This article was downloaded by: [University of California, Berkeley]

On: 04 August 2014, At: 08:00

Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered
office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Urban Geography
Publication details, including instructions for authors and
subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rurb20

Geography of Protest: Places of

Demonstration in Buenos Aires and
Seoul
a
Taru Salmenkari
a
University of Helsinki
Published online: 16 May 2013.

To cite this article: Taru Salmenkari (2009) Geography of Protest: Places of Demonstration in
Buenos Aires and Seoul, Urban Geography, 30:3, 239-260

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.2747/0272-3638.30.3.239

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the
“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,
our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to
the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions
and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,
and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content
should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources
of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,
proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or
howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising
out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any
substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,
systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &
Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-
and-conditions
 GEOGRAPHY OF PROTEST:
PLACES OF DEMONSTRATION IN BUENOS AIRES AND SEOUL1

Taru Salmenkari2
Institute for Asian and African Studies
University of Helsinki
Helsinki, Finland
Downloaded by [University of California, Berkeley] at 08:00 04 August 2014

Abstract: Demonstrations shape the urban landscape and affect the normal functions of a
city. They disrupt traffic, make marginalized people and neglected areas visible in city centers,
and challenge élite designs of urban landscape both visually and functionally. Demonstrations
question élite norms by using city space in nonconformist ways for making claims, and by charg-
ing places with demonstrators’ own meanings. Differences between Buenos Aires and Seoul
show that historically developed conventions and symbolic readings of city space matter in the
strategic choice of places to protest. Yet most demonstration sites belong to the same major cat-
egories. Demonstrators may gather outside governmental buildings to communicate with the
authorities; at centers of commercial activity to appeal to the public; to places that link them
historically, culturally or morally with symbolically important events; or at places connected
with a particular grievance. Along with local traditions, an internationally shared demonstration
culture determines what kinds of places are suitable for demonstrations. [Key words: demonstra-
tions, social movements, city space, public space, public sphere.]

Demonstrations literally take place—however transnational protest networks, commu-

nication technology, and even grievences can be in our globalizing world. As long as
decisions are made inside legislatures, presidential offices, international meetings, and
the like, it makes sense to show one’s opposition at these venues. At times, being there is
a means to underscore the undemocratic and repressive nature of the politico-economic
system and even to obstruct decision-making that demonstrators believe is illegitimate
and unjust (Herbert, 2007). At the same time, many events and causes that can unite
people to oppose national governments or transnational forces are locally based (Escobar,
2001). For example, in South Korea the most successful mobilizations to oppose the U.S.
military presence have stemmed from injustices against identifiable persons in a specific
place, such as in Daechuri, where two villages were relocated due to a U.S. base expan-
sion, and in Yangju, where an American military vehicle ran over two schoolgirls.
In democracies, both the numbers and intensity of grievances count, and successful
demonstrations symbolize them both. According to Tilly (2005), social movements try to
prove that they are worthy, united, numerous, and committed in order to claim that they

1
This research was made possible by the Korea Foundation and the Emil Aaltonen Foundation. The author and
the editors are most grateful to Eric Leinberger of the Department of Geography of the University of British
Columbia, who transformed the preliminary sketches into the maps included in this article.
2
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Taru Salmenkari, Institute for Asian and African
Studies, Box 59, 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland; fax: +358-9-191 23373; e-mail: taru@salmenkari.name

239
Urban Geography, 2009, 30, 3, pp. 239–260. DOI: 10.2747/0272-3638.30.3.239
Copyright © 2009 by Bellwether Publishing, Ltd. All rights reserved.
 240 TARU SALMENKARI

should be recognized as valid political actors. Demonstrations are much more effective
ways to show commitment and unity than signed petitions can ever be, and many groups
need to produce space to be seen and heard exercising their rights of expression. As
Mitchell (2003b) and Zick (2006b) emphasize, effective demands for attention and inclu-
sion often require adoption of unpredictable, confrontational and disruptive tactics. In
addition, demonstrating together also creates histories, memories, meanings, excitement,
and feelings among participants (Zick, 2006b), and these can be essential for maintaining
social movement. Collective experiences and place-based rituals thus reinforce commit-
ment, solidarity, and shared identity within a group as well as among diverse organiza-
Downloaded by [University of California, Berkeley] at 08:00 04 August 2014

