer literacy and resources required for using social media for
political purposes are primarily found in the urban middle-classes (see
Howard, 2011 for an overview of digital media use in the Arab world). The
correspondence between Saids personal characteristics and those of
politically engaged and/or motivated Egyptian Facebook users made his
unjust death particularly potent as a symbol for a Facebook-initiated
political campaign.18 Visually, this potential was strongly supported by
Saids appearance on the pre-death photograph, which, as noted, often
accompanied the postmortem one. Here we see a well-groomed, handsome,
informally dressed, kind and intelligent looking young man: an embodiment
of Egypts urban, educated, middle-class youth.19
Universalization
The identication dynamic did not only concern who Khaled Said was
before his death on June 6, 2010; it was also evident in the nonuniqueness of
his murder. This interpretation is evident, for example, in the DR radio
documentary interview with Ahmed Maher: y we tried to expose the
injustice of the atrocity committed against him, because what happened to
Khaled Said happens to a lot of people. This universalizing use of Said is
perhaps most powerfully conveyed in the name of the Facebook page set up
in reaction to his death, We Are All Khaled Said, and is spelled out in
the background text of the page, which begins in the following way:
Khaled y a story of many Egyptians. The text goes on: Khaled has
become the symbol for many Egyptians who dream to see their country free
of brutality, torture and ill treatment. Many young Egyptians are now fed
up with the inhuman treatment they face on a daily basis in streets, police
stations and everywhere (see also Ghonim, 2012, p. 59). The examples
demonstrate the proactive attempt to connect the case of Khaled Said with
existing injustice frames in Egyptian society. Systematic police violence and
impunity had thus been a core concern for activists long before Saids
murder. As reported by the El Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims
of Violence, police torture is widespread in Egypt (e.g., Aziz, 2007). Critique
of the Egyptian police and legal system has been widely associated with the
emergency law in effect since the murder of President Anwar Sadat in 1981.
The emergency law grants the police and legal authorities extensive powers
that clash with basic civil and political rights (FIDH, 2011). The resonance
of Khaled Saids murder in Egyptian society did not thus derive from its
aberration in comparison to existing expectations and experiences, but, in
contrast, from the way his brutal and unjustied murder conrmed prior
16
THOMAS OLESEN
17
CONCLUDING REMARKS
In the concluding section I wish to briey address three wider issues and
points for future debate and analysis that spring from the preceding
analysis. The rst concerns the place and relevance of photography in social
movement research. The second considers the extent to which the ndings in
the Khaled Said case may be generalizable to other cases and settings. The
third is a discussion of the transnational aspects of the Said case.
In one of the most inuential books on photography, Sontag (1979) is
generally skeptical about the transformative power of photographs. She
fears that rather than activating and mobilizing people against injustice,
photographs of suffering may have a numbing and demobilizing effect or,
even worse, become the objects of voyeurism and perverse entertainment.
And it is certainly true, as noted by Lineld (2010, p. 33), that seeing does
not necessarily translate into believing, caring, or acting. Indeed, if the
sheer presence of photographs of suffering and injustice were sufcient to
mobilize people, protesters would be packing the streets constantly. Yet, as
Lineld (2010) is also keen to point out, photographs do sometimes make a
political difference. Khaled Said is a case in point. In the absence of the
postmortem photograph would his unjust death have caused any waves in
Egypt? Even if this is counterfactual speculation I think it safe to say that it
would not. In trying to understand how and why certain photographs
acquire mobilizing potential I nd it absolutely crucial to consider the role
of political activists. In relation to Khaled Said I argue that the postmortem
18
THOMAS OLESEN
19
accept the basic thrust of the argument we must be cautious not to overstate
this globalizing dynamic. It should be borne in mind that a photograph
of suffering is always local, private, and particular; suffering, in other
words, always happens somewhere and to someone. What is profoundly
modern about photography, however, is that it allows such local experiences
to be radically disembedded (Giddens, 1991; see also Sontag, 2003, p. 21).
It is thus a key characteristic of global modernity that local/national
injustices are increasingly globalized through moralpolitical solidarity
action (Alexander, 2007; Olesen, 2005). In relation to photography and
visual injustice symbols these remarks suggest that photographs may be
successful in symbolically diffusing local/national injustice frames transnationally. Yet in that process the local/national injustice frame invariably
changes meaning in at least two ways: rst, the diffused version will lack the
thickness of the local/national version; second, it will be interpreted
through the politicalcultural lters of the receiving audience. Theorizing
and analyzing the way visual injustice symbols are transformed in interaction between the local/national and global levels is a particularly fruitful
area for future research within political sociology.
A nal note for consideration in future research: in line with the political
cultural approach adopted here it is important to consider injustice symbols
not only as instigators and motivators of political activism, but as outcomes
as well. This opens up to a temporal perspective interested in the extent to
which Khaled Said has become integrated into Egyptian political culture as
a core injustice symbol or perhaps even an injustice memory (see also
footnote 22). This development can be probed on at least two levels. First,
commemoration activities are among the most vital signs that an event or
individual has become part of a countrys political culture or collective
memory (Booth, 2006; Cubitt, 2007; Olick, 2007). Such activities can be
both formal and informal. Formal activities are typically related to state
sanctioned days and sites of remembrance. In the case of Khaled Said no
ofcial sanctioning has yet occurred. However, informal and popular
activities commemorating the one-year anniversary of Saids death were
widespread in Egypt on June 6, 2011, especially in Cairo and Saids
hometown of Alexandria. Many of these employed the silent stand format
discussed in the background section. Commemoration activities at the oneyear anniversary often took a decidedly political character, as Egyptians
generally consider many of the ills of the Mubarak regime to remain
unresolved (see also the section on analogical bridging). The most vivid and
politically charged act of commemoration occurred on June 6, 2011, when
protestors outside the Egyptian Ministry of the Interior in Cairo sprayed the
20
THOMAS OLESEN
face of Khaled Said on the ministry walls as part of a wider protest against
the ruling military council and the lack of democratic progress.22 Second, in
his analysis of the Holocaust as a cultural trauma and memory, Jeffrey
Alexander (2004, p. 247) argues that the extent to which an event has
become ingrained in political culture is evidenced by its employment in
analogical bridging. Analogical bridging occurs when a current event is
compared with a past event (whose injustice is undisputed) in order to
emphasize the injustice of the current event and to strengthen the legitimacy
of claims related to that event. A similar pattern of analogical bridging has
been evident in the case of Egypt and Khaled Said. Issam Atallah
(Saeddine, 2011), Elsayed Belal (We Are All Khaled Said, 2011), and
Essam Ali Atta (Rodr guez, 2011) are only a few examples of victims of
police brutality and/or torture in Egypt who have been termed as a new
or another Khaled Said. The case of Essam Ali Atta is of particular
interest. In late October 2011 his fate became a rallying point for postRevolution protests against the military council that has ruled Egypt since
the fall of Mubarak. For protestors gathering in the Tahrir Square, Attas
death testied that even if Mubarak had gone, violent police practices
persist under the military council. From a symbolic point of view it was
particularly interesting to note how Attas and Saids fates were connected
through the presence of Saids mother, Leila Marzouk, during the protests
in the Tahrir Square (Abdellatif, 2011).
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This chapter is a revised version of a paper presented at the Danish
Sociology Conference, Aarhus, January 1920, 2012. I am grateful to the
participants in the workshop on social movements for their useful
comments. I also wish to sincerely thank three anonymous reviewers at
Research in Social Movements, Conicts, and Change for their unusually
useful feedback.
NOTES
1. For other applications of the injustice symbol concept, see Olesen (2011, 2012,
forthcoming).
2. It is difcult to approach the case of Khaled Said without some ethical
hesitation. The horrifying photograph of Khaled Said in the morgue represents a
21
very private moment. To photograph people, Sontag thus says (1979, p. 14), is to
violate them y it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. This
is a quite precise characterization of what happened to the photographs of Khaled
Said in the Egyptian Revolution, but it also describes the way it is used in a article
such as this. What is worth noting in this particular case, however, is how the postmortem photograph was not taken by a stranger, but by Saids own family and
with the explicit purpose of publicizing the injustice that had befallen him. The
photograph in this sense does not entail a violation or intrusion in the same way as
photographs taken for purely or mainly professional purposes.
3. This understanding and expectation of photography (especially documentary
photography), is evidenced in the disputes that arise when the authenticity of a
photograph is questioned. Such a dispute arose over one of the most famous
photographs/footage from the Balkan Wars: a group of Muslim prisoners standing
behind a barbed wire fence at the Trnopolje camp in the Prijedor region. The center
of the picture and subsequent attention was the prisoner Fikret Alic who appeared
bare-chested and evidently emaciated. The images immediately drew analogies to the
Holocaust. However, critics later argued that what was portrayed as a concentration
camp was in fact a refugee camp and that the prisoners were standing outside the
barbed wire compound (for detailed accounts of the controversy, see Campbell, 2002
and Taylor, 1998, pp. 6063).
4. This point can be understood at several levels: rst, the meaning of the same
photograph may change over time; second, meaning may vary between countries/
regions (see also the concluding section); third, meaning will differ between
individuals.
5. This argument is not uncontroversial. Butler (2010, p. 71), for example, argues
as follows: The photograph is not merely a visual image awaiting interpretation; it
is itself actively interpreting, sometimes forcibly so. While Butlers point is well
taken I wish to maintain that for a photograph to become an injustice symbol with
implications for and resonance in a wider public it must undergo a process of
interpretation and exposure by political actors.
6. Documentary photography is, however, a category with several shades. Sontag
(1979, p. 6), for example, argues how the famous series of American Depression
photographs created by members of the Farm Security Administration were in fact
the results of a concerted and strategic effort to get the right picture (the best
known of these is undoubtedly Dorothea Langes Migrant Mother from 1936).
7. The documentary is available on: http://www.dr.dk/P1/P1Dokumentar/
Udsendelser/2011/05/31092508.htm (accessed October 20, 2011).
8. Khaled Saids full name is Khaled Mohamed Said Sobhi.
9. For a set of witness accounts in Arabic see http://www.elshaheeed.co.uk/2010/
07/04/khaled-said-murder-witness-accounts-arabic-videos (accessed November 21,
2011).
10. The rst forensic report can be accessed at: http://www.dr.dk/NR/
rdonlyres/2B705A52-EB04-4D7F-9FF8-6D91A2DACB7C/2848082/Firstforensicre
port.pdf. The second can be accessed at: http://www.dr.dk/NR/%20rdonlyres/
2B705A52-EB04-4D7F-9FF8-6D91A2DACB7C/2848072/Preliminarytripartite
forensicreport.pdf.
11. The international evaluation report can be accessed at: http://www.alnadeem.
org/en/node/306 (accessed December 6, 2011).
22
THOMAS OLESEN
12. The two police ofcers responsible for Saids death were sentenced to seven
years imprisonment in October 2011. Saids family and activists widely considered
the sentence to be too lenient.
13. The original page started by Ghonim was in Arabic (http://www.facebook.
com/ElShaheeed), but an English language version was soon after set up by
Mohamed Ibrahim (http://www.facebook.com/elshaheeed.co.uk).
14. See http://www.elshaheeed.co.uk/silent-stands (accessed November 29, 2011).
15. Several videos showing Khaled Said related protests may be found on
YouTube, for example: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middleeast/egypt/111029/thousands-rally-alleged-torture-victim-essam-atta (accessed November
17, 2011).
16. The quote has been translated from the Danish narrators translation from
Mahers Arabic.
17. The fact that social media played a key role in mobilization should not
eclipse the effect of personal and physical relations in that regard. As noted by
Tufecki and Wilson (2012, p. 370) many received information about protests by
mouth.
18. I make a distinction between politically engaged and politically motivated
to denote that only about one-third of those who took part in the protests in 2010
and 2011 had previously been engaged in political activism (Tufecki & Wilson, 2012,
p. 369).
19. Egypt has 18 public universities and a high tertiary education enrollment rate
at 32.6% (EACEA, 2011).
20. Saids innocence and the violators morallegal corruption helped elevate him
to the status of martyr. This status is evident for example in the Arabic name URL of
the We Are All Khaled Said page, el shaheed, which translates as the martyr.
Martyrs play a key role in most major religions, but generally have a stronger
position in Muslim societies where the term refers to individuals who, in dying for a
religious cause, transfer their moral qualities to society. Martyrs in this sense are
closely related to the concept of injustice symbols.
21. In the global context one example deserves special mention. In September
2011 Khaled Said posthumously received the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Human rights
Award (Friedrich ebert Stiftung, 2011). In relation to the event German grafti artist
Andreas von Chrzanowski (aka Case) painted a portrait of Khaled Said on a piece of
the Berlin Wall. The process and result is documented in a widely distributed video
featuring one of the songs Khaled Said wrote before his death. The painting is to be
placed permanently in Berlins Freedom Park. The Berlin portrait is interesting not
only because the portrait and video have been widely circulated, but also because it
contains a double symbolism. The use of a piece of the Berlin Wall as a canvas for
Saids portrait powerfully projects his fate into global history and memory. The
Berlin Wall contains considerable symbolic importance for people all over the world.
The symbolic association with the Berlin Wall thus lends some of the walls
undisputed and globally recognized status as an injustice symbol to that of Khaled
Said. The photograph can be seen at: http://www.dsg.ae/portals/0/ASMR2.pdf
(accessed December 7, 2011).
22. A recording of the event can be seen on http://www.alnadeem.org/les/
torture_in_egypt_0.pdf (accessed December 20, 2011).
23
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27
28
EEVA LUHTAKALLIO
INTRODUCTION
Visual representations play a crucial role in struggles over discursive power,
the power to set agendas, and the power to dene credibility. What we think
of a collective struggle far away, or in the neighboring city district, is
increasingly dependent on the images we have seen on TV, in newspaper
reports, and the internet. These images may be of young men throwing
stones at the police or the windows of a McDonalds, or they may represent
dancing, singing, and shouting women wearing owers, or veils, on their
heads. Sometimes images of activism are lled with clouds of tear gas, at
other times, they are crowded by colorful, carnivalesque groups carrying
signs or playing self-made musical instruments. These elements appear in the
most common visual representations found in news reports on social
movements, and on the countless websites where activists themselves share
photos of their actions.
Social movement contention is a particularly spatial, bodily, and, indeed,
visual form of politics: its means of inuencing the current media-dominated
public spheres lie rmly in the chances of being seen and recognized. For the
sociology of social movements, visual representations offer the possibility of
grasping elements that are complicated to analyze by means of, for instance,
interviews, such as the meanings and consequences of different aspects of
gender: masculinity, femininity, and gender/sex ambiguity. Gender aspects
matter in all kinds of collective action, and provoke a great number of
stereotypes and assumptions, but they have been the subject to less in-depth
analysis, apart from studies on movements that have explicitly gendered
goals such as feminist or gay rights movements (Charles, 2004; Einwoher,
Hollander, & Olson, 2000; Taylor, 1999; see however Adams, 2002;
Dunezat, 2007; Kolar ova, 2004; Luhtakallio, 2007; Sasson-Levy &
29
30
EEVA LUHTAKALLIO
31
32
EEVA LUHTAKALLIO
I included all images found from these sources, without preselecting issues
or events, so as to make the sample as representative of the local online
activist visuality of the time as possible.5
I knew most of the groups whose images were included, and participated
myself in some of the events represented in the material, thus gaining an
understanding of the activists ideas of what was at stake in these
representations. I was thus able to include a larger sample of groups and
events without losing touch with the material and social conditions the
images were produced in, and therefore, in my view, maintain a noncognitive, kinesthetic understanding of the activities and gender congurations
that repeatedly emerged within the two contexts (Laine, 2011, pp. 251253),
and thereby the capacity to read the images sensitively, even though the
numbers involved are large. The ethnographic link to the material helped in
analyzing complex issues such as the meaning of gender congurations in the
two contexts.6 My take on analyzing this material is primarily that of
researcher interpretation, built on an ethnographic understanding of the
contexts these representations stem from, on the one hand, and a careful
examination of a corpus of over 500 images, on the other, thus forming a
broad understanding of the master frame in question.
While the signicance of visual representations is widely recognized today
in many areas of mainstream sociological analysis, from everyday sociability
to consumption habits, work remains to be done regarding both the
recognition of visual material as a serious sociological object and methodological approaches to the sociology of visual representations (e.g., Becker,
1998; Grady, 1996; Harper, 1998; Holliday, 2000; Rose, 2001; Suchar, 1997;
Wagner, 2002). To contribute to this work, this chapter introduces a
methodological approach based on Erving Goffmans (1974) frame analysis.
Combining frame analysis and social movement studies is no breaking news,
and the eld of visual sociology is no stranger to frames (on framing and
social movements, see, e.g., Benford & Snow, 2000; Snow & Benford, 1988,
2000; Snow & Byrd, 2007; Snow, Vliegenthart, & Corrigall-Brown, 2007; on
frames and visual material, see, e.g., Fahmy, 2010; Gamson, Croteau,
Hoynes, & Sasson, 1992; Margolis, 1999; Morreale, 1991; Parry, 2010).
While acknowledging the achievements of the innumerable applications of
frame analysis in these elds of study, I suggest that going back to
Goffmans theoretical work provides a fruitful starting point to solve some
of the troubles of analyzing visual material sociologically, and in particular,
how to gure out new ways to address social movement activities through
visual representations. An adaptation of Goffmans idea of keying and
a suggestion of dening the dominant frames visual material entails form
33
34
EEVA LUHTAKALLIO
35
of the tools that sociological analyses of visual material mostly use: visual
content analysis for studying large sets of images, the wide variety of
semiotic approaches for studying the signs and meaning production in single
images or relatively small sets of material, and narrative analysis for
studying visual storylines (e.g., Cowie, 1994; Prosser, 1998; Rose, 2001; van
Leeuwen & Jewitt, 2001; van Zoonen, 1994). These methods have been
applied in a wide variety of cases of visual sociological analysis (on content
analysis, see, e.g., Ahmed, 2000; Billings & Eastman, 2002; Garc a,
Mart nez, & Salgado, 2003; on semiotics and narrative analysis, see, e.g.,
Anttila, 2009; Harper, 2000; Harrison, 2003; Margolis, 1999; Mattoni &
Doerr, 2007; Nixon, 1997). They certainly prove useful for various kinds of
research questions. Nevertheless, when the social, contextual, and cultural
dynamics of visual representations together form the center of interest, the
troubles of the sociological analyst of visual culture are far from being
solved. The following is an attempt to solve a few more.
Studying visual representations visually experienced situations of
everyday life requires taking into account their simultaneously produced
and productive nature. They both articulate social processes and contribute
to them: they produce meaning from within a world, objectifying something
collectively observed or experienced, and produce, reproduce, and alter
this world (e.g., Cowie, 1994; Hall, 1997). In terms of the activist websites
I studied, the visual representations found were, thus, simultaneously
products of more or less conscious publishing processes8 and the intention
to share and articulate certain meanings and images that, once published,
enter endless processes of interpretation and negotiation with viewers.
In order to grasp this twofold dynamic of representation and to make
sense of the stream of images oating around on the internet, popping up
and commented on here and there in the ow of communication that formed
the local public spheres in Lyon and Helsinki, I began with the idea that
typically, when we look at an image, we ask what are we looking at, and
answer the question by interpreting what we see. I took it more or less for
granted that these visual representations would rarely be mistaken for
something other than messages by grassroots activists and groups, as the
media, websites of activist groups, were extremely recognizable. But what
takes interpretation and framing is to understand what kind of an image
this is, what does it mean, and how does it relate to the thousands of
previous visual situations one has seen, and to the reserve of visual
literacy one has gained.
