Activist Identity as a Motivational Resource: Dynamics of (Dis)empowerment at the G8 Direct Actions, Gleneagles, 2005

‘Activist’ identity as a motivational resource:

Dynamics of (dis) empowerment at the G8 direct actions,

Gleneagles, 2005

Dermot Barr & John Drury1

Department of Psychology

University of Sussex

Abstract

This paper describes a study which examined processes of

(dis)empowerment across and between different groups of

protesters at the G8 protests, Gleneagles, Scotland,

2005. A recent survey of experiences of different protest

events by Drury et al. (2005) found that protesters’

failure either to unify or to impose their collective

identity against a powerful outgroup can mean subjective

disempowerment. However, Drury et al. also hypothesized

that, as a function of their social identities,

experienced activists have available to them certain

strategies and other cultural resources that can be used

1 Contact details: Dr John Drury, University of Sussex, Department of Psychology,

School of Life Sciences, Pevensey 1 Building, Falmer, Brighton

BN1 9QH, UK.

Tel: +44 (0)1273-872514

Fax: +44 (0)1273-678058

[email protected]

http://drury.socialpsychology.org/

1

to counter this disempowerment and hence provide

motivation for continued involvement. The G8 direct

actions in Gleneagles provided an opportunity to study

such dynamics of (dis)empowerment in situ, for two reasons.

First, protesters would be bringing to the events a range

of levels of experience and political identities. Second,

it seemed unlikely that protesters at Gleneagles would

not have the same success in imposing themselves as at

previous anti-capitalist events, such as J18, Seattle,

Quebec and Genoa.

A cross sectional, longitudinal, ethnographic study

was carried out covering the duration of the Gleneagles

events, including interviews with 40 participants before,

during and after involvement. The two key findings were

as follows.

First, there was little unification across the

protest group as a whole, and there was no agreed

definition of success. Consequently, feelings of

empowerment and disempowerment varied systematically

across the sample. Those who reported overall

disempowerment held a political ideology of reform not

revolution, and sought positive attention not direct

action. These participants also had the least well

formed-activist identities (less time involved and less

organizational involvement). In evaluating the protest

actions, they used family and friends unconnected with

the movement as their reference points. Those

participants who reported overall empowerment were the

2

ones with a more complete activist identity (i.e., many

years involved as both organizers of and participants in

protests). They placed their experiences at Gleneagles in

a historical narrative (e.g. ‘just one battle in a wider

war’) or emphasised the issue of the right to protest,

rather than focussing on the immediate and apparent

ineffectiveness of particular actions.

The second key finding concerned the importance of

the Stirling campsite. The campsite was originally

intended as a base from which the direct actions were to

be launched. Those participants without a well-

established activist identity found the camp to be

cliquey and full of fear. However it eventually came to

be seen by the experienced activists as one of the most

important achievements of the event as whole, as it

served to instantiate their activist identity; in its

communal practices, it was a glimpse of a possible future

alternative world.

Thus, as predicted, for experienced activists,

identity operated as a resource allowing them to treat

events which were potentially interpretable as

(disempowering) defeats as (empowering) successes. First,

their activist identity entailed access to sets of

arguments, knowledge of the history of movements, and,

importantly, discussions or ‘debriefs’ with comrades, all

of which allowed the ‘particular’ to be placed in a wider

political context. Second, there was evidence of a

strategy of sustaining motivation through transforming

3

the aims of the event: the nature of the direct activist

identity allowed ‘means’ (the activist campsite) to

become elevated into an ‘end’ in its own right. In both

cases, empowerment wasn’t simply ‘read off’ from

particular experiences, but varied and developed over

time within the activist group. All these points will be

illustrated with direct quotes from participants.

The paper will argue in conclusion, however, that

some activist strategies to enhance empowerment and

sustain motivation, while appearing to be based on the

most radical position, can operate as a break on

escalation. Specifically, the translation of means into

ends in cases such as the present one could potentially

entail a retreat into lifestylism or an activist ghetto,

cementing rather than challenging the disunity observed

at Gleneagles between the different protest groups.

