On the streets
and in the halls of power:
spatial metaphors and
social movement studies
Mapping the Australian Women’s Movement
Kirsty McLaren (kirsty.mclaren@anu.edu.au)
Australian National University
How have spatial metaphors shaped
women’s movement events and tactics?
How do spatial metaphors shape our
understandings of social movements?
•
•
•
•
Literature on space and social movements
Contests over space
Using space to represent power and position
Spatial metaphors and scholarship
“With rare exceptions, the literature has treated
space as an assumed and unproblematized
background, not as a constituent aspect of
contentious politics that must be
conceptualized explicitly and probed
systematically.” (Sewell 2001: 51-52)
Contentious politics:
“episodic, public, collective interaction
among makers of claims and their
objects when (a) at least one government is a
claimant, an object of claims or a party to the
claims and (b) the claims would, if realized,
affect the interests of at least one of the
claimants.
Roughly translated, the definition refers
to collective political struggle.”
(McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly, 2001: 5)
Women dressed as men and men dressed as
women moved into the public bar of the
Petersham Inn to protest at the exclusion of
women from drinking in public bars.
"The women posing as men were easy to
pick-they had an artistic arrray of pencilled
moustaches that would have left Salador
Dali green with envy. The men ..were
equally as conspicuous- they were the ones
in min--dresses with hairy legs and chests”.
(SMH 21 Nov 1970)
Public space: the realm of dissent
Photos from The Tribune
Using space to symbolise power and exclusion
The Age 2 May
1973
(Salisbury)
“The women halted the senators progress
by linking arms around them and
humming. “It mightn’t sound like much,
but it was very creepy,” said Senator
[Jocelyn] Newman”
(SMH, 21 Oct 1986)
“Opposition MPs lining up to be
personally affronted by this on national
television”
(SMH, 22 Oct 1986).
Conclusion
• Space – the conventions of certain spaces, and
the control of space – is itself contested.
• Space is a canvas and a medium through
which positions can be represented.
• The imagined public sphere overlays public
space, and is the setting for protest events.
• Spatial metaphors are powerful, and
unavoidable, as we try to understand social
movements.