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12 Waves of Protest, the Eros Effect, and the Social Relations of Diffusion

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Spontaneous Combustion
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25112Waves of Protest, the Eros Effect, and the Social Relations of DiffusionLESLEY WOODHow do we best understand the recent global cycles of contention? This chapter analyzes the first 206 events within Canada’s 2012–2013 indigen-ous-led mobilization Idle No More as represented by social media and indigenous writing and in the mainstream press. To understand how this wave of protest spread, the chapter compares two approaches: the first is George Katsiaficas’ eros effect, and the second is Sidney Tarrow’s work on diffusion that draws on a “dynamics of contention” approach to social movements. Neither approach adequately explains variation in the participation and spread of these waves. However, an analysis of stories of emotion enables us to incorporate Katsiaficas’ emphasis on pleasure and solidarity into Tarrow’s emphasis on relational patterns of action. In this way, we are better able to understand both how and why waves of protest unfold in particular ways. The drummers pounded out a steady heartbeat as the young woman looked at her friend, grinned, and grabbed her hand. Heads held high, the two joined the end of the chain of people snaking past them in the food court in the Sudbury, Ontario, shopping mall. The event they joined was one of seventy-nine that took place that day as part of the wave of protest known as Idle No More. The rapid and euphoric spread of the indigenous-led mobilization (with its unique symbols, frames, and tactics) in 2012 coincided with many similar protest waves occurring around the same time. How should
© 2017 State University of New York

25112Waves of Protest, the Eros Effect, and the Social Relations of DiffusionLESLEY WOODHow do we best understand the recent global cycles of contention? This chapter analyzes the first 206 events within Canada’s 2012–2013 indigen-ous-led mobilization Idle No More as represented by social media and indigenous writing and in the mainstream press. To understand how this wave of protest spread, the chapter compares two approaches: the first is George Katsiaficas’ eros effect, and the second is Sidney Tarrow’s work on diffusion that draws on a “dynamics of contention” approach to social movements. Neither approach adequately explains variation in the participation and spread of these waves. However, an analysis of stories of emotion enables us to incorporate Katsiaficas’ emphasis on pleasure and solidarity into Tarrow’s emphasis on relational patterns of action. In this way, we are better able to understand both how and why waves of protest unfold in particular ways. The drummers pounded out a steady heartbeat as the young woman looked at her friend, grinned, and grabbed her hand. Heads held high, the two joined the end of the chain of people snaking past them in the food court in the Sudbury, Ontario, shopping mall. The event they joined was one of seventy-nine that took place that day as part of the wave of protest known as Idle No More. The rapid and euphoric spread of the indigenous-led mobilization (with its unique symbols, frames, and tactics) in 2012 coincided with many similar protest waves occurring around the same time. How should
© 2017 State University of New York
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