tions within a broader movement (Bosco, 2001; Missingham, 2002; Massetti, 2004).
Nonetheless, many scholars (e.g., Escobar, 2001; Martin and Miller, 2003; Auyero,
2006) lament that spaces receive inadequate attention in social movement studies. Exist-
ing literature examines space mainly as producing networks needed for mobilization or
local grievances motivating protests (e.g., Yea, 2000 and Bosco, 2001). Auyero (2003)
shows how physical and symbolic geography explains the spatial movement of protesting
crowds. Some scholars emphasize that spaces are not only contexts but also objects of
contentious politics (Sewell, 2001). Strategic choice of places, the theme of this article, is
abundantly present in empirical studies on protests, but has attracted little systematic
inquiry. Of the few studies available, Routledge (1997) shows how spatial environments
shape practices of resistance, and simultaneously how protesters can transform their daily
spatiocultural practices as well as local architecture into tools in their struggle. Bosco
(2001) maintains that symbolic proximity, based on identification with one place, can
contribute to networking within and outside an organization and sustain the movement.
Heaney and Rojas (2006) established that a place can be chosen as a symbol in framing
strategy intended to attract new groups and to mobilize new areas for the protest.
McCarthy and McPhail (2006) argue that the target and the stature of a legally protected
public forum are often decisive in the selection of a protest location. This handful of
studies examines how demonstrators consciously make spatial choices. Yet, as McCarthy
and Clark McPhail (2006, p. 230) observe, “In spite of both the great theoretical and
practical implications of the location of protest gatherings, there exists almost no system-
atic evidence about its variation.” It is this lacuna this study seeks to address.
A place can be politicized in a number of ways. It can provide an arena for political
activities or a mobilization base for political action. Sometimes the use of a particular
space becomes a political issue; occasionally, a place such as a demonstrators’ camp can
become a political statement in itself (Hosey, 2000; Missingham, 2002). This article
deals with places that became sites of political protest in two capitals, Buenos Aires in
Argentina and Seoul in South Korea and is based on eight months of field work in Seoul
in 2006–2007 and two one-month fieldwork periods in Buenos Aires in 2004–2005 and
2006. I witnessed piquetero, FTA, AMIA, trade union, Cromañon, and student demon-
strations, among others. Apart from participatory observation in demonstrations, I inter-
viewed participants and followed printed and electronic calls for protests and media
reportage of demonstrations in both cities.
Buenos Aires and Seoul are similar in that they have active street politics and are
national capitals where the presence of state institutions focuses protest geography.
Although they adhere to different cultural traditions, their demonstration sites proved to
be generally similar.
 GEOGRAPHY OF PROTEST 241

DEMONSTRATING IN PLACES

Places are not only locations, but also cultural artifacts that express “how a spatially
connected group of people mediate the demands of cultural identity, state power, and
capital accumulation” (Zukin, 1993, p. 12). They are social constructs communicating
about social status, political control, social practices, and histories; expressions of power
distribution; and repositories and manifestations of social exchange, memories, images,
uses, and meanings (Zick, 2006b). According to Mitchell (2000, p. 446), “The right to
define and represent public space and the culture of public space is considered important
Downloaded by [University of California, Berkeley] at 08:00 04 August 2014

by so many diverse actors because it is also fundamentally about the right to define the
society and its collective identity.”
The abstract hegemonic representations of space by the powerful leave open possibil-
ities for resistance and the articulation of alternative rationality (Roberts, 2001). Hosey
(2000) sees public buildings as idealized representations of national power and wealth,
and demonstrations as a way to challenge this symbolic imagery and the status quo it
reinforces, exposing a society to its actual, imperfect conditions. Some demonstrations
challenge the dominant ideals of a society by staging protests in places constructed
according to these ideals (MacLeod, 2006). In demonstrations “public space … lends
its iconic value to those who occupy it, even briefly” (Goheen, 1998, p. 494). Thus public
space is a source of power, “available to be used by those best able to ‘capture’” it
(Mitchell, 2003b, p. 73). Demonstrations are ephemeral transformations of physical pub-
lic space (Burk, 2003) that spatially disrupt hegemony (Brown, 1997). However, places
have multiple meanings that make it difficult to control spatial symbolism that different
actors inject into the protest (Heaney and Rojas, 2006).
Routledge (1997) classifies places of resistance as ambiguous third spaces where
power relations are confronted and where the marginalized are momentarily at the center
of power, but where resistance is entwined with practices of domination. Hosey (2000)
categorizes protest constructions as heterotopias, and in many senses all demonstrations
fall into that rubric. Demonstrations are, as Foucault (1986) understands heterotopias to
be, countersites that reflect the imperfect condition of the real world and allow partici-
pants to transgress the norms of their everyday life, a temporary condition simultaneously
reflecting both the real and ideal worlds. Like carnivals, demonstrations are rituals that
play out alternative visions of the normal order. Demonstrations allow “inversion to
occur—minority groups take up the central position in space and dominant society is
relegated to spatial margins” and thus “destabilize the hierarchy of spatial dominance”
(Malone, 2002, p. 160). Contrary to carnivals, demonstrations usually try to convince the
authorities and the public with rational arguments, but they simultaneously use bodies,
place, dress, and decorations in nonconformist ways to question dominant power rela-
tions. Most assuredly this has occurred in Argentine riots that attacked élite institutions
and residences as an iconoclastic “contest for symbolic domination and cultural power”
(James, 1988, p. 454) and “ritual defilement in which the (ab)use of space was central”
(Auyero, 2003).
Contentious politics simultaneously reacts to its spatial environment and produces
new spatial relations, routines, and meanings (Sewell, 2001). In other words, it is both
geographically structured and geographically structuring (Auyero, 2006). Activists go
into the streets to reconfigure geography so that decision-makers must pay attention to
 242 TARU SALMENKARI

