From 'the effect of repression' toward 'the response to repression'

Scholars have long been interested in explaining the effect of state repression on political participation. Recent reviews of research on state repression highlighted contradictory findings about this effect, yet the core question is still debated: what accounts for the variation in the effects of repression? This article posits that, to make sense of the variation in repression's effect on political participation, theorization needs to move toward predictions about individuals' responses to repression. The article, thus, attempts to lay the foundations for such theorization by reviewing the scholarship on the relationship between repression and political participation through the lens of the strategic choices individuals can make. Seeing individuals as having agency and shifting focus to their responses to repression (1) offers a broader picture of the activities available to discontented people under repression and (2) provides a better account of the contentious politics occurring under repression. A number of strategies in response to repression are identified. The notion of 'choice points' is applied to formulate hypotheses about why or under what conditions people choose a particular strategy in response to repression. In doing so, this article outlines new avenues for empirical research on repression.

Everyday politics, social practices and movement networks: daily life in Barcelona's social centres

The relations between everyday life and political participation are of interest for much contemporary social science. Yet studies of social movement protest still pay disproportionate attention to moments of mobilization, and to movements with clear organizational boundaries, tactics and goals. Exceptions have explored collective identity, 'free spaces' and prefigurative politics, but such processes are framed as important only in accounting for movements in abeyance, or in explaining movement persistence. This article focuses on the social practices taking place in and around social movement spaces, showing that political meanings, knowledge and alternative forms of social organization are continually being developed and cultivated. Social centres in Barcelona, Spain, autonomous political spaces hosting cultural and educational events, protest campaigns and alternative living arrangements, are used as empirical case studies. Daily practices of food provisioning, distributing space and dividing labour are politicized and politicizing as they unfold and develop over time and through diverse networks around social centres. Following Melucci, such latent processes set the conditions for social movements and mobilization to occur. However, they not only underpin mobilization, but are themselves politically expressive and prefigurative, with multiple layers of latency and visibility identifiable in performances of practices. The variety of political forms - adversarial, expressive, theoretical, and routinized everyday practices, allow diverse identities, materialities and meanings to overlap in movement spaces, and help explain networks of mutual support between loosely knit networks of activists and non-activists. An approach which focuses on practices and networks rather than mobilization and collective actors, it is argued, helps show how everyday life and political protest are mutually constitutive.