Two Sides of a Barricade - (Dis)order and Summit Protest in Europe

Investigates how activists confront global powers with their street-level dissent. Two Sides of a Barricade argues that to construct global democracy, conflict and dissent must be taken seriously. Christian Scholl explores the political significance of the confrontations within four sites of interaction: bodies, space, communication, and law. Each site of struggle provides a different entry point to understand the influence of protester and police tactics on each other. At the same time, the four sites of struggle allow a comprehensive analysis of how the contestation of global hegemonic forces during summit protests trigger a preemptive shift in social control through increased deployment of biopolitical forms of power. “This is the most extensive firsthand analysis of the global anticapitalist movement to date. It takes cutting-edge European social theory and brings it to bare on the concrete conditions of summit protests in Europe. Anyone interested in these large protest events and the movements that engender them will be compelled to read this book.” — Alex S. Vitale, author of City of Disorder: How the Quality of Life Campaign Transformed New York Politics.