Introduction

Theoretical background

The Elaborated Social Identity Model (ESIM) of collective

action (Drury & Reicher, 2000; Reicher, 1996a, b, 2001;

Stott & Reicher, 1998) suggests that empowerment is the

fulcrum by which crowd events can escalate and become

social movements. According to the ESIM, empowerment may

take place in crowd events following outgroup (e.g.

police) action against a crowd ingroup which is perceived

by crowd members as (a) illegitimate – violating ingroup

definitions of proper practice - and (b) indiscriminate –

4

affecting or threatening the crowd as a whole. Under

these conditions, crowd members shift psychologically

from seeing themselves as a disunited or fragmented

aggregate of small groups and individuals to a single,

much more unified entity within a common antagonistic

relationship to the outgroup. This in turn entails

expectations of support and mutual aid, encouraging

people to take action against the outgroup.

The ESIM suggests that such action against the

outgroup will be in line with the definition of social

identity shared by crowd members, and will thus serve to

instantiate the social identity tangibly in the world.

The new-found congruence between an otherwise subordinate

identity and the social world – the overturning of

existing power-relations whereby the normally powerful

outgroup is at least temporarily deposed – is experienced

as joyful and exhilarating. Following Marx’s (1844)

theory of labour, Drury & Reicher (2005) refer to this

process of imposition of self-definition and its

emotional correlates as collective self-objectification (CSO).

Feeling part of a wider group, expectations of

support from others when taking action, and CSO each make

participants more ready and confident to get involved in

future actions and generalize the issues. Indeed,

repeated experiences of empowerment could in theory take

the form of a virtuous cycle (Drury, 2004), feeding into

processes of social as well as psychological change.

The present paper

5

A corollary of the concept of CSO is that failures to

change the world in line with one’s identity will feel

disempowering. A study by Drury et al. (2005) of

participants’ experiences of a number of collective

action events found that failure of CSO was a key

predictor of disempowerment and discouragement.

However, this study raised the question of how it is

that, given such experiences, activists continue to get

involved in protests. Observations of the No M11 Link-

Road direct actions and post hoc interviews with other

activists have suggested a number of possible strategies

for maintaining motivation for activism in the face of

experiences potentially interpretable as ‘defeats’.

First, since, according to the ESIM, identity is not

simply a cognitive representation of self but rather a

project of action – or a definition of proper and

possible practice within a concrete ‘ensemble of social

relations’ (cf. Marx, 1845, p. 122) – it is hypothesized

that experienced activists have available to them certain

cultural resources that can be used to counter the de-

motivating effects of disempowerment arising from

(apparent) failure of CSO. Specifically, it is suggested

that activists are able to place experiences in a wider

context (e.g. ‘just one battle within a long-term war’)

by referring to their (sub-)culturally-given knowledge of

the history of struggles (‘some you win, some you lose’),

or to understand particular defeats as ‘learning

experiences’ from which they and their struggle could

6

develop. Being an ‘activist’ means not only having

certain knowledge and arguments, but also knowing how to

access such resources from others (i.e., in meetings,

groups, social centres, publications etc.). This strategy

of ‘long-term perspective’ would not be available to

political neophytes and those not socialized into the

activist culture, who would not have these resources to

draw upon, and hence might therefore feel defeated when

experienced activists feel philosophical over the same

events (Drury et al., 2005).

Second, it is suggested that the very definition of

events as ‘successes’ or ‘defeats’ – i.e. the very aims

of struggles – are not givens but change and are

themselves struggled over (Drury & Reicher, 2005).

Indeed, in some struggles, participants’ means or forms

of protest action, including the ‘right to protest’,

become foregrounded and valued as ends in their own

right, to the extent that they are defined as highly

identity-congruent (Drury, 1996).

