Hostname: page-component-8678677fb7-6w47d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-10-05T18:51:43.890Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Privatization and Protest: Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Toronto, and the Occupation of Public Space in a Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 March 2013

Margaret Kohn
Margaret Kohn*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto. E-mail: kohn@utsc.utoronto.ca
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines the legal and normative debates about the Occupy Toronto movement in order to illuminate the issues raised by Occupy Wall Street. It challenges the view that the occupation of parks and plazas was an illegitimate privatization of public space. In both New York City and Toronto, the courts relied on a theory that Habermas called “German Hobbesianism.” This sovereigntist theory of the public was used to justify removing the protesters and disbanding the encampments. The alternative is what I call the populist model of the public, a term which describes the political mobilization of the people outside the institutional structures of the state. While my focus is on public space, I suggest the appropriation of space was the most visible aspect of a broader call for collective control of the common wealth of society. In other words, we should understand the occupations synecdochally as struggles over the meaning and power of public and private.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , March 2013 , pp. 99 - 110
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Abensour, Miguel. 2011. Democracy Against the State: Marx and the Machiavellian Movement. 1st ed. Polity.Google Scholar
Agamben, Giorgio. 2000. Means Without End: Notes on Politics. University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Arditi, B. 2007. Politics on the Edges of Liberalism: Difference, Populism, Revolution, Agitation. Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Arendt, Hannah. 1965. On Revolution. Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Arendt, Hannah. 1972. Crises of the Republic. New York: Harcourt.Google Scholar
Batty v. City of Toronto 2011 ONSC 6862Google Scholar
Berg, John C. 2012. “Occupy Wall Street: Does Changing the Story Change Votes?” SSRN eLibrary (April 27).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blumenkranz, Carla, Gessen, Keith, Greif, Mark, Leonard, Sarah, Resnick, Sarah, Saval, Nikil, Schmitt, Eli, and Taylor, Astra, eds. 2011. Occupy!: Scenes from Occupied America. Verso.Google Scholar
Brown, W. 2011. “Occupy Wall Street: Return of a Repressed Res-Publica.” Theory & Event 14(4).Google Scholar
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, s 2, Part I of the Constitution Act, 1982, being Schedule B to the Canada Act 1982 (UK), 1982, c 11.Google Scholar
Castañeda, E. 2012. “The Indignados of Spain: A Precedent to Occupy Wall Street.”Google Scholar
Clark v. Community for Creative Non-violence 468 U.S. 288 (1984).Google Scholar
Connolly, William. 1974. The Terms of Political Discourse. Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Dean, Jodi. 2011. “Claiming Division, Naming a Wrong.” Theory & Event 14(4).Google Scholar
Elshtain, Jean Bethke. 1993. Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Fontana, B. 2003. “Sallust and the Politics of Machiavelli.” History of Political Thought 24(1): 86–108.Google Scholar
Frank, Jason. 2010. Constituent Moments: Enacting the People in Postrevolutionary America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Gitlin, Todd. 2012. Occupy Nation: The Roots, the Spirit, and the Promise of Occupy Wall Street. New York: It Books.Google Scholar
Givan, Rebecca Kolins, Roberts, Kenneth M., and Soule, Sarah A., eds. 2010. The Diffusion of Social Movements: Actors, Mechanisms, and Political Effects. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Green, Jeffrey. 2011. The Eyes of the People: Democracy in the Age of Spectatorship. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, Juergen. 1985a. “Right and Violence: a German Trauma.” Cultural Critique 1: 125–139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Habermas, Juergen. 1985b. Theory of Communicative Action. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Hague v. Committee for Industrial Organization 307 U.S. 496 (1939)Google Scholar
Harcourt, Bernard E. 2012. “Political Disobedience.” Critical Inquiry 39(1) (September 1): 33–55.Google Scholar
Hardt, Michael, and Negri, Antonio. 2011. “The Fight for ‘Real Democracy’ at the Heart of Occupy Wall Street.” Foreign Affairs, October.Google Scholar
