ideas for discussion questions

[Katrina Navickas]

Post your ideas for what we should discuss at the colloquium here. I would like to focus on 'new approaches' and directions in the history of popular protest.

[mattroberts]

As someone who has recenly moved into the area of visual and material culture, I'd be interested to hear what others think about what sources and approaches associated with visual and material culture can add to the history of popular protest. What are the potentials, challenges and limitations of visual and material culture for historians working on popular protest?

[shaun0113]

I subsribe to theidea that history is written by the winners and hence a lot of the material asscociated with popular protest is long gone. However in the this digital era the use of new forms of media has played a tremendous role look at North Africa nd the Middle East.
But how will this material be avialble to future generations not only do we have the changing mechanical means of reproduction (I wonder what the Franjfurt school would say) so that current forms of communication may not b accessible in the future.
I also note that recently Facebook are deleting political sites, so who will decide what material is archived and where and how

[terrydunne]

As a means of expressing what sort of issues I would be particularly interested in discussing I'm just going to introduce here something of my research and its more general aspects:

For the past three years I have been researching at post-graduate level the late 1820s/early1830s Whitefeet movement in the Irish midlands, particularly in the Leinster colliery district in north-east Kilkenny and south-east Queen's county. The themes with more general applicability in my research include (in order of which is most current in my work):

(1) the extent to which popular resistance influenced estate policies, specifically in inhibiting clearances and consolidation of landholdings prior to the late 1840s and the Famine.

(2) the evidence for class identity in 'threatening notices', the use of pseudonymous titles in 'threatening notices'.

(3) the resemblance between the language and practices of the state and of the Whitefeet (e.g. references to the laws of Captain Rock in 'threatening letters', use of oaths, there is some suggestion of the holding of courts).

(4) the relationship between popular protest and conflict between groups from higher socio-economic strata, for want of a better terminological formulation, specifically in the case of the Whitefeet the relationship between the Whitefeet and the simultaneous conflict between what could be very imperfectly described as the middling order and the ruling class, or also imperfectly between Roman Catholics and Anglicans, or also imperfectly liberals and conservatives, over Emancipation, tithe, local government reform etc.. - wherein I'm drawing on political opportunity theory from social movement studies.

(5) the relationship between policing/the administration of law and the forms of popular resistance.

To distill from the above I'm probably most interested at the moment in elite responses to popular protest, especially in regard to ameliorative measures or the checking of particular policies.

In regard to the ideas for discussion questions distributed by Katrina I am probably most interested in “Is James C. Scott’s model of ‘everyday resistance’ and ‘hidden transcripts’ a useful model for the history of popular protest and collective action? Or does it stray too near to the old notion of ‘social crime’?” and least interested in questions of class.

[Katrina Navickas]

Thanks for these great ideas; keep 'em coming!

[shaun0113]

I am intersted in the notion that the trade unions and Luddism were merely different sides of the same coin. Luddism was used when other methods of struggle proved ineffective. Thus, there was no conflict between the two, merely different methods to achieve the same aims.
It is interesting to note that the debate about the use of machinery was still going on in in Leeds into the 1830s.

[stevepoole]

I'm interested in the extent to which participants feel that 'protest history' is itself a problematic concept. By definition, protest has to be reactive, defensive. It assumes an oppressive agenda set elsewhere by somebody else, and doesn't really suggest proposition, only opposition. If we spend too much time looking for 'protesters' and studying their 'protests', are we in danger of limiting our own interest in popular agency and popular culture? I guess really I'm wondering how interested everybody is in what protesters might be doing during those days of the week when they're not preoccupied with something we can identify as protest... Their susceptibility to protest is perhaps simply a clue to a wider politics of democratic perception, for instance... So what do LCS members talk about around the tea table or in the course of a country walk?

[stevepoole]

re shaun's point, above - this is another way of saying the old dichotomy between moral and physical force Chartism is a false one, isn't it?

[shaun0113]

I would say that it is not a false dichotomy, but we need to look again at the types of protest and their inter-relationship. This holds true for those activly involved as well.

