1
Activist identity as a motivational
resourceDynamics of (dis) empowerment at the G8
direct actions, Gleneagles, 2005

• Dermot Barr John DruryDepartment of
  PsychologyUniversity of Sussex

2
Empowerment in collective action

• Social and psychological importance
• Processes
• Intergroup dynamics support, unity
• Collective self-objectification
• Coping with disempowerment?

3
Coping with potential disempowerment

• Activists cultural resources
• Meaning of events as contestable
• Both of these are identity-related

4
Rationale

• Research so far has only inferred these processes
  post hoc
• G8 Gleneagles as an opportunity to examine
  definitions of a potentially disempowering event
  across people and time
• Background scale of previous anti-cap
  demonstrations

5
G8 Protests 2005a brief chronology

• Saturday 2 July MAKE POVERTY HISTORY DEMO
  Edinburgh
• Sunday 3 July G8 ALTERNATIVES COUNTER SUMMIT
  Edinburgh
• Monday 4 July CND BLOCKADE FASLANE NUCLEAR SUB
  BASE
• Tuesday 5 July PROTEST AT DUNGAVEL ASYLUM SEEKERS
  PRISON
• Wednesday 6 July MARCH TO THE GATES OF GLENEAGLES
  Gleneagles Hotel

6
Our focus The G8 Blockade

• Obviously the thing on Wednesday morning was
  possibly the lowest point in the week, we just
  trudged through the wilderness overnight for
  quite a significant distance, it was cold, it was
  wet, we hadnt really slept, we were all very
  aggravated, and had been routinely intimidated
  through the night by the police, and in a very
  bad psychological state of affairs. (T4S1I7 N)

7
Method

• Participant Observation
• Semi structured interviews
• Cross-sectional
• Opportunity sample
• Longitudinal

8
Unity/Fragmentation (time 1)

• D How would you describe the people that are
  protesting, going up now and have gone up
  recently?
• I think its a fairly mixed bag, youve got
  people here who are protesting against G8, I
  suppose youve got your kind of anarchists and
  the anti-capitalist movement, and youve got
  things like Make Poverty History which is going
  up to kind of just reform as opposed to
  completely over-rule. So its quite mixed, and
  it is in ages as well, mixed ages, completely
  mixed bag of people. (T1S2I2 So)
• obviously most people here are probably
  anti-capitalist, especially for the G8
  demonstrations now rather than the demo before on
  the second, T1S2I4

9
Unity/Fragmentation (time 2)

• theres this pretension about being like a whole
  collective (T3S2I4)
• the protest has changed to what happened before
  at the other G8 meetings, its more that you have
  a kind of official tolerated protest, this Bob
  Geldorf kind of thing, which you know is a
  meeting with, you know, making a conscious
  decision between protesters and basically the G8
  and but that takes away the you know it really
  takes away the voices of the people who are
  really protesting here (T3S1I1)

10
Discussion and definition of success/failure
varies across participants

• D What would you hope to achieve from this kind
  of action?
• Well, ideally blocking the road, (TIME 2)T3S2
• D What would you consider a failure today, if
  today was to be a failure, what would that be?
• A failure would be if they succeed more and more
  in dividing the protest. T3S1I1
• T1S2I1 D
• D So what do you think the best outcome, what
  can be achieved from the protests and what is the
  best outcome that could happen?
• The best outcome would kind of be the obvious
  things, such as lessening debt, more aid and
  stuff like that.

11
Discussion and definition of success/failure
varies with time

• Time 1
• D So is that what you would hope to achieve?
• Ultimately, it would be great to stop the thing
  from happening T1S2I2 So
• Time 2
• D What would you consider a success or a
  failure for the protests today?
• If we could just get a voice, that people be
  allowed to demonstrate in the way that they feel
  is appropriate. T3S2I5
• Time 3
• I think that their hopes where that they might
  postpone or shut down or cause trouble for the G8
  taking place. And I think it did to a certain
  extent it was more kind of taking back autonomy
  and power from that meeting SO

12
(Dis)Empowerment varies across participants

• D Do you feel that these kind of actions are
  empowering?
• Yes.
• D How would you say that theyre empowering, I
  mean why are they empowering? Is it numbers of
  the crowd, is it unity, is it . .
• I dont know, yes, its just
• Female Its no good just giving a donation and
  waiting for someone else to do it, were just
  here saying this has to be changed, here and now.
• Male You just know that youre doing the right
  thing, and no matter what, even if youre with
  the crowd or youre not with the crowd, youre
  just doing the right thing.
• (DIS)EMPOWERMENT T3S2I5
• D Do you find these type of events empowering?
• Not at the moment. Not right now. Generally,
  yes.
• D Why not right now?
• Because weve been, all powers been taken away
  totally from us at the moment.

13
(Dis)Empowerment varies across time

• T3S1I3 SO Time 2
• but to be honest I dont know whether to feel
  more empowered or less empowered, because its a
  kind of weird space were in because we dont
  really know whats happened today.
• So Time 3
• Then thats quite empowering so its either a
  case of having an immediate goal that you can see
  or knowing that you can work, that youve got
  people that youre unified with that you can work
  together to have an eventual goal that might be
  sometime in the future.

