[Commlist] Call for Chapters: Coronavirus, Crisis and Culture

*Coronavirus, Crisis and Culture: ***

*Policing, Protest and the Mediation of Dissent during the Covid-19 
Pandemic ***

*

*

*Editors: Ben Harbisher and Stuart Price,*

*/Media /**/Discourse/**//**/Centre/*



*/Call for Chapters/**//*

*.....*

*Dear All - this may be of interest to members ... deadlines, format, 
etc., scroll down*

**

_Global restrictions on protest _

In May 2020, the Bonavero Centre for Human Rights published an analysis 
of twelve nations’ response to the pandemic: the authors identified ‘a 
global rise in autocratic populism’ accompanied by ‘Covid 19 emergency 
measures’ that ‘risk becoming a foundation for greater consolidation of 
executive power’ (3). A month later, Amnesty International 
produced/Policing the Pandemic/, which drew attention to ‘systemic human 
rights concerns regarding institutional racism, discrimination in law 
enforcement and lack of accountability regarding allegations of unlawful 
use of force by law enforcement officials’ (4). In March 2021, the 
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace identified over 230 
anti-government protests in some 110 countries, with 25 significant 
protests aimed specifically at coronavirus restrictions.

This Call for Chapters from the Media Discourse Centre emerges in 
response to the/worldwide/limits placed on public protest during the 
last twelve months, and the social movements that have continued to 
mobilise in the face of these conditions. Contributors can discuss new 
manifestations of dissent, the adaptation of existing movements to 
political/pandemic restrictions, live and mediated events, and the 
online reconfiguration of the protest tradition (see below).

_Controversies and resistance _

Events such as the death of George Floyd on 25 May 2020, and the global 
call to end racial inequality, have shown that protest in this era was 
not monopolised by the conspiratorial Right, and that the articulation 
of alternative social visions has not been curtailed by ‘lockdown’ 
legislation. Yet, although widespread condemnation of the use of 
‘discretionary’ powers, exercised for example against women attending 
the Sarah Everard vigil on Clapham Common (13 March 2021), seemed to 
presage renewed resistance to state interference, it may not prevent the 
creation of draconian restrictions on protest in the UK and elsewhere 
(Allegretti and Wolfe-Robinson, 2021). A substantial drift towards 
authoritarianism was notable pre-Covid, but the pandemic seems to have 
exacerbated this trend, within ‘democratic’ systems, in repressive 
nations like China, and in countries like Brazil that have emerged from 
dictatorial regimes but have in this period repurposed repressive laws 
to stifle dissent (Human Rights Watch, 2021).

In some nations, there was also clear conflict between national and 
regional authority, evident for instance in Spain, where in October 
2020, the Government enforced restrictions on the region of Madrid, and 
in Britain, where the Tier System and the disbursement of recovery funds 
seemed inequitable. Yet obvious state intervention in this period, 
against visible signs of public dissent, are mirrored by the control or 
‘private’ life and increased workforce surveillance through modes of 
technology (from Amazon workforce tracking to the monitoring systems 
within Microsoft Teams) that employees were forced to endure.

_A range of issues and movements _

During the lockdown, a range of social movements and political causes 
became visible, either in direct response to official limitations, or in 
spite of them. Some were longstanding campaigns that gathered renewed 
momentum, and some (such as the Clap for Carers phenomenon), were 
enthusiastically promoted by Establishment figures as a means to promote 
social cohesion. Right-wing protests over lockdown measures, intended as 
direct challenges to formal authority, included the UK’s ‘Freedom 
Festivals’, advertised throughout social media, which (state actors 
claimed) had been appropriated by the Far Right. Groups such as 
anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers emerged, and there were numerous 
demonstrations in London at the closure of Gyms. In the UK at least, the 
blanket ban on gatherings rendered all forms of protest illegal, but 
inconsistent policing and vague public policy led to the variable 
application of new laws. In the United States, the first ‘armed 
invasion’ of a state facility took place in the Michigan Capitol, after 
the Governor introduced emergency measures to control the spread of the 
pandemic (Beckett, 2020).