Hobbes, Thomas. 1985. Leviathan. New York: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Honig, Bonnie. 2009. Emergency Politics: Paradox, Law, Democracy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Isaac, Jeffrey C. 1998. Democracy in Dark Times. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Juris, J. S. 2012. “Reflections on Occupy Everywhere: Social Media, Public Space, and Emerging Logics of Aggregation.” American Ethnologist 39(2): 259–279.Google Scholar
Kayden, Jerold. 2000. Privately Owned Public Space: The New York City Experience. New York: Department of Planning.Google Scholar
Kazin, Michael. 2011. “Anarchism Now: Occupy Wall Street Revives an Ideology.” The New Republic.Google Scholar
Kilibarda, Konstantin. 2012. “Lessons from Occupy in Canada: Contesting Space, Settler Consciousness and Erasures within the 99%.” Journal of Critical Globalization Studies 5: 24–41.Google Scholar
Kohn, Margaret. 2004. Brave New Neighborhoods: The Privatization of Public Space. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Laclau, Ernest. 2005. On Populist Reason. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Machiavelli, Niccolo. [c. 1513–1519] 1994. Selected Political Writings ed. Wooton, David. Indianapolis: Hackett.Google Scholar
Markell, P. 2006. “The Rule of the People: Arendt, Archê, and Democracy.” American Political Science Review 100(1): 1–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCormick, John P. 2003. “Machiavelli Against Republicanism.” Political Theory 31(5): 615–653.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCormick, John P. 2011. Machiavellian Democracy. 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pabst, Adrian. 2011. “The Resurgence of the Civic.” Possible Futures. (www.possible-futures.org/2011/11/29/The-resurgence-of-the-civic/), accessed January 17, 2013.Google Scholar
Pettit, P. 1997. Republicanism: a Theory of Freedom and Government. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pitkin, Hanna. 1967. The Concept of Representation. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Piven, Francis Fox, and Cloward, Richard. 1978. Poor People's Movements. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Quint, Peter E. 2008. Civil Disobedience and the German Courts. NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Rancière, Jacques. 1999. Disagreement: Politics And Philosophy. Trans. Rose, Julie. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Rancière, Jacques 2006. “Democracy, Republic, Representation.” Constellations 13(3): 297–307.Google Scholar
Razsa, Maple, and Kurnik, Andrej. 2012. “The Occupy Movement in Žižek's Hometown: Direct Democracy and a Politics of Becoming.” American Ethnologist 39(2).Google Scholar
Schrader, Stuart, and Wachsmuth, David. 2012. “Reflections on Occupy Wall Street, the State and Space.” City 16(2): 243–248.Google Scholar
Shapiro, Michael. 2012. “Street Politics.” Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies 5: 127–128.Google Scholar
Skinner, Quentin. 1990. “The Republican Idea of Political Liberty.” In Machiavelli and Republicanism. Eds. Gisela Bock, Quentin Skinner, and Maurizio Viroli. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Skinner, Quentin. 2002. Visions of Politics Volume 2: Renaissance Virtues. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 14.Google Scholar
Spivak, G. C. 1988. “Can the subaltern speak?” In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Macmillan.Google Scholar
Tarrow, Sidney G. 1994. Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tarrow, Sid. 2012. “The Occupy Movement: What's Old, What's New,” paper presented at the European University Institute.Google Scholar
Tilly, Charles, and Tarrow, Sidney. 2006. Contentious Politics. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.Google Scholar
Vatter, M. 2012. “The Quarrel Between Populism and Republicanism: Machiavelli and the Antinomies of Plebeian Politics.” Contemporary Political Theory 11(3): 242–263.Google Scholar
Waldron, Jeremy. 1991. “Homelessness and the Issue of Freedom.” University of Los Angeles Law Review 39: 295–324.Google Scholar
Waller v. New York N.Y. County Supr. Ct. Nov. 15, 2011.Google Scholar
Weintraub, Jeff, and Kumar, Krishan. 1997. Public and Private in Thought and Practice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
White, Stephen, and Farr, Evan. 2011. “'No-Saying' in Habermas.” Political Theory 40(1): 32–57.Google Scholar
Wood, Lesley J. 2012. Direct Action, Deliberation, and Diffusion: Collective Action After the WTO Protests in Seattle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Zick, Timothy. 2008. Speech Out of Doors. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar