Activist Identity as a Motivational Resource: Dynamics of (Dis)empowerment at the G8 Direct Actions, Gleneagles, 2005

Abstract

This paper describes a study examining how different groups at some of the G8 protests, Gleneagles, 2005, negotiated experiences of (dis)empowerment. A recent survey of protest events speculated that, as a function of their social identities, experienced activists have available to them particular strategies to counter disempowerment and hence provide motivation for continued involvement. The G8 direct actions in Gleneagles provided an opportunity to examine such dynamics of (dis)empowerment in situ. An ethnographic study was carried out covering the duration of the Gleneagles events, including interviews with forty participants. Two key findings were as follows. First, across the protest group as a whole there was little unification and no agreed definition of success. Consequently, feelings of empowerment varied systematically across the sample. The second key finding concerned changes in definitions of success among some participants. For experienced activists, their activist identity entailed access to sets of arguments and discussions with fellow activists which allowed potentially disempowering events to be (re-)interpreted positively. An example was the re-evaluation of the importance of the Stirling campsite, which came to be seen by some as a key achievement. We argue in conclusion, however, that some activist strategies to maintain empowerment, while appearing to be based on a radical position, can operate as a break on escalation. The analysis as a whole suggests both the subjective and objective significance of identity and empowerment in movement dynamics.

Keywords:

• Anti-globalization
• empowerment
• social identity
• G8
• activists

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Cristina Flesher Fominaya and three anonymous reviewers for comments on an earlier version of this paper.

Notes

1. The term ‘anti-capitalist’ seems to be more popular in the UK, whereas elsewhere the term ‘anti-globalization’ is preferred. See Aufheben (2002).

2. The present argument on the role of activist identity in times of decline has some similarity to the position expressed in the article ‘Give up activism’, by Andrew X, originally published in ‘Reflections on June 18’ following the ‘J18’ day of action in 1999 (and reproduced in Do or Die No. 9, 2000). The article was extremely influential within UK social movement discussions. However, as Andrew X himself stated, in a postscript to ‘Give up activism’ published with the Do or Die reprint, his thesis was badly flawed by ‘an over-hasty appropriation of Situationist ideas’ (p. 167) about the self-sacrificial role of the leftist ‘militant’ which were unfair and inappropriate as a critique of the direct action movement of the 1990s. In fact, we would suggest that the Aufheben (2006) article is closer to the present argument and a more coherent account of ritualization in protest.

3. Against this kind of point, Nash (2008) argues that the style of MPH, though ‘symbolic’ action not direct action was potentially empowering, since it avoided an enfeebling focus on shame and guilt.