In order to understand the meaning of an image, we need to come up with
an answer to the question what is going on here?, and to accompany it
with additional interpretations and understandings that may either slightly
36
EEVA LUHTAKALLIO
37
and mimic (e.g., Goffman, 1979; Rose, 2001, pp. 7577, 112114, 188189;
Williamson, 1978).
I rst went through the material in order to dene and name the dominant
frames: the repeated features emerging as the at the rst glance
interpretations when looking at the images. This procedure can be described
as imitating a random viewer of the images trying to make sense of them,
with the difference that I had a larger number of pictures before me than an
average web surfer might care to go through at one sitting. Dening the
dominant frames means observing the mental categories one builds when
trying to understand what happens in an image: what is present that is
similar to something I have seen before, how does it differ from something
I have seen before, and how is it similar to or different from the other
representations that surround it.
I organized the images following the denominators detected at the rst
reading, and took notes about the keyings that rened or redirected the
meanings of the images, including an attentive reading of the captions and
headlines attached to the images. This step further illustrates how the
method simulates the process of understanding images, and thus the
production of meaning that occurs in the negotiations between the image
and the viewer.
The idea of dominant framing enables the categorization of the general
characteristics, even for a very large set of visual material, whereas the
dynamics of keying provide a systematic yet sensitive way of analyzing both
the general characteristics and atypical or other particularly dense features
of the material in a qualitative approach.10 Framing and keying form a
continuum that helps identify the meaning dynamics of an image, and
further, of a set of strips that constitute the analyzed imagery.
Images make meaning and matter through both repetition and uniqueness: as Gillian Rose (2001, p. 66), among others, has rightly noted, in
analyzing visual representations, frequency does not equal importance or
the density of meaning. However, as I wanted to keep the sample wide, and
not make a preselection of the images, some basic quantication helped in
the necessary moves back and forth in the steps of the analysis, keeping
different aspects both the repetitive and the unique of the material
tangible.
In the following, I analyze the images found on the activist websites in
Lyon and Helsinki as cultural representations that a viewer needs to frame
in order to understand what is going on, and to key in order to understand
how this going-on is happening.
38
EEVA LUHTAKALLIO
Demonstration (%)
Violence (%)
Performance (%)
26
17
3
44
41
2
10
100
85
8
5
2
100
22
11
67
100
25
10
13
13
18
51
12
6
100
70
15
11
4
100
22
19
28
31
100
39
starting res (when it is evident that the image is not of a friendly campre)
or scenes indexical to violence in which the expressions, mimic, or artefacts
that dominate the image have a connection to violence, such as shouting faces
involved in confrontation, or riot police gathered in a phalanx in full gear.
The frame of violence was slightly more frequent in the Lyonnais material.
The dominant frame of performance, nally, comprises depictions of a variety
of shows and theatrical scenes, organized performances, or make-believe and
mock appearances. The frame of performance shows a range of activist
creativity from concerts to dance and juggling performances to clown displays. This frame, in turn, was found more often in the material from Helsinki.
I have quantied the gender keyings not by looking at numbers of
people counting which sex/gender has more representatives in each image
is impossible, as many of the pictures represent big crowds, and not all
human gures can be clearly dened but instead by looking at what
actually keys the interpretation of the frame in question, that is, what is
important in terms of understanding what is going on in the image. In the
frame of demonstration, for instance, it is of less relevance whether there is
one woman somewhere in the crowd, than if this woman is leading the
corte`ge. Similarly, gender ambiguity keys an image in which one person can
be recognized as a man, but all the others in the foreground are dressed
as clowns, and deliberately unrecognizable as one gender or the other.
Table 1 illustrates a quantication of the three dominant frames and
gender keying within them, divided into a keying by femininity, masculinity,
the two former combined, gender/sex ambiguity, and no gender keying. The
rst row of each set of images shows the volume of the frame in the whole
set of material, and the six rows below show the proportions of the gender
keyings within each frame.
On the one hand, the differences in the volumes of frame occurrence do
not, in themselves, tell us very much about the material. The reasons for the
variation of frequency can be speculated upon, but it is impossible to verify
to what degree this is due to the events that were topical and thus
abundantly posted about at the time the material was collected.12 This is one
of the reasons the quantication of the visual frames is not at the core of
the analysis, but instead a device used in guring out the general features of
the material, whereas the actual analysis is done qualitatively.
On the other hand, however, the quantication of the keyings shows that
femininity, as well as the keying combining femininity and masculinity, key
the dominant frames more frequently in the material from Helsinki than in
the Lyonnais images, with the exception of the frame of violence that is very
strongly masculinity-keyed in both contexts. The frame of performance
40
EEVA LUHTAKALLIO
41
42
EEVA LUHTAKALLIO
playful and childlike: feminine gender keys the image with nonthreatening
joyfulness that closely resembles the infantile, regressed, nonserious
representations of women that Goffman (1979) found in his sample of
advertisement imageries.
In Fig. 2, the banderol states Strike!, but this serious-sounding message
fails to direct the interpretation, so strong is the keying produced by the clumsy,
playful bodily movements and light-hearted, cheery expressions of the two
women. Rather than a deant contestation, the keying directs understanding of
this image so that youthful hope and energy prevail, but also harmless action
provided by the small and feminine gures. In contrast with the sometimes
striking similarity in so many other features of the two contexts, the above type
of gender keying is seen exclusively in the material from Helsinki. In the
Lyonnais material, representations of both women and playfulness are
rather scarce. In this regard, Fig. 2 is also a representation of autonomous,
even slightly wild femininity, and hence simultaneously challenging in its
somewhat airy way to both the mainstream of current social movement
imagery, and the traditional depiction of women in political iconography.
This was, however, not the only manner of blurring the boundaries of
femininity in the Helsinki material. Apart from playfulness, aggressive
femininity also keyed some representations. Moving toward the dominant
frame of violence, Fig. 3 presents a rare but powerful case of feminine anger
and deance.
43
The group of activists confronting the police in this image consists of two
men and two women, so that the keying is both feminine and masculine, but
the leader of the confrontation seems to be the woman on the left. She is
shouting aggressively at the police and bending toward them. This rare
representation of a Herculean woman standing, if not alone still in the
leading position against the oppressors is, as such, an example of the
power of gendered agency in visual representations. The image has a certain
shock value to it, and as will be shown in the following, in the array of
representations of the frame of violence, this gender keying adds complexity
to the intertwinement of violence, bodily features, and representations of
power.
In overview, different signs of violence mark the dominant frame of
violence: there are representations of activists throwing stones, or making
threatening movements, but more abundantly, there is the police performing
physical repression in terms of blocking progression or more heavy-handed
acts such as pressing a person to the ground by force. In addition, the
visibility of rearms, potentially safety-threatening res, and the consequences of violence such as wounds and even possible casualties are part
of the repertoire of this dominant frame.
In the Lyonnais material especially the frame of violence includes
representations so explicitly violent that the rst interpretation sometimes
approaches that of a war zone rather than civil society contention. Also, in
particular in the Lyonnais material, an important majority of the images
I interpreted within the dominant frame of violence represent police forces
in action. First, police phalanx in riot gear, eets of police vehicles, and
police ofcers gathered behind riot fences are represented. These representations seem to carry a proof function: these images tell the viewer that
the police symbolized a threat of violence for the activists, and point out the
disproportionate police presence in demonstrations. Second, the police are
represented in action toward the demonstrators. These representations
show how the police hindered the passage of demonstrators, aimed at them
with guns, or pressed them to the ground with sheer physical supremacy.
The gender keying in these images oozes testosterone, and whether or not
all the actual bodies underneath the masks and armors are biologically
male, a strong keying directs the interpretation of these images as signs of
masculinity.
A typical scene within the frame of violence in both contexts depicts the
faceless, robot-like police ofcer kitted out in heavy riot gear and
equipped with shields and arms, (mis)using their supremacy in numbers,
mass and strength, on the skinny, helpless, and visibly armless activists,
44
EEVA LUHTAKALLIO
Fig. 4. Masculinities Keying the Frame of Violence in (a) the Lyonnais (CPE
Demonstration in 2005) and (b) the Helsinki Material (Omega Squat Support
Demonstration, 2005). Sources: (a) http://Rebellyon.info. (b) http://Megafoni.
kulma.net/
45
Fig. 5. The Frame of Performance Keyed with Gender Ambiguity (a) in Helsinki
(The Clown battalion Hinders Entrance to Kamppi Shopping Mall in 2005),
and (b) in Lyon (Non a` Big Brother Activists Cover Surveillance Cameras
with Balloons in 2004). Source: (a) http://megafoni.kulma.net/. (b) Non a` Big
Brother.
46
EEVA LUHTAKALLIO
CONCLUSION
The representations of local activism discussed in this chapter portray
gender through a variety of keyings that both reproduce and fracture the
gendered division of labor in activism, its prevailing power structures, and
nally, the entire social order. The reproductive features can be seen in the
representations of masculine leadership as well as the confrontations
between activists and the police. However, even in the midst of the masculine power game, tracing the keying dynamics provides for the fracturing,
transgressive idea of nonuniform masculinity in both contexts, however
weak a sign that may be. Similarly, images in which female activists are
keyed by childlike, sweet femininity, as in the Helsinki case, repeat and
reproduce recognizable features of representations of women. At the same
time, their presence as autonomous actors within the frames of contentious
action should not be deprecated. Maybe the playful, cheery girls just like
the ower-headed dancers in Marta Kolar ovas (2004) analysis of womens
roles in the visualization of protests are more powerful than they rst
seem. Their anchorage in joy is perhaps a stronger sign than the bleak
vicious circles of violence.
47
48
EEVA LUHTAKALLIO
the activists thoughts about many things, including the gender congurations in activist milieus, differed greatly (Luhtakallio, 2012), their ways of
visualizing their doings still converged often. Certainly, there were
differences, ones in which we can see echoes of the cooperative gender
equality culture of Finland, or the sexual difference emphasis of France, or
again the more peaceful and consensual civic repertoires in Finland as
opposed to overplayed masculine violence in France. Nevertheless, the
visualizations of the activist events t within the same set of frames, and
could be understood by deploying similar keyings in both contexts.
These results show the importance of methodological tools that
simultaneously help us capture the meanings of images as such, and enable
us to position these meanings in social and societal contexts. The visual
frame analysis approach I have proposed in this chapter offers such tools to
facilitate visual analysis in the eld of social movement studies, and other
elds of sociology in which visual objects are crucial in understanding the
ensemble of the social.
There is no direct link from an activist website image to the inuence of
contention, or a fundamental social change. Visual representations
do, however, both report on and participate in producing the political
climate and conditions of politicization in local public spheres. Analyzing the
ways in which they do this what kinds of frames and keyings emerge
provides the basis for a nuanced understanding of the complexity of political
struggles, marked by a variety of gender dynamics and multiple contextual
characteristics. Visual representations play an important role in political
struggles, reecting and modeling political cultures. A comparative analysis
of social movement imageries shows the particular strength of images in
accessing dimensions of politics and contention that are hard to grasp in
traditional studies of politics. Analyzing visual representations of political struggles make transparent the bodily and gendered groundings of
contention.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am deeply indebted and grateful for thoughtful comments and numerous
conversations on earlier versions of this chapter, and all kinds of help and
support, to Lena Nare, as well as Soa Laine, Laura Lyytikainen, Suvi
Salmenniemi, and other members of the Sociological salon at the
University of Helsinki; to Anu-Hanna Anttila, Riikka Homanen, Merja
Kinnunen, and Alexandre Aubin; and to the Helsinki Research Group for
49
NOTES
1. Gender is naturally not the only thing dening human representations: the signs
of gender, ethnicity, sexuality, ability and disability, age, and other visible physiological features cannot be isolated from one another, but interplay and affect the
process of looking and giving meaning to images (e.g., Nixon, 1997, pp. 297298).
2. In terms of comparability, the two local contexts in this study are cities of
similar size, with one being a regional capital and the other a national one. Lyon and
Helsinki are also both important centers of civic activities within their national
contexts, and are both marked by a particularly wide variety of progressive groups
and movements (further details in Luhtakallio, 2012, pp. 1621).
3. The isomorphic features of contentious politics have been addressed before, for
instance in the debate about the Europeanization of protest (see della Porta, 2009;
della Porta & Caiani, 2007; Tarrow, 1995).
4. The eldwork consisted of a seven-month period in Lyon (20052006), followed
by several shorter visits to the eld, and four years eldwork in Helsinki (20032004;
20062008). The selection of the groups followed in the eldwork, and those included
in this study, was based on multiple sources: literature, local media, key person
interviews including both long-term activists, politicians and civil servants, and
participant observation at numerous civic events and activities in the two cities (see
Luhtakallio, 2012).
5. Representativity in statistical terms is not, however, applicable for this type of
research material. Activist website images do not form an observable, quantiable
universe. Instead, the material and its display change constantly through the posting
of new images, the removal of websites, and the creation of new links. The collection
of the material here simulates a (thorough) web surfers exploration of the visual
contents of activist websites in two cities at a given time.
6. This project did not, however, include visual ethnography in either of its most
commonly used senses: I did not shoot any of the images myself, nor did I ask
anyone to shoot them (e.g., Auyero & Swistun, 2007; Back, 2007; Laine, 2011; Pink,
2007; Young & Barrett, 2001), but collected them after activists had published them
on their websites.
7. The abundant usage of frame analysis in social movement studies for nigh on
four decades has created a school of its own and stabilized several concepts in
50
EEVA LUHTAKALLIO
analyzing contention (e.g., Benford & Snow, 2000; Snow & Benford, 1988; Snow &
Byrd, 2007; Snow et al., 2007). The common denominator of many of the works in
this line of thought is an emphasis on the cognitive and even strategic uses of frames
and framing. This emphasis has faced criticism pointing for example at how it at
times forgets about discourses and meaning (Fisher, 1997; Steinberg, 1998) and
ideology and politics (Oliver & Johnston, 2000; see also a response to the criticism in
Snow & Benford, 2000), while over-emphasizing the actors conscious choices.
8. There is an important difference here to the studies analyzing commercial or
news images: the process of publication of activist website images is light. On these
kind of sites, measures of selection were more dependent on who cared to shoot the
photos and download them, than on a consideration and selection by some
authoritative party.
9. When keying becomes so fundamentally altering that it actually changes the
entire frame of the situation is a question Goffman leaves somewhat open. I have
included the idea of switching and overlapping frames in visual frame analysis
elsewhere (Luhtakallio, 2005, 2012), but as it does not bring any additional depth to this
analysis, but does add to the complexity of the procedure, I leave the matter alone here.
10. In comparison with other methods of visual analysis, visual frame analysis is a
combination of content analysis without its common problems of nitty-gritty
categorizations that end up being more laborious to create and follow than they offer
deep interpretative power, and a sensitive semiotic reading of images, often hard to
connect to wider contexts. Undeniably, during the procedures of both calculating
and writing the qualitative interpretations, visual representations are subject to
multiple translations that are verbalizations and numerical representations, but
also, as in Table 1, re-visualizations. This, however, should not produce an obstacle
to the analysis of visual material any more than other types of empirical objects. The
debate concerning these translations, and more generally the relationship between
images, words, numbers, and so on, is extensive (see, e.g., Mitchell, 1994, pp. 111
117; Mitchell, 1986, pp. 4274; Barthes, 1977, pp. 3841).
11. The other dominant frames in the material were marking (Lyon 54%; Helsinki
36%), working (Lyon 1%; Helsinki 8%), and deliberating (Lyon 1%; Helsinki 7%).
For gender keyings in these images, as well as other keying dynamics in the material,
see Luhtakallio, 2012, pp. 92109.
12. Typically, a massive demonstration was reported on several local websites and
illustrated with several series of images.
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56
INTRODUCTION
In Autumn 2008 a new protest wave emerged in Germany. For the rst time
since the protests against the population census in the 1980s, a protest
movement against governmental surveillance and control developed and
received considerable attention from the mainstream media. With annual,
nationwide demonstrations under the slogan freedom not fear (Freiheit
statt Angst) the protests succeeded in raising critical awareness about data
protection and surveillance. This wave of protest parts of which were
coordinated across Europe was sparked by the German governments
decision to implement data retention.1 It brought together different political
actors: established activists encountered a new generation of protesters
young and internet savvy and Free Democrats met the radical left. Images
played a signicant role in these protests. The ubiquitous production of
pictures (with Closed Circuit Television, for example) is, among other
things, one of the reasons for the protest. Concurrently, pictures were
ubiquitous in the protest repertoire as symbols, posters, banners, ags,
stickers, photos, logos, caricatures, installations, and performances.2 This
chapter analyzes the visual language of these protests. More specically, it
compares the images created and employed by its two major currents, the
liberal and the left spectrum.
Images are crucial means to express a political message. In doing so,
images are not mere illustrations of this message; rather they are part of the
production of social and political reality (Doerr & Teune, 2012; Frey, 1999;
Gamson, 1992; Maasen, Mayenhauser, & Renggli, 2006). In this vein, they
Images of Surveillance
57
serve to make the invisible (e.g., surveillance) visible (Munkler, 2009) and
thus have considerable political power in particular with respect to social
movements. Despite their ubiquity in political communication, however,
analysis in the social sciences has focused on text rather than images
(de Opp Hipt & Latniak, 1991; Jager, 1999). Social movement studies have
also largely neglected visual analysis (cf. Doerr & Teune, 2012) though
there are exceptions (e.g., DeLuca, 1999; Lahusen, 1996).
Only more recently have movements visual languages received more
attention. Several scholars have explored movement images in a broad
sense with respect to the media images produced during protest events
(e.g., Delicath & DeLuca, 2003; Fahlenbrach, 2002; Juris, 2008; Teune,
2012), political colors used and worn (Chester & Welsh, 2004; Sawer, 2007)
as well as art (Adams, 2002). Other scholars have analyzed movements
images in a narrower sense, focusing on graphic designs used on posters,
yers, and patches deployed in campaigns (e.g., Doerr, 2010; Doerr &
Teune, 2012; Mattoni & Doerr, 2007; Ullrich & Le, 2011). These contributions reveal that movements images both draw from as well as counter
existing visual codes. Alice Mattoni and Nicole Doerr (2007), for example,
show how visual depictions of precarious workers in the Euro May Day
Parades aimed to subvert popular culture while drawing on the aesthetics
of saint portrayals.
The analysis of social movements visual languages provides crucial
insights into movement dynamics, with respect to both strategic and
expressive aspects. First, images have a strategic function similar to frames
(Snow & Benford, 1992). They are employed to highlight certain issues,
raise awareness, and mobilize people (Adams, 2002; Fahlenbrach, 2002,
p. 142). At the same time, images are embedded in an existing stock of
visual codes. While these codes may be challenged to some extent, social
movements largely need to stay within their connes in order to get their
message across either with respect to society at large or to their specic
subculture. In this way, images are also an expression of belonging to a
certain group (Casquete, 2003) or general cultural context. This means that
the analysis of images provides insights into the formative conditions of
the activists outlook on the world. Visual analysis, hence, combines the
framing approachs dominant strategic lens (Johnston, 2009, p. 5) with an
emphasis on expressive aspects like worldviews and belonging coming from
the sociology of knowledge, discourse analysis, and New Social Movement
theories (Buechler, 2000; Baumgarten & Ullrich, 2012; HeXdorfer, Pabst, &
Ullrich, 2010; Johnston, 2009). In addition, it allows the issue of reception
and its potential discrepancy with the producers intentions to be addressed.