them (Mitchell, 2003b). Certain places become standardized (Waddington, 1995) places
of demonstration through through repetition, sometimes to the point that people identify
these places with protests. In such cases, the demonstrators have succeeded in appropri-
ating a political space and changing its culture (Roberts, 2001)—they have socially pro-
duced public space and made themselves public in it (Mitchell, 2003b).
A place is one element influencing a demonstration’s effect and meaning. A place
affects visibility and ability to communicate with the authorities and the public. Accord-
ing to Heaney and Rojas (2006, p. 503), “place is often a critical part of the discursive
opportunity structure that allows social movement actors to shape public opinion.” A
Downloaded by [University of California, Berkeley] at 08:00 04 August 2014

place can relate to protesters’ message or symbolize conflicts, conditions, emotions, and
collective memories (Zick, 2006a). Sometimes the threat of occupation of a particular
place is sufficient to make those in power comply with the demonstrators’ will. When
the student union at a Christian university in Seoul has grievances, it announces a
demonstration outside a church on Sunday. After the police inform the church about
the demonstration plans, its authorities turn to the university administration to ask the
student union what they want in order to avoid the demonstration plan (student leader,
June 21, 2007).
I now turn to examine where demonstrations take place in Buenos Aires and Seoul. I
will analyze the reasons for choosing a site for a protest and construct a typology of desir-
able sites. I will examine how demonstrators’ choices and messages, city planning, his-
tory, social differences, and state institutions shape the geography of protest. I will
scrutinize conflicts over the use of urban space among protestors, their adversaries, and
the authorities.

COMMUNICATIVE PLACES

In Buenos Aires, the main determining factor in the choice of a protest location is
communication with the authorities. Demonstrators go directly to the agencies that deal
with the issue in question. When the demonstration is about an issue that falls under the
authority of the city, demonstrators head to City Hall; but when they demand that the
national government act they march on the Presidential Palace. When the demand con-
cerns legislation, the protest takes place outside of the national or municipal legislature,
whereas in court cases demonstrators gather at the tribunal handling the case. Further-
more, relevant ministries, provincial offices, and embassies draw demonstrations when
the issue falls under their jurisdiction.
As the symbol of popular power that overthrew Argentina’s President de la Rúa in
2001, the Plaza de Mayo in front of the Presidential Palace attracts more demonstrations
than its proximity to the centers of presidential and municipal powers warrants. In partic-
ular, demonstrations with diffuse demands tend to assemble at the Plaza de Mayo.
Whereas some organizations of the piquetero movement of the unemployed and the poor
constantly mobilize their members for diverse issue-based demonstrations aimed at vari-
ous authorities, others employ their mobilizing capacity less often but tend to organize
larger demonstrations that bring together the entire membership to articulate all of their
various demands. Along with its history of resistance, the Plaza de Mayo has a different,
more official history of public gatherings as a site of Peronist rallies in which Juan and
Evíta Peron addressed the masses during the 1950s (Waisbord, 1996). Thus, the Plaza de
 GEOGRAPHY OF PROTEST 243