In the UK, despite the questionable legal grounds on which a national 
lockdown had been imposed, fear and acquiescence dominated public 
discourse during the initial curfew. On the one hand, nearly all 
collective public activity had been prohibited, and on the other, 
strategically crafted messages were disseminated via public institutions 
and by the mass media to propagate compliance (Dagnall et al, 2020). To 
ensure that key political messages were ubiquitous, opposing posts on 
social media were sometimes lumped together, condemned as irresponsible 
or conspiratorial, and consigned to the lunatic fringe. A range of 
organisations were established during the pandemic to counter subversion 
and regulate communications, and the threat to ‘infrastructure’ from 
malignant forces was woven into the discourse of securitisation (CPNI, 
February 2021). Besides over-priced PPE, popular opinion became the UK’s 
most valuable commodity, and disinformation became the new sedition – 
censured by normative convention and by deliberate state intervention 
under the rubric of media literacy and the war against ‘fake news’ 
(Ofcom, 2021).

*Academic disciplines and fields of study:***

Social movement theory, state and corporate analysis, feminist 
internationalism, policing and surveillance studies, class analysis, 
media studies, intersectional organisation theory, digital labour and 
resistance studies, critical management studies, trade and industrial 
union theory, discourse and multimodal analysis, libertarian left and 
revolutionary critiques, regionalist and independence studies, race and 
post-colonialist approaches, cultural studies, comparative and 
historical studies, economic theory, and queer theory.

*Topics for chapters may include specific or general examples:***

George Floyd and U.S. BLM protests

The toppling of Edward Colston’s statue

Anti-lockdown demonstrations in Europe (Netherlands, France, Spain, etc)

Mutual Aid and foodbanks in Communities

Managerialist recuperation of pandemic collectivity (mindfulness/CBT, etc)

Antifa in the U.S.

XR protests in the UK

The Sarah Everard vigils

Echoes of the Arab Spring

Transnational online protest events and organisation

State Repression in Brazil

International LGBTQI organisation

‘Minority’ unions and syndicalism under Covid (IWGB, IWW, UVW)

Anti-Putin mobilisation in Russia

Clap for Carers and the ‘slow handclap’ against government

The Sardines Movement in Italy

European antifascist mobilisation

Agitation for Universal Basic Income

The worldwide Feminist General Strike

General Defence Committees of the U.S. IWW

The heritage, public statues and ‘woke’ controversies

Pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong

The repression and coup in Myanmar

‘Taking the knee’ as a symbol of global solidarity

Fascist mobilisation and state collusion: Proud Boys, Trump and the 
Alt-Right

Left and Right-wing Militia protest in the U.S.

Physical state/police response to public protest

Whereas mainstream coverage of the crisis has focussed on factors such 
as maintaining social cohesion, the effectiveness of official 
‘messaging’, and opposition to ‘fake news’, this submission explores the 
various modes of collective resistance, made in response to a variety of 
attacks (open or insidious) on: civil liberties; human rights; working 
class autonomy; BAME communities; activist health workers; and women’s 
organisations. The volume highlights, therefore, the increase in 
policing, surveillance and supervisory practices, and the innovative 
ways in which contemporary social movements have organised their 
response. The book questions the legitimacy of authoritative sources 
such as the BBC because of the profound lack of the ‘investigative’ 
impulse that should characterise news organisations.//

**

*Proposal for Chapters *

The edited volume will be published in the Protest, Media and Culture 
Series by Roman Littlefield International. We welcome submissions that 
examine coronavirus laws and their impact on public dissent from an 
international perspective, and invite contributions from a range of 
disciplines (see above).

Please send an abstract of the proposed piece at 300 words maximum, and 
a brief bio of 150 - words (toBen.Harbisher /at/ dmu.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(Ben.Harbisher /at/ dmu.ac.uk)>*and*(sprice /at/ dmu.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(Stuart.Price /at/ dmu.ac.uk)>– no later than Friday*30^th ****April 
2021*. Feedback will be provided shortly after that date, with draft 
submissions due*1^st ****August**2021*.

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