[chriswilliams]

Dear all,
Hi, I'm Chris A. Williams, a historian at the Open University. I was going to be coming to the seminar but now I can't make it so I'm going to be posting my contribution(s) here. They come under two headings - (a) a research project I did some time ago on whether or not we can explain disorder in CHartist protest in the same ways that disorder in the 1984/85 miners' strike was explained and (b) some interesting information about records concerning the Riot Damages Act which as far as I can make out hasn't really been looked at yet.
More soon.

[chriswilliams]

Hi all, this is what I was planning on saying in Hatfield (apart from "I used to stack boxes in a warehouse down the road from here") I think that it's relevant to the discussion that's already going on about class, and the difference between orderly and disorderly protest.

The basis of what I've got to contribute to this subject is my MA dissertation, which was informed both by Urban History (the topic of the MA) and the study of contemporary policing of public disorder, which, through the Centre for the Study of Public Order (now Leicester U's Criminology Dept) also formed part of my studies.

The dissertation was a historical sociology project, designed to answer a simple question: can a sociological model which was arrived at in the 1980s, be used to explain the incidence (or not) of disorder in the C19th? The model I was testing was that written up by David Waddington et al in the book 'Flashpoints'. This team working out of the Communications Studies department of what was then Sheffield City Polytechnic, picked up an ESRC grant to study why some demonstrations are violent and others peaceful in 1984. This was remarkably convenient for us all, since the Conservative government and the NUM were about give them a large number of case-studies on their doorstep to work on.

The historical case-study which I chose to apply it to was Leicester in the year 1842. This year saw a number of Chartist protests, and also demonstrations against the New Poor Law. In addition, there were also some less political incidents of disorder occasioned by community or family quarrels. The plan was to seek to describe each of my selected events in terms of the model and see how much use it was in predicting the actual outcome: disorder or not.

I will post my tentative conclusion here in a week or so, but until then I urge you to skim the dissertation, which is quite good, considering:
open.academia.edu/ChrisAWilliams/Papers/678908/1842_the_dynamics_of_urban_disorder

[Katrina Navickas]

Thanks for all your points - I'll add them to the list of discussion points for the day.
Steve - I totally take your point about the reductive nature of looking for protesters and protests - I don't want to spend the whole day looking for these either. Perhaps a 'new approach' would indeed to be look more holistically at everyday life, of which protest was only one part.

[ruthm]

I am particularly interested in what influences the forms protest takes in different areas and time periods - for example, what inspiration is drawn from popular culture, or from adopting (subverting?) the language and behaviour of authority figures. I will be starting a PhD in October looking at these themes across Northern England, Ireland and Scotland in the post-Napoleonic war era. As most of my previous research concentrated on Lancashire post-war radicalism, I'm very much looking forward to gaining insights from specialists in other regions and periods.

[francis]

I am currently doing a PhD with a focus on space and how its social constitution helps to make up the political dynamics of the community. I'd be interested to know what people think about protest in urban and rural settings. It strikes me that protesters in both city and countryside are able to subvert the dominant narrative or history of a place. But are there necessary differences in the tactics they use? How is the sociability of protest groups affected by the different dynamics of urban and rural life?

I am also interested in the more holistic approach that others have already discussed. However, I feel there is a danger of losing any sense of political action as a thought out process, with specific aims, decided upon by discourse within a select group. Is there a danger that by elevating mundane aspects of protesters' daily lives too far, we are no longer producing an explanatory history of protest, but instead is trying to completely reconstruct past experience? Is current political cynicism/exhaustion fuelling too great an enthusiasm for hidden transcripts of resistance, to the excessive denigration of collective politics with an explicit interest in rational-critical debate? I don't mean to criticise developments being discussed here, which I have found useful in my own work. I'm just questioning whether the case can be overstated.

[Katrina Navickas]

Thanks Francis - excellent points. I am still going to start off the day with Steve's challenge to us all, but I think you provide a convincing retort. This is looking to be a good line of debate!