Capturing protest in urban environments

The 'police kettle' as a territorial strategy

Bibliographic Data

ID4476482
AuthorsAndrew W Neal (0000-0002-7386-9255, University of Edinburgh), Andrew Neal (0000-0002-5344-9376, University of Edinburgh), Sven Opitz (0000-0001-9655-630X, Philipps University Marburg, Institute of Sociology, Germany), Chris Zebrowski (0000-0003-0109-729X, Loughborough University School of Social Political and Geographical Sciences, UK, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume37
Issue6
Pages1045-1063
Publication date2019-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnvironment and Planning D Society and Space (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0263-7758 • E-ISSN: 1472-3433
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0263775819841912
OpenAlexW2936687066
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited59

Kettling' has emerged in recent decades as an established, if controversial, tactic of public order policing. Departing from a historical emphasis on dispersal, kettling instead acts to contain protesters within a police cordon for sustained periods of time. This article elaborates upon the spatial and temporal logics of kettling by investigating the conditions of its historical emergence. We argue that kettling should be understood as a territorial strategy that co-evolved in relation to forms of disruptive protest. Whereas techniques of crowd dispersal serve to diffuse a unified collective, 'kettling' aims to capture the volatile intensities of public dissent and exhaust its political energies. Drawing on police manuals, media coverage, accounts from activists and expert interviews, we show how the 'kettle' re-territorializes protest by acting on its spatio-temporal and affective constitution. By fabricating an inner outside of the urban milieu, freezing the time of collective mobilization and inducing debilitating affects such as fear and boredom, kettling intervenes into the scene of political subjectification that each congregation of protesting bodies seeks to fashion

Boredom · Constitution · Dissent · Kettle (birds · Political science · Politics · Relation (database · Sociology · Subjectification · Crime, Deviance, and Social Control · Law · Policing Practices and Perceptions · Psychology · Public Spaces through Art · Social Psychology