Exit the system’ Crafting the place of protest camps between antagonism and exception
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Protest camps function by creating an antagonism between the space of the camp and the surrounding status quo. However, this antagonism is artificial in so far as it is rules and regulations of the status quo that allow the protest camps to exist in the first place. At the same time the opposition between the inside and the outside is tangible and real. Following Agamben’s argument the oppositional logics of the rule and the exception are in thread of complementing each other, leading to a situation whereby the protest camps became complicit in sustaining the status quo. Protest camp may become a place of an alleged freedom, of an outside that is experienced as radically different to the status quo but that actually affirms and enables it. For many protest campers, such a function of their camps would be considered diametrically opposed to their political aims, which, as I pointed out earlier, actually contains the demands for systemic change of the status quo. The political trajectory of protest campers would therefore be to create an antagonism that does not become an exception in the sense of Agamben. How do they do it, and are they successful? In which ways do protest camps succeed in becoming antagonistic without becoming an exception? To answer these questions it seems useful to look in more detail at the ways the antagonism is crafted in protest camps. This concerns the way the camps are emphasising difference in relation to status quo in particular areas and practices of the camp life. These areas allow studying the bordering of the camp and its limits in more practical terms. I have identified two areas that are both central to the camping tradition and central also in the running of the protest camps that I have analysed for this paper. These areas are the internal governance, the ways the camps are run and the domain of education in the camps. I have conducted ethnographic fieldwork, collecting data in a multisided ethnographic approach (Falzon 2009). I will utilise data gathered at a series of protest camps from the Anti G8 protest camp in Scotland in 2005 to the 2008 climate camp in Kingsnorth power station in Kent (see Table 1). What unites these protest camps, but not all protest camps, is an explicit focus on ‘re-creation’, a spatially expressed antagonism to the status quo.
(Table 1) By way of comparison between different camps I will furthermore identify more and less successful ways of crafting the antagonism in relation to the aims of the camps to political change the status quo. Internal governance Camps need to be run. The way they are run differs remarkable across the variety of camps. Central to all the camps I investigated is the notion of horizontality, or horizontal decision making. This way of running the site is equally about making decisions and about sharing and disseminating information. The closeness of the two modes is no coincidence. According to the theory of consensus decision making decision-making can be resolved into free communication. The ‘dissent guide’, given out at the Anti G8 protest camp, alternatively named ‘Eco-village’ or ‘Hori-zone’ in Scotland in 2005, explains: Instead of simply voting, and having the majority of the group getting their way, the group is committed to finding solutions that everyone can live with.(…) Consensus is more than just a compromise. It is a process that can result in surprising and creative solutions (Dissent! 2005, p.3). The politics of consensus are understood as the solution of conflict by communication and inclusion rather than by dominance and exclusion. Horizontality, as a political model, relates to the notion of re-creation in the organized camp. The shared and exceptional camping experience produces a realm of ‘communitas’ in which participants leave behind the structuring force of the status quo and can meet as equals. According to Cohen (2009), camping experiences prefigure a political alternative to capitalism. Cohen argued, that even normal leisure camping works on principles that are inherently ‘socialist’ in that camping implied voluntary cooperation and communal or horizontal decision making. Quite clearly however horizontal decision making is an unreachable ideal if taken in this pure form. The limitations of horizontal decision making reside specifically in the fact, that the nominal inclusivity of its operation is based on an assumed a priori equality of participants. This equality is however already contradicted by the fact of differential involvement in the preparations of the camp. In fact all camps display a duality between camp organisers and camp participants, clearly contradicting the notional horizontality. Additional factors relating to the backgrounds of individual participants further complicate the picture. Entry to the camp does not create a blank slate of social organisation. The fact that inequality remains in place and that the notional horizontality is more or less ideological obviously creates a conceptual problem for protest campers. It might undermine the political message of protest camps towards the status quo and hence an important trajectory of the protest camp. My evidence suggests that protest camps face a choice here between either strengthening the antagonism or formalising the regime of horizontality. Within the category of autonomy, Hailey (2009) has pointed to the difference between camps who posit themselves in antagonism to the status quo and camps that operate on the