Why Occupy a Square?

Abstract

On 25 January 2011, tens of thousands of Egyptians came out on the streets to protest against emergency rule and police brutality. Eighteen days later, Mubarak, one of the longest sitting dictators in the region, had gone. How are we to make sense of these events? Was this a revolution, a revolutionary moment? How did the protests come about? How were they able to outmanoeuvre the police? Was this really a “leaderless revolution”, as so many pundits claimed, or did the protests grow out of the protest networks that had developed over the past decade? Why did so many people with no history of activism participate? What role did economic and systemic crises play in creating the conditions for these protests to occur? Was this really a Facebook revolution? This book is an analysis of the shape and timing of these extraordinary events, the players behind them, and the tactics and protest frames they developed. Drawing on a critical interpretation of social movement theory, interviews with key actors and political analysis, it traces the interaction between protest networks, frames and tactics, regime responses and broader structural changes through successive protest waves over the past decade. Using theories of urban politics, space and power, it reflects on the exceptional state of non-sovereign politics that developed during the occupation of Tahrir Square.

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