Policing Protest

In diesem Papier referierte ich in Dresden auf die Polizei Sachsen bezogene sowie allgemeine Aspekte des Spannungsfeldes von Polizei und Gewalt.

Ich möchte aufgrund der Einladung durch eine politische Stiftung anmerken, dass ich keiner deutschen Partei angehöre.

Le degré de coercition déployé par la police dans le cadre de manifestations varie en partie selon certaines caractéristiques propres aux individus mobilisés : race, classe, idéologie politique, notamment. Les groupes subordonnés qui mettent en cause l’ordre social établi semblent de fait particulièrement visés par des interventions musclées des forces de l’ordre. S’inscrivant dans la continuité de ces études, cet article s’intéresse à la manière dont les manifestantes perçoivent l’influence du genre sur les pratiques policières en matière de gestion de foules ; est-il un facteur auquel les styles de gestion de foules sont sensibles ? Les femmes, en tant que groupe subordonné, sont-elles plus violemment ciblées par la police ? À partir d’entrevues semi-dirigées avec des manifestantes ayant vécu de nombreuses interactions conflictuelles avec la police, il nous a été possible d’observer que le genre caractérise significativement l’expérience des femmes. Plus précisément, les résultats pointent un double traitement des femmes manifestantes par la police. D’un côté, celles qui correspondent en apparence aux stéréotypes associés à leur identité de genre sont considérées par les policiers comme des victimes de mauvaises influences, mobilisées presque par erreur. Ce paternalisme genré décrédibilise leur mobilisation et réduit la portée de leur action politique. De l’autre, celles qui transgressent les rôles qui leur sont habituellement assignés sont traitées avec violence — une violence (verbale et physique) elle-même genrée, visant le corps des femmes de manière spécifique. Ces observations nous amènent à conclure que la police défend également un ordre social genré, punissant plus sévèrement les manifestantes qui transgressent les normes qui y sont associées. - Research tends to state that protest policing strategies are partly dependent on specific protester’s characteristics, like race, class and political ideology. Indeed, it seems that police are more prone to use force against subordinate groups who challenge the established social order. This paper looks into women protesters’ perception of the influence of gender on the tactics used by the police when protest arise. Is gender a variable which modulates the policing protest strategies adopted? Are, for example, women protesters treated more harshly by the police? Drawing from semi-directive interviews with women protesters who had numerous conflictual interactions with the police, this study shows that their experiences are characterized by their gender. Two distinct strategies are used by the police whether women were consistent with the gender-related stereotypes. On one side, if they fit within the boundaries of their woman’s roles, they will usually be treated as victims of bad influences. By doing so, the police minimizes the credibility of their cause and weaken their political empowerment. On the other side, women protesters who move away too sharply from the dominant social norms are violently — verbally and physically — treated, with forms of violence that are gender specific. These observations point to the hypothesis that the police, by punishing more harshly those who do not respect these gendered norms, defends a gendered social order.

Focusing on the British animal rights campaign against Huntingdon Life Sciences, this article investigates how changing judicial opportunities effectively cause the demobilization of a social movement campaign, explaining the central role of law and criminal justice in movement repression. The study identifies four forms of legal repression arising in response to the UK organization Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty: elite-initiated protest control, targeted criminalization, leadership decapitation and extended incapacitation. The analysis demonstrates the need to widen repression research beyond the policing of protest events, to cover how social movement activists are controlled after arrest. It concludes by arguing for the inclusion of a stage-dimension in repression research to better grasp the crucial role of private elites in the initiation of repression. The study builds on qualitative data from Britain, obtained by participant observation, trial observation and interviews, covering both protestors and their adversaries.

Presentación en 3rd ISA Forum of Sociology en mesa redonda "Repression and protest control". 10-14 Julio, Viena, 2016.

The aim of this paper is to discuss the results of an ethnographic research that explores two phenomena that have gained great visibility in the latest round of global protests that began in 2011. On the one hand, it examines the incorporation of a performative, non-lethal, and small-scale violence in the repertoires of protest from minority groups such as noted in a diversity of cities like Athens, Cairo, Sao Paulo, and Santiago. On the other hand, it accounts for the return of direct confrontation tactics in policing protests, supported by a militarized logic of management of urban conflict. In a context of emerging alter-globalization movements, both issues compel me to (re)think, first, the role of violence "from below" in contemporary politics and, second, the apparent normalization of the conflict between police and protest, especially in recent years in Western democracies. Drawing on a qualitative perspective, I will thus analyze the intersections and overlapping of these two lines of force by inquiring the mobilization carried out by the student movement in Santiago, Chile, which started in 2011 and opened up the largest cycle of public protests in that country since the restoration of democracy in 1990. To do so, it is fundamental to situating these violent protest repertoires both in a synchronic and in a diachronic axis, the former to think of potential influences and similarities on a global scale and the latter to assess the weight the popular resistance against the Pinochet regime in the 1980s.