basis of previously formalised autonomy. Between these poles there seems to be a continuum of potential positions of the camps. Some protest camps emphasise and escalate the antagonism between the camp and the status quo. The more obvious the focus on the difference of the camp to its outside, the less pronounced appear the differences inside the camp. By focusing on protest actions, for example blockades and demonstrations, G8 camps in Scotland 2005 and Germany 2007 could mitigate some of the limits of horizontal decision making. Decision making was geared towards action based on a fundamental critique of the G8 as an institution, reducing the scope of potential disagreement within the camp radically. Diverging approaches to action, from direct action to symbolic protest could be accommodated in notions of a plurality of tactics. Obviously such a strategy has its clear limits. In escalating the opposition between inside and outside, the campers can get trapped in a somewhat isolating activist identity. This has implications for the diversity of groups and opinions present in the camp. Frequently criticised in regards of the 2005 protest camp in Scotland, the problem is the development of an ‘activist ghetto’. The media relations team, at the forefront of the some of the conflicts emerging from the 2005 camp argued in this respect against opposition to mainstream media: (…) to what extend can a disdain for mainstream media be another way of remaining firmly locked in the inside-outside dichotomy of counter-culture/sub-culture vs. the mainstream, not wanting to engage with anything that is considered ‘mainstream’ because of being beholden to an existence as ‘anti’, as ‘indy’, as ‘alternative’, as ‘pure’, (…)?” (CounterSpin Collective 2005, p.328) The activists’ communitas, one could argue, depends on a clear dichotomy between inside and outside. While this supports the conditions to run the camp horizontally, it closes it off to the outside, the world of the status quo that activists want to change. In this way the camp is likely to become too exceptional in their antagonism undermining their power to politically influence the status quo. A marked difference between the G8 camp in Scotland and the one in Germany resided in the fact, that activists in Germany had build a broad coalition of groups, involving many NGOs and civil society actors, based on a clear rejection of the G8 prior to the camps. This did not happen accidently. The camp organisers had learned from the experiences in Scotland and consciously build the coalition to prevent the isolation of the camp (Turbulence 2007). They hereby reduced the exceptionality of the camp despite its clear antagonism. The camps in Germany were still clearly geared towards action and hence strongly instrumental. This undermined the role of the camp as a world re-created as an alternative to the status quo. As a result, hierarchical structures became more pronounced, particularly in regards of the role of education in the camp that I will discuss in the next section. In the attempt to remain true to horizontality in decision making camps can also take a different approach. This is exemplified in the development of a series of climate camps that has been taken place in the UK since 2006. Again there is evidence of learning processes from the G8 camp in Scotland (Shift Magazine & Dysophia 2010). The climate camps, while still formulating a clear antagonism towards the status quo and while still focusing on direct action, additionally emphasised the functions of the camps as ‘education, sustainable living, direct action and movement building’ (Climate Camp UK 2010). In respect of the first and second function, deceive planning was put into place, signified by a more elaborated, or formalised structure of horizontal decision making. Indeed, veritable guidebooks were created to disseminate the ways the camps are running and familiarise people with the rules of horizontal decision making (Only Planet 2006; Only Planet 2007). This served both the function to make the system operating more successfully and it secondly allowed certain openness to newcomers. It seems the camp organisers were relying more strongly on a ‘previously formalised autonomy’, rather than on a clear cut antagonism to enable horizontal decision making and openness to newcomers at the same time. In the course of the development of the climate camps over the last years, this approach has shown some remarkable success, allowing the climate camps to run with high levels of participation. Indeed many participants and especially newcomers have described the experience of direct democracy and horizontality at the camps as extraordinary and not paralleled in the political process of the status quo (Berry 2007; Monbiot 2007). It is however important to note that with an increased role of meticulously planned processes and with increasingly ‘formalised’ process, there was also an increasingly obvious difference between camp organisers and participants. As I had argued above, such a difference occurs in all protest camps. However in the climate camps this difference has been becoming more pronounced. An indication of this lies in the way the newcomers make sense of the experience. There has been increasing references to the camp in language of consumption, and particularly tourist consumption (Weaver 2007; Weinberg 2007; Berry 2007). This is mirrored to an extent in the language of camp organisers. The guidebooks, initially spoof version of the Lonely Planey, called ‘only planet’ already introduced this context, albeit with some irony.
