Protest, Property and the Commons : Performances of Law and Resistance

This book examines the occupation of space as a mode of resistance. Drawing on the phenomena of social centres, as radical political communities that use the space of squatted, rented, or owned property, the book considers how such communities offer an alternative form of law to that of the state. It also addresses the relationship between this form of law recent protest phenomena, such as the Occupy movement. Contributing to an ongoing re-imagination of the law of property, Protest, Property and the Commons will be of interest to anyone concerned with the role of law in political protest.

Protest, Property and the Commons focuses on the alternative property narratives of ‘social centres’, or political squats, and how the spaces and their communities create their own – resistant – form of law. Drawing on critical legal theory, legal pluralism, legal geography, poststructuralism and new materialism, the book considers how protest movements both use state law and create new, more informal, legalities in order to forge a practice of resistance. Invaluable for anyone working within the area of informal property in land, commons, protest and adverse possession, this book offers a ground-breaking account of the integral role of time, space and performance in the instituting processes of law and resistance.