SOCIETY AGAINST MARKETS. THE COMMODIFICATION OF MONEY AND THE REPUDIATION OF DEBT

From anti-debt movements in Mexico, Spain, Poland, Croatia, and Chile to the Occupy movements in the United States, Israel and Canada, organizations repudiating both debt and the centrality of financial markets have proliferated worldwide. In this article, I draw on Polanyi’s work in order to frame the financialization of society and different forms of debt repudiation as a double movement, characterized as a second wave of the commodification of money and the attempts by society to protect itself from the advancement of finance. Relying on a secondary literature and my own ethnographic research on debtors’ movements, I explore the commonalities and differences between diverse forms of repudiating debt through collective action at both national and international level.

The Performative Power of Queer Assembly

This paper addresses some relations between the spatial politics of queer assemblies in spaces of protest and the constitution of collective political subjects. It does so by exploring the spatial politics of queer activism within the global Occupy movements, in the light of Judith Butler’s work on the performative power of assembly and the ambivalences of the Foucauldian concept of heterotopia. Specific challenges faced by queer activists in various encampments will be addressed in order to expose some tensions between the constitutive exclusions inherent to the constitution of spaces of protest and the processes of coalition building needed to effectively overcome those very constitutive exclusions.

It’s (Red) Hot Outside! The Aesthetics of Climate Change Activists Extinction Rebellion

From 2011’s Occupy movements to the Umbrella Movement Hong Kong to the recent Climate March in September 2019, typified by Extinction Rebellion’s performative acts of resistance, there’s been an exponential increase in protests around the world. People move together en masse to challenge economic inequality and political ineptitude; they demand racial justice and action against climate change and Indigenous land rights. Ideally, protests and forms of direct action generate new ideas where the use of bodies in space become conduits to spark debate, bring awareness, with the hope to change the discourse about urgent issues. The visual power of many bodies speaking both to each other and to a larger public offers a space everyone can safely participate in the social imaginary. This paper considers Extinction Rebellion's graphic and performative aesthetics.

Social Movements and Democracy in Spain: Review of Democracia, dignidad y movimientos sociales. El surgimiento de la cultura cívica y la irrupción de los «indignados» en la vida pública. Rubén Díez y Enrique Laraña

Over the last decade, Spain became one of the global hotspots for social movement contestation. The emergence of the 15M movement, or Indignados, was of significance not only in Spain, where it gave rise to the longest wave of mobilisation since the transition to the democracy but also internationally as its practices, repertoires and discourses became the blueprint for Occupy movements around the world. In Spain, the Indignados movement unleashed protest potential that transformed mobilisations between 2011 and 2014. The potency of these protests led to a shift in the public debate and the emergence of new parties such as Podemos and Ciudadanos. The 15M was not only a consequence of austerity under the Great Recession. It also transformed democracy, bringing to the fore new frames and repertoires that impacted institutional politics.

Introduction: the end of representative politics?

What should political theorists make of M15 and the Occupy movements? Of the rise of alternative parties such as Podemos and Syriza? And support for alternatives to parties such as the Five Star Movement and the Pirate Party movement? These insurgencies are not motivated simply by economic circumstances but are unique for giving voice to a new and distinctively democratic citizen anger directed at the limits of representative politics. Some herald this activity as the “end of representative politics.” We argue that it is a protest against just one version—mandate representation—that is elitist in its conception and practice. Similar to this activism in the street, the “constructivist turn” in political theory also pushes against the limits and rejects the elitism of mandate representation. Its proponents argue that representatives can and should do more than speak for constituencies of voters: they revitalize democracy by sparking new political subjects into action—both within and beyond the confines of parliamentary politics.