Both the affordances of identity as a source of

strategies for countering long-term disempowerment (and

hence sustaining movement participation) and the

transformation of aims can be understood as forms by

which shared identity operates as a resource to provide

continued motivation. Moreover, both processes can be

understood as involving the role of discussion and

argument amongst participants, since both illustrate the

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point that the definition of an event is not given but

potentially open to multiple interpretations.

The direct actions against the G8 summit of world

leaders in Gleneagles, Scotland, in 2005, afforded an

opportunity to study these dynamics of empowerment and

disempowerment in collective action, in situ and

longitudinally.

First, given the variety of people – in terms of

political ideology, background, and experience – expected

to be attending the event, it was predicted that there

would be different identities and hence definitions and

expectations of success amongst the different activists

initially arriving at the events.

Second, given the decline in the anti-capitalist

movement after the high points of J18, Seattle, Quebec

and Genoa, it was expected that the chances of impact on

the same scale as previous G8 events were unlikely. In

which case, at least some people might experience the

Gleneagles events as disempowering.

Finally, the form of the protest – a rolling series

of parallel direct actions around Gleneagles supported by

an ongoing camp at Stirling – meant that there would be

ample opportunity for discussion and argument among

protesters about the meaning of events across the course

of the protest, and thus the possibility of studying

collective strategies of countering disempowerment

longitudinally and in situ.

Method

8

A cross-sectional and longitudinal ethnographic study was

carried out, covering the duration of the G8 direct

actions in Gleneagles. Interviews were carried out with

people before, during and after the events, and

soundtrack recordings were made of discussions amongst

activists during actions and at the camp. Political self-

definitions of those interviewed more than once are given

in Table 1 (below). Material was gathered from 40

participants in total. The material was analysed

thematically in line with the research questions outlined

above.

Particip

ant

Position on

political

spectrum

Interes

ted

(Years)

Activ

e

(Year

s)

Involvem

ent

Perceive

d action

as

successf

ul?N Unaligned,

Anti

Authoritarian

10

years

7

year

s

Organise

r

Yes

SD Apathetic

Left,

Alliance of

Social

Environmenta

lists

8

years

3

year

s

Organise

r

Yes

SO Marxist 5

years

2

year

s

Organise

r

Yes

9

A Environmenta

list

Anarchist

Feminist

5

years

2

year

s

Organsie

r

Yes

D Concerned

Citizen

3

years

3

year

s

Particip

ant

No

SA Slightly

left of

centre

3

years

1

year

Particip

ant

No

O Marxist

Social

Environmenta

list

10

years

9

year

s

Organise

r

Yes

Table 1: Political self-definitions of participants

interviewed more than once

Analysis

As expected, a variety of identities and motivations were

evident amongst those arriving at the protest. Despite

conflicts with the police, there was little evidence that

the different protesters unified as a superordinate

ingroup. Indeed, throughout the events the variety of

participants was stressed by those we spoke to:

D: How would you describe the people that are

protesting, going up now and have gone up recently?

I think it’s a fairly mixed bag, you’ve got people

here who are protesting against G8, I suppose you’ve

got your kind of anarchists and the anti-capitalist

10

movement, and you’ve got things like Make Poverty

History which is going up to kind of just reform as

opposed to completely over-rule. So it’s quite

mixed, and it is in ages as well, mixed ages,

completely mixed bag of people.

Time 1 T1S2I2 So

Obviously most people here are probably anti-

capitalist, especially for the G8 demonstrations now

rather than the demo before on the second,

T1S2I4 People

There’s this pretension about being like a whole

collective,

Time 2 T3S2I4

the protest has changed to what happened before at

the other G8 meetings, it’s more that you have a

kind of official tolerated protest, this Bob Geldorf

kind of thing, which you know is a meeting with, you

know, making a conscious decision between protesters

and basically the G8 and but that takes away the

you know it really takes away the voices of the

people who are really protesting here.

