Performing Civic Action: Networked activism and its use of urban space

Maija Jokela (2024)

PhD thesis. Tampere: University of Tampere

Responsible Professor: Eeva Luhtakallio
Pre-examiners Senior Scientist: Luca Pattaroni
Docent: Tapio Nykänen
Opponent: Laura Centemeri
Custos: Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen

Abstract. Social media has changed the way people come together to try to make a change, be it in institutional politics or their living environment. In Finland, this new form of civic action has challenged especially the tradition of registered associations. This ethnographic dissertation offers a snapshot of networked civic action in the social media era, investigating civic groups’ cultures and their public performances on the one hand and the negotiations between the movements’ and local public authorities on the use of urban space on the other. The research cases are the Kallio movement the Kallio Block Party organized by the movement, and the asylum seekers’ protest camp Right to Live, in which I have focused on the role of its Finnish supporters. The data was gathered in 2017–2019 mainly by ethnographic participant observation and interviews to activists as well as to the City officials and the police. The dataset is complemented by a survey to Kallio Block Party attendees and other data sources such as newspaper articles. In my analyses, I have used pragmatic sociology, more specifically justification theory and sociology of engagements, and the concept of scene style, which I have applied to the analysis of the movements’ performances. I have also paid attention to embodiment, materiality, and affects, which I perceive as essential elements in the movements’ public performances. Especially compared to the Finnish political tradition of associations, which emphasizes collectivity, what surfaced in the analysis of my research cases was individualism, for instance in the forms of short-term commitment to the movements as well as an emphasis on individual creativity and, especially in the case of Kallio movement, of individual freedom. Kallio movement wanted to stress that its members were free to do whatever they wanted, as long as they followed the movement’s principles, and that they didn’t have to commit to the movement. On the other hand, the supporters of the Right to Live protest were extremely committed to the protest, but many of them only for a short time – some of the supporters continued with asylum activism after the protest while some did not. Therefore, one of the most important contributions of this work is related to discussions on individualism especially in the field of civic action. With increasing individualism, there have been concerns in Finnish discussions concerning the dismantling of the associational tradition and international discussions concerning for instance ”DIY urbanism” about the subsequent pursuit of individual interests or lack of ideologies or politics. I argue, first, that increasing individualism does not necessarily mean increasing selfishness, but a new kind of articulation of individualism and collectivism. Second, contrary to the literature, I argue that individualism in civic action does not automatically mean a lack of political aspirations, but that it may change how we understand ”ideologies” or ”political”. The two civic groups in this research differed in how they perceived what is usually considered “politics” or “political”, as institutional politics. Right to Live pursued a change specifically in institutional (asylum) politics, whereas the Kallio movement shied away from ideas about political representation and institutional politics in an ideological manner. Instead, the Kallio movement tried to mediate its values through its actions, which can be characterized as prefigurative politics. In prefigurative politics, the means of action are as important as the goals, and the underlying idea is to produce alternative futures through one’s actions. In addition, even though Right to Live primarily advocated a change in institutional politics, its prefigurative dimension was also crucial to the protest, namely creating relationships between asylum seekers and citizens and altering the asylum seekers’ stigmatized media image into a positive one. Thus, my research also takes part in discussions concerning immigrant solidarity movements that have emphasized the importance of the (political) significance of social relations between immigrants and citizens. I argue that, depending on the situation at hand, these relations had political meanings of varying scales in Right to Live. In the protest, the asylum seekers were considered to be the primary protesters and the role of the Finns was to support the protest, in multiple ways. During the public protest, it was necessary for the maintenance of the protest that it received local support, and for the public image of the protest it mattered that the supporters were recognized as Finnish citizens and that the protest was called ” Right to Live family”. The visible presence of Finnish citizens and the emphasis on the familiar- like nature of the protest showed that asylum seekers were just like ”us” and that it was possible to create relationships across citizenship statuses. However, after the protest, with increasing pressure from forced return flights of those asylum seekers with a negative decision to asylum application, it was more important to help them with their asylum applications than to merely reminisce about the “Right to Live family”. Therefore, in some situations the creation of social relations between citizens and non-citizens does not suffice to be considered as a political act if. In other words, whether an act is political or not is always context specific. The public performances of both the Right to Live and Kallio movements were central in their prefigurative politics. It is noteworthy that both of these performances emphasized peacefulness and avoided conflicts as well as conventional ideologies such as anticapitalism. To the Kallio movement, this neutrality was (paradoxically) ideological whereas to Right to Live, it was more a necessity since asylum seekers were in a vulnerable position in several ways. However, it is reasonable to ask whether there are in civic groups characteristics that have been considered typical of the post-political era, such as avoiding explicit political ideologies. Two very different pictures can be drawn out of the relationship between the activists in the two civic groups and local public officials, and the control of the use of urban space. On the one hand, there was the explicitly political Right to Live protest by racialized non-citizens that the police actively controlled and that was eventually evicted, questionably, based on safety reasons. On the other hand, there was the Kallio Block Party, organized mainly by white citizens, that looked like a non-political event and that had gained the public officials’ and the police’s trust and that had the freedom to act rather freely. One of the arguments in this research regarding the use of urban space is therefore that trust, or the lack thereof, was a relevant factor in the relationship between the activists and the public officials. Another reason to why the City of Helsinki was favorable to Kallio Block Party was that the event was perceived to enhance Helsinki’s reputation. This dissertation therefore also takes part in discussions concerning the use of urban space, emblematic to practicing democracy, arguing that while the action by white Finns that enhances the markets has gained more freedom, the action by those who are racialized on the one hand, or that politicizes the urban space on the other, is likely to face security measures by the police.

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OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
GdL (20 septembre 2024). Performing Civic Action: Networked activism and its use of urban space. Économie des conventions. Consulté le 9 février 2026 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/12bvl