58
Images of Surveillance
59
60
Images of Surveillance
61
critical of surveillance (Out of Control, Seminar fur angewandte Unsicherheit). Despite ideological differences, these groups base their critique on an
anti-statist and anti-capitalist stance.10 Accordingly, the analyses, positions,
and political styles of the liberal spectrum are considered insufcient.
The anti-statist and anti-capitalist perspective is relevant to both the left
currents goals and its forms of protest. The aim is not to improve the liberal
state but to level fundamental criticism at the political form of statehood,
specically the police, secret services, and armed forces. Accordingly, more
confrontational protest forms are preferred and cooperation with governmental organs of repression is largely rejected.11 Furthermore, following an
anti-capitalist perspective surveillance is interpreted as a means of the
exclusion of marginal social groups. Hence, left groups do not primarily
address surveillance as everybodys problem as the liberals do, but stress its
selectivity: socially marginalized groups are affected by governmental
surveillance and control to a signicantly higher degree, especially precarious
workers and the unemployed, as well as those who do not have fundamental
rights to start with such as refugees. This selectivity is attributed not only to
the hysteria about terrorism after the events of 9/11 but to the acute and
enduring crisis of capitalism.
62
cultural sciences often developed long before the pictorial turn in the
humanities of the 1990s (cf. Mitchell, 1994). For our analysis we draw
especially on semiotics, the history of art, and, partly, cultural studies and
discourse analysis. These offer fruitful approaches to decoding political
images, as they allow the analyst to distinguish between different levels of
signicance and meaning. First, drawing on structural linguistics, most
prominently developed by Ferdinand de Saussure (1960), semiotics
distinguishes between the two sides of a sign (in our case an image or a
part of it), that is, between the signier and signied. While the signied
concerns an idea or concept (e.g., a ag), the signier is the means of
expressing this concept (e.g., a piece of colored fabric). Because there is no
xed or universal relation between a signs two sides, we cannot take what we
see as immediate access to the intention of the images producer, nor can we
be sure about what kind of meaning a viewer attributes to the image. Second,
following the work of Roland Barthes (1985), two ways in which signs
convey meaning are identied: while denotation concerns the decoding of a
sign at a simple level, often on the basis of conventional conceptualizations
(e.g., a piece of specically colored fabric=ag), connotation links the sign to
broader cultural themes and concepts (e.g., a ag=nationality) and its
evaluation (Barthes, 1972, 1985; Eco, 1968).
To be able to transfer these distinctions into a concrete methodology,
recourse to the interpretative scheme by Erwin Panofsky (1975[1957]) is
helpful. Panofsky has played a crucial role in developing a methodology for
analyzing artwork. While his concepts have been developed for a different
subject (i.e., renaissance art)13 and long before the cultural and discursive
turn in the social sciences and humanities, they nevertheless offer useful
analytical tools for the present analysis. In particular, this analytical method
allows the scholar to take distance from the visual material and differentiate
between different layers of meaning. Panofsky distinguishes three layers of
meaning, which partly overlap with the basic distinctions just introduced
(see Table 1):
Primary or Natural Subject Matter (pre-iconographic description):
analysis of the purely material congurations of colors and shapes, as
well as natural beings or things (e.g., animals, women/men, a table).14
Secondary or Conventional subject matter (iconography): analysis of the
composition of the motives and images (e.g., anecdotes or allegories) as
carriers of meaning for whose identication knowledge of the conventional meaning patterns is required (e.g., a man with a knife represents
St. Bartholomew in a renaissance painting).
63
Images of Surveillance
Table 1.
Panofsky
Paper Analytical
Method
Signier
Form
Primary or Natural
Subject Matter
Signied (concept)
Denotation
Secondary or Conventional
Subject Matter
(Iconography)
Connotation
Intrinsic Meaning
(Iconology)
64
Images of Surveillance
65
(a symbol can be used with different intentions) as well as the reception (the
symbol can be read differently). In the following analysis, the contextualization of the image will often proceed using comparisons and will
include the consideration of textual elements. Comparisons in particular are
crucial to reveal consensus on context-specic meaning.
66
Images of Surveillance
67
68
Fig. 1. The Prominent Symbol of Wolfgang Schaubles Face with the Slogan Stasi
2.0 (On a Banner at a Freedom Not Fear Demonstration in Berlin, 2008).
(Photo: Priska Daphi).
Images of Surveillance
69
substantiates the liberal currents strong focus on the state. It is the German
state that is held responsible. This can be derived from the reference to the
federal government in the rst image and the former interior minister in the
second, fourth, and fth images. Other agents of surveillance such as
corporations are neglected. At the same time this implies that changes
should also occur within the framework of the state. In comparing the
present government with the Third Reich and the GDR, it is not the state as
such that is questioned but its form. Hence, the liberal critique identies the
state as both the cause and solution to the problem: on the one hand, it is
held accountable for excessive surveillance; on the other, alternatives should
occur within its connes.
The Visual Language of the Left Current
In the lefts visual language, particular protagonists such as Wolfgang
Schauble or the character of Big Brother are much less common. Much
more typical are depictions of specic governmental organs of repression, in
particular the police.
Fig. 2 is a poster calling for participation in the (radical) left bloc at the
2011 freedom not fear demonstration published by the group Out of
control.
First step: two (originally pink) horizontal lines divide the image into
three parts. The upper and lower parts contain text and surround the middle
70
part which contains images. The upper parts text in white, smeared capital
letters reads: Uns wirds zu bunt (For us, it goes too far). The lower
part states in smaller letters: Uberwachungsstaaten wegputzen! (Polish
off surveillance states!) and provides information about the demonstration.
The images middle part contains several icons separated by dots. The icon
furthest to the left representing a round head is dark red, nearly black, with
a light area around its eye. The heads open mouth points in the direction of
simplied depictions of a camera, a police ofcers head, a DNA-strand, and
RFID waves (Radio-Frequency-Identication).
Second step: the icon on the left can be identied as an altered version of
the very popular Pacman, a computer game in which the round-headed
Pacman eats his way through various dots and other objects. With his
hungrily open mouth Pacman mirrors the second lines theme of eating
(polish off). In place of his usual yellow color, the Pacman on this poster is
dark red/nearly black. The white space around his eye indicates a (radical
activists) mask. The other icons substitute Pacmans usual food and depict
specic aspects of surveillance: a camera, a policeman, DNA, and RFID.
Third step: the image combines a radical critique of surveillance states
with a popular computer game. Despite the radicalism of the critique and
the measures implied against it (polish off) this combination has a rather
playful tone. The game Pacman and its pixel style is very popular today
among computer-savvy youngsters. Its icons can be found on T-shirts,
stickers, and other merchandise. The allusion to this game hence locates the
image and its producers in a young and trendy scene. At the same time, the
image clearly signals active and radical resistance against surveillance
through its particular pairing of visual elements and text. This is due rst to
the depiction of a masked Pacman (resembling an anarchists balaclava)
and the substitution of his food with objects of surveillance. Second, the
text underlines the radical position with the call to Polish off surveillance
states. The opposition to surveillance states not just surveillance marks
the left groups anti-statist stance: the solution is not a change within the
state. Instead, the state is identied as inherently prone to surveillance and
hence needs to be abolished. Also, the use of the plural surveillance states
reveals that it is not a single state (Germany) that is addressed. Rather, it
implies the more general problem that we live in an era of surveillance states.
In addition to the opposition to surveillance states, the inclusion of the
RFID in Pacmans food reveals that surveillance is not only attributed to
the state but also corporations (RFID is not only used in ID cards, but also in
customer cards as well as in price tags or entry controls in companies).
Furthermore, the rst line of the text denounces other, more colorful
Images of Surveillance
71
solutions to the problem of surveillance: Uns wirds zu bunt, literally translates as For us, it is too colorful and guratively means Thats enough!. It
is a play on words which not only seems to criticize excessive surveillance but
also distances itself from the colorful, that is, non-radical parts of the
protest. The distinction between black and colorful groups is common in left
protest mobilizations. In anti-fascist mobilizations, for example, the radical
autonomist groups and their predominantly black clothing (the black bloc)
are distinguished from the moderates who often describe themselves as
colorful instead of brown (brown being the color of Nazis).
A similarly militant message is employed in a poster against the creation
of a European police authority (Fig. 3).
Fig. 3, published on a blog about the monitoring of the European police,
comprises three parts. The central part shows two faceless and simplied
police-gures in full combat gear walking slightly to the right, facing the
viewer. Above, in an urban landscape of skyscrapers, a camera behind
the policemen points away from them to the left and a helicopter ies to the
right. This ensemble in blue is bordered by yellow stars, referring to the ag
of the European Union. The left part of the image depicts a piece of broken
glass, while the right part states Monitoring European Police! in red
letters and the blogs website in smaller letters. The policemen in full combat
gear together with the cameras and helicopter display the force and ubiquity
of surveillance/control. The text Monitoring European Police! calls for
the table to be turned and the police to be monitored instead. In this vein,
the broken glass pane in the left part of the image implies destruction (of
a camera for example) and may be read as a call for militant action.
The call for militant action is more explicit in Fig. 4, which constitutes an
instruction to saw off surveillance cameras. Published by the alternative
news website Inforiot, the image displays a camera sawn off by a large red
saw with red arrows on both sides indicating sawing movements and headed
by the equivocal text: Wir haben etwas gegen Uberwachung! (We have
Fig. 3.
72
Fig. 4.
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CONCLUSION
Two basic observations summarize our analysis and are applicable beyond
the movement sector under study. First, the use of images within political
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75
Many contexts can be relevant in this respect: place, time, issue eld, or
culture more generally. The national context seems to be of particular
formative power as the frequent historic allusions to the German past (the
GDR and the Third Reich) reveal. In fact, the allusion to the Nazi regime
seems to be common among left-libertarian movements in Germany
(cf. della Porta, 1999). The comparison with the Nazis is still among the
strongest methods of political dramatization and stigmatization available in
the German political context. Generally, national past and politics of
remembrance offer a political language and interpretive frames for several
issues24 (cf. Daphi, 2013; Ferree, Gamson, Gerhards, & Rucht, 2002;
Ullrich, 2008, 2012).
This chapter conrms the signicance of both national context and issuerelated contexts. In fact, it showed that the interplay of both is decisive in
shaping movements and their image production. The images revealed the
strong interplay of these two dimensions: while the national context
provided certain options for allusion and comparison, only one current
picked this up. Only in the liberal current, with its focus on the loss of
democracy, are these contrasts useful. The radical left current, on the other
hand, does not rely on the dramatic horror scenario due to its strong general
critique of the state. In other words, they do not see Western liberal
democracy in opposition to surveillance, but surveillance as an expression of
the capitalist (though formally democratic) state.25
Furthermore, it should be noted that a viewers discursive context affects
how they interpret an image though this aspect is not explicitly addressed
in this chapter. Whatever strategic and expressive aspects images entail,
they may be interpreted in a variety of ways and detached from the context
of their production or the producers intentions. For example, the allusion
to Nazi Germany may be primarily seen as a mere dramatization to mobilize
people or as a genuine demarcation from dictatorship as part of the
producers conception of themselves. It also may be interpreted as a statement about structural similarities between present-day and Nazi Germany,
or as a relativization of the Nazi atrocities. For future research it will be
fruitful to analyze the different possible meanings of images and to reect on
the effects for mobilizing strategies.
Thus, visual analysis provides a crucial key deepening our insights into
how social movements work. Through their various layers of meaning,
images communicate messages differently than texts, and add crucial
information. While strategic aims may also be analyzed with respect to
leaets and other explicitly formulated textual material, images condense
76
central claims and add symbolic layers. Images do more than illustrate
existing political messages: they play a crucial role in formulating groups
different strategies as well as worldviews. In this vein, images are not only a
product of movements, but also part of the symbolic practices which
constitute the movement and its identity, and are embedded in national and
sectoral contexts. A systematic visual analysis (including distancing and
thick description) is hence key to explaining social movements aims,
strategies, and collective identities. In this vein, visual analysis could also
provide a crucial tool to explore possibilities for and restrictions to coalition
building in and between movements. Finally, visual analysis may provide
movement actors themselves with a tool to reect critically on their visual
communication.
NOTES
1. This development stands in the context of what has been considered the rise of
the surveillance society (Lyon, 1994). For an overview of this debate see Haggerty
and Ericson (2000), Lyon (2001), and Garland (2002). For the European context,
ever more important due to the European Unions increasing legislative and
executive rights, see Hempel and Topfer (2009).
2. The central role of artistic contributions in surveillance-critical debates has led
to the creation of new concepts such as artveillance (Brighenti, 2009). For an
overview on research about resistance against surveillance see the special edition of
the journal Surveillance and Society (Huey & Fernandez, 2009), as well as Marx
(2003) and Monahan (2006).
3. http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/content/view/13/37/lang,de/ [1.11.11],
translation by the authors.
4. For several years this association has presented a negative prize for excessive
surveillance, the Big Brother Award.
5. For a more detailed account of the protest movement and the cleavages therein
see Leipziger Kamera (2009) and Ullrich and Le (2011).
6. Groups located between the liberal and the radical left spectrum are: the youth
organization of the Left Party, the Association of Republican Lawyers, and some
civil rights organizations (Humanist Union, Committee for Fundamental and Human
Rights, International League for Human Rights).
7. On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the German Constitution, for
example, activists staged protests against surveillance with info booths and actions,
among them the symbolic burial of the Constitution and the announcement of its
death in obituary notices.
8. This was especially the case after excessive police violence (sic!) during the
demonstrations in Autumn 2009.
9. In particular, the lawsuit led against data retention drew a great deal of
attention since it put a provisional end to data retention.
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Images of Surveillance
10. The (statist) old left radical current (such as the Communist Party) was
much less active in these protests.
11. During demonstrations in Leipzig and Berlin in 2008, for example, left
demonstrators jeered at coordinators attempts to obsequiously full the police
restrictions imposed on the protesters or to thank the police for its presence.
12. See also Ullrich and Le (2011).
13. In this context it should however be mentioned that art sciences have not only
dealt with high culture but also with mass culture, for example, Baxandall (1985) and
Kemp (1985).
14. The concept of natural things follows an outdated, pre-discursive turn
theory of science. Yet the following steps can compensate for this shortcoming.
15. http://wiki.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/images/Eyeballs.png [30.10.12].
16. For copyright reasons, this image as well as the following three cannot be
reproduced in this volume unfortunately.
17. http://img4.magnus.de/Bundestrojaner-was-technisch-m-glich-ist-r599x585-C726da535-62642322.jpg
18. http://imagecache6.allposters.com/LRG/56/5663/T2GUG00Z.jpg [30.10.12].
19. http://4topas.les.wordpress.com/2007/12/ueberwachung3.jpg [30.10.12].
20. It is the font most often used to refer to the Third Reich, though in fact it does
not constitute the most commonly used font of the Nazi era.
21. For other examples see Leipziger Kamera (2009, pp. 132179).
22. Our analytical distinction between strategy and identity should not, of course,
be mistaken for an ontological differentiation. In movement praxis both aspects go
hand in hand and, as James Jasper (1997) for example has shown, strategic decisions
depend on the groups identity (cf. Daphi, 2011).
23. Accordingly the reiterated use of a set of symbols and signs is part of the
stabilization of this discursive structure. Movements play a double role in this eld as
they reproduce their formative conditions as well as try to challenge their limitations
(at least in cases of radical or transformative movements).
24. Without wanting to fall into the trap of reproducing holistic nationalist
cliches (Koopmans & Statham, 2000, p. 31).
25. This adds to radical left groups caution with historical comparisons. The
radical German left decreased their use of Nazi-references since a long and ongoing
debate about the singularity of the Shoah and the specics of German National
Socialism raised activists awareness about the politics of remembrance. Hence,
potential accusations of relativizing the Shoah are avoided.
REFERENCES
Adams, J. (2002). Art in social movements: Shantytown womens protest in pinochets chile.
Sociological Forum, 17(1), 2156.
Barthes, R. (1972). Mythologies. London: Cape.
Barthes, R. (1985). Aventure semiologique. Paris, OH: Editions du Seuil.
Baumgarten, B. & Ullrich, P. (2012). Discourse, power and governmentality. Social movement
research with and beyond foucault. Discussion Paper SP-IV 2012-401, Social Science
Research Center Berlin. Available at http://bibliothek.wzb.eu/pdf/2012/iv12-401.pdf
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79
80
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KIRSTY MCLAREN
INTRODUCTION
I showed my friends some letters and pictures I printed from AbortionTV.com.
Suddenly, through the veil of deception they saw the truth and reality of cold blooded,
terror-cloaked murder of defenseless children who had no chance and absolutely
no choice.
(Pro-life activist Peter Erbacher, quoted in Pro-Life News, 2005).
Images of the fetus are a striking and potent element of pro-life repertoires
of contention. Indeed, visual images are central to the repertoires of many
social movements. Yet it is only comparatively recently that social
movement scholars have focused on the visual dimensions of politics. This
chapter presents an exploration of pro-life uses of images of the fetus in the
contemporary Australian abortion debate, as a small example of the value
of visual analysis of social movements. I argue here that analyzing the
meaning and importance of the fetus as a visual symbol leads to insight into
the pro-life movement, as well as into the interplay between emotion,
intuition, and reason in the formulation and reproduction of moral and
political beliefs.
The chapter begins by discussing how the existing literature on social
movements deals with the use of visual images, and provides an overview of
feminist scholars work on images of the fetus. It then describes the context
and the research design. Drawing on a survey of the pro-life visual landscape
dating from the 1970s, three cases were selected to encompass the breadth of
pro-life tactics and materials used in the past 15 years. Each case is discussed
in turn: the Maternal Health Information Act in the Australian Capital
Territory (ACT); Protect Life sit-ins in Brisbane, Queensland; and the Tell the
Truth campaign in Victoria. Taken as a whole, this chapter presents a unique
record of the contemporary visual culture of Australian pro-life politics.
The analysis identies three main themes that are represented in pro-life
images of the fetus: the wonder of life; the human form and human frailty of
83
the fetus; and the barbarity of modern society. In the nal section of the
chapter, I argue that these meanings are built on our parallel understandings
of sight and feeling as immediate and unmediated. Emotion is a powerful
element of politics, and images of the fetus challenge the emotions, and thus
the humanity, of the viewer. This interpretation considers pro-life activists
discussions of images of the fetus, and work on embodiment, emotion, and
visual culture. Thus, I contend, visual analysis of this social movement
activity reveals an important intersection between the visual and the
emotional.
Two preliminary notes on terms are necessary. First, I use the terms prolife and pro-choice. Although these phrases are not always adequate to
encapsulate the positions of the various actors, they are in common usage
and would be happily worn by most of those they label. Second, the word
fetus is used throughout. Medical and scientic language distinguishes
between the embryo, from conception to 12 weeks gestation, and the
fetus, from 12 weeks until birth. The vast majority of abortions take place
during this rst 12 weeks; according to this denition, pro-life images depict
both embryos and fetuses. However, to talk about images of the fetus,
rather than using two discrete terms, makes more sense and seems the most
neutral term available.
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85
political attack on abortion [had] moved further into the terrain of mass
culture and imagery (1987, p. 263).