Later advertisement for the climate camp has involved flyers that operated in the irony free languages of adventure tourism (Climate Camp 2008; Climate Camp UK Flyer 2008). These are indicators of the problems that arise with formalised horizontality in the camp. The protest camps actually start resembling tourist camps as a clear hierarchy between camp organisers and participants becomes obvious. On this basis, the antagonism that defines the camp is again in thread of becoming an exception. If the underlying structure of the camp, the split between camp organisers and participants, contradicts the nominal structure of horizontality very obviously, then the nominal structure, formalised as it may increasingly appears as ontologically minor to the status quo. A very similar logic applies in respect of the educational components of the camp to which I will turn now. Education Traditionally organised camping has been a function of education, from the military camp on to boy scouting and the Wandervoegel movement (Scout Association 2009; Smith 2006). Despite the very different political and social contexts in which protest camping operates today, educational regimes still play an important and often central role. This is partly explained by the fact that protest camping is a learning imperative. The set up of camping itself arguable creates an educational context simply by merit of its exceptionality. Many participants are non-local and unfamiliar with the site and the surrounding environment. Moreover the exceptional experience of high police and media surveillance in many protest camps prompts participants to search for knowledge, narratives and techniques of coping and justification. A clear indication of this consists of informal exchanges between more and less experienced participants by way of circulating information on campfires during evening hours and various other social occasions on the campsite. Formalising these processes camp organiser sometimes provide guidebooks that I mentioned above. Many protest camp sites also feature workshops where knowledge exchanges between more and less experienced participants are further formalised. These workshops have different educational trajectories. Some are used to convey knowledge about setting up the infrastructure of the campsite itself, involving hands-on practices like food, energy provision and waste management. Others are practical training workshops in techniques directed towards protest action outside the camp. These training efforts can play a significant strategic role in protest actions. In the camps erected around the 2007 G8 summit in Heiligendamm in Germany training workshops in the so-called ‘Five finger technique’ enabled the mass-blockade of roads leading towards the conference centre, involving thousands of protesters. Moreover topical workshops aim to provide information in respect of the target of protest and the issues protested about. These may be organised by experts, conveying particular knowledge or ideologies. Alternatively they may be organised more in the sense of ‘open spaces’, places of debates in which all participants are considered expert (Keraghel & Sen 2004). Arguably different regimes of education operate when information is exchanged informally between participants on a campfire, when an issue like carbon emissions in aviation in discussed in an open meeting or when a guide, written and printed by camp organisers is circulated in the camp. In educational theory the latter has been associated with traditional enlightenment understanding of education in which the learner is seen as a container or a bank (Freire 1985). Knowledge is conceptualised as an asset that can be placed inside the learner. Concurrently this model creates a clear hierarchy between the teacher and learner, or in this case between camp organisers and newcomers. The more informal exchanges on the camp site on the contrary seem to indicate a regime of education in which hierarchies are less pronounced as the educator of one instant becomes the educated of the other. Such regimes support the notion of the camp as a communitas of equals. Freire (1985) has proposed to formalise these more horizontal notions of learning as ‘dialog’ and ‘co-learning’, ideas that have been picked up in critical education theory(Hooks 1994). In many protest camps such ideas have been adopted in the provision of ‘open spaces’ for debates to co-educate participants. These alternative regimes of education are posited as counter-regimes of the camp and often play a key role in the antagonistic positioning of the camp. Concurrently the more hierarchical regime of education is associated with the status quo of the outside of the camp (Trapese Collective 2007). However inside the camp the more hierarchical forms of education continue operating. Guidebooks or workshops like the aforementioned five-finger technique are essential to the success of protest camps and occur in all of them along with the hierarchies of camp organisers and participants that these educational regimes produce. While the nominal antagonism of the camp against the outside space is based on opposing regimes of education, the reality of every protest camp contradicts this. The development of open space approaches to education in the camp follows a similar logic than the use of horizontal decision making in the domain of internal governance. ‘Open space’ was developed as an organisational tool for events, conferences and meetings since the 1980ies (Owen 2008). In political contexts it has been adopted by the founders of the world social forum (WSF), and widely debated ever since (Wallerstein 2004; Keraghel & Sen 2004; Patomaki & Teivainen 2004; Boehm et al. 2005). As a principle open space is equally contradictory as is the notion of horizontality but interestingly open space inspired educational systems get formalised in the practice of protest camps in very different ways. The protest camps against the G8 in Scotland and Germany only provided a limited amount of workshops that were mostly geared towards the support of action. This indicates the stronger role of the antagonism that makes further debate unnecessary. In an extreme form, arguably the assumption is that problem and solution are already defined. There