Insurrectionary Collective Action: dimensions of an eventful dynamic

This paper focuses on a conspicuously understudied form of radical-disruptive collective action: Insurrectionary Collective Action (ICA). Mustering evidence from the convulsive events that shook Greece in the aftermath of the unprovoked shooting of teenager Alexandros Grigoropoulos by riotous police in the centre of Athens in December 2008, we seek to conceptualize, interpret and explicate the ensuing social eruption employing (and seeking to further refine) analytical tools drawn from the rich literature of Contentious Politics. Explosions such as the Greek ‘December days’ are usually portrayed (and subsequently discarded) as senseless violence, mere rioting. ‘Riots’, however, are nowhere defined, which precludes serious analysis and explanation. Starting off our analysis from this conceptual core (What constitutes and What causes rioting?) we claim that the Greek events were something profoundly more intense and politically consequential. Involving far more than mere violence, the novel form we conceptualize, i.e. ICA, was characterized by broad diffusion processes, whereby riotous activity originally undertaken in the centre of Athens snowballed to engulf the whole of the country and beyond (with syncretic action breaking out in over 50 cities in some 40 countries). In it, participated a large number of underprivileged strata - school students, second-generation migrants, precariously employed etc - whilst its political message was framed in utterly uncompromising ways, making a shambles of official leftist rhetoric. Calling attention to key structural (macro-) factors helping explain this diffusion (varieties of the democratic deficit, economic crisis, crisis of political representation etc) we lay special emphasis on three neglected dimensions of contentious politics bearing on both the meso- and the micor-level of analysis, the emotional, the spatial and the temporal. We also enquire on outcomes: Can/has December 2008 transform/-ed the nature of Greek contentious politics as a whole?

Keywords: riots, insurrections, coercion, contentious politics, collective action, emotions, transformative events, time, space

Loukia Kotronaki, Seraphim Seferiades, Azione insurrezionale collettiva: una analisi della dinamica degli eventi in "PARTECIPAZIONE E CONFLITTO" 3/2011, pp 17-35, DOI: 10.3280/PACO2011-003002