Mayo is the location to celebrate the anniversaries of the fall of the de la Rúa administra-
tion as well as it was of the Kirchner presidency. To some extent, the participating groups
were the same, although on one occasion they presented their demands to the government
and at another, demonstrated their support for the incumbent president.
In Seoul, the geography of protest is less straightforward than in Buenos Aires. Many
protests in Seoul take place close to the seats of the authorities. Legislative issues are
voiced outside the National Assembly, controversial court cases draw demonstrators to
courthouses, and complaints concerning education are expressed at the Ministry of
Education. But at other times there is little connection with the issue and the specific
Downloaded by [University of California, Berkeley] at 08:00 04 August 2014

authority. City Hall Plaza, one of the main arenas for demonstrations, sees protests with
complaints ranging from foreign policy to private education to labor rights, even though
the city government has little authority over these matters. Moreover, demonstrators who
gather at the plaza are not exclusively Seoul residents, but include groups like farmers. If
the City Hall of Buenos Aires draws protests because it is a place of authority, in Seoul it
is a convenient open space with an audience.
Some common locations for demonstrations in Seoul have no relationship to the
spatial distribution of the authorities. When I wondered why so many demonstrations
take place in the Daehangno cultural district or the Myeong-dong commercial center,
younger protesters answered that either there is available space to gather or that there are
always many people on the streets of these popular districts. Both of these answers are
correct: if there were no suitable space and no audience, demonstrators would hardly
assemble there. Still, the main reason for assembling at these places is historical. During
the military dictatorship, Seoul National University, one of the main mobilization centers
and venues for then illegal demonstrations, was still located in Daehangno, while
Myeong-dong’s cathedral provided protection for the democracy movement. During the
late years of the dictatorship in the 1980s, the police usually kept away from university
campuses, making them convenient centers for political activities. Today campuses still
occasionally provide space for the political meetings for nonstudents, such as striking
workers, and university gates often serve as gathering points for organized marches.
March routes in Buenos Aires are linked to the message. Marches either head to a
politically meaningful place or start from one place, perhaps stop at another, and termi-
nate at still another place connected with the issue. Demonstratiors can visit the offices of
several agencies having power over an issue, or they link the location of the grievance to
a specific public authority. For example, the movement supporting the Cromañon disco-
thèque fire victims marches from Once, where the disco was located, to Plaza de Mayo to
demand that the city authorities located there act.
In Seoul, marches seldom pass by the offices of public authorities. Common march
routes start at Daehangno or the Seoul railway station and end somewhere in the
city center; other marches begin at City Hall and return to the same place. One reason for
this pattern is that police do not permit demonstrations near some public buildings;
another is that demonstrators primarily use marches to communicate their message to the
public. Seoul’s marches sometimes visit symbolic places, but often the message and the
symbolism of the march is concentrated in protest formations, placards, banners, sound
cars, and leafleting. During the march the focus is wherever the demonstrators are—the
place is literally on the move. As Mitchell (2000) notes, the movement of bodies across
the landscape can blur borders and erode systems of domination. A trade union parade
 244 TARU SALMENKARI

with carefully planned formations arrayed behind their own banners and sound cars is not
only an effective propaganda vehicle, but also transforms the character of the surrounding
place and power relations within it. Similarly, more playful and colorful student groups
prepare their costumes, performances, decorations, and slogan-shouting dances for the
marching phase of the demonstration. Especially when the size of the protest is large, the
demonstration itself temporally becomes the most powerful element in the visual land-
scape. This particular procession style is also related to the traditional city plan.

CITY PLAN AND DEMONSTRATIONS

Downloaded by [University of California, Berkeley] at 08:00 04 August 2014

Premodern Seoul was constructed according to the traditional Chinese city plan,
wherein the locations of the royal palace and main roads were configured according to the
principles derived from the Book of Rites (Zhou Li) and fengshui. The majority of big
demonstrations in Seoul take place along the principal north–south main road, starting
from the southern gate of the royal palace, or the main east–west thoroughfare. Many key
protest sites are situated on the wide, open road leading to the royal palace (Fig. 1).3 A
similar spatial solution is constructed around the National Assembly, where demonstra-
tors alike occupy the street leading to it.
There were no public plazas in Seoul’s traditional city plan, and demonstrators still
commonly congregate on sidewalks or streets. Many major labor demonstrations take
place exclusively on the streets: demonstrators hold their first rally on the street in
Daehangno and then march along the main east–west thoroughfare to hold another rally
on the street at Gwanghwamun (Fig. 1). The 20th century introduced parks and plazas to
Seoul. The first, Tapgol Park, was the site of one of the earliest modern demonstrations in
the city in 1919, when demonstrators read Korea’s declaration of independence there.
Today, streets, parks, and plazas all host demonstrations.
In traditional Chinese-influenced city planning, the main streets hid semiprivate alley-
ways in a way that led Han (2001) to use the term “dualistic urban structure.” Kim (2002)
showed that historically the main streets provided a setting of stately displays, while their
commercial function made them more egalitarian spaces than hierarchically ranked living
quarters inside their adjoining blocks. Both these aspects, the presence of authority and
egalitarian street space, are appealing to demonstrators. Although demonstrations mainly
utilize the visibility available on the main streets, the system of secondary roads criss-
crossing inside the blocks defined by major streets has its uses as well. Because the police
now seldom venture into the narrow secondary roads, demonstrators sometimes use them
to skirt police blockages or to gather at points where riot police do not enter.
The layout of Buenos Aires partly explains the practice of demonstrating at the public
institution having authority over a particular issue. Demonstrations in the city center are
likely to have an audience, convenient spaces to assemble, and walking distances from
one political target to another. Buenos Aires exhibits an urban plan typical of late 19th
and early 20th century European-influenced capitals, with monumental public buildings
and spacious boulevards. Many public buildings open onto a plaza or park that provides