Anglophone feminist scholars have mostly focused on critique and
deconstruction of these images, rather than on their meanings for pro-life
activists. Scholars contributing to this literature have sought to destabilize
pro-life visual practices by demonstrating how epistemologies and
especially visually based epistemologies of pregnancy have varied over
time (Duden, 1993, 1999; Morgan & Michaels, 1999). They have critiqued
the assumption that the technology is objective, analyzing the artice
involved in the production of images of the fetus (Ginsburg & Rapp, 1999;
Haraway, 1997), and also exploring the impact of fetal imaging on womens
reproductive choices (Rapp, 1997; Zechmeister, 2001).
While these scholars have considered the power of images of the fetus to
shape our understandings of pregnancy, they have spent less time
considering these images power to alter viewers political opinions, and
then mainly through informed speculation or limited research. Celeste
Michelle Condit is one of the few who has touched on the persuasive effects
of images of the fetus, and she comes to a similar conclusion as the social
movement scholars:
Although such persuasion does not change pro-Life advocates and supporters from a
completely hostile to a supportive position, it does justify, integrate, and activate their
beliefs. yWhen pro-Life rhetors talk about why they believe as they do, the role of the
photographs and lms becomes quite clear. (Condit, 1990, p. 80)
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87
that were not accompanied by images and of articles and items discussing
the use of images of the fetus and abortion politics.
The survey was constrained by what materials had been kept and made
available to researchers. Hence, it was not used for quantitative analysis but
to identify dominant ideas and ways of representing the fetus. Informed by
the broader survey I undertook three case studies of tactics used in three
different Australian jurisdictions: a government-mandated information
booklet in the Australian Capital Territory; protests outside medical centers
providing abortion in Queensland; and leaets and internet-based campaigning against abortion law reform in Victoria. These were selected as
most different cases, chosen to illustrate the range of pro-life activities, and
the range of pictures themselves, from stylized to shocking. Though they
show this range, neither the tactics nor the images used are outliers. All the
tactics were used or promoted in other contexts, and all of the images of the
fetus appeared in multiple other sources in the datasets.
In fact, both the survey and the case studies demonstrated that visual
materials using images of the fetus have changed very little over four
decades. The images themselves and the arguments being used have
remained almost entirely the same. Throughout this time, images and
materials have been highly derivative, even being printed in the United
States. Technology has had some impact: the quality of pictures, the use of
color, and the media employed have all changed markedly. The internet
allows many more images to be used, and links to international websites
effectively expand the gallery of materials provided. Nonetheless, the
discourse is mostly static, and in some cases, strikingly so. For instance,
during the 2007 election campaign, conservative Queensland Senator Ron
Boswell used a cartoon of a fetus holding a sign that was almost exactly the
same as a newspaper advertisement from 1977 (Stop Abortion Fund, 1977)
and election yers from 1979 (held in the State Library of Victorias
ephemera collection). The writing on the fetus placard, I demand my
constitutional rights, too! (emphasis in original) clearly derived from an
American context, as the Australian constitution does not deal explicitly
with rights. Collating such materials is useful, because their circulation has
been quite uneven common in some areas, for some people, and absent in
others. It also constitutes an important resource for future study (see
Halfmann & Young, 2010).
Analysis of the material was guided by principles from the social science
literature on the study of visual culture and visual methods. This means that,
most importantly, reading an image means reading both the content the
internal narrative and the context in which it is read the external
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89
half (see the pro-life view presented in ACT Right to Life Association
Newsletter, 1998). The other was the failure of Senator Natasha Stott
Despojas campaign on pregnancy counseling advertising, with the defeat of
the Transparent Advertising and Notication of Pregnancy Counselling
Services Bill 2005 and the cross-party Pregnancy Counselling (Truth in
Advertising) Bill 2006.
The Act was the culmination of much maneuvering in the ACTs
Legislative Assembly, which is elected through a proportional representation system. This was led by Paul Osborne, an independent MLA with a
platform of Christian and family values, in an Assembly where he had the
numbers, with 10 of the 17 Members broadly opposed to abortion
(Canberra Times, 1998). Though the legislative success was unusual, the
legislators views were less so: typically, Australian parliamentarians hold
more conservative views on abortion than the general public (Betts, 2004;
see also Pringle, 2007).
Initially, the expert committee charged with creating the prescribed
pamphlet decided that pictures might be unhelpful or distressing. Pro-life
MLAs then rectied this, passing regulations specifying that the information
booklet include a description and images of fetal development. As a result, a
timeline of development milestones was added, accompanied by three
images from the photography of Lennart Nilsson, captioned Embryo at
8 weeks, Embryo at 9 weeks, and Foetus at 14 weeks (Department of
Health and Community Care, 1999, pp. 1112).1 There was, however,
spirited community and Assembly debate about the change, and some
medical services refused to return copies of the rst edition or to use the
second (see Jackson, 2000).
Supporters of the regulatory change felt that visual images were especially
important. Brendan Smyth, a Member of the Legislative Assembly who had
supported the amendment of the prescribed information, thought the
pictures irrefutable.
These pictures are of the young unborn. They are pictures of unborn human beings,
Mr. Speaker. If I were pro-abortion, I would not want my arguments in favour of
abortion clearly and easily undermined by the simple, undeniable, irrefutable, clear,
distinguishable, recognisable truth that these pictures show. yI believe that the pictorial
information will enable women in fact, empower women to make an informed
decision. (Australian Capital Territory, Legislative Assembly, Debates, 1998, p. 2838)
In the debate about the Act, informed consent came to imply a sensibility
of the enormity of abortion, and pictures were presumed to be a more
powerful medium for evoking such a sensibility. Some of those who argued
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KIRSTY MCLAREN
against the information pamphlet, on the grounds that images of the fetus
might cause distress, were using the same premise as those supporting the
bill: that images of the fetus have some innate emotional power.
Alternatively, some argued that it was unnecessary, because women already
make informed, considered decisions, while others pointed out that the
quality of womens decisions did not have any bearing on their right to
make those decisions.
There are few copies of this booklet remaining, although copies of the rst
version, which did not contain any pictures (published in April 1999), can be
found in libraries. The three pictures used in the booklet are photographs
by Lennart Nilsson, published in a well-known Life magazine photo essay
and multiple editions of a book, although the originals are in full color
(Nilsson, 1965, 2003). Nilssons work explores the beauty and wonder of
life; his photos, supreme examples of documentary photography, are usually
presented as providing a rare entry to a realm of wonder and amazement
(see, for example, Good Weekend: The Sydney Morning Herald Magazine,
2006, p. 32). This sense of crossing new visual frontiers is invoked by many
images of the fetus. For instance, Petchesky (1987) notes how ultrasound
was presented as opening up new horizons, sending pictures from previously
unknown worlds.
Traces of the origins of the images can still inect how they are read.
Hence, the images retain both an aura of scientic authority and traces of
wonder: this is a genre in which wonder is an expected response. This sense
of awe is compounded by the interpretation of the images as showing new
life. Indeed, the very fact that the fetus is hidden and rare that mere
images of it are treasured, precious emphasizes the value of the subject
being represented.
The most striking element of these three images is the fetal body itself, and
its form as a kind of human body. Condit argues that pro-life images often
function as tropes, that the parts of the fetal body which most resemble
those of a child or adult hands, feet, and face represent the whole
(Condit, 1990). This is not the case here: instead, the entire fetal body is
shown, and is clearly not that of a child or an adult. Indeed, showing the
entire fetal body is extremely signicant, for its form is also quite different
from the adult human form, by turns a human and a not-quite-human form.
It is disproportionate in ways that signify weakness and fragility: its limbs
are spindly, its body is hunched, and its frame looks underdeveloped in the
way of a malnourished childs. Though the text explains the developing
capabilities of the fetus, all three images show how much development is yet
to be completed.
91
This ambiguity that the fetal body is both human and not human
does not diminish its signicance. First, the emerging humanity of the fetus
is established by the developmental sequence, which collapses time and
creates a sense of inevitability in fetal development. The sequencing of fetal
development pictures pulls the familiar baby back into the early stages of
growth, and encourages the viewer to note the trends connecting early,
strange forms to later, somewhat more recognizable body. Thus, the
strange, boxy skull of the rst picture is rendered recognizable.
Furthermore, in these images, the fetus appears in a vacuum, surrounded
by empty space. This image excludes the womans body, a matter
emphasized by feminist criticism. While feminists have argued for womens
control over their own bodies, pro-life activists have rejected these feminist
arguments and presented the fetus as a delineated body of its own an
individual organism of the human species (Shanahan, 2009, p. 9). And
this is not merely a distinct body: it is a vulnerable body. The fetus has
skin which is almost translucent. Moreover, appearing in a vacuum makes
it appear unprotected, at best sometimes surrounded by the almost transparent wisps of tissue that are the amniotic sac in Nilssons photographs.
This is a consequence of Nilssons methods: he created most of his images by
suspending the embryo or fetus in saline in a glass container and photographing it. The message of frailty compounds the air of wonder in so many
of these images.
This cluster of characteristics combine to reinforce the duality of the fetus
embodiment: the body which is simultaneously discrete and complete,
fragile and vulnerable, signies simultaneously that it exists and that it
cannot fend for itself: the fetus needs protection. Thus, these images present
the fetus as a special moral subject, to which we owe greater care.
The scientic authority of the pamphlet, as an ofcial government
publication, heightens the impression that these are objective, correct
images. The ACTs information booklet ended up resembling the materials
used by pro-life crisis pregnancy counseling services. In Australia,
Pregnancy Counseling Australia, the most prominent pro-life counseling
service attempting to reach women considering abortion, uses similar visual
material (see, for instance, Pregnancy Counselling Australia, n.d.). The
failure of Senator Stott Despojas truth in advertising bill was hence a
signicant victory in the very same arena as the Osborne bill. Although
the intentions of the pamphlets creators, constrained by regulation, were
quite different from pro-life pregnancy counselors, the impact seems to
have still been similar. Indeed, the ofcial character of the publication
makes it more authoritative.
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Many of the complaints and the media reports emphasized that children
could encounter the images, or that women who had previously terminated
a pregnancy could experience distress.
95
Tell the Truths website also featured graphic content, and links to sites
with graphic content. The website used links to piggy-back on the resources
of American sites: the home-page featured links formatted as though they
were pages within the site, but which took the user to the Centre for
Bioethical Reform (http://www.abortionno.org/) and Priests for Life (http://
www.priestsforlife.org/). These featured images labeled as aborted fetuses,
and video of a curettage being performed.
The ier distributed by the Tell the Truth Coalition depicts a modern
barbarity, showing evidence of the wrong of abortion. Blood and esh are
usually internal matter which should remain hidden. To expose innards
requires violence, violation, and pain. The visceral reaction to blood and
esh and violence is a deliberate aim of such pro-life campaigns, which seek
to construct the viewers emotional reaction as a sign of the signicance of
the fetus. The viewers inch becomes proof of a violent act. Flesh is a
marker of destroyed signicance, of a destroyed moral subject.
These markers of atrocity are found in bodily destruction, and hence
require an imagined fetal body to be destroyed. Thus, the pairing of images
of an aborted fetus and a healthy baby, as in the yer distributed earlier
in central Melbourne, is not just illustrating the logical contention of the
text. Likewise, images highlighting the preciousness and vulnerability of
the fetus make images of fetal slaughter even more powerful. The fetus that
Petchesky described as chaste (1987, p. 263), the secretive creature
glimpsed in breathtaking shots with advanced technology, is transformed
in post-abortion images into a dismembered, exposed, mutilated corpse.
This contrast is a very common way of presenting the pro-life argument.
For instance, a Sydney campaign against a local politician (Roberts, 1984)
distributed a leaet titled Life or Death, which featured the same
juxtaposition of images of a baby and of a bloody aborted fetus (published
by Dr. and Mrs. C. J. Wilkie, 1975, available in the Victorian State Librarys
ephemera collection).
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KIRSTY MCLAREN
That is, there is a strong link between vision and voyeurism in this
opposition: a chaste glimpse of the wonder of the hidden fetus (Petchesky,
1987, p. 276) is a rarely afforded privilege, but the exposure of the blood and
esh and gore is violating, excessive, and horrifying. To look at and expose
the mistreated corpse is a violation which implicates the viewer as an
accomplice of the abortionist. It is not just that the mistreatment of the
fetus is depicted, but that the act of depicting it is also rather horric, a
public desecration of a body. Once we see desecration, we are recognizing
the destruction of something of signicance.
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This close connection between seeing and feeling is central to the meanings
of the images. Images portraying the wonder of life whether evoking life
as a scientic or a religious quality are presenting life as wondrous and
awe-inspiring. Images of violence to the fetal body are shown as evidence of
actions which, it is implied, should evoke horror and outrage. The fetal body
is shown as both human and not-quite human, with the implication that the
viewer should identify with the fetus as human, and also feel protective of it
as a frail and vulnerable human. Thus, images of the fetus try to evoke
emotion, and cast that emotion as evidence of the signicance of the fetus.
This emotion of care feeling protective of the fetus, or feeling empathy
for its pain in the more grisly images is an intersubjective act. That is, the
viewers (presumed) reaction to seeing the fetus establishes the fetus as a
subject. This reaction is construed by pro-life campaigners as a natural and
irrefutable indicator of the moral connection between our society and the
fetus. The philosophical conceptualization of personhood (in which capacity
and autonomy are usually necessary) is not relevant in this moral landscape;
the fetus being places a moral duty on pro-life activists because of its
incapacity. As Mitchell argues, we regard images as objects of emotion,
affection, desire, and power (2005). Those forces are sufcient to make the
fetus akin to a subject. This is not the only way of seeing the fetus, in John
Bergers (1972) famous phrase; it is not the only mode of visuality available.
Built in to an image, though, are the visualities with which it can be seen.
This is, in Mitchells (2005) conceptualization, what a picture wants: it
presents a way of constituting the act of seeing, a way of positioning the
viewer and meta-level epistemological assumptions. There is power in that
positioning relations and positions that are implied and must be accepted
or resisted.
One source of the power of images of the fetus is that they present the fetus
as an embodied subject. That is, visually embodying the fetus makes it easier
for the viewer to think of it as a social subject. Jenny Hockey and Janet
Draper analyze how traces of the material body enable the social
constructions of persons before birth and after death (Hockey & Draper,
2005, p. 44). Conceptualizing the life course is a social institution (p. 44,
emphasis in original), Hockey and Draper argue that material traces of
the body, such as ultrasound, anchor practices, and ways of thinking that
create that are ongoing interactions and relationships (p. 47).
This embodiment bolsters images claims to a relationship with the viewer.
Moreover, this claim, a challenge to the humanity of the viewer, constitutes
an especially potent challenge to the maternal character of the woman
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Marian Sawer and Norman Abjorensen for their
helpful comments and suggestions. I would also like to thank the two
anonymous referees for their invaluable feedback, which greatly improved
the chapter.
NOTES
1. Hard copies of this version of the booklet (i.e., with the images) are extremely
rare. I am aware of a low-resolution digital copy only, which was not suitable for
reprinting. The included images come from the photography of Lennart Nilsson.
They are in color but with a blue tint. The image captioned 8 weeks is a
photograph titled 7 weeks by Nilsson; the Embryo at 14 weeks is a version of
Nilssons Spaceman (13 weeks) photograph, ipped on its vertical axis. The
photographs can be seen at http://www.lennartnilsson.com/child_is_born.html. The
disparity in the number of weeks in the captions reects different ways of
determining the age of the fetus, or the duration of pregnancy.
2. A practically identical image though it is rotated is used to illustrate a 2011
blog post by Prolife New Zealand. See http://prolife.org.nz/2011/10/alranz/
3. This ier is quite graphic, and has not been reproduced here. It is A4, in color,
with the title Why not protect them both? It is illustrated with two pairs of
pictures. The rst pair comprises a picture of a premature baby and a picture of an
aborted fetus. This picture, titled 24 week abortion is posted by the American
Centre for Bioethical Reform, at http://www.abortionno.org/abortion-photos/?pid=47.
The second pair comprises a smiling, older baby, and a fetus, with the head separated
from the body, and an arm, also separate, being held by a gloved hand. It can be seen
at http://www.100abortionpictures.com/Aborted_Baby_Pictures_Abortion_Photos/
Enlargement.cfm?ID=29. The images were accompanied by some text, and, at the
bottom of the page, the question: What are you doing to help these children?
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interplay, the chapter argues that, in the quest to document truth and
induce realism and immediacy, tensions between fact and ction emerge
in the creative appropriation and remixing of images. Finally, it demonstrates how the cityscape is recruited to document and dramatize the
spectacle of death as part of a larger struggle for semiotic resources
within the protest space and over media representations of social
movements more generally.
Keywords: Protest movements; video activism; spectacle of death;
commemoration; geographies of resistance; YouTube
INTRODUCTION
Yet scattered and fragmented under the weight of technology, body and city cant be
recovered by means other than those that displace them: they must be recorded or
registered anew. Video replaces the personal diary. Made up of images, urban culture is
like a hall of mirrors, its reections reproduced to innity. Confronted with their own
technological images, the city and the body become ruins. Even technology is attacked
by an obsolescence that renders it old instantly. We are faced with a transitory
landscape, where new ruins continually pile up on each other. It is amid these ruins that
we look for ourselves. (Olalquiaga, 1992)
In the past decade, the recurring political summits of the G8/20, World
Trade Organization (WTO), and World Economic Forum (WEF) have
attracted a large number of political protesters, who occupy and reclaim
the host cities with mass demonstrations and counter-summits, contesting
the political agendas of the leaders of the world economy. The streets
of these cities thus become not only arenas for radical politics, but
concurrently settings for spectacular and colorful cultural expressions of the
struggle for voice and access to public spaces in an urban environment.
In Genoa in 2001, in Athens in 2008, and in London in 2009, the mass
demonstrations had a deadly upshot since three men were killed in
confrontations with police.1 In commemoration videos on YouTube, these
men, regardless of the different circumstances of their deaths, are inscribed
into a consecutive and still ongoing narrative of martyrdom. Images of their
deaths are woven into those of past, present, and future political
mobilizations, with the urban space forming the backdrop against which
their dead bodies are depicted. This chapter takes as its empirical starting
point videos documenting the events in the three cities as places. From these
places, we may raise questions about how YouTube forms spaces in which
107
videos documenting the events and commemorating the people who were
killed link up with one another. In a semiotic analysis paying specic
attention to the voice of the visual (Barthes, 1981; Zelizer, 2004, 2010) in
these images of violence, death, and collective trauma, this chapter
interrogates the continuities of practices and collective rituals from physical
urban places to representations in online spaces. By exploring the
continuum between ofine and online practices, I raise questions of how
representations of the ways in which activists alter and redene urban
landscapes by means of cultural expressions and protest artefacts such as
grafti, street jamming, and vernacular street memorials are (re)mediated in
online videos calling for future mobilizations. I take a particular interest in
representations of the city as a site of struggle for visibility and symbolic
resources, and in how the tropes of semiotic disobedience take center stage
in video documentation of the protests. Against this backdrop, this study
asks, rst: how is the spectacle of death in three distinct protest events staged
through the multimodal orchestration of written, verbal, aural, and visual
modes? And second: how does the architecture of participation in YouTube
shape meaning-making practices around these online videos? By the notion of
the spectacle of death I mean to signal certain elements of performativity
and dramatization in the way that these commemoration videos stage the
protest events through narratives that move beyond record and strict
documentation. The chapter is structured as follows: rst, the literature
devoted to the interplay between media and movements is briey reviewed,
identifying a pronounced scarcity of audio-visual analyses of social
movements. As a point of entry, the initial analytical effort establishes
how the commemoration videos interweave the individual deaths and
martyrdoms of the three men into a depiction of an anti-capitalist
movements collective struggle. The next sections of the analysis are
dedicated to understanding the various ways in which tensions between
fact and ction emerge in the creative appropriation and remixing of
images of the three events. In this context, critical concerns are raised
about the ethical frameworks involved in recruiting the aesthetics of death
for purposes of political mobilization. The analysis nally establishes the
importance of the city as a protest space in order to open up the analysis of
the video representations of these spaces. In so doing, the last section asks
how the cityscape is recruited to document and dramatize the spectacle of
death by exhibiting the commemorative rituals and symbols spread
across the city as part of a larger struggle for semiotic resources within
the protest space and over media representations of social movements more
generally.
