Protest Camps (Anna Feigenbaum, Fabian Frenzel & Patrick McCurdy)

Protest Camps, published in 2013 is an in-depth look at the concept of the protest camp, a temporary settlement of people who have chosen to occupy a physical space as a form of protest or as a base for the organization of a wider movement. Authors Feigenbaum, Frenzel and McCurdy describe protest camps as "ecosystems" and often "a city within a city." They frequently refer to the Occupy Movments, the Greenham Common (in the 1980s a large number of women camped outside the United States airforce base in England to protest nuclear weapons for a number of years), and Resurrection City (a part of the American Civil Rights movement in the 1960s).

The authors point out that Protest Camps are about more than protest. "Camps are frequently home to do-it-yourself (DIY) sanitation systems, communal kitchens, educational spaces, cultural festivals and performances, as well as media, legal and medical facilities." They provide a forum for the convergence of ideals, movements and protest methods. Additionally, camps usually attempt to claim a degree of (although artificial) autonomy from the outside world and its governance forces.

Camps are "heterotopias" a term coined by Foucalt to describe "the notion of a space that is entangled in this world and yet extends beyond its limits." Protest camps "mirror the status quo" while trying to point or reach beyond it. This is why many camps experiment with alternative and radical forms of democracy and often social-democratic governance structures.

Feigenbaum, Frenzel and McCurdy are especially interested in the way in which people react with each other and with the environment while they are creating and living within these camps. They refer to ANT, Actor Network Theory, a "method of thinking about how interdependencies between people, groups and objects emerge and function."

One of the more unusual types of protest camps mentioned is the occupation of trees. I came across this picture showing how to secure a rope on which is easily exit your occupied tree.

I was especially interested by the "binary of the violence debate" which the authors touched on. As a pacifist, I firmly believe in non-violent protest at all times, but for many protest camps and protest movements the issue of violence vs. non-violence is problematic. As the authors point out, a group can quickly be divided over the use or absence of violence in a proposed situation.