3
This road is the Seoul equivalent of Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
 GEOGRAPHY OF PROTEST 245
Downloaded by [University of California, Berkeley] at 08:00 04 August 2014

Fig. 1. The main demonstration sites in Seoul City Center: The presidential palace Blue House (a place with
authority); Jongno Administrative Complex (a place with authority); Yeollin Madang (an open space with
authority); U.S. Embassy (a place with authority); Sejong Cultural Center (an open space with audience);
Gwanghwamun (a major crossroads, place with audience); Cheonggyecheon Plaza (an open space with audi-
ence); City Hall (an open space with audience, customary protest site); Seoul Station (an open space with
audience); Myeong-dong (a place with audience, historical protest site); Bosingak (an open space with audi-
ence); Jongmyo (an open space with audience); Daehangno (an open space with audience, historical protest
site); Japanese Embassy (a place with authority). Common protest sites outside this area include the National
Assembly, the Sinchon university area, Yongsan Garrison and Ministry of Defense.

a space to gather. Where there is such space available, demonstrators occupy the street in
front of the building. Sites of political power and centers of commercial and cultural life
are located within a relatively small area of the city center. Therefore, open spaces tend to
 246 TARU SALMENKARI

carry multiple meanings and histories. For example, political power, the Catholic Church,
and populist politics confer competing definitions on the Plaza de Mayo (Rosenthal,
2000). Buenos Aires’s architecture is closely related to the state-building process and is
named and decorated accordingly. For instance, political gatherings can choose the Plaza
de la Republica with its emblems of all the Argentine provinces (Waisbord, 1996).
Seoul is a modern city centered on the premodern capital. Many public spaces now
used for demonstrations are the products of recent attempts to open more space in the city.
Most administrative buildings were built during the modernization drive and look like
typical bureaucratic office buildings, indistinguishable from the offices of private compa-
Downloaded by [University of California, Berkeley] at 08:00 04 August 2014

nies. The National Assembly is a monumental public building, but its appearance is
somewhat compromised by the visible presence of private economic power all around it.
Both sides of the broad street leading to the National Assembly accommodate corporate
headquarters. The Presidential Palace is also a monumental building, but it still reflects
traditional Chinese-style city design in which the ruler resided in a forbidden city
detached from urban life. During the military dictatorship, not only the Palace itself but
also nearby streets and the mountain behind the Palace were closed to ordinary citizens.
Lately, the risk of demonstrations has affected city planning in Seoul. Some institu-
tions have purposely been moved some distance from the city center. Many ministries are
now concentrated in Gwacheon outside Seoul proper, and a former center of protest mobi-
lization, Seoul National University, is now located in the hilly terrain in southern Seoul.
More remote locations reflect the growth of the city and the need for more space for
expanding educational and administrative facilities, but the remoteness of these buildings
also makes protest policing easier and reduces the number of potential demonstrations.

POLITICALLY CONTESTED PLACES

Of outdoor city spaces, politically contested places are the most challenging venues for
demonstrations. Usually they are located around buildings accommodating high-level
authorities. In these places the authorities want to exclude demonstrators who demand
access to this space.4 In Europe and North America, recent trends in protest policing have
tended toward “displacing dissent” (McCarthy and McPhail, 2006; Crocker, 2007) or “ter-
ritorial restrictions to regulate dissent” (Herbert, 2007, p. 602) that establish protest-free
zones or limit free speech to certain zones, which Mitchell (2003a, p. 38) termed the “ghet-
toization of protest” where those being protested against cannot hear the message. Zick
(2006b, p. 585) called them a “perfect geometry of control” utilized to marginalize and
confine dissent. However, in Argentina and South Korea, police repertoires have gradually
become more humane, less intrusive, and spatially more tolerant.
Both Buenos Aires and Seoul have established no-protest zones, some of them perma-
nent, and others imposed to control particular protests. In Buenos Aires, no-protest zones
are small and mostly reinforced with equipment such as riot fences. There are two perma-
nent no-protest zones, one around the Congress and another around the Presidential
Palace. In addition, the police temporarily erect riot fences around other buildings, such

