Space and Social Movements: Decentralized Structure and Occupation in Occupy Wall Street

• In Event: 282 - Student Forum Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 07. Sociology of the Occupy and Environmental Movement

Abstract

Recent years have seen the emergence of a global wave of social movements occupying central public squares in countries such as Egypt, Spain, the United States, and Turkey. While scholars have suggested that these movements signal the emergence of a new global repertoire, the frequent appearance of decentralized structure alongside the tactic of occupation has been largely unexplained. Without an analysis of the relationship between these two components, we risk overlooking the ways in which social movements’ organizational structure and use of space may influence one another.

This presentation draws from more than one year of in-depth ethnographic research on the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement in New York City to highlight the ways in which the movement’s decentralized structure and occupation of Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan each provided benefits to the other. In the first section, I explain how OWS’s decentralized structure enabled “self-organization,” wherein the combined actions of participants produced an emergent order within the park without any strict or centralized management. I then show how the tactic of occupation enabled the formation of ties between participants that compensated for the absence of extensive centralized organization. These findings highlight a crucially overlooked relationship between movements’ use of space and their organizational structure. In so doing, the presentation provides the groundwork for future research on how movements’ various uses of space may help advance or inhibit their objectives.

Author

• Gianmarco Savio, St. Lawrence University