is no need for further discussion beyond tactics and strategies. In the climate camps the focus on education was broadened and full workshop programs were offered that increasingly transcended support for action. In these workshops a variety of issues was discussed. Increasingly over the years attempts were made to open the debate to a broader range of political opinions as well. The guide to the second climate camp emphasised this outlook: So it’s up to us, the public acting together, to push solutions that fight against climate change and for social justice, to develop attractive solutions, to adopt different measurements of value, to turn things around. The good news is that most of the changes needed are social, psychological and political. They aren’t about technology. They are questions to be answered by the public, not the expert. (Only Planet 2007, p.2) Didactic or instrumental education is about the expert. However, in the climate camps education was more open than that, more of an exchange of the public with experts about the way forward, more about creating the sphere to ‘make things public’ (Latour & Weibel 2005), to have a debate about it, to empower people to speak. Practically however this development has shown its own limitations. With the arrival of prominent journalists, unionists and MPs at the climate camps the idea of an open public space without experts was undermined to an extent. Not only were now a variety of diverging opinions being equally discussed, often contradicting the original ideas of the camp organisers. Moreover the role of particular experts undermined the ideas of co-education in the camp. Such developments have been contested and critiqued in the organisation process of the climate camp, particular in respect of more mainstream political positions (Shift Magazine & Dysophia 2010). Opening space meant in practice to allow people who had strong voices in the status quo to feature highly in the camps as well. The antagonism of the camp space – seen from this perspective - seems increasingly nominal while real differences to the status quo diminish. New configurations might emerge from current discussions on where to take the climate camps in particular. It is clear however that the climate camps in their success to overcome a certain isolation of previous activist camps have encountered new challenges. These challenges relate to the increasingly important role of ‘formalised autonomy’ or what can be called an increasing institutionalisation within the status quo. Conclusion The purpose of the paper was to discuss the place of protest camps that position themselves in antagonism to the status quo. Not all protest camps search such a position and the empirical study was focused on camps that do. The conclusions from this paper are limited to protest camps that pursue an antagonistic positioning. Such a position is arguable artificial as the rules and norms of the status quo continue to apply in the camps. Protest camps, I argued, where hence in danger of becoming an exceptional feature of the status quo. Rather than changing the status quo, they would strengthen it. The analysis focused on the ways in which protest camps craft the antagonism, looking in particular at the domains of internal governance and education in the camps. Protest camps employ the alternative modes of internal governance and education, horizontal decision making and open space. However the application of these modes shows clear limits and contradictions in practice. Horizontality and open space approaches are undermined by continuously existing differences between different groups of protest campers and their differential investments into the camps. The emerging contradictions are challenge to the camps and it appears that both open acknowledgement and open denial seem to lead the antagonism of protest camps to become an exception and hence undermine their political aims. On the one hand, to deny the continuous existence of educational and governmental regimes that produce hierarchies in the camps will demand increasing closure of the camp to the outside, by way of an affirmation of the antagonism in ontological terms. The camp may claim increasing autonomy from the status quo based on claims to a more authentic, utopian social organisation inside the camp. In practice such claims to ontological difference will increasingly be based on cultural signifiers as evidently a political autonomy in strict terms cannot be achieved without the creation of a new body politic. The development of strong counter-cultural identities in the camp will however limit the political significance of protest camps, creating the impasse of so called ‘activist ghettos’. It allows the status quo to ignore the campsite as marginal and politically irrelevant and will limit its appeal to core constituencies. An essentialist affirmation of the antagonism between inside and outside might moreover increase the role of hierarchical regimes inside the camp, as the antagonism is increasingly defined in cultural and not political terms. On the other hand, the camps may try to tackle the contradiction of continuously existing hierarchical regimes in the camp by formalising governmental and educational regimes in the form of guidebooks and guidelines. This has the advantage that it allows for a broader appeal of the protest camps beyond core constituencies. Indeed the development of the climate camps over the years has shown the remarkable success of this approach. However, as the regimes are increasingly based on previously formalised regimes, the difference between camp-organisers and camp-participants become more accentuated. The camp and its attempt to establish an antagonism via non-hierarchical governance and educational regimes increasingly seems to be artificial or nominal while the status quo and its hierarchical regimes are real as proven by their continuous existence in the protest camp. Previously formalised autonomy leads to a downgrading of the ontological status of the camp in relation to the status quo. The antagonism of the camp again becomes exceptional, this time more in the sense of how tourist spaces are understood functionally integrated into the status quo (see above). |
Picture 3: Climate Camp Guidebook 2006