4
I use this term to refer to the contested use and control of a place. Zick (2006a, 2006b) uses the term differ-
ently to mean that the existence or practice of the place is contested.
 GEOGRAPHY OF PROTEST 247

as embassies, residences of former members of the military junta, and the City Hall. Only
at the Presidential Palace is the no-protest zone extended beyond the sidewalk in front of
the building, and only the Madres de Plaza de Mayo or individual protesters are permitted
to demonstrate inside this zone. Apart from the Palace, the Congress, and the Israeli
embassy, police employ spatial tactics very sparingly and demonstrators frequently
lounge and even paint graffiti next to the entrance to City Hall, while a token police con-
tingent calmly looks on.
In Seoul, the police use spatial tactics regularly and over large areas. These areas, apart
from the fenced-off area around the National Assembly and the Presidential Palace, are
Downloaded by [University of California, Berkeley] at 08:00 04 August 2014

not marked by physical barriers. Instead, the police impose spatial control with riot lines
and blockages by police buses. This strategy makes boundary control mobile. Sometimes
the South Korean police use spatial tactics outside demonstration venues to prevent dem-
onstrators from entering them. Demonstrators can be barred from leaving their home-
towns or from entering Seoul (Shin, 2006), or may be halted at metro station exits or a
few blocks away from the protest site. This strategy works only on recognizable catego-
ries of people, such as peasant activists entering the city or people carrying placards; and
more often it succeeds in reducing the number of demonstrators rather than preventing
the protest, since demonstrators sometimes manage to verbally or physically fight their
way through a police line or find an alternative route to the spot.
Foreign policy issues are often articulated in places like Seoul City Hall Plaza or other
open spaces in the city center because the police guard a no-protest zone around certain
buildings central to foreign policy grievances, such as the Presidential Palace and the U.S.
embassy. Although demonstrations at an intersection near the Palace are sometimes
possible, this place is not visible from the Presidential Palace itself and has few passers-
by. The South Korean government had used laws to establish protest-free zones outside
governmental buildings, embassies, and U.S. garrisons, but they were declared unconsti-
tutional (Kim, 2007); instead, the authorities use laws to control the size and timing of
demonstrations in these places. Because a single person cannot assemble, individuals are
allowed to protest anywhere, including places where demonstrations are normally forbid-
den (Moon, 2003, p. 148).
Demonstrators routinely accept spatial limits themselves. Often they choose their
arenas and routes so that they do not challenge imposed spatial boundaries. In an excep-
tional case, when access to a protected area suddenly opens, demonstrators may still com-
ply with internalized boundaries. This happened on December 18, 2006 in Buenos Aires,
when demonstrators managed to push down a section of riot fence surrounding the Con-
gress, but instead of trying to enter the no-protest zone, the mass of demonstrators contin-
ued pushing down other segments of the fence.5 In Seoul, the police sometimes reinforce
the customary uses of space when they divert an illegal march to an established place of
demonstration where protestors usually agree to remain and rally. However, in both cities
demonstrators sometimes challenge the spatial limits implemented by police. In Seoul,
these kinds of conflicts are common because the police use spatial control so extensively.
Demonstrators push through police lines en masse, run or take the subway to reach

5
See the video at http://www.clarin.com/diario/2006/12/18/um/m-01330129.htm
 248 TARU SALMENKARI

venues faster than the police, or break away onto small streets to avoid police blockages.
Due to their higher mobility, better intelligence, and flexibility, demonstrators often suc-
ceed in getting close to their targets.
One dramatic struggle for city space took place when the South Korean government
prohibited all demonstrations by the Korean Alliance against the Korea–U.S. FTA after
some protesters torched a government office in Chungnam on November 22, 2006. At
first other organizers, such as the Democratic Labor Party, could register demonstrations
that actually protested the free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations, and demonstrators
managed to break out to illegal marches from legal rallies. On January 16, 2007, the
Downloaded by [University of California, Berkeley] at 08:00 04 August 2014