14
Redefinition of aims

• REDEFINITION OF AIMS T3S1I1
• I think this is the main issue for me to come
  here, I think the main political issues. But
  also the protest, the culture of protest, as well
  because we should not forget what happened in
  Genoa and what happened to the protesters and
  where we went from Seattle so thats a global
  protest going on all over the world
• REDEFINITION OF AIMS (TIME 2) T3S2I5
• D Why do you take part in things like this?
• Because I believe that everyones got civil
  rights.
• A Time 3
• Yeah it almost became a struggle between us and
  the police, us and the state, yeah it was a much
  bigger bigger thing I think than maybe like us
  against the G8
• D Do you think then that it achieved what it
  hoped to achieve
• P(S) No. I dont think it really did. In terms
  of getting groups, one of the things that I think
  is the best thing about that kind of thing is
  that it got groups together.
• (Sa Time 3) Inability to redefine aims
• Prior to going I thought that we might achieve
  something, or wed see an actual sort of, you
  know, something would happen.

15
Reference groups

• (N Time 3)
• Then back to Stirling after blockading the road
  felt extremely disenfranchising, but then in the
  evening talking to other people and really
  getting an idea of the picture of what had been
  going on, through working in the media centre and
  receiving calls and looking through the timeline
  the logs of what had been happening, I saw that
  actually we had been very effective
• REFERENCE GROUP T3S1I2 A
• There was stuff going on in Edinburgh, I believe,
  you know, through our wonderful network of
  communications, it seems that they managed to
  achieve quite a lot, but, and keep it going for
  quite a long time.

16
Reference Groups

• Sa Time 3
• Int What did you think of the idea of affinity
  groups
• I didnt really have one.
• Int So could you sum up the weeks events and
  what they meant for you
• Sa The events didnt mean very much cause I
  didnt think they were successful
• D Time 3
• I just know from like my friends back home
  people from people I talked to afterwards, my
  parents, they saw what we were doing as a really
  like a bad thing that we werent doing it for a
  purpose as such we just wanted to kind of cause
  havoc. I dont think the real reason got across
  to everyone.

17
Campsite

• N After)
• D The camp at Stirling, how important do you
  think that was.
• P(N) I think that was very important. The
  temporary autonomous zone, the zone that the camp
  took up, the area that the camp occupied becamae
  a, the small little island of sanity amongst our
  world, you really got to see an example of how
  society could be organised. So that made the
  ideals of what you were fighting for somewhat
  more tangible and therefore more real, because
  you had this little example of an alternative way
  of working.
• EMPOWERS (So After)
• D How important do you think the campsite was
  for the protests
• P(S) I think it was very important. I think it
  was actually like the very central part of the G8
  protests. Because actually what it did was allow
  activists to network with each other to
  understand each others kind of ideas and opinions
  but it was also it gave you quite a sort of sense
  of power cause actually you could see that you
  werent standing alone that you were standing
  with how ever many other people in one area.
• CAMP(alice after)
• And it was such a brilliant buzz on camp to see
  that we were living this kind of I dont know
  anarcho-syndiclist dream.

18
Campsite

• Yeah Stirling yeah
• D And what did you think of the atmosphere there
  and how did that make you feel?
• P(D) It was quite on guard all the time,
  probably cause the police were obviously around
  all the time and there was quite a lot of am very
  like groupy very kind of cliquey different groups
  kind of planning different actions am so it made
  you feel like part of it if you were in your own
  group I guess but if you werent you felt kind
  of like on the outside
• CAMP (Sara After)
• There was a lot of fear within the camp which was
  unnecessary and it seemed like more people spent
  their time worrying than taking any action.

19
Identity as lens for evaluation

• Little unification
• Some participants were able to redefine aims
  reflecting social identity
• Participants used different reference groups
  reflecting social identity
• Participants valued Stirling campsite differently
  reflecting CSO

20
Identity as a lens for evaluation

• Int Have your experiences affected your
  motivation in getting involved in other
  demonstrations and other things?
• Well, Im a die hard protester so
• (O After)

21
Lifestylism

• Female Yes, to network and you just want to be
  seen, want to get involved, and what you are
  fighting for is actually, youre on the right
  path or something, T3S1I2
• A After
• It will definitely change the way I feel about
  protesting and am just being part of , I dunno I
  dont want to label it as a counter culture or
  lifestyle or just something but its just
  something I can see myself sticking with for the
  rest of my life you know.
• I think that some of the demos that were the
  most empowering were not ones that were kind of
  about a far off goal they were things like the
  reclaim the streets demo because it was like
  right now this is our space and that was more
  empowering because actually right now you were
  doing exactly what you wanted to be doing. And
  you were achieving your objective by being on the
  demo So Time 3
• T3S1I2 A
• D Was it, tell me why youre involved in this.
• Im . . . why am I an activist? Because I
  fucking love it

22
Conclusions

• Activist identity operated as a motivational
  resource in the interpretation of potentially
  disempowering events.
• ? This allows participants to carry on even when
  isolated
• ? It may increase their isolation