| This dissertation examines the social control of dissent, focusing specifically on the policing of the anti-globalization movement. Drawing on insights from the social control, social movement, and protest policing literatures, this study examines the ways that the state (through law enforcement agencies) manages, regulates, and pacifies mass protest. The research resulted from two years of participatory observation within the anti-globalization movement, in which I employed a verstehen approach to capture the effects of social control on the mind, body, and social relationships of protesters. Over a two-year period, I collected data on five large anti-globalization protests. They included: the World Economic Forum in New York City (February 2002), the Group of 8 (G8) in Calgary and Ottawa, Canada (July 2002), the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC (September 2002), the World Trade Organization in Cancun, Mexico (September 2003), and the Free Trade Area of the Americas in Miami (November 2003). Data were gathered through multiple ethnographic methods, including participatory observations, semi-structured interviews with law enforcement and antiglobalization activists, newspaper articles from each protest, and a review of police documents. The analysis of the data focuses on three general spheres of control: legal, physical, and psychological. First, the dissertation examines legal control, detailing how law enforcement agencies use laws, ordinances, and city codes to regulate the movement. Second, it analyzes the physical control of space, looking at various strategies that police deploy to constrain the movement and pacify bodies in the streets. Third, it studies the control over the meaning of a protest, describing the public relations mechanisms designed to frame the movement as violent and dangerous to the public. |