police, although not permitting the march, even contacted the demonstration organizers
and told them that police would not interfere with the march as long as it kept out of the
negotiation arena they carefully guarded. However, from February onward, most organiz-
ers failed to register any demonstration opposing FTA and police broke up assembling
demonstrators, making them disperse into several smaller-scale protests instead. But the
next big protest mobilization on March 10, planned in secrecy, managed to take the police
by surprise and occupied the main intersection in Seoul’s city center. Subsequent police
violence against journalists turned the opportunity structure against the police; thereafter,
the police permitted protester gatherings outside City Hall, but tried to prevent marches.
Regardless, during the last week before the signing of the FTA on April 1, demonstrators
succeeded in occupying the street outside the U.S. embassy as well as the Presidential
Palace. After that, the police no longer prevented marches, but deployed troops only to
guide marches and prevent them from entering politically sensitive areas of Seoul. Thus,
even though demonstrators regained control over city space, this renewed access did not
mean wider access to political space. The police now changed their control strategy and
began to issue arrest warrants for movement leaders; after the massive FTA-signing dem-
onstrations of June 29, 2007, two elderly movement leaders were arrested and put on trial.

DEMONSTRATIONS IN COMMERCIALIZED SPACES

In North America, people increasingly concentrate at privately owned shopping malls

and semipublic places of entertainment where political protest is either limited or forbid-
den (Mitchell, 2003a; McCarthy and McPhail, 2006). Even public places have not
escaped the tendency to limit the expression of political opinions when they are regarded
as public properties managed by public officials, and when the listeners’ right to choose
not to listen is sometimes prioritized over the right of public expression (Zick, 2006a;
Herbert, 2007). This trend has not duplicated itself in Seoul or Buenos Aires. As Rosenthal
(2000) observes, in Buenos Aires the plaza-centered city plan and vibrant street life along
boulevards and in cafés continue to confer cultural and symbolic meaning to residents. To
some extent, the commercial space of Buenos Aires has even been politicized, as is
evident on the avenue leading to the Congress on which advertisements are exclusively
political or cultural (theaters concentrate in this district). There too, a cacophony of
unsanctioned political messages in the form of graffiti has spilled over into political
debates in paid advertisements. In Seoul, shopping mall culture is stronger, but its market
areas are traditional demonstration venues that continue to accommodate protests. Com-
mercialization spills over into noncommercial spaces of central Seoul, creating mixed
spaces. Thus at almost all main demonstration sites political demands compete with
 GEOGRAPHY OF PROTEST 249

commercial messages from screens atop nearby buildings, but this hybridism seems to
make these targets more accessible to protesters than in the case of purely political spaces.
Commercialization of a space is not necessarily a threat to its political use. Commer-
cialized places attracting visitors provide an audience for demonstrations, and sometimes
even offer a refuge for political action. For example, when the authorities had forbidden
demonstrations against the free trade agreement with the United States, anti-FTA events
regularly took place at Bell Pavilion (Bosingak), located in a busy commercial area oppo-
site Jongno Tower, one of Seoul’s most prominent business landmarks. Because these
events did not take place in a politically contested zone, authorities had little interest in
Downloaded by [University of California, Berkeley] at 08:00 04 August 2014

them. Usually there were two riot police buses parked at the intersection, compared to
more than 60 I counted around City Hall Plaza during an anti-FTA demonstration. This
underscores that often the place at which a protest occurs is more important than the
grievance in determining deciding how the authorities deal with the protest.
During South Korea’s military dictatorship, there were special reasons to choose mar-
ket places. Since demonstrations were suppressed by the police within a few minutes, it
was important to have as many spectators as possible, and these could be found in shop-
ping areas or in front of theaters. Participants waiting for a street demonstration lingered
at market places where the police could not distinguish demonstrators from shoppers, but
from where participants could see the demonstration coming and run to join it (two long-
term activists, March 17 and April 10, 2007).6
In Seoul, protesters, commercial entrepreneurs, and shoppers adopt neutrality toward
one another. Demonstrators frequently end up at Myeong-dong and stage their own pro-
gram there; their presence does not bother street vendors, who continue marketing their
goods.7 Communication between demonstrators and entrepreneurs can even be two-
directional: protesters disseminate their message through slogan shouting, leafleting, and
speeches, but they sometimes receive advertisements distributed outside shops. Some-
times passing demonstrations attract attention among Myeong-dong shoppers, who
photograph them as a curiosity. Disinterested shoppers may move in and out through the
narrow passage left in the riot police line that confronts demonstrators leaving Myeong-dong,
ensuring that people depart the place as individuals and not as a group of protestors before
letting them out of the area.
One can also distinguish between commercial activities in publicly owned spaces,
such as shopping streets, and those inside privately owned shops. Even private commer-
cial spaces sometimes offer a refuge for political activists who have been ousted from
public places. When the police dispersed anti-FTA demonstrations, small groups of
demonstrators went to distribute their message inside shopping malls, supermarkets, and
subway trains. Since the target was not the enterprise itself, these involuntary hosts
showed some tolerance toward the protest. Some demonstrations even have access to a
private venue because protesters are not outsiders. Most typical of these are strikes. When