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109
Documenting Counter-Summits
Bringing together single-issue campaigns stemming from environmentalism,
feminism, anti-capitalism, human rights activism, and anti-war movements,
the global justice movement convenes at regular intervals in social forums
and counter-summits targeting the symbols and institutions of neoliberal
globalization. These gatherings usually involve a number of organized and
preplanned direct actions and a series of large-scale demonstrations contesting the high prole meetings of those considered by activists to be the
self-appointed leaders of the world economy. In so doing, activists seek to
hijack media attention around issues of social justice and political alternatives
to global capitalism and neoliberal governance. The large-scale demonstrations in Seattle in 1999, which effectively derailed and ultimately shut down
the WTO meeting, received extensive media coverage and were followed by a
number of high-visibility demonstrations in cities such as Prague, Nice,
Montreal, Gothenburg, and Genoa. More recently, larger mobilizations have
taken place, for example, in Gleneagles, London, Copenhagen, and Toronto.
(There is of course a vast literature dedicated to the global justice movement
and its recurrent counter-summits; for a comprehensive overview, see, e.g.,
della Porta & Tarrow, 2005; Munck, 2007; Smith, 2001.)
The physical gatherings of the global justice movement are heavily policed
and over the years have seen a number of violent clashes between protesters
and authorities. Engaging in spectacular, theatrical, and at times, violent
displays of protest and civil disobedience, activists practice what Juris (2005)
refers to as performative violence, providing activists with valuable
symbolic resources for the conveying of political messages. However, these
same images are used by police and government ofcials to delegitimize
protesters, depicting them as dangerous criminals or terrorists, and to
prosecute activists in the legal aftermath of demonstrations (Juris, 2005,
p. 414). Furthermore, mainstream media have been known to frame the events
as random acts of senseless violence, disregarding performative violence as a
means of communicating and dramatizing certain social values and political
alternatives (Donson, Chesters, Welsh, & Tickle, 2004; Gitlin, 1980; Graeber,
2007; Juris, 2005, 2008). In a contemporary media environment driven by a
media logic in which violence both travels and sells well, peaceful protests
often go unnoticed, while the iconic images of burning cars, teargas, and
activists hurling themselves at heavily militarized contingents of riot police
make instant headlines (Juris, 2005, 2008; Rosie & Gorringe, 2009). A great
deal of scholarly attention has thus been dedicated to questions of how
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(militant) political activists enact performative violence in order to communicate political messages, construct identities, and generate affective ties
within political communities (see, e.g., Juris, 2005; Sullivan, 2004). Similarly, a
number of studies have looked at how militant actions and their symbolism
are framed and distorted by the mass media (Juris, 2005, 2008; Perlmutter &
Wagner, 2004; Rauch et al., 2007), while less attention has been paid to
how the symbolic imagery of violence is used strategically in the context of
alternative media and activists self-representations.
The awareness among activists of the imperative for the visual
documentation of a protest event in order to bypass the gatekeepers of
mainstream media and/or counter-spin their representations, as well as to
provide visual evidence of police brutality, has made camcorders and camera
phones an essential part of any demonstration. In recent years, YouTube
has become a popular platform for disseminating, viewing, and archiving
videos documenting protest. In an era where the ever-wider availability of
technology and the proliferation of free and easy-to-use online platforms
makes it relatively effortless for anyone taking part in or witnessing a
demonstration to record and disseminate images, the abundance of protest
videos uploaded on YouTube by users across the world makes for a motley
and cacophonic blend. The majority of videos on YouTube documenting
protests consist of little more than raw, unedited footage depicting the events
in an often chaotic audio-visual swirl of shouting protesters, sirens, water
cannons, and teargas. In these bearing-witness videos, a short text is
usually added on-screen or as part of the videos presentation, indexing the
place and time of the demonstration or direct action event. In the more
creatively sampled and edited videos, often with a more explicitly stated
political motive, a range of different modes of documentary are put into play,
mixing still images, snippets of lm, music, text, graphics, and artwork in
endless combinations. Demonstrating amateur editing skills, the videos
combine the shaky, handheld footage taken from within the crowd at a
demonstration, encoding a sense of presence and immediacy, with slowmoving slideshows of photographs set to music. In the following analysis,
I focus on a small thread of videos that stage three distinct protest events as
spectacles of death by means of these practices of bricolage or mash-up
which have come to characterize contemporary forms of online video.
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Video Selection
Within the abundance of videos that deal with the deaths of the three men
circulating on YouTube, I was interested only in those that could be
described explicitly as commemoration videos. Although genres are exible
and unstable entities, especially in these nonprofessional contexts, the
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TINA ASKANIUS
ANALYSIS
On the afternoon of July 21, 2001, a series of brutal clashes between Italian
riot police and fractions of the broad coalition of G8 protesters gathered in
Genoa culminated in the shooting of a 22-year-old man. Images of the dead
body of Carlo Giuliani on Piazza Alimonda continue to haunt accounts of
what would become known as the battle of Genoa. Seven years later, a
15-year-old boy named Alex Grigoropoulos was shot dead by police in an
Athens neighborhood. His murder sparked a wave of school occupations,
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TINA ASKANIUS
death, claiming access to the past and promising insights into the future in
various ways. Thus, although they contemplate and revisit the past, the
videos do not only point back in time but more notably point forward and
inscribe the names and images of the men in future mobilizations. While
strategies of sequence construction and combinations tie the three men
together visually, the connection between the events is sometimes made by
comments left about videos, such as viva carlo viva alexis, u r my brothers
(see appendix, Item 4), or by a video being given a certain title or tag. One of
the many ways of linking the death of Alex Grigoropoulos to the aims and
struggles of the global justice movement has been jamming-by-tagging, a
practice typical of the opportunities offered by YouTube for individual
expression and inuence over how a video is framed and found (van
Zoonen, Vis, & Mihelj, 2010, p. 255). A video entitled Another world is
possible start the riots! (see appendix, Item 16) does not itself address the
death of Alex Grigoropoulos or the riots in Athens as such, but consists of a
short documentary about the global justice movement. This catchphrase
used by and associated with the movement is accompanied by a call for
action to spread the riots beyond Greece and the immediate social struggle
taking place there. Only in the tags and in the textbox presenting the video
is the story of Alex Grigoropoulos raised and construed as part and parcel
of the larger struggle to make another world possible:
The death of an innocent 15-year-old Greek boy by Police as well as the consequtive (sic)
deaths of several Pakistani migrant workers by racist cops, sparked a mass movement
against police brutality. The Movement for Justice and Equality still goes on. Youth,
students, workers, immigrants all have taken to the streets to protest against the
conservative Greek government and racist Police Force. (See appendix, Item 16)
When searching online for videos of Alex Grigoropoulos, the user is sure to
nd this short documentary in the initial pages of results. As a statement
indicative of how one might respond to the concrete incident and the riots
that took place in Greece at the time, joining the movement is construed
as a possible way of taking action against the injustices witnessed on the
screen. Further, the video Fight Capitalism! Block G8! (see appendix,
Item 35) is an example of how the names of both Ian Tomlinson and Carlo
Giuliani are used as tags in a mobilization video for the 2009 G8 summit
taking place in LAquila, Italy, some three months after Ian Tomlinsons
death in London. In YouTubes wedding of technology and commerce,
jamming-by-tagging becomes one small way for activists to make sense of
what is essentially an apolitical and chaotic platform and to navigate in the
biased search algorithm, which favors commercial content partners over
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117
Therefore, in the process of telling the story, providing facts and a fuller
picture, a level of interpretation and creativity is added and the eyewitness
gaze loses it power. Digital reproduction has often been seen to complicate
the evidential claims about visual representations of the world and political
realities, prompting scholars to refer to this as a crisis of the index (see,
e.g., Gaines, 2007; Juhasz & Lerner, 2006; Landesman, 2008). Digital visual
technologies and the online video practices of playing with the tenets of fact
and ction destabilize the already highly contested status of video as truth,
evidence, or document. In this manner, we may want to ask ourselves what
the dual processes of digitization and dramatization do for truth claims and
political aspirations to document and reveal uncensored reality on a
platform which is designed (what is more) to entertain and serve the
corporate imperative of bringing eyeballs to advertisements. Entertainment
draws on ction and creativity, and in this case is not just a neighboring
context to political activism, but may well be seen to affect the messages and
knowledge that are outsourced from the platform. This is an example of an
area where the blurring of boundaries between fact and ction deserves our
continued attention. Let us therefore move on to a consideration of some of
the ethical implications of dubiously situating representations of death at
the juncture of these two modes of address.
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and Carlo Giuliani is construed as a moral duty, with the aesthetics of death
embedded in a sequence of actions and actors in order to emotionally and
morally move the viewer from passive spectatorship into action. From the
perspective of a human rights activist, Gregory (2010) has called attention to
the need to dene a new ethics of video practice that address the challenges
of the online remix ethos. In a contemporary mediascape marked by the
ubiquity of camera technologies and mash-up video aesthetics, online videos
that appropriate existing visual representations of public trauma respond to
the immense ethical responsibility the image is burdened with (p. 202).
Endless possibilities of remixing, reappropriating, and recirculating images
encumber the principles of ensuring the integrity of the victim as well as the
role of the ethical witness (Gregory, 2010). The remix practices of online
video pull the material farther and farther from its original source testier
and the point of display. While this transformation may increase the chances
that the footage will actually nd an audience, it also beckons the
responsibility of the witness to represent death with ethical integrity
(Gregory, 2010; Guerin & Halas, 2007).
Returning to the 2009 images of the collapsed body of Ian Tomlinson on
Cornhill, a street in Londons nancial district, these tell us a different, less
graphic story of death. With no blood or signs of death on the body, death
evades visual representation (Zelizer, 2010). In videos paying tribute to Ian
Tomlinson, the visual language seeking to compensate for the invisibility of
death is built up around images of street memorials at the site of his
collapse and of the memorial rallies and speeches around London in the
aftermath of the G20 protests. Although a few videos include images of his
collapsed body, the narrative primarily focuses on a meticulous documentation of the minutes preceding his death, providing eyewitness accounts as
well as a space for the voice of the grieving family (see, e.g., appendix,
Items 31, 34, 36). In this manner, the story of Ian Tomlinson becomes a
story of empowerment through video. By furnishing visual evidence, the
videos direct renewed attention to a long-standing campaign against police
violence and the criminalization of peaceful protest in Britain. Within this
national campaign, his name is added to the list of people who have died
in recent years in confrontations with, or custody of, the British police
(see, e.g., appendix, Item 29). In the short term, by putting on display Ian
Tomlinsons death on a London street, the videos facilitate multiple
responses to the local G20 protests of 2009 and bring insights to the
national controversies over British policing tactics. Over time, however,
as the images leave their original context and the immediate debate
they spurred, their recycling in new videos engages viewers in a broader
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struggle for social and economic justice beyond the borders of the United
Kingdom.
Fictionalizing Facts
The iteration of images and the commuting of meaning between the three
events demonstrate what Zelizer (2010) terms the contingency and
changeability of certain representations of death, indicating how meaning
does not necessarily settle at an images original point of display. Carried by
the voice of the visual, meanings tend to alter over time when put to multiple
uses in new contexts by different people who reactivate and adapt them to
an updated political context. By this token, the images of the three men in
their about-to-die, dying, and post-mortem moments travel across
circumstances. They are transformative, playful, and hypothetical, and
sometimes even internally contradictory (Zelizer, 2010, p. 12). These insights
may assist us in understanding the way in which Alex Grigoropoulos death
is associated with counter-summit protests despite the fact that his death
and the subsequent uprisings in Greece (at least in the beginning) had
different origins and aims. Similarly, they may help to explain why Ian
Tomlinson who was no activist, let alone an anarchist is commemorated
in the name of anti-capitalism. Critical observers might claim that this is a
case of opportunistic (ab)use of images of dead people and their
posthumous reputation; that these are videos in which random bystanders
are mobilized as martyrs. While this claim may be specious, the aim here is
in any case not to put forward a critique of the (at times) dubious modes of
deploying the images. Rather, from an analytical perspective committed to
understanding the mash-up practices that typify contemporary online video
cultures, what is of concern is not so much the legitimacy of the rationale by
which heroes and epics are constructed, but rather the various creative ways
in which the connections between the three men are made and their stories
told, and by which meaning travels between distinct events and spaces.
We see cases where the factuality of the documentary modes of representing
these events and the broader political struggles they feed into are
jeopardized in order to dramatize and magnify their political implications
and future directions. Death is used as a powerful visual trope to signify the
ultimate price of commitment to a political cause and as a rallying cry for
future mobilization. But, put to a political test, do these images include
instances where video documentation degenerates into propaganda or a
pornography of grief? (Lule, 2012). We have seen examples of how the
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The Punctum
As a nal consideration of the powers at play in the about-to-die image
and the emotional, contingent, and imagined appeal it wields in relation to
the viewer, let us revisit the videos paying tribute to Alex Grigoropoulos.
These videos present the viewer with a slideshow of photographs of what
appears to be a carefree, smiling schoolboy with his whole life ahead of him,
taken in the time preceding the December riots. By situating him in a spatiotemporal setting, unaware of his impending demise, the photograph acts as
what Barthes (1981) has described as the punctum within the stream of
images presented to the viewer in this particular video montage. A certain
poignancy and immediacy is thereby added to the photo and the viewer is
poked (Barthes, 1981, p. 26) by the certainty of knowing what is
irreversibly to come.
121
This confessional posting, like a letter to the dead boy, bears on Zelizers
(2010) ideas of how the third meaning of an image, the as if, carries a
persons posthumous existence into art, poems, short stories, etc. In this
poetic statement, Alex Grigoropoulos death is allied with that of Oscar
Grant, a young Afro-American shot dead by police in 2009 in front of
numerous witnesses and a dozen camera phones. Their lost lives are
presented as important pieces in a larger puzzle and as a necessary sacrice
to the sequence of political events that were to follow in the current wave of
protests taking place throughout the world, from the European austerity
protests to the global Occupy movements.
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123
2005), protesters tactics often involve trying to take back the fenced-off
areas to set up a peoples assembly in a ritualized siege of the red zones.
The incessant ideological struggle between the ofcial and the banished,
subaltern city thus becomes particularly evident at the time of global
political summits during which cities are showcased as ofcial host venues
yet at the same time besieged by protesters strategically targeting their
symbols of power and capital (Ibrahim, 2007). Visually, cities parade the
cultures of consumer capitalism: these are the targets of the protesters and
their destruction or vandalization form recurring tropes in the videos. This
double articulation of the city is reected aesthetically in the videos by
conicting images of the dystopian, postmodern city which has succumbed
to global consumer capitalism, on the one hand, and the cityscape construed
as a site of resistance and emancipation, on the other. Juris (2005) has
drawn attention to how newspaper coverage of the demonstrations against
the G8 summit in Genoa represented the city predominantly as a victim of
wanton destruction. In newspaper headlines such as Genoa in a state of
death, a war torn city, a depressed and humiliated city (Juris, 2005,
pp. 424425), the city is personied and lamented. These representations
stand in startling contrast to how the city and its functions in direct actions
are presented in activist videos, in which the city is a site of agency and
empowerment, and resistance is crafted through the amalgamated body of the
protester and the city. In image slideshows, scenes of bodies clashing and
bodies moving as a mass pass by on the screen, using the aesthetics of
performative violence and its symbolism to drive the narrative forward. These
images of the politicized body summon the notion of body genres as a
doorway to understanding the commonalities of visual work engaged with the
production of outrage to galvanize the spectator into action and mobilize
body work (Gaines, 2007, p. 50). Within the wider array of activist videos,
body genres are characterized by the way in which the evidentiary status
makes its appeal through what Gaines (1999) terms the pathos of fact. In
these commemoration videos, the pathos of fact tells us: this happened;
people died for this; others are suffering; many took to the streets; this
innocent victim can be saved if only something is done (Gaines, 1999, p. 92).
Cityscapes in Videoscapes
If we then start to chronicle in more detail just how these spatial and bodily
practices are recruited as visual tropes and storytelling devices in the videos,
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TINA ASKANIUS
we see how some of the most commonly depicted motifs are the residues
left by the activists within the cityscape: the various material marks that
the demonstrations and their deadly upshots have left around the cities. This
visual protest material (Philips, 2012) ranges from images of grafti,
jammed street signs, tagged commercial billboards, and street memorials
to banners, stickers, and y-posters agging up the names and faces of the
victims. These visual expressions in the inner city can fruitfully be seen
to map geographies of resistance in urban riots and mass demonstrations
(Pile, 1997).
In the city, a building facade becomes a message board for recording and
testifying to what happened in the street. An alley is designated as a public
restroom by protesters corralled and detained during the G20 protests in
London. By these means of civil disobedience and semiotic playfulness,
protesters alter the urban landscapes, literally inscribing the power struggle
into the material texture of the city. In the videos, images of these practices
take center stage. In strategies of sequence construction and linking, the
videos augment and dramatize the territorial tug-of-war that unfolds in
public spaces during demonstrations.
Threatening the spotlessness of dominant ideas, and generally
considered as vandalism, grafti, tags, and stencils are always swiftly
removed by the authorities. Documenting and distributing the images online
therefore becomes a way of preserving and archiving the ephemeral writing
on the wall. In the videos, photographs exhibit the messages left by
protesters tagging the streets with names, initials, or a date of death, using
the city as a canvas for projecting the spectacle of death. The showcasing of
these urban spaces in the videos suggests how activist practices seek to
simultaneously occupy both the physical and the representational spaces
of the protest event and how online video is used to sustain attention
and commitment to the struggle long after the dust has settled in the
streets. From this perspective, the videos are part of the spatial legacy
(1997, p.78) of protest events and form one small component in the wider
struggle to contribute to and contest the symbolic meaning of their
representational spaces.
Archiving the Ephemeral Street Memorial
Representing yet another type of ephemeral visual artefact of the protest
event are the many vernacular memorials set up spontaneously in the city,
often at the site where death occurred. The material texture of the city is put
to use in a variety of creative ways to build street memorials against large
125
blank walls or fences that, for a short time, are turned into shrines. In the
videos these memorials are recurring features, and in comment-postings
viewers leave ritualized commemorative markers resembling those left on
street memorials in ofine settings. In fact, there is an immediate
continuation between the makeshift tombstones and their online appropriations when viewers leave online comments such as 6-12-08 never
forget or RIP fuck the new world order, echoing the grafti scattered
across the city. Similarly, exclamations such as Carlo vive or the struggle
continues never forget Carlo Giuliani, scrawled on walls, posters, and
pavements in Genoa, reverberate in the video comments.
By this token, death has left its marks around the city. Geographically
circumscribing the terrain of struggle and carving resistance into its walls,
pavements, and spatial texture, these images indicate how the events not only
left scars of a trauma inicted upon a political community, but left the
spectacle of death engraved into the urban space in which it took place.
