Eventful Spaces and Spatial Policing: The Case of Gezi Park Occupation

• In Event: 106 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 18. Tactics and Repertoires

Abstract

Social movements literature has generally treated space as a passive ‘container’ in which social interactions are unfolded, as an unquestioned background, or at best as a metaphor. I think that post-2010 occupations in Arab Spring, anti-austerity protests in Europe, and Occupy movements around the world require social movements scholars to consider the centrality of space in contentious politics, and conceptualize space accordingly. Using the data obtained from semi-structured interviews with the occupiers, social media and news analysis, and political discourse analysis, I ask how space is used by both the protestors and the government in 2013 Gezi Park occupation in Istanbul.

Author

• Dolunay Ugur, Yale University