Performing politics

This article brings together the anthropological, sociological, and related literature on media, emotion, and performance to explore the role of counter-summit protests within anti-corporate globalization movements. Counter-summit actions produce both external and internal effects, allowing activists to communicate political messages, while generating deeply felt emotions and political identities. However, activists eventually tire while public interest may wane as protests become routine. Moreover, the most unpredictable, free form actions which produce high levels of affective solidarity among core activists often elicit media frames that stigmatize or trivialize protesters. Through comparative ethnographic accounts of mass mobilizations in Prague and Barcelona and subsequent media analysis, I argue that counter-summit protests are important networking tools, but they are difficult to reproduce over time, while the emotional and media impacts of counter-summit actions are often contradictory. I further suggest that grasping the affective dimensions of protest requires an engaged and embodied ethnographic praxis.