T3S1I1

11

Reflecting the variety of identities and objectives

within the crowd, there were different definitions of

success and failure:

D: So what is the most important thing that you

could achieve today?

Significant disruption to the G8 conference is key.

T3S1I1

D: What would you hope to achieve from this kind of

action?

Well, ideally blocking the road,

(TIME 2)T3S2

D: What would you consider our failure today, if

today was to be a failure, what would that be?

A failure would be if they succeed more and more in

dividing the protest.

T3S1I1

D: What would you hope to achieve by going on

marches and demonstrations?

Male: I mean, long term change obviously we’d like

you know, regular campaigns and that, but with

something like this it’s more like just messing up

their big symbolic occasion,

TIME 2 T3S1I2

12

D: And what would you hope to achieve by going on

this protest?

Raising awareness of the fact that the G8 hold the

power to change. I don’t think that it will change

an awful lot, except possibly a raised awareness.

T3S2I1 SD

D: What would you consider a failure of today, if

the protest was a failure, what would that be?

A failure would be severely sanitised like regulated

demonstration where we’re going to like demonstrate

between ten o’clock and twelve o’clock against

babies dying, global warming, hundreds of billions

of animals being killed you know, and we’re going to

demonstrate for two hours, that would be a failure,

if we just did what the police wanted us to do

really.

T3S2I6

As expected, not all the protest actions went ahead in

the ways initially hoped for or expected. Hence events

were potentially interpretable as unsuccessful and

disempowering. Thus the initial response of some to

specific actions was to see them as unpleasant and

disappointing:

Obviously the thing on Wednesday morning was

possibly the lowest point in the week, we just

13

trudged through the wilderness overnight for quite a

significant distance, it was cold, it was wet, we

hadn’t really slept, we were all very aggravated,

and had been routinely intimidated through the night

by the police, and in a very bad psychological state

of affairs.

T4S1I7 N

However, the interpretation of success or failure wasn’t

simply a given but was discussed and argued over across

time, leading some to change their definitions of events:

D: Do you think that it achieved what you hoped it

would achieve?

P(N): I think in a lot of ways I regarded the

actions that I was most interested in going to which

were the carnival for full enjoyment and the

blockade of the conference centre as being largely

quite symbolic actions therefore to say that they’ve

achieved something is (), they’re symbolic because

of the nature of trying to achieve intangible things

its difficult to measure that achievement. But I

would say subjectively, yes they achieved what they

set out to achieve. With regard to the other events

that I attended I would say that they achieved

exactly what they wanted to achieve.

14

Judging from participants’ comments, feelings of

empowerment were indeed found to vary both across people

and over time, and these variations were found to relate

to the content of identity, as predicted:

D: Do you feel that these kind of actions are

empowering?

Yes.

D: How would you say that they’re empowering, I

mean why are they empowering? Is it numbers of the

crowd, is it unity, is it . .

I don’t know, yes, it’s just

Female: It’s no good just giving a donation and

waiting for someone else to do it, we’re just here

saying this has to be changed, here and now.

Male: You just know that you’re doing the right

thing, and no matter what, even if you’re with the

crowd or you’re not with the crowd, you’re just

doing the right thing.

Am yeah it made me just really excited and well a

little bit scared having doing, doing something new

I think and not really know what we were getting

into but now I just ah wanna be doing that sort of

stuff everyday, it makes me feel incredible like

nothing else I’ve ever done before

15

In particular, participants used their social

identity as a lens for the evaluation of the events they

participated in. Some utilised the historical narrative

of activism or activist reference groups to (re)assess

the activities. In this way, events experienced

immediately as unsuccessful, unpleasant and disempowering

became re-evaluated in the light of discussions which put

them in the context of the whole protest, where different

small direct actions were taking place simultaneously,

arguably with some overall success.

