Protest Property And The Commons

Protest, Property and the Commons focuses on the alternative property narratives of ‘social centres’, or political squats, and how the spaces and their communities create their own – resistant – form of law. Drawing on critical legal theory, legal pluralism, legal geography, poststructuralism and new materialism, the book considers how protest movements both use state law and create new, more informal, legalities in order to forge a practice of resistance. Invaluable for anyone working within the area of informal property in land, commons, protest and adverse possession, this book offers a ground-breaking account of the integral role of time, space and performance in the instituting processes of law and resistance.

"The struggle for the right to housing is a battle over property rights and land use. For housing to be provided as a human need, land must be recognised as a common right. Property, Planning and Protest is a compelling new investigation into public opposition to housing and real estate development. Its innovative materialist approach is grounded in the political economy of land value and it recognises conflict between communities and real estate capital as a struggle over land and property rights. Property, Planning and Protest is about a social movement struggling for democratic representation in land use decisions. The amenity groups it describes champion a democratic plan-led system that allocates land for social and environmental goals. Situating this movement in a history of land reform and common rights, this book sets out a persuasive new vision of democratic planning and contributes a powerful insight into the global affordability crisis in housing"--

Using the forest as a thematic device, Clark and Page explore the tensions that pervade our propertied relationships; between commodity and community, abstraction and context, and private enclosure and the public square. They draw on a range of case studies including the 13th century Forest Charter, Thomas More's Utopia, the Diggers' radical agrarianism, the Paris Commune's battle for the right to the city, and Australian forest protestors of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. By analysing these movements and their contexts, Clark and Page illustrate the origin, history and legal status of the lawful forest and its modern-day companions. Although the dominant spatial paradigm is one where private rights prevail, this book shows that communal relationships with land have always been part of our law and culture.

In 2011, political protests sprang up across the world. In the Middle East, Europe, Latin America, the United States unlikely people sparked or led massive protest campaigns from the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street. These protests were made up of educated and precariously employed young people who challenged the legitimacy of their political leaders, exposed a failure of representation, and expressed their dissatisfaction with their place in the aftermath of financial and economic crisis. This book interrogates what impacts--if any--this global protest cycle had on politics and policy and shows the sometimes unintended ways it continues to influence contemporary political dynamics throughout the world. Proposing a new framework of analysis that calls attention to the content and claims of protests, their global connections, and the responsiveness of political institutions to protest demands, this is one of the few books that not only asks how protest movements are formed but also provides an in-depth examination of what protest movements can accomplish. With contributions examining the political consequences of protest, the roles of social media and the internet in protest organization, left- and right-wing movements in the United States, Chile's student movements, the Arab Uprisings, and much more this collection is essential reading for all those interested in the power of protest to shape our world.

This is an open access book. The start of the 21st century has seen the world shaken by protests, from the Arab Spring to the Yellow Vests, from the Occupy movement to the social uprisings in Latin America. There are periods in history when large numbers of people have rebelled against the way things are, demanding change, such as in 1848, 1917, and 1968. Today we are living in another time of outrage and discontent, a time that has already produced some of the largest protests in world history. This book analyzes almost three thousand protests that occurred between 2006 and 2020 in 101 countries covering over 93 per cent of the world population. The study focuses on the major demands driving world protests, such as those for real democracy, jobs, public services, social protection, civil rights, global justice, and those against austerity and corruption. It also analyzes who was demonstrating in each protest; what protest methods they used; who the protestors opposed; what was achieved; whether protests were repressed; and trends such as inequality and the rise of women’s and radical right protests. The book concludes that the demands of protestors in most of the protests surveyed are in full accordance with human rights and internationally agreed-upon UN development goals. The book calls for policy-makers to listen and act on these demands.

Across the globe, from established tourist destinations such as Venice or Prague to less traditional destinations in both the global North and South, there is mounting evidence that points to an increasing politicization of the topic of urban tourism. In some cities, residents and other stakeholders take issue with the growth of tourism as such, as well as the negative impacts it has on their cities; while in others, particular forms and effects of tourism are contested or deplored. In numerous settings, contestations revolve less around tourism itself than around broader processes, policies and forces of urban change perceived to threaten the right to ‘stay put’, the quality of life or identity of existing urban populations. This book for the first time looks at urban tourism as a source of contention and dispute and analyses what type of conflicts and contestations have emerged around urban tourism in 16 cities across Europe, North America, South America and Asia. It explores the various ways in which community groups, residents and other actors have responded to – and challenged – tourism development in an international and multi-disciplinary perspective. The title links the largely discrete yet interconnected disciplines of ‘urban studies’ and ‘tourism studies’ and draws on approaches and debates from urban sociology; urban policy and politics; urban geography; urban anthropology; cultural studies; urban design and planning; tourism studies and tourism management. This ground breaking volume offers new insight into the conflicts and struggles generated by urban tourism and will be of interest to students, researchers and academics from the fields of tourism, geography, planning, urban studies, development studies, anthropology, politics and sociology.

The right to demonstrate is considered fundamental to any democratic system of government, yet in recent years it has received little academic attention. However, events following the recent G20 protests in April 2009 make this a particularly timely work. Setting out and explaining in detail the domestic legal framework that surrounds the right of peaceful protest, the book provides the first extensive analysis of the Strasbourg jurisprudence under Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, offering a critical look at recent cases such as Öllinger, Vajnai, Bukta, Oya Ataman, Patyi and Ziliberberg, as well as the older cases that form its bedrock. The principles drawn from this case-law are then synthesised into the remainder of the book to see how the right of protest enshrined in the Human Rights Act 1998 now operates. The five central chapters show how the right is defined: the restrictions on the choice of location of a protest; the constraints imposed on peaceful, persuasive protest; the near total intolerance of any form of obstructive or disruptive protest; the scope of preventive action by the police; and the extent to which commercial targets can avail themselves of private law remedies. This contemporary landscape is highlighted by critical analysis of the principles and case law -- including the leading decisions in Laporte, Austin, Jones and Lloyd and Kay. The book also highlights and develops themes that are currently under-theorised or ignored, including the interplay of the public and the private in regulating protest; the pivotal role played by land ownership rules; and the disjuncture between the law in the books and the law in action. While the book will appeal primarily to scholars, students and practitioners of law – as well as to campaigners and interest groups – it also offers political and socio-legal insights, which will be of interest equally to non-specialists.