Territoriality and Governance in Contemporary Protest Movements

This paper explores the relationship between protest movements, public space and issues of territoriality. While protests movements invariably leave national territory basically unaltered, they are having pronounced effects on the exclusive territoriality of the national state – that is, its effects are not on the boundaries of national territory as such but on the institutional encasements of that national territory. Protest movements have emerged in the last five years across the globe for a number of reasons but these protest movements, from Istanbul to Sao Paulo, from Cairo to New York share a central feature. They made their presence known by challenging the state’s dominance of the public sphere by inhabiting public spaces, at times occupying public parks in urban settings. This, I argue, has the potential to challenge the state’s territoriality by opening up issues of authority and governance for deliberation amongst and across a disaffected public.