I think this is the main issue for me to come here,

I think the main political issues. But also the

protest, the culture of protest, as well because we

should not forget what happened in Genoa and what

happened to the protesters and where we went from

Seattle so that’s a global protest going on all over

the world

T3S1I1

I mean there’s a saying by a philosopher

called ????? who said on one thousand wars there’s

only one revolution.

even if your ultimate goal isn’t achieved right now

the purpose that you set out to do which was perhaps

have a strong demonstration that caught peoples

attention and know that collectively you’d managed

16

to achieve that. Then that’s quite empowering so its

either a case of having an immediate goal that you

can see or knowing that you can work, that you’ve

got people that you’re unified with that you can

work together to have an eventual goal that might be

sometime in the future.

SO

These participants drew upon the accounts of others in

the movement to contextualize their own actions:

Then back to Stirling after blockading the road felt

extremely disenfranchising, but then in the evening

talking to other people and really getting an idea

of the picture of what had been going on, through

working in the media centre and receiving calls and

looking through the timeline the logs of what had

been happening, I saw that actually we had been very

effective

There was stuff going on in Edinburgh, I believe,

you know, through our wonderful network of

communications, it seems that they managed to

achieve quite a lot, but, and keep it going for

quite a long time.

T3S1I2 A

17

Other participants, however, used family and friends

unconnected with the protests as their reference points,

and continued to view events as disappointing.

according to my dad, it’s, we’re being presented as

a bunch of bloody idiots.

P(D): Dunno yeah it was just very one sided press I

don’t really know like I just know from like my

friends back home people from people I talked to

afterwards, my parents, they saw what we were doing

as a really like a bad thing that we weren’t doing

it for a purpose as such we just wanted to kind of

cause havoc. I don’t think the real reason got

across to everyone.

D After

Int: What did you think of the idea of affinity

groups

Sa: I didn’t really have one

D: Do you find these type of events empowering?

Not at the moment. Not right now. Generally, yes.

D: Why not right now?

Because we’ve been, all power’s been taken away

totally from us at the moment.

18

but to be honest I don’t know whether to feel more

empowered or less empowered, because it’s a kind of

weird space we’re in because we don’t really know

what’s happened today. And we don’t know how much

we’ve achieved and how much it’s going to be

perceived by the outside world as a positive or

negative thing, so I feel a little bit in between at

the moment, a little bit disillusioned, a little bit

tired, and little bit delusional.

T3S1I3

A second key finding, related to the variation in

feelings of (dis) empowerment, was the transformation for

some people of what their own actions were about. Thus

the protest itself became re-evaluated such that it was

deemed to be about such things as inclusive decision-

making processes, building the movement and the right to

protest itself (rather than about simply stopping the

G8). In these terms, the protest as whole could be seen

as a success, even though they failed ultimately to stop

the G8 meeting:

D: Yes. So is it the effectiveness of the action

that would give you the . .

Not really the effectiveness, but what we’re

basically essentially trying to do here is like

trying to create like a new way of making decisions

19

that will involve people but so far it doesn’t work

all the time, it rarely works,

T3S2I4

D: Why do you take part in things like this?

Because I believe that everyone’s got civil rights.

(TIME 2) T3S2I5

I’m not here exclusively for anti-poverty, I think

that’s been hijacked by Brown and Geldof and all the

rest of it. And once you get here and get started

getting treated like shit by the police you get

reminded why you’ve come here in the firs place.

T3S2I6

in Britain yeah people think we’ve got loads of

civil rights, but you only realise like how few

you’ve got when you start trying to use them.

It’s just good that we’re here, you know. People

will ask in future, how come these people just did

nothing, you know, when the environment was being

destroyed, children dying in Africa, like every day

in Africa three babies die, and people will say how

come these people did nothing, well at least we’re

doing something, it might not seem that logical or

whatever, but at least we’re trying to do something.

T3S2I6

20

Before they were just this kind of nasty presence

that I didn’t really think they did any good but

they’ve sort of almost become the enemy sometimes

more than the 8 men sitting in that building, hotel.

