Reconceptualizing Social Movements and Power: Towards a Social Ecological Approach

ABSTRACT

Existing social movement theories subsume protests into abstract conceptualizations of society, and current ethnographic studies of protests overburden description. Through a case study of London protests, this article transcends these limitations by articulating a social ecological approach consisting of critical ethnography and autoethnography that unearth the organizational strategies and symbolic representations exchanged among police, protesters, and third-party observers, while mapping the physical and symbolic characteristics of space bearing on these interactions. This approach points to a conceptualization of power at work as transient, typological structures: (a) rooted in collective agency; (b) both mediating and mediated by symbolic representations; (c) whose sensibilities are determined by symbolic interpretations; and (d) thrown into binary opposition between protester power and police power, who mutually represent meanings to resist and be resisted by.

KEYWORDS:

• Collective behavior and social movements
• community and urban sociology
• social psychology
• theory
• methodology
• political sociology

Acknowledgments

The author thanks the editors and anonymous reviewers at the Sociological Quarterly, whose insightful suggestions have enriched this article as a result. Gratitude is also expressed to Flora Cornish for her useful comments.

Notes

1. I refer to “members” (of the city), rather than “residents” because (a) people in the vicinity were not residents alone, but also included tourists and visitors; (b) “members” is meant to convey inevitable participation, willing or otherwise, in a given space.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anson Au

Anson Au is a Research Officer within the Department of Social Policy at the London School of Economics, and is also affiliated with the Department of Methodology at London School of Economics. His research focuses on sociological methodology, culture, politics, and theory.