Within this massive explosion of signs, the names of the three dead men are
spread across the landscape, laid in owers, formed by candles, written on
the walls, or engraved into the pavement. In this manner, the stories of
violence, death, and collective trauma concurrently become a story of how
protesters alter and redene the urban landscapes of the cities, where the
streets become sites of radical politics and urban spaces the backdrops
against which the mens dead bodies are depicted. In the city, these visual
territorial markers are used to delineate space between red zones and free
zones and to project thoughts onto the urban landscapes. But as they travel
from ofine to online spaces, they turn from markers of territory into
semiotic resources in the symbolic representation of the events. Within the
videos, they point to the imagined boundaries of a community and provide
indications both of the we-ness of a group and of who constitutes the
external enemy of this we (Melucci, 1996; Mouffe, 2005). In the shifts
between off-screen and on-screen practices, the global counter-summits in
Genoa and London fuse with the localized struggles of the Greek riots, which
inscribe themselves in the long history of political dissent and unrest in that
countrys post-dictatorial era. The three place-specic protest events are
thereby given broader relevance and a transnational audience on YouTube.
CONCLUSIONS
While large-scale, coordinated demonstrations against global economic
summits and associated political elites may be the physical and most visible
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127
NOTES
1. The attentive reader might object to the formulation used here, indicating that
Alex Grigoropoulos died in clashes with police, as he was not involved in an actual
confrontation or ght with police but simply killed by the police. In October 2010,
a police ofcer was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment (partly
on the basis of video evidence taken at the moment of the shooting from a balcony
close to the murder scene). This discrepancy, and the specic circumstances
surrounding his death and the following urban riots across Greece, are accounted for
in more detail in later sections.
2. The idea of an images third meaning was introduced by Roland Barthes
(1977, 1981) as an additional force at play in the meaning-making of an image,
complementing its connotative and denotative forces. Elaborating on Barthes
conceptual frame, Zelizer (2004, 2010) uses the notions of the voice of the visual
and the subjunctive as if of an image to help elucidate how images work across
represented events from different times and places. The three, more or less
synonymous, terms are used interchangeably throughout this text.
3. For access to the full IPCC reports, see: http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/en/Pages/
investigation_reports.aspx
4. Posted in Indymedia Athens on December 6, 2011. Retrieved from http://
athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=en&article_id=1361196.
Accessed
on
January 25, 2012.
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APPENDIX
1. Mourning the death of A.Grigoropoulos of Kratzi, uploaded by user
Kratzi69,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjqR-8LK4HM
2. REVENGE!!! BEAT THE BASTARDS (ALEXIS R.I.P 6/12/2008),
uploaded by user refuseResist7,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvMUXRvz7G8&feature=related
3. Alexis Grigoropoulos Ofcial song, uploaded by user linos1987,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jUJtiYTXyA&feature=related
4. ALEXIS GRIGOROPOULOS ANARCHY IN MEMORY, uploaded
by user arxitekton1,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj_UI3VzqUM&feature=related
5. Alexis Grigoropoulos 06-12-08, uploaded by user warezuser,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-Is2UhcM3Q&feature=related
6. Alexis Grigoropoulos R.I.P., uploaded by user mylekadapress,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVNfndo2KN4&feature=related
7. ena tragoudi grammeno gia ton Alexi(R.I.P.).mpg, uploaded by user
ktziavos,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xROwvt23CpA&feature=related
8. Goodbye Alex! (Aleksandros Grigoropoulos), uploaded by user
omlain2542,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUxD3OVD25Q&feature=related
9. Chris Geo-Greek Revolution/ Riots December 2008 Alexandros
Grigoropoulos, uploaded by user djchrisgeo,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VgQORvcP-A
10. 15 year old Alexandros Grigoropoulos shot by greek police, riot in athens,
uploaded by user fothnio,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LobOlhkJABU
11. Aby To tragoudi tis monaxias (tribute to alex), uploaded by user
crystalpurple,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZaAODfreY8&feature=related
12. a song for Alex uploaded by user AndreasLovely,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RFsRPBJE48&feature=related
13. ALEXANDROS GRIGOROPOULOS tribute: Candle in the wind,
uploaded by user madmanishigh,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLC_pvVdBgY&feature=watch_
response
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133
PART II
COMMENTS ON ADVANCES IN
THE VISUAL ANALYSIS OF
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
137
138
Just a few hours before the editors of this special issue reminded me of my
promise to contribute a short comment on it, I had a (for me impressive)
chance to reect on visual images. After we founded the Centre On Social
Movement Studies (Cosmos) at the European University Institute, the need
to nd a logo that would testify even more than any formal institutional
decision to our existence emerged. I asked a Greek artist to design it for us.
When she delivered several (very beautiful) drafts, I spent the afternoon
looking at them all, again and again. After, I chose two, and met with her to
explain my choice. It only became clear to me then how much my esthetic
judgment had been inuenced by the conception of social movements these
logos reproduced. The designs showed a sort of explosion of colors in all
directions, from the center out. This resonated very much with my current
vision of movements as nets of explosive streams. Even the detail of the
gradually merging colors at the borders seemed to resonate with my vision
of contemporary movements as characterized by the creation of multiple
identities in action. Moreover, the multicolored, explosive picture seemed
to reect the cosmopolitanism of the consortium: the acronym Cosmos
reects not only the (increasing) cosmopolitanism of social movements (at
least, the ones we have studied most), but also the composition of the
consortium, with a few dozen social movement scholars from a few dozen
countries.
Apparently, then, my choice had been neither purely esthetic, nor
purely instrumental: visual images and visions of movements had simply
merged into each other. Without denying that all decisions referring to
symbols can be based on a different mix of instrumental and esthetic
reasons, my own experiences made me think that the two aspects are often
difcult to disentangle as, others have argued, is the cognitive from the
affective.
My self-reexive mood led me then to think about how often we as
scholars (implicitly, if not explicitly) perform visual analysis in our work.
Another example which came into my mind was the use of pictures about
social movements in presentation slides. While previous didactical instruments, like overhead projectors, were somehow hostile to pictures, recent
techniques allow us to take advantage of the synthesizing power of images,
showing how much photos or drawing can communicate by capturing
attention and transmitting messages. That new technologies favor images
over words, as they blur the borders between producers and consumers
of information, is indeed another path of thinking that could be better
investigated. If the Web 2.0, with its opportunities and limits, does indeed
facilitate the spread of information transmitted via images even more than
139
140
141
nights seem like bad habits you dont want to quit y); the 99Posse and
Guccini, generationally mixed. While the idea that a new world could come
from revolution and guerrilla tactics was widespread among the generation
of the 1970s, on Carlos railings Do not place hope in our violence was
written. While nonviolence prevails as an ethical or tactical choice in the
documents of movement organizations, in messages to Carlo, who died a
violent death, this comes through as an internalized value. Where someone
reminds us that Carlo lives and ghts alongside us, those who ght are in
any case a small people, in equality and solidarity. No vendetta is sworn
for Carlo: he is wished to be well, wherever you are, and to be at peace,
hugged with all the other citizens of the world.
A visual analysis of the objects collected where Carlo died also show a
movement centered more around values than ideologies. Those who
mention the (then emerging) global justice movement do not present it
through references to big theoretical constructions, but rather by recalling
the founding values of justice and peace, dignity, and democracy. There
is the occasional circled anarchist A, but many more drawings of owers.
If a better world is possible, it seems this will be the result of individuals
constant and daily efforts rather than taking the palace (or the actions of the
8 shits). The values recalled are justice (and Carlos death is not fair)
and peace, hope for a better world, life is a dream (not a mission).
Between easy things and difcult things I choose things that dont yet
exist. Dignity and justice are invoked more than socialism or anarchy.
Reclaim our right to dream a different, better world y; They try to
make us believe that dreams, utopias, dignity, faith, hope, passion are
illnesses. For this reason, the promise that We wont make a monument
to the memory of you y because you werent a paper hero.
In these images, spontaneous but harmonious, the movement represents
itself as a meeting of many individualities that wish to recognize but not
dissolve themselves in a collective. This attention to individuality, to
subjectivity, is reected in the offering of words and symbols that recall the
everyday. Meetings are arranged with Carlo, and apologies offered for
tardiness (Im here tonight, 6 days late); he is brought a note between
one train and another. Everyday objects are left for him a greeting
scrawled on a CD, a train ticket, a yer y The railings are visited to leave
something, even if that something will then be lost or covered up: the hat
that I left on New Years Eve must have blown away, these lines will fade,
not even the GIR sticker is here anymore. A faded rose is brought for
Carlo: Im writing these two lines, slipping on my shoes and bringing this
to you, but also the symbols of the fragments of their own subjectivity:
142
143
movement organizations the logos of various campaigns testify to, but are
also an instrument of, networking.
Given their semantic openness (Doerr & Mattoni, 2013), visual symbols
are easier to agree upon than discourses, and are easier to synthesize
diversity in a common vision. As Luhtakallios chapter in this volume
illustrates so well, however, visuals are also somewhat vulnerable and open
to different interpretations. Some strong symbols such as the statue of
liberty for the Chinese student movement in China contribute to activists
reections about themselves, but may also then constrain them in their
actions (Calhoun, 1994). Also, as Doerr and Teune (2012) argue, a logocentric approach to visuals can distort both social movements actual
visual choices, and scholars interpretations of them.
Additionally, the different processes of production of visuals in different
social movements form an extremely relevant theme for investigation
(see, e.g., Doerr, 2010). As the Carlo Giuliani Square illustrates, more
and more symbols are a collective choral product. The ways in which the
different availabilities of specialized skills in different movements and
generations impact on this process of symbolic production, how it can
potentially create or diffuse power structures, are important topics for further
research. Also, as Kirsty McLarens chapter in this volume clearly illustrates,
esthetic preferences change along with social movements cultures.
The visual analysis of Carlo Giuliani Square also indicates the importance
of pluralistic methodological approaches. Not only, as for instance the piece
by Priska Daphi, Peter Ullrich, and Anja Le in this volume shows, is
understanding enhanced by the collaboration of sociologists with art
historians, or the bridging of social movement studies and semiotics (see
Tina Askanius chapter in this volume), but the visual and the written seem
to be strictly connected in social movements production of symbols and
their combination contributes to the construction of meaning (see also
Doerr, 2010).
In conclusion, this volume shows the richness, but also the complexity of
visual analysis. It gives us clues about the how-to-do-it well question, even if
at the same time demonstrating the importance of acquiring specic
knowledge. Even if it will not make all its readers expert visual analysts, it is
extremely useful for stimulating a more conscious and self-reective use of
visual products in our work.
NOTE
1. A reference to the colors of Genoa, the football team Carlo supported.
144
REFERENCES
Calhoun, C. (1994). Neither gods nor emperors: Students and the struggle for democracy in China.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
della Porta, D. (2005). Il Movimento in Piazza Carlo Giuliani. In F. Caffarena & C. Stiaccini
(Eds.), Fragili, resistenti. I messaggi di Piazza Alimonda e la nascita di un luogo di identita`
collettiva, Milano, Terre di Mezzo (pp. 148151).
Doerr, N. (2010). Politicizing precarity, producing visual dialogue on migration: Transnational
public spaces in social movements. Forum Qualitative Social Research, 11(2), Art.
30. Available at http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1485.
Accessed on 30 January, 2013.
Doerr, N., & Mattoni, A. (2013). Public spaces and alternative media networks in Europe: The
case of the Euro Mayday Parade against precarity. In R. Werenskjold, K. Fahlenbrach &
E. Sivertsen (Eds.), The revolution will not be televised? Media and protest movements.
New York, NY: Berghahn Books.
Doerr, N., & Teune, S. (2012). The imagery of power facing the power of imagery. Towards a
visual analysis of social movements. In K. Fahlenbrach, M. Klimke, J. Scharloth &
L. Wong (Eds.), The Establishment responds: Power, politics and protest since 1945
(pp. 4355). London: Palgrave.
PART III
GENERAL THEME: NARRATIVES
AND REPERTOIRES OF
CONTENTION
147
148
three years of eld work with a chapter of the Voice of the Faithful, an
organization of Catholics that formed in the wake of the priest sexual
abuse crisis, to exemplify this integration of Tillys work. Using data from
eld notes and interviews we demonstrate how chapter members engage in
the telling standard stories of origin, legacy and transformation, and trust
in their pursuit of change and in maintaining internal solidarity. We
conclude that our integration of Tillys later work can be added to other
perspectives on narrative to broaden the cultural analysis of contention.
Keywords: Charles Tilly; narrative; storytelling; trust;
collective identity
149
dynamics of contention. For all of its centrality scholars have been less
inclined to turn to Tillys work to understand the cultural dimensions of
contention; and some might well puzzle over our reference to his work in
discussing Shirleys autobiographical account above. Indeed, a group of
critics have argued that Tilly paid insufcient attention to the cultural
processes of contention (cf. Goodwin & Jasper, 2004).
In this chapter, we present Tillys framework for a cultural analysis
of contention, though we nd it in a series of writings that have little to do
with the subject. It is true that Tilly did not pursue extensively an analysis of
the cultural and symbolic work in contentious performances. However,
during his nal highly fertile period of publishing he offered pieces of an
analytic framework in writing that did not focus on collective action.
Putting these pieces together can provide signicant theoretical insights on
the cultural dynamics of contention. Tilly did not identify this latter work as
providing such pieces, and he might not readily recognize this extension in
the way we assemble them. In this later work he developed a number of
insights on the cultural and cognitive dimensions of political engagement
and social interaction more generally that can serve to expand his longstanding research agenda on collective action. These analyses, such as those
that focus on storytelling and trust, were part of a larger program of
relational realism which he was creating in concert with other sociologists
(Mische, 2011).
We make the case that in a series of books and papers Tilly produced a
theoretical framework on cultural processes that can be braided with his
work on contentious politics to provide a fuller understanding of collective
action and social movements. To date, virtually no social scientists have
made the connections between this body of work and his writings on
contention, nor have they discerned how it offers a fuller cultural dimension
to Tillys program for the analysis of contentious politics. Our goals in this
chapter are to present how this work offers insights for the cultural analysis
of contention, as well as to extend some aspects of this framework into areas
not raised by Tilly himself. We focus on Tillys writings on storytelling and
trust networks and demonstrate how his discussions of political identities
serve as a bridge between this writing and his corpus on contention. To
fortify this framework we draw on the theoretical insights of other
sociologists who have taken a narrative turn. We illustrate these additions
through an analysis of ethnographic eldwork on the St. Erasmus chapter of
the VOTF. In our analysis we demonstrate how Tillys work on identity
processes, storytelling, and trust shed light on the origins and continuing
dynamics of the chapter.
150
151
152
153
Second, Tilly explores the ways in which trust networks can be congured
within different political regimes based on coercion, capital, and commitment. His attention is not on how challengers engage in collective action for
the purposes of re-establishing trust with powerholders on a new footing
(2005a, pp. 3043). Yet many of his most signicant conceptual and
empirical works, not the least of which is his classic Popular Contention in
Great Britain, 17581834 (1995), concern the rise of modern social
movements and the pursuit of reform (see Tilly, 2004 for an overview).
In these key works he details the development of new repertoires of
collective action through which mass challenges pursue reform politics and
inclusion in the polity. This in part is accomplished by generating new bases
for trust between challengers and powerholders. As we noted, his writing on
storytelling extended the analysis of repertoires of contentious performances
further into the cultural realm. It explained how storytelling facilitates
strategic interaction with powerholders. Standard stories provide a framework to discern opportunity/threat in interactional politics with powerholders. To the degree that the challengers goal is to recuperate relations
with powerholders that is, engage in a reform agenda storytelling can
signal opportunities for change as well as remind them of shared risks.
We also wish to extend this perspective on trust. While Tilly centered his
work on state politics (for which he was critiqued by other scholars), we
suggest that the construction of trust is a frequent concern of contention in
other aspects of associational life. This is the case in terms of creating
collective identities necessary for internal solidarity, in the assignment of
blame and the pursuit of justice, and in efforts to negotiate or repair
relations with powerholders.
This work on trust and storytelling thus provides the gateway for using
Tillys insights beyond the realm of state politics. As we explore in our
analysis below, challengers can attempt to recuperate and reconstitute
relations that were axiomatically constructed as benevolent. Under assumed
benevolence the risk of malfeasance is essentially unrecognized. The
recognition of risk activates an understanding of the possibilities for
betrayal, which in turn can motivate a recuperation of ties through the
establishment of trust.
By bringing together Tillys work on stories, reason giving, identities,
and trust networks, we show how this integration further extends cultural
analysis within his relational realist perspective on contention. As
Emirbayer and Goodwin (1994) have observed, a comprehensive analysis
of network dynamics requires an understanding of how cultural and social
structures interanimate network action, enabling and constraining relations
154
between actors (see also White, 2008). Codes, conventions, and perhaps
even technical explanations can also be part of transactional work giving
meaning to trust networks. However, it seems likely that from Tillys
perspective storytelling is often the main process linking the cultural
dynamics of reason giving and identity and boundary setting to the
dynamics of networks and contentious interaction.
155
156
TELLING STORIES
We pursue the cultural framework we have identied in Tillys work
through an analysis of the observations and stories that we have collected in
157
158
other St. Erasmus VOTFers describe how they experienced a kind of gutpunch that prompted action as much or more in the immediacy of the moral
emotions than the news provoked as reasoned response:11
Just you know, horror. Disgust that this kind of thing could go on you know, with
priests that you know, always were held in very high esteem. (Loretta)
I just cant tell you how outraged I was. (Nancy)
Something should be done to change the church. y I mean I was really angry.
(Grace)
159
There are several facets of the social work that members accomplish
through these origin stories worth emphasizing. First, most St. Erasmus
members draw clear boundaries concerning their individual and collective
identities in at least two ways. They sharply distinguish between themselves
and their allies and those who perpetrated and concealed the abuse. In this
sense these origin stories articulate a membership in a shared community of
belief in Tillys terms. As we argue elsewhere (Steinberg & Ewick, 2011),
the divisions that St. Erasmus VOTFers draw between themselves and other
lay members is complex and shifts over time. However, through our three
plus years of observations they continually returned to their origin story to
draw a bright line between themselves and the corrupt authorities in the
Church who they hold responsible. This marked boundary has been fortied
over the years as new cases of abuse and cover-up have been revealed,
cementing the veracity of their origin story.
Additionally, in their reections on their VOTF participation and their
Catholicity more generally, many offer a before-and-after representation of
themselves, with early 2002 representing a critical temporal demarcation. As
Phil noted during one meeting, We still have all the prayers. We still have
all the rituals. We still have all the other things and thats the key. That
being faithful Catholics I think. And part of our strength that we havent
given that up, okay? But weve reintegrated or transformed y a lot by the
tragedy. The tragedy pushed us (Meeting, November 10, 2008). And at
various times (both during interviews and in meetings) these VOTFers
express this temporal division by noting that they previously had been
pay, pray, and obey Catholics. As Nancy reected on her transformation,
I was essentially a passive Catholic before. Then y you just did the pay,
pray and obey thing (also Phil, Victoria; June 2, November 10, 2008,
February 2, 2009 Meetings). This standard story serves as a maker of
personal and collective transformation in what Somers terms an ontological
narrative.