Yeah it almost became a struggle between us and the

police, us and the state, yeah it was a much bigger

bigger thing I think than maybe like us against the

G8

I felt that the main reason why we were there was to

sort of, to show them that no matter where they go,

no matter where the G8 goes, we’re just going to be

able to follow them there, you know, people who are

going to be putting them to task you know and

shouting abuse at them and everything else, you

know. The hope is obviously that as the movement

grows then it encourages other people to join in and

maybe give them the confidence to maybe take this

sort of action, so that it will all end up hopefully

overthrowing the sort of oppressive system, you

know.

(A after)

D: Do you think then that it achieved what it hoped

to achieve

P(S): No. I don’t think it really did. In terms of

getting groups, one of the things that I think is

the best thing about that kind of thing is that it

21

got groups together. Groups that are working on the

same kind of issues with the same ideas and

different groups from around the UK especially. So

it was a very good way of networking and seeing

other people were doing exactly the same things in

their own areas.

Sophie After

Then that’s quite empowering so its either a case of

having an immediate goal that you can see or knowing

that you can work, that you’ve got people that

you’re unified with that you can work together to

have an eventual goal that might be sometime in the

future.

Relatedly, for some, the protest campsite came to be

seen as the main achievement of the event when it was set

up originally as simply to support the road-blocking

direct actions. This strategy of redefinition again

varied across participants – experienced ‘direct

activists’ were the ones who made this re-definition,

since they could see the camp as an instantiation of

their activist identity - or a glimpse in the present of

an alternative future world:

D: How important do you think the campsite was for

the protests

P(S): I think it was very important. I think it was

actually like the very central part of the G8

22

protests. Because actually what it did was allow

activists to network with each other to understand

each others kind of ideas and opinions but it was

also it gave you quite a sort of sense of power

cause actually you could see that you weren’t

standing alone that you were standing with how ever

many other people in one area.

D: The camp at Stirling, how important do you think

that was.

P(N): I think that was very important. The temporary

autonomous zone, the zone that the camp took up, the

area that the camp occupied becamae a, the small

little island of sanity amongst our world, you

really got to see an example of how society could be

organised. So that made the ideals of what you were

fighting for somewhat more tangible and therefore

more real, because you had this little example of an

alternative way of working.

The whole kind of anarchist organised only

donations, no [prices], this is important to show,

that five thousand people or ten thousand people can

live together for a few time, can make actions

together,

T3S2I3

23

And it was such a brilliant buzz on camp to see that

we were living this kind of I don’t know anarcho-

syndiclist dream.

Those participants without a well-established

activist identity found the camp to be cliquey and full

of fear, however:

D: And what did you think of the atmosphere there

and how did that make you feel?

P(D): It was quite on guard all the time, probably

cause the police were obviously around all the time

and there was quite a lot of am very like groupy

very kind of cliquey different groups kind of

planning different actions am so it made you feel

like part of it if you were in your own group I

guess but if you weren’t you felt kind of like on

the outside

There was a lot of fear within the camp which was

unnecessary and it seemed like more people spent

their time worrying than taking any action.

Conclusions and implications

The dynamics of (dis)empowerment at the 2005 G8 direct

actions were in line with the suggestions of the ESIM on

the strategies used to continue motivation in the face of

‘defeat’, by showing how identity can operate as a

24

collective resource for experienced activists. In

particular, the use of historical and contextual

narratives offset immediate feelings of defeat arising

from apparent failure of CSO, while the transformation of

aims involved a refocusing away from actions

interpretable as failures to those which could be

experienced instead as CSO.

However, this kind of evidence also shows how an

‘activist’ identity can potentially operate as a break on

escalation. More specifically, the translation of means

into ends – such as the elevation of the campsite to an

achievement in its own right - could in certain contexts

mean a retreat into lifestylism or an activist ghetto,

cementing the very fragmentation between ‘activists’ and

‘others’ that need to be superseded if isolated crowd

events are to develop into social movements.

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