Symbolic Gestures in Contemporary Protest Movements

In this chapter, the arts and humanities are addressed in a discussion of symbolic gestures of protest. The aim is to embed symbolic gestures of protest in broader political sociology debates and explore how symbolic gestures are used to convey different political meanings. The chapter is structured as follows: the first part begins by defining protest and embedding it in the broader scientific debates on political participation. Since protest is a form of political engagement, we briefly review different types of political behavior and place protest in the sphere of non-conventional politics, which takes place outside the formal institutions of the state. Then we elaborate on which (constellations of) factors motivate protest. In the second part of the chapter, we draw on real-life examples to discuss how protesters convey messages to political elites, the masses, and the media by using symbolic gestures instead of words. In the concluding section, we discuss how symbolic gestures contribute to the production of resistance through new disruptive meanings and frames