In a similar vein most of these VOTFers note in their stories that they
made their initial forays into the listening sessions alone. They were not
well-connected with those who would eventually become their activist
community. A number emphasized that they did not have the inclination for
activism nor a personal history of it. In her narrative Sarah expressed such
sentiments, Im not a joiner. Im denitely not. Many members note a
shared history of parish participation at St. Erasmus, but not a shared
interpersonal history, despite the fact that many lled public roles in parish
life over the years. These comparable accounts of how the revelations
individually gave members impetus to join highlight both how the
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161
justiable and the feasible. During our interviews we asked members what
they saw as the future or the VOTF and what they anticipated that their
chapter would be doing in ve years. Only one member offered a temporal
horizon for the group (she hoped that its work would be nished ve years
hence) and none provided us with a specic agenda or set of future activities.
It is possible to argue that the origin stories offer members a level of
ambiguity that both creates an indeterminate horizon and militates against
the perceived need for a specic enduring agenda beyond the three planks.
The openness of the origin stories provides some leeway to navigate
internal differences within the group, which we heard occasionally discussed
informally or in steering committee meetings. These focus principally on the
balance of emphases between the three planks and the substantive meaning
of structural change. At various points some St. Erasmus VOTfers have
noted unease among those core activists who are most centrally concerned
with assisting the survivors and those who gravitate toward the other
planks (particularly structural change) (Grace, Thomas, Shirley; Meeting,
March 12, 2008). They depicted subterranean tensions that never actually
surface in the weekly meetings. These have never become public divisions or
seriously tested the cohesion of the group. We suggest that the ways in
which individual and collective identities are constructed through the
standard story of the groups origin allows members room for accommodation and maneuver. As Thomas suggested to us in his account of the group:
We shine light on the truth. And not well and we dont know how to
respond to it, you know? The appropriate and adequate response doesnt
exist yet. But we still say its a situation that has to be addressed. And we
come together as a group of people. Probably no two of whom agree on what
it is we need to do. But {we} come every Monday. By returning to the origin
story and the groups purpose to shine the light on truth they outwardly
reafrm common goals as they informally navigate their differences.
In her analysis of the VOTF as an intrainstitutional movement, Tricia
Bruce (2011) argues that members seek a delicate balance between
portraying themselves at the same time as change agents and faithful
Catholics. The substantial majority of St. Erasmus VOTFers we have
heard or interviewed are deeply committed to this individual and collective
identity. One way in which this identity can be articulated is through the
retelling of Church history. In so doing they produce legacy stories that are
congruent with their stated mission and actions. During the three years we
observed their weekly meetings a number were devoted to retelling Church
history including the origins of Christianity, the history of the American
Church, and the history of Vatican II to establish a narrative continuity
162
that knit together the Churchs past, the members present, and their desired
future into a whole cloth. Legacy stories marked members efforts as
congruent with an institutional history and the recent scandal as an
aberration. In this sense the gap between ofcial history and stories of recent
events opened possibilities for alternate interpretations of institutional
standard stories of Church history. These stories are partly appropriated
and refashioned as legacy stories that legitimize challengers activities. The
meetings provided a number of different types of programs to this end.
The history of Vatican II was invoked through this process. A majority of
the St. Erasmus VOTFers we interviewed told us that while they were
generally aware of Vatican II, they had not been particularly caught up in
the transformation (also Meeting July 16, 2007). Many were young mothers
whose foremost concern at the time was childrearing. For these members the
history of the Council became a history of the present, a means of linking
their activism with a legitimate institutional past. A number of members
highlighted such educational events as highly valuable to them. In the fall
of 2007, for example, a former priest and VOTF activist led a series of three
meetings to view pieces of a documentary The Faith Revolution, which
partly focused on the transformations emanating from Vatican II (Meetings
September 17, October 1, November 26, 2007). Discussions included the
refashioning of the doctrine of Ecumenism, the Constitution of the Role of
the Laity in the Modern World, and the Dogmatic Constitution of the
Church. They highlighted the ways in which the Council had dened all
within the Church as the People of God and noted their responsibility to
exercise informed, independent judgment. Over the course of three years of
eldwork we heard members at meetings regularly invoke these aspects of
Vatican II to dene their actions and identities as mainstream given this
recent past. Typically they raised Vatican II to observe that they follow their
mission in the Church as baptized, adult responsible laity. In doing so they
also constructed a history, sometimes implicit, in which the passive
obedience to the hierarchy expected in their early years was indeed a thing
of the past (Meetings October 29, 2007, August 19, September 15, 2008,
January 5, February 2, 2009, April 5, 2010, May 9, 2011).12
A number of core St. Erasmus activists had been members of the parish
from its inception in the 1960s during the tenure of its rst pastor,
Monsignor Valance. Retelling this history was another means by which the
participatory vision and practice of Vatican II justied their actions. Legacy
stories of these golden years are told by these long-time parishioners to
mark a historical congruency with their present activities. During one
meeting Grace warmly remembered the participatory community fostered
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165
Grace told us that at the end of the rst meeting, he said, well I wasnt
looking forward to this evening. But I have to say that I think youre good
people and I think youre sincere. Id like to hear what it is you want from
166
me. She also recollected of their nal meeting, It was amazing. And by the
third meeting he was really genuinely glad to see us again. It was just
extraordinary. Toward the end of this session she recalled Bishop Ferrer
reecting on the life of Archbishop Romero of El Salvador, since it was the
anniversary of his assassination, and commenting, I pray that I have the
courage to step out and to put myself in an uncomfortable position and
consider things that I should be considering.
Closer to home many members discuss the growing bond between their
chapter and Fr. Francis. He was installed after the establishment of the
afliate, though he had a lesser presence for some years prior. Several
members expressed to us that they had some concerns over the conservative drift of the parish after the rst priest, Monsignor Valance, departed
and were unsure as to how they would be received by their new pastor.
One member noted during an interview that he at rst seemed somewhat
wary of their activities. However, as Shirley recounted one of a number of
versions of the story, there was a signicant warming of relations over
time:
So we said, how does he know were not a threat to him? My suggestion was, lets get on
this Parish Council. Put your names in for the Parish Council. We got seven of our
members on Parish Council. We had a church that was going to be joining with us. And
some of the members of that church said to Father Francis, we really dont want to be in
your church because youve got those people from Voice of the Faithful there. So Father
Francis said, those people from Voice of the Faithful are lling my pews. Theyre doing
my lectors. Theyre serving Communion. Theyre taking care of my church. Im not
getting rid of them. And she observed that with accumulation of interactions He fell in
love with us.15
Telling these stories is one means through which members can speak to
themselves (and perhaps outsiders) concerning a path of reparation that can
be pursued. They are stories of trust and transformation, projective
emplotments in which risk-taking in terms of their activism and its
impact on their standing in the Church as mainstream Catholics
generates increased trust and openness with authority. These stories
certainly are important for the group to signal its legitimacy vis-a`-vis
authority over its history, but they also stretch into the future. For many
(though not all) members they provide a horizon in which the capacity to
reach out leads to a possible growing rapprochement and condence
between Church authority and VOTFers, moving beyond the betrayal that
they experienced. These stories narrate a possible path of conciliation which
facilitates the voice so vital to many of the group. Drawing on Graces
account of Bishop Ferrers reections, nding the courage to put
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169
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank Jeff Goodwin, Ann Mische, Francesca Polletta, Mayer Zald, and
the anonymous reviewers for their comments. We also thank the members
of the St. Erasmus VOTF for their generous and ongoing cooperation
without which this research would not be possible.
NOTES
1. That Tilly had distinctive research agendas that were not fully connected is not
a new observation. Sidney Tarrow (1996) observed that Tillys work on nation-state
170
formation and that on collective action were what he termed Two Tillys because of
their lack of integration.
2. In Dynamics of Contention McAdam, Tilly and Tarrow note in a discussion of
culture and identity in contention, y contentious politics always involves the social
construction of politically relevant categories, such as indigenous peoples or
feminists y (2001, p. 58). Elsewhere Tilly (1998) makes a strong case for analyzing
the importance of analyzing the social construction of political identities. We view
his analysis of standard stories and storytelling as providing additional insights as to
how these processes work in the cultural realm.
3. Relatedly Ewick and Silbey observe that, stories people tell about themselves
and their lives constitute and interpret those lives; stories are media through which
identities are negotiated (2003, p. 1341).
4. We nd parallels between this narrative approach to identity and other
discussions of how social ties are activated culturally for contention. In rening
Tillys early work on catnets, Brubaker and Cooper argued that a feeling of
togetherness is necessary to make groupness actionable (2000, p. 20). Roger
Gould, in his signal work on networks and insurgency, maintained that ideological schematics need to be overlain on social networks to make them recognizable
as cleavage lines on which contention occurs (1995, pp. 1518). The logic of
narrativity can be substituted in both cases while maintaining the substance of these
arguments.
5. As Ewick and Silbey (2003) emphasize acts of resistance are extended
temporally and spatially when they inhere in stories.
6. Owens also suggests that activists sometimes stick with such narratives even as
they face concrete challenges to them, since abandoning a narrative can undermine
the reason giving that has given collective action its purpose (2009, pp. 9192).
7. It would be worth exploring the extent to which the time frames of origin stories
determine the temporality of stories of transformation, that is, whether stories of
long-enduring problems lead to prospective stories of the long haul for change
ahead.
8. For a thorough analysis of the origins of the VOTF as an intrainstitutional
social movement, see Tricia Bruces The Faithful Revolution (2011).
9. All identications are pseudonyms.
10. The collective prole of the St. Erasmus members is similar to that established
by a national survey national membership by William DAntonio and Anthony
Pogerelc in 2004 (2007). Characteristically they are college-educated (many having
been educated within the Catholic educational system), have had professional
careers, attend mass regularly, are active participants in their parishes and express a
deep faith in and commitment to the Catholicism. Most of the St. Erasmus members
are retirees, and a number have been members of the parish since its opening in the
mid-1960s. We discuss the signicance of this below.
11. In their work on narratives and social movements both Owens (2009) and
Polletta (2006) note that origin stories often present initial participation by activists
as a feeling of being swept up in larger forces.
12. In our interview with Phil he noted parallels between the formation of the
VOTF and the course of Vatican II: These were all people talking together and
sharing ideas, which is the same thing that happened at Vatican II. You had all of
171
these people and nobody knew exactly where it was going to go. By getting
everybody in the room, bingo.
13. He observed that the more familiar hierarchal institution emerged later in the
nineteenth century with the mass immigration of Catholics from Ireland and
southern Europe.
14. This is perhaps similar to the dynamic that Nepstad (2004a) nds in the use of
rituals by Catholic peace activists to maintain solidarity and persist in the face of
political stasis.
15. Importantly from the perspective of Tillys analysis of transactional politics, Fr.
Francis noted to us the centrality of the VOTF members in the parish. He did so during
an interview, and publicly at their meetings had pronounced them the vital members
and the conscience of the parish (May 12, 2008, May 11, 2009, April 25, 2011.)
16. Bruce also observes that Goal three stied the movements efforts to
consolidate its voice, gain legitimacy among church leaders, and move toward
fruitful outcomes (2011, p. 130). We see the way it was constructed through the
origin story as part of the reason behind this.
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Tarrow, S. (1996). The peoples two rhythms: Charles Tilly and the study of contentious
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Challenging authority: The historical study of contentious politics (pp. 316). Minneapolis,
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Princeton University Press.
Tilly, C. (2007). Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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White, H. (2008). Identity and control: How social formations emerge (2nd ed.). Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
REPERTOIRES OF CONTENTION
AND TACTICAL CHOICE IN
LATIN AMERICA, 19811995
James C. Franklin
ABSTRACT
This study uses Tillys concept of repertoires of contention as a lens to
examine the utilization of eight distinct contentious tactics, ranging from
nonviolent demonstrations to rebellion. Using an original dataset on Latin
America, I develop a measure of tactical fractionalization of 62 contentious campaigns in Latin America, and I nd that, consistent with
theory, the range of tactics within campaigns is limited, compared to the
range of tactics found in the country or region as a whole. Second, an
examination of the sample shows that the eight contentious tactics tend to
coincide into three separate repertoires of contention: protest, strikes, and
rebellion. Finally, I analyze two conicting theories on the selection of
contentious tactics: Tillys regime theory and Lichbachs substitution
model. The prevalence of the three repertoires depends a great deal on the
regime type in place, the level of primary school enrollment (measuring
state capacity), and the generalized level of repression. These variables
were all suggested by Tillys regime theory. Contentious challengers show
175
176
JAMES C. FRANKLIN
INTRODUCTION
Ennis (1987) argued that tactics are the essence of collective action
(p. 520). Each contentious action takes a particular tactical form out of a
broad range of possibilities, and scholars of nonviolent action (see Sharp,
1973) and practitioners of guerrilla warfare, such as Che Guevara (1998),
place a great deal of importance on the tactical choices facing challengers to
the status quo. However, contentious tactics are still not well understood by
social scientists. Charles Tilly (1977) offered the most-cited concept for
understanding the types of tactics used by contentious challengers
repertoires of contention. This concept is based on Tillys observations that
contentious actions within any particular time and place tend to focus on a
few particular forms that are quite limited compared to the wide range of
actions that are theoretically possible. This idea gained traction, yet in the
preface of his last book, Contentious Performances (2008), he lamented that
[d]espite my repeated calls for empirical verication, modication, or
falsication of the repertoire idea, no one responded with evidence in hand.
One contribution of this paper is to develop a general, systematic method to
assess Tillys claims. This method is applied to an original dataset on
contentious challenges in Latin America. Studying eight forms of contention, I nd that challenging groups do tend to specialize in particular tactics,
relative to the range of tactics used in the country or region. An examination
of the timing and location of the different contentious tactics shows
that they tend to coincide in three distinct repertoires: protest, strikes, and
rebellion.
Furthermore, even if we can conclude that tactics of contention are
constrained into strong repertoires there is still the question of why
particular tactics are used in different times and places and how this changes
over time. This study moves beyond previous efforts in two ways. First,
I begin with an assessment of the repertoires of tactics so that we
can concentrate the analysis on the most fundamental tactical choices
(in this case protest vs. strikes vs. rebellion). Second, I analyze two conicting
177
theoretical accounts for this variety. Tilly (2006, 2008) developed a theory
that the patterns in tactics are shaped by regimes. Lichbach (1987) argued
that groups shift away from tactics that have been repressed. Testing both
theories, the results largely support Tillys regime theory and clearly
contradict Lichbachs substitution theory.
178
JAMES C. FRANKLIN
179
180
JAMES C. FRANKLIN
181
182
JAMES C. FRANKLIN
183
DO CHALLENGERS SPECIALIZE?
Tillys rst, second, and fth criteria of strong repertoires suggest that a
relatively limited range of contentious tactics will be used in particular
settings and by particular groups. We can assess this by using the
HerndahlHirschman concentration index that is commonly used to
measure ethno-linguistic fractionalization (e.g., Fearon & Laitin, 2003;
184
Table 1.
JAMES C. FRANKLIN
Contentious Tactic
Violent attacks
Violent protest
Forceful seizures
Sabotage
Destructive protest
Nonviolent
intervention
Strikes and
boycotts
Demonstrations
Total
Tactical
fractionalization
Arg
Brz
Chile
Guat
Mex
Nic
Ven
Total
12
9.5%
12
9.5%
0
0.0%
1
0.8%
1
0.8%
10
7.9%
32
25.4%
58
46.0%
126
100%
0.70
4
3.3%
12
9.8%
1
0.8%
0
0.0%
2
1.6%
5
4.1%
41
33.6%
57
46.7%
122
100%
0.66
29
18.8%
39
25.3%
2
1.3%
6
3.9%
0
0.0%
20
13.0%
13
8.4%
45
29.2%
154
100%
0.79
185
70.9%
7
2.7%
12
4.6%
24
9.2%
0
0.0%
6
2.3%
6
2.3%
21
8.1%
261
100%
0.48
3
1.1%
25
8.9%
2
0.7%
1
0.4%
8
2.9%
71
25.3%
38
13.5%
133
47.3%
281
100%
0.69
204
66.9%
10
3.3%
4
1.3%
27
8.9%
0
0.0%
15
4.9%
9
3.0%
36
11.8%
305
100%
0.53
3
4.3%
28
40.0%
1
1.4%
0
0.0%
0
0.0%
5
7.1%
12
17.1%
21
30.0%
70
100%
0.71
440
33.4%
133
10.1%
22
1.7%
59
4.5%
11
0.8%
132
10.0%
151
11.5%
371
28.1%
1319
100%
0.77
k
X
p2k
k1
185
that they would use different forms of contention. Looking at the patterns
for countries, we see that the main distinction is the far lower tactical
fractionalization for the two countries experiencing civil war: Guatemala
and Nicaragua. This shows that civil war tends to crowd out the wide
variety of public protest tactics, leading to a more limited repertoire. The
other ve countries are relatively high in terms of tactical fractionalization,
but we can still see different patterns in which types of contentious
tactics were most common. Argentina and Brazil showed a higher relative
prevalence of strikes. Violent protest was more common in Chile and
Venezuela, while nonviolent intervention was especially likely in Mexico.
While this examination of the distribution of tactics across countries and
the entire sample provides a necessary baseline, to truly assess the presence
of strong repertoires, we need to examine whether particular contentious
groups in particular settings consistently favor certain contentious tactics,
while different groups in different settings will specialize in a different
repertoire of actions. Coding the groups involved in contentious challenges is
difcult since there may be multiple organizations involved in particular
contentious actions, or sometimes no formal organizations are mentioned
at all in descriptions of challenges. Therefore, I focus here on particular
contentious campaigns. Tilly (2008) denes a campaign as a sustained,
coordinated series of episodes involving similar claims on similar or identical
targets (p. 121). Building upon this, I identied a contentious challenge as
being part of a campaign if it was one of at least three challenges focused on
the same demand type, including at least some continuity in the groups
involved.3 Furthermore, campaigns must cover more than a single day, and a
period of at least 12 months with no challenges marks the end of a campaign.
Following these denitions resulted in the identication of 62 separate
campaigns, listed in the appendix.
Tillys strong repertoire framework predicts that tactical fractionalization
would be far lower for specic campaigns than for all of the challenges in a
particular country or certainly the whole sample. This would show that
particular actors in particular places and times tend to prefer a limited range
of tactics, relative to what we see across the entire region for the entire time
period studied. It would also strongly suggest that groups avoid certain
tactics that are within their technical reach.
Indeed, the evidence strongly indicates that groups specialize in limited
repertoires of contentious tactics. The mean tactical fractionalization across
all campaigns is 0.41, which is signicantly below the 0.77 gure for the
entire sample of challenges or any of the country-level tactical fractionalization scores.4 Furthermore, every one of the 62 campaigns has a tactical
186
JAMES C. FRANKLIN
187
nonviolent
intervention
destructive protests
0.6
0.5
factor 2
0.4
demonstrations
sabotage
forceful seizures violent attacks
strikes &
boycotts
0.2
Fig. 1.
0.2
0.4
factor 1
0.6
0.8
1.2
188
JAMES C. FRANKLIN
Table 2.
Tactic and
Incidence
dem 49
strike 22
nvint 29
destprot 3
vioprot 28
sabotage 5
seiz 3
vioattack 10
86
90
100
82
20
0
20
strike
nvint
destprot
vioprot
sabotage
seiz
vioattack
39
53
36
6
0
10
47
41
52
67
2
0
3
0
0
0
0
3
0
4
40
4
0
7
0
11
100
100
36
0
32
0
0
0
100
54
20
33
20
7
0
0
0
0
33
30
67
50
30
Note: Incidence refers to the number of the 62 campaigns that include that tactic.
189
190
JAMES C. FRANKLIN
191
Substitution Model
Lichbach (1987) presents a theory that posits far more frequent shifts in
contentious tactics, based on a careful assessment of government responses
to previous challenges. Assuming a single opposition confronting a regime,
he develops a formal model of contentious tactics. He assumes that groups
choose between two tactics: nonviolent protest and political violence.
Lichbach cites terrorism and military operations by guerrilla movements as
examples of political violence, indicating that this category of tactics
corresponds with what I refer to as rebellion. Most notably for this study,
Lichbach hypothesizes that when governments increase repression on
nonviolent protest, the opposition will substitute political violence, and
vice versa. Moore (1998), in a study of Peru and Sri Lanka, found support
for Lichbachs substitution hypothesis. Furthermore Mason and Krane
(1989) and Goodwin (2001) argue that repression of nonviolent tactics
192
JAMES C. FRANKLIN
193
Analysis
The analysis examines the choice between the three main types of tactics
emphasized earlier in the analysis: protest, rebellion, and strikes. Since there
are three categories of this nominal dependent variable, multinomial logit
regression is the appropriate technique.11 Since the dataset has multiple
challenges per country, the standard errors were adjusted for country-level
clustering. The regression coefcients are shown in Table 3. To facilitate
interpretation of the relationships, Table 4 displays changes in predicted
probabilities of choosing the three tactics for each independent variable,
controlling for the others.
The tactics of contention used do seem to be shaped in part by the type of
regime and the capacity of the state, as measured by the primary school
enrollment ratio.12 Democracy somewhat increases the probability that
challengers will use protest, but the effect is not statistically signicant.
Thus, we have at best partial support for hypothesis 1. Indeed, 45% of
protests in the sample took place in high capacity authoritarian regimes in
Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico, which, as mentioned above, were the
setting of major protest campaigns demanding greater democracy. These
Table 3.
Variable
Primary School Enrollment
Democracy
Political Terror Scale t1
Previous protest repressed
Previous strike repressed
Previous rebellion repressed
Constant
% correctly predicted
% error reduction
n
Strikes
Rebellion
0.00 (0.01)
0.35 (.09)
0.21 (0.16)
1.30 (0.57)
0.96 (0.70)
28.95 (1.07)
0.88
0.14 (0.02)
0.62 (0.26)
0.90 (0.19)
2.94 (0.75)
34.07 (0.83)
5.33 (1.21)
17.32
73.4
51.7
1,319
Note: Number on top in each row is the multinomial logit coefcient and number in parentheses
is the robust standard error, adjusted for country-level clustering.
po0.05, two-tailed.
po0.01, two-tailed.
194
Table 4.
JAMES C. FRANKLIN
Variable (Range)
Strikes (%)
Rebellion (%)
75.4
13.0
45.3
33.2
2.2
57.3
18.5
13.4
3.6
8.4
24.9
14.6
93.9
26.4
49.0
24.8
27.1
71.9
Note: These probabilities are calculated holding all other independent variables either at their
mean or at 0 for dummy variables.
The 95% condence interval for the estimate excludes 0.
campaigns peaked under authoritarian regimes and then fell sharply after
democratization.
The results for rebellion are more clearly supportive of Hypothesis 1. The
results in Table 4 show that rebellion is 26.4% less likely in democracies,
relatively to nondemocracies. The transition to semi-democratic regimes in
Guatemala in 1985 and Nicaragua in 1984 coincided with a decline in
rebellion and an increase in protest tactics. However, it would be overly
simplistic to say that a regime opening causes challengers to change tactics.
In Guatemala, extremely high levels of repression succeeded in lowering the
level of rebellion more than two years before elections were held. Schirmer
(1998) asserted that due to the brutal massacres of 1982, the subsistence
and surveillance base for the guerrilla was destroyed, obligating both the
guerrilla and the population to ee to the mountains (or to Mexico) (p. 61).
Both Schirmer and Jonas (1991) see the elections of 1985 as part of the
Guatemalan militarys strategy for defeating the insurgency, rst, through
repression, and then by placing a more legitimate government nominally in
charge. The military retained signicant power, but the move to semidemocracy did open new opportunities for protest, which rose as rebellion
waned. In Nicaragua, rebellion mostly declined, and protest increased, with
the establishment of democracy. However, the trends in rebellion in
Nicaragua were also very much shaped by actions in Washington DC as
President Reagan and Congressional Democrats clashed over funding
for the contra rebels (Walker & Wade, 2011).
195
196
JAMES C. FRANKLIN
CONCLUSIONS
This study offers a preliminary analysis of the tactics that contentious
challengers in seven Latin America countries used between 1981 and 1995.
I began by specifying eight distinct forms of contention: violent attacks,
sabotage, forceful seizures, demonstrations, strikes, nonviolent intervention,
violent protests, and destructive protests. Tillys concept of strong repertoires suggests that groups in particular times and places should specialize
in certain forms of contention, relative to what is available. I test this by
calculating the tactical fractionalization for 62 contentious campaigns that
took place in the countries and years studied here. This reveals that the
range of contentious tactics used in particular campaigns is, indeed, quite
limited relative to the range of contentious tactics seen in the country or
sample as a whole.
The second issue addressed is which tactics tend to coincide in particular
times and places to make repertoires. A factor analysis gives clear evidence
of three distinct repertoires: protest (including demonstrations, nonviolent
intervention, destructive protests, and violent protests), strikes, and
rebellion (including violent attacks, sabotage, and forceful seizures).
The next task of this chapter was to explain why groups use particular
contentious tactics in particular situations. This analysis focuses on the most
fundamental tactical differences the different prevalence of the three
repertoires found above. Tilly (2006, 2008) sees shifting of regimes as a
major factor in gradual shifting of repertoires. Lichbach (1987) introduced a
substitution model which posited that repression of protest will lead a group
to switch to political violence and repression of political violence will cause
a group to switch to protest. The analysis here is largely though not
completely in support of Tillys theory. The prevalence of the three
repertoires depends a great deal on the regime type in place, the level of
primary school enrollment (measuring state capacity), and the generalized
level of macro-repression. These variables were all suggested by Tillys
regime theory. Following Lichbachs substitution model, I also examined
the effect of repression of particular previous contentious tactics, and the
results clearly contradict the hypotheses. Contentious challengers show no
sign of shifting tactics in response to repression of that tactic in the past. To
the contrary, challengers tend to stay within the same repertoire even when
those tactics have been repressed.
This research has established interesting and theoretically sensible
patterns in the use of contentious tactics, but further research is necessary.
First, the methods used here should be extended to other datasets covering
197
different countries and regions. This would help to determine the broader
applicability of the methods and the generalizability of the results. Second,
more focused studies of contentious groups would illuminate more subtle
differences in contentious tactics or aspects of tactical decision making that
cannot be analyzed in a study of hundreds of contentious groups and
challenges. This could also further consider the relationship between identity
and tactics (see Smithey, 2009). Finally, and most importantly, further
theorizing is necessary to fully understand the choice of contentious tactics.
Tilly (2006, 2008) and Lichbach (1987) offered contrasting theories, and
Tillys theory was more consistent with the data. However, Tillys theory is
incomplete. Jasper (2004), Lichbach (1998), and Smithey (2009) all noted
limitations with structural models of contentious politics. Indeed, the
concept of repertoires of contention assumes that tactical choice is
structured, but there is still variance within a repertoire. For example, how
do groups decide on a tactic within the protest repertoire? Lichbach (1987)
presented his theory as determining the choice between nonviolent protest
and rebellion. There appears to be too great a gulf between these tactics to
make them realistic substitutes. However, Lichbachs substitution model
could help explain choices within a repertoire. Alternatively, as Jasper (2004)
asserts, there might be some other choice-centered theory that better
explains tactics. An additional consideration in future research is to what
extent organizers can determine tactics within the protest repertoire, since
the actions of police, pro-government thugs, or a radical fringe of protesters
can quickly turn a demonstration into a violent melee. Knowledge of the
repertoires and their structural factors provides a basis for the next steps in
research on contentious tactics and repertoires.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Sidney Tarrow, Joseph Young, Whitney Franklin, and
the anonymous reviewers for RSMCC for their helpful and insightful
comments on earlier manuscripts.
NOTES
1. At the outset of the project, I used Stata to choose a global random sample of
countries. As the immensity of the data collection project became apparent, I focused
on the region I am most familiar with, gathering data on the seven Latin American
198
JAMES C. FRANKLIN
countries chosen in this process. Random selection avoids the fairly common
practice of choosing cases based on values of the dependent variable, which produces
a biased sample (King, Keohane, & Verba, 1994). Before proceeding with data
collection, I was satised that the seven-country sample produced great variation in
terms of regime, population, level of development, and presence of civil war, thus
providing a relatively unbiased sample for the region.
2. The vast majority of strikes described in any detail were political, as dened
here. Brockett (2005) noted similar patterns in media strike coverage for Guatemala.
The main exception was strikes by workers at foreign-owned car factories in Brazil
demanding wage increases. These occurred at the same time period as an upsurge in
strikes that were dened here as political.
3. The nine demand types are anticorruption, economic benets, economic policy,
education policy reform, environmental protection, human rights reform, prodemocracy, revolution, and social reform. Groups here could mean specic
organizations, or similar social groups, such as peasants or students.
4. For the mean tactical fractionalization at the contentious campaign-level, the
upper 95% condence interval is 0.47.
5. I used the principal factors method, with orthogonal varimax rotation.
6. Factor loadings of 0.3 or greater are typically seen as signicant (Kline,
1994).
7. This separation between protest and rebellion was also found in an earlier study
(Bwy, 1968) in an analysis of 65 provincial units spread across Brazil, Cuba, the
Dominican Republic, and Panama, though Bwy used the terms turmoil and
internal war.
8. Prisoners staged a violent, deadly protest, and then followed it up by murdering
two inmates in a death lottery to protest the overcrowded, unsanitary conditions.
The death lotteries were coded as violent attacks (analogous to assassinations),
though in this case it could alternatively be seen as a violent public protest.
9. One could also test these effects as interactions between democracy and state
capacity. Models with interactive effects were tested using a multiplicative term and
using dummy variables, but both had estimation problems that prevented the
estimation of standard errors for certain variables. Since this prevented testing of the
competing theories, the analysis was limited to additive models.
10. I thank Mark Gibney for making the data available at www.politicalterrors
cale.org.
11. The multinomial logit model assumes the independence of irrelevant
alternatives. Hausman and Small-Hsiao tests show no signs that this assumption
has been violated.
12. The choice of indicator for state capacity is highly consequential for the
results. If GDP per capita is used instead of primary school enrollment, democracy is
no longer a signicant factor in explaining rebellion over protest. This is probably
due to the greater intercorrelation of democracy and GDP per capita. If we use tax
revenue as a percent of GDP in place of primary school enrollment, democracy,
again, has a negative, statistically signicant relationship with rebellion, but we nd
that rebellion is actually somewhat more likely in countries with a higher tax
revenue, which suggests it is not actually measuring state capacity. While this
suggests further testing, these results show additional problems with alternative
measures for state capacity, as discussed above.
199
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JAMES C. FRANKLIN
201
202
JAMES C. FRANKLIN
Argentina
Argentina
Argentina
Argentina
Actors
Goals/Demands
Tactical
Fractionalization
Mother of the
Plaza de Mayo,
other human
rights groups
Labor unions,
sometimes CGT
Protesting
disappearances,
demanding
information
Protesting
economic
conditions
Democracy, end of
military rule
0.28
Protesting austerity
policies,
demanding wage
increases
Justice for those
responsible for
HR abuses
Opposition to
HR trials
Against pardons
for HR abusers
Higher salaries
Opposition to IMF
and austerity
measures
End of military
rule, call for
direct
presidential
elections
Protesting prison
conditions and
mistreatment
0.54
Political parties;
especially UCR
and/or Peronists
CGT
Argentina
Mothers, other
HR groups
Argentina
Military
Argentina
HR groups, youth
Argentina
Brazil
State employees
Workers,
sometimes PT
Brazil
Opposition parties
Brazil
Prison inmates
0.59
0.38
0.18
0
0.67
0.38
0.12
0.44
203
Appendix (Continued )
Country
Actors
Brazil
Labor
confederations
Brazil
Brazil
Brazil
Public employees
Port workers
Opposition parties,
students,
workers
Workers, unions,
leftist parties
Brazil
Brazil
Chile
Chile
Chile
Chile
Goals/Demands
Tactical
Fractionalization
Opposition to
economic
policies
Pay increase
Pay increase
Impeachment of
President Collor
de Mello
Opposition to
economic
policies,
particularly
privatization
Pay increase
End of military
rule
0.44
0.5
0
0
0.64
0
0.54
Release of union
leaders,
protesting
repression
against unions
Anti-government
0.71
End of military
rule
0.49
0.41
204
JAMES C. FRANKLIN
Appendix (Continued )
Country
Actors
Chile
Popular
Democratic
Movement
(MDP) alliance,
but without
centrist support
Various
Chile
Women
Chile
Workers
confederation
CNT
Leftist rebels
Political prisoners
and their
supporters
Chile
Chile
Guatemala
Guatemala
Guatemala
Mexico
Mexico
Leftist guerrillas
Mutual Support
Group for the
Appearance
Alive of Our
Relatives
(GAM)
Teachers and
students
Peasants, workers,
independent
Workers Union
Teachers, students,
university staff,
Goals/Demands
Tactical
Fractionalization
Protesting murder
of 3 PCCh
members
Denouncing
repression
Economic reforms
and antiPinochet
Anti-military
Demanding
release,
protesting their
trials
Revolution
Information on
disappeared
0.41
0.56
0.64
0
0.44
0.28
0.44
Pay increase,
replacement of
Education
Minister
Protesting austerity
policies
0.69
Pay increases,
protesting
0.6
0.57
205
Appendix (Continued )
Country
Actors
Goals/Demands
planned closure
of teachers
college
Mexico
National
Education
Workers
Coordinator
Workers at
governmentowned uranium
company
COCEI, Coalition
of Workers,
Peasants and
Students of the
Tehuantepec
Isthmus
Students, leftists
Mexico
PAN
Mexico
Various groups
Mexico
Students at
National
Autonomous
University
Mexico
Farmers,
Chihuahua
Peasant
Mexico
Mexico
Tactical
Fractionalization
Pay increase,
opposition to
plans to shut
down company
Struggle with PRI
over who will
govern town of
Juchitan
0.67
Commemorating
1968 massacre,
protesting
repression
Protesting
fraudulent local
and state
elections
Demanding relief
and
investigations
following
earthquake
Opposition to
reforms to
increase fees and
use standardized
admissions tests
Protesting low
food prices
offered by
0.63
0.64
0.61
0.32
0.38
206
JAMES C. FRANKLIN
Appendix (Continued )
Country
Actors
Goals/Demands
Mexico
Organizations
Front
Opposition parties
Mexico
Leftist parties
Mexico
Mexico
Teachers, dissident
teachers union
(CNTE)
Mexico
PAN
Mexico
PRD
Mexico
Teachers
Mexico
government food
company
Protesting validity
of 1988
presidential
election
Protesting
fraudulent local
and state
elections
Protesting arrest of
union leaders
Pay increase,
dismissal of
leadership of
ofcial teachers
union
Protesting
fraudulent local
and state
elections
Protesting
fraudulent
elections, calling
for electoral
reforms
Opposition to new
policies that cut
pensions and
delay retirements
Social and electoral
reform, antiNAFTA
Tactical
Fractionalization
0.36
0.64
0.44
0.5
0.67
0.63
0.58
207
Appendix (Continued )
Country
Actors
Goals/Demands
Tactical
Fractionalization
Mexico
Ranchers, farmers
0.44
Mexico
El Barzon debtors
movement
Power workers and
sympathizers
Contra rebels,
FDN, or ARDE
Upset about
peasant uprising
and land
invasions
Lower interest
rates
Wage increase
Mexico
Nicaragua
Nicaragua
Miskito opposition
groups
Nicaragua
Opposition parties,
Democratic
Coordinator,
including Social
Christian Party
Families of
draftees,
opposition
parties
Construction
workers, auto
mechanics, and
their supporters
Sandinista-backed
union
Nicaragua
Nicaragua
Nicaragua
Overthrow of
Sandinista
government
Overthrow of
Sandinista
government
Anti-government,
protesting
repression,
censorship,
constitution
Opposition to draft
Higher wages,
improved
working
conditions
Maintaining
Sandinista
economic
reforms;
opposition to
new economic
policies; wage
increase
0
0.44
0.2
0.44
0.13
0.64
0.67
0.57
208
JAMES C. FRANKLIN
Appendix (Continued )
Country
Nicaragua
Nicaragua
Nicaragua
Actors
Goals/Demands
Tactical
Fractionalization
Former contras
(sometimes
including former
Sandinistas)
Former contras
(sometimes
including former
Sandinistas)
Former Sandinista
soldiers
Demanding
benets
promised in
peace deal
Demanding
benets
promised in
peace deal
Demanding
benets
promised in
peace deal
Protesting
transport fare
increases and
repression of
earlier student
protests
Opposition to
austerity
measures
announced on
2/27/89
Opposition to
economic
policies and
repression;
resignation of
President Perez
Share their
criticism of
government;
demand their
release from
prison or better
conditions
0.32
Venezuela
University students
Venezuela
Variety of citizen
groups
Venezuela
Students, teachers,
opposition
parties
Venezuela
Supporters of coup
plotters
0.52
0.61
0.61
0.42
0.38
210
from below, The University of Minnesota Press; (with Abby Peterson and
Herbert Reiter), The policing transnational protest, Ashgate 2006; (with
Mario Diani), Social movements: An introduction, 2nd edition, Blackwell,
2006; (with Sidney Tarrow), Transnational protest and global activism,
Rowman and Littleeld, 2005.
Nicole Doerr is currently assistant professor of international relations at
Mount Holyoke College. She was previously a democracy fellow at the Ash
Centre for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard University.
She has also been a Marie Curie Postdoctoral fellow at the University of
California, Irvine and did her PhD at the European University Institute in
Florence. Doerrs work focuses on democracy and political translation in
social movements, and on discourse and visual analysis in multilingual,
culturally heterogeneous public spaces. Her writings have appeared in
Mobilization, Social Movement Studies, European Political Science Review,
Feminist Review, Journal of International Womens Studies, FQS, Berliner
Debatte Initial, and Partecipazione e Conitto.
Patricia Ewick is professor of sociology at Clark University. Her principal
research areas include deviance, law, and social control. She has published
extensively on legal consciousness among ordinary American citizens in
order to identify how, when, and why people come to dene their everyday
disputes and troubles as potentially legal matters. Among her writings in
these areas include the books, The common place of law, Social science,
Social policy and law, and Law, ideology and consciousness.
James C. Franklin is associate professor of politics and government at Ohio
Wesleyan University. His primary areas of research include contentious
politics, political repression, and democratization, with regional interest in
Latin America. He has published articles in various journals, including
Comparative Political Studies, International Studies Quarterly, and Political
Research Quarterly. One of these publications was named the best article in
PRQ for 2009.
Anja Le, MA, has studied art history, gender studies, and educational
sciences at the Universities of Hamburg (Germany) and Vienna (Austria).
Her main research interests are modes of representation in modern
and contemporary arts, interactions between the (natural) sciences and
art, 19th century photography, and social control in early public housing.
Most recent publication: Bilder der Uberwachungskritik. Kriminologisches
Journal, 43, 112130 (with P. Ullrich).
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