Dear Bea and all,
Last year at the European Association of Social Anthropologists
conference in Maynooth I heard a really fantastic paper by Stine
Krĝijer (Copenhagen University) who described being kettled with such
power and poetry that her presentation stayed with me as one of the
conference highlights. I don't know much more but the details are at
http://www.nomadit.co.uk/easa/easa2010/panels.php5?PanelID=679 and
hopefully you can find out more from following that lead. Maybe she's
written more on this?
Best wishes,
Rachel
On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 6:21 PM, Bea Oliver <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> This is a request, or perhaps even a plea.
>
> Having been involved in the student protests and followed various other contested cases of kettling of protesters by police (see Josh Moos's article on his successful court case against the Met for the G20 demo for example http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2011/05/illegal-tactics/ ). I am increasingly worried about the use of kettling as a tool to delegitimise protests; confining people for lengthy periods and goading protesters into violence only to turn it against them and denounce them as 'anarchists' (ignoring, of course, the real definition of 'anarchism' as a political concept).
> I am only an undergraduate and, being already 80% through my thesis, do not have the option (or the depth of theoretical and political understanding) to research 'the geographies of the kettle', much as I would love to. So my request is this: would one of you academic types (the type that can get grants and your research published) please consider researching this increasingly pertinent (even urgent) construct? Because, at this rate, 'protest' will soon be synonymous with 'criminal', as 'anarchist' already is (see this article from the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/02/anarchists-civil-liberties-media-police). And that would be more than just a shame; it would affect our civil liberties...
> Yours hopefully
> Bea
|