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Durham E-Theses Durham E-Theses The Energies of Activism: Rethinking Agency in Contemporary Climate Change Activism LEE, CHARLOTTE,ELIZABETH How to cite: LEE, CHARLOTTE,ELIZABETH (2013) The Energies of Activism: Rethinking Agency in Contemporary Climate Change Activism, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/6953/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 Charlotte Lee The Energies of Activism: Rethinking Agency in Contemporary Climate Change Activism This thesis is concerned with the energies of activism, and uses an exploration of the concept of „energy‟ to rethink the agency of activism, rethinking: what counts as an act, who counts as an actor, and in particular how action is produced in activism. This process of rethinking brings recent theorising around agency more broadly, specifically in relation to non-representational theory, the more-than- human, and affect, into conversation with the practice of activism. The empirical aspect of this research involved three case studies of UK climate change activism, each of which demonstrates a particular form of activism: activism in the form of „direct‟ action through the protest camps of Camp for Climate Action, activism as a more mundane and regular part of life through the meetings and events of a Transition Town group, and activism as a lifestyle in itself through the low-impact living and building practices of the Lammas eco-village. The methodology involved an immersive participatory approach consisting of periods of observant participation, alongside in-depth interviews with activists, the material from which was then developed into immersive narratives (Summers-Effler, 2010). These narratives aim to illuminate: the role of the more- than-human (Bennett, 2010) in the act of activism, and that emotions and affects are not simply “straightforward „prompts‟ for activism” (Horton and Kraftl, 2009: 17) in line with emerging activism literature, but instead, alongside the human, the more-than-human, and the act of activism itself, emotions and affect are part of the „conditions‟ (Ahmed, 2010) for action in activism. In this research, rather than action being literally and linearly produced, the potential for action emerged as a process of aligned and openness to action, and therefore always pivots on the relations between elements rather than the properties of a single element or actor. The Energies of Activism: Rethinking Agency in Contemporary Climate Change Activism Charlotte Elizabeth Lee PhD Department of Geography Durham University 2013 ii Contents List of Illustrations vii Statement of Copyright ix Acknowledgements x Dedication xi 1 Introduction: The Agency of Activism 1 The Carnival of Climate Chaos 1 Unravelling the Carnival of Climate Chaos 2 The Act of Activism 5 The Actor of Activism 9 The Production of Activism 12 The Energies of Activism 14 Structure of the Thesis 16 2 The Act of Activism: Capacity and Mobilisation 22 Engaging the Geographies of Activism 27 The Capacity to Act 35 The Act of Mobilising 44 Conclusions 48 3 The Energies of Activism: Potentiality, Affect, and the More-than-Human 50 (Re)Establishing Emotions in the Activism Literature 53 Action: Action and Energy 58 iii Relations: Affect and Energy 65 Space: Energy and Space 77 Conclusions 83 4 Methodology: Exploring and Presenting the Energies of Activism 85 Bridging the Non-Representational and Activism Research divide: Developing a non-representational activist approach 89 Choosing „the field‟: Identifying the Case Studies 94 Acting in the field: Methodological practice in the fieldwork 104 Ethics in the field: ethics in activism research 125 Conclusions 128 5 Spaces of Activism: Spatial Arrangements of the Climate Camp 131 Setting up Camp 135 Swopping onto the Camp 136 Negotiating the Camp Layout 142 The Wellbeing Space 150 Encounters with Wellbeing 152 Wellbeing: containment and living attention 157 The Neighbourhood Meetings 162 Sitting in Circles 164 Circles: exposure and enclosure 168 Conclusions 175 iv 6 Doing Activism: Visioning, Building, and Inhabiting the Future 177 Futures and the Transition Group 181 Visioning: imagining and drawing the Future 184 Visioning the Future: Energy and Potentiality 187 Futures at the Lammas Eco-village 194 Building the Future: Liming and Lathing 195 Building Futures Energy and Matter 200 Inhabiting the Future at the Climate Camp 207 Living with the Future at the Climate Camp 208 Preparatory and Playful Acts at the Camp 212 Conclusions 219 7 Activist Relations: Humour, Music, and Playful Protest 222 Humour in Transition Meetings 227 Humorous Breaks: Warming to Each Other 228 Humorous breaks: collective experiments 232 Music at the Lammas Eco-village 237 Circle Dancing and Singing at the Volunteer Week 238 Musical compositions and decompositions 241 Playful Protest at the Climate Swoop 246 Swooping Around the Power Station 247 v Subversive atmospheres 253 Conclusions 258 8 Conclusions: 262 Bibliography 278 Appendices 297 vi List of Illustrations Figures Page 1. Waiting for the march to begin (photograph: Nick Chan) 2 2. The Pink swoop group (photograph: authors own) 137 3. The entrance to the Climate Camp (photograph: Mike Russell) 138 4. The welcome speech is about to take place 139 (photograph: Amelia Gregory) 5. The camp‟s first night (photograph: Kristian Buus) 142 6. The plan as it began (photograph: Amelia Gregory) 143 7. The plan after the camp has become established 145 (photograph: authors own) 8. The plan in its final form (photograph: authors own) 145 9. The clutter around of the Welcome Tent 148 (photograph: authors own) 10. The wellbeing tent‟s sign (photograph: authors own) 152 11. Poster in the welcome tent (photograph: authors own) 154 12. The signs on the wellbeing tent (photograph: authors own) 156 13. Introduction to the camp (photograph: Mike Russell) 163 14. The straw bale amphitheatre at the entrance 164 (photograph: Kriptick) 15. “Automobile anonymous” (photograph: Transition group) 185 16. Tesco apology (photograph: Transition group) 186 17. Bike lanes (photograph: Transition group) 187 18. Image from the cover of The Transition Handbook 192 (Hopkins, 2008) 19. The Transition Handbook cover image reversed 193 (Hopkins, 2008) vii 20. The liming trowels (photograph: authors own) 195 21. My section of the liming (photograph: authors own) 196 22. The other volunteer writes “Hi” in their liming 198 (photograph: authors own) 23. Outside of the barn showing the scaffolding I used to work on, 200 and my lathing contribution (photograph: authors own) 24. Piles of materials outside the front of the barn 205 (photograph: authors own) 25. Clutter of materials and tools inside the barn 205 (photograph: authors own) 26. The cube canvas (photograph: authors own) 212 27. The Mass Action Game (photograph: Amy Scaife) 215 28. The Mass Action Game (photograph: Mike Russell) 215 29. A mini version of a roundhouse roof made of beer mats 239 (photograph: Sylvia) 30. The burning embers of the campfire (photograph: Sylvia) 240 31: The looming cooling towers of Radcliffe on Soar power station 248 (photograph: authors own) 32: Picnicking on the power station (photograph: authors own) 251 33: A theatrical funeral for EON (photograph: authors own) 252 34: Having a game of „Giants, Wizards, and Pixies‟ on the motorway 253 (photograph: authors own) 35: The glow-in-the-dark police barricade (photograph: authors own) 256 viii Statement of Copyright The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without the author's prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. ix Acknowledgements First and foremost I am grateful to all the activists (including those who don‟t consider themselves „activists‟) who I have encountered along the way, who gave up their time to speak to me, who opened their homes and lives to me, cooked me dinner and made me cups of tea, every conversation and every moment has contributed to the journey of this research. Equally, I am grateful to my extremely patient supervisors Dr Ben Anderson and Professor Louise Amoore for their academic insight, energy, and brilliance. Additionally, to Dr Gareth Hoskins and Professor Deborah Dixon for inspiring and enabling me to try to do what was previous unimaginable. Thanks also go to my family and friends for their support and to the ESRC 3 + 1 PhD studentship which funded this research. x Dedicated to Reginald Lee and Mike Russell xi Chapter 1 Introduction: The Agency of Activism The Carnival of Climate Chaos ―BP! Esso! Shell! We don‘t want your climate hell!‖ shouts an eight foot wolf with a megaphone, or rather a man on stilts wearing a wolf‘s head (made out of papier-mâché), his hypnotic chant quickly spreading through the crowd. The wolf-man is an uneasy sight as he stalks the sides of the crowd on his rickety legs, it was all part of the madness of the ‗Carnival of Climate Chaos‘, a student activist section of a larger national climate change march in London 2006. We had turned ourselves into a moving art installation: every few rows was fronted with blue fabric representing potential flooding, in the middle of the crowd this was replaced with yellow fabric and cactuses to represent a desert and was home to the samba band.
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