6
The dictatorship made demonstrators adopt other interesting spatial tactics as well. Korean student activists
chose the highest buildings to demonstrate because it took considerable time for the police to climb to upper
floors and find their way into locked rooms or onto rooftops to arrest a demonstrator who was voicing his
demands to the spectators outside (former student activist, May 24, 2007).
7
The situation in Buenos Aires is different, where shops sometimes pull down their steel shutters during dem-
onstrations expected to turn violent or leave their mark on the walls of the city.
 250 TARU SALMENKARI

irregular workers employed by the E-Land chain occupied some outlets in Seoul, they
bridged places accessible to insiders with those outside. Striking workers held their
demonstration inside while supporters, blocked out by the police, were demonstrating
outside; E-Land workers opened windows to listen to the program outside and to insert
their speeches.
Moreover, economic targets are usually softer than political targets. After failing to
force the South Korean government to maintain its ban on imported U.S. beef, opponents
of the free trade agreement targeted one supermarket chain, managing to make it
withdraw U.S. beef from its sales counters. Unable to change state policy, the protestors
Downloaded by [University of California, Berkeley] at 08:00 04 August 2014

successfully influenced the profit calculations of a private company, which produced the
desired result of halting U.S. beef imports. In Argentina, the piquetero movement has
used similar tactics to pressure firms into providing jobs or goods for the poor.
However, commercial space may be inaccessible to protesters because it is private.
Sometimes private business interests work to prevent demonstrations not only on their
property but also on the street outside. Samsung is a company hostile to demonstrations
to the degree that it mimics civil society to prevent disturbances: it registers daily a dem-
onstration outside its own headquarters, but this demonstration never takes place. Since
the law permits registration of only a single demonstration at one place at one time,
authentic civil society cannot demonstrate there (Cho, 2007). When trade unions finally
managed to outwit the company and register their demonstration first, this unusual protest
outside Samsung headquarters attracted wide media coverage. During this demonstration,
Samsung deliberately emphasized its inaccessiblity and private character by deploying its
own security guards to police the entrance to its headquarters.
Sometimes the police are deployed to protect business interests. In the Paseo de los
Artesanos in Buenos Aires, proudly displayed photographs of “artisans’ and artists’
struggle of Florida Street” (as a banner inside the Paseo depicts it) show how riot police
can be used to expel from a lucrative location anyone trying to earn a living in the infor-
mal economy. Because Florida is a flourishing pedestrian shopping street, its shopkeepers
were unwilling to tolerate competition by street vendors whose presence could degrade
the middle class image of the street. Although the state originally sided with shopkeepers
and responded to this conflict with coercion, it was later resolved in a conciliatory manner
by providing a passageway for the artisans to sell their products indoors.
Evidently, commercialized places can be both convenient and difficult environments
for protests. Owners can limit access to private commercial space, but access to many
public buildings is limited too. Protest policing is usually strictest outside governmental
buildings, whereas outdoor public space in commercial areas is often easily accessible to
demonstrators. Thus the advantages of choosing either a public or a commercialized site
for a demonstration are mixed, depending on the site and the audience addressed.
Some scholars have adopted terminology other than private–public distinction to
examine tensions in the use of space during demonstrations. Baydar and Ivegen (2006)
borrow the dichotomy of smooth and striated spaces from Deleuze and Guattari. Turkish
demonstrators chose a space that simultaneously possessed the formal, standardized char-
acter of a striated space and the amorphous, innformal character of a smooth space,
permitting them to assemble and if necessary to escape into busy streets nearby. The
demonstrators’ presence undermined the fixed and hierarchical quality of the place and
thereby invited the authorities’ response to restore the stratified and coded character of
 GEOGRAPHY OF PROTEST 251

the place. McCann (1999) uses Lefebvre’s distinctions to sketch how demonstrations
bring “differential spaces” or “counterspaces” to sites where dominant groups have tried
to create “abstract spaces” that appear socially homogenous, but actually are gendered
and racially and socially exclusive. These approaches underscore that both public and
private power, or both political and economic power, construct spaces of the dominant
culture and order, and that demonstrators undermine the controllable and orderly image
imposed by those in power.

SYMBOLIC SPACES
Downloaded by [University of California, Berkeley] at 08:00 04 August 2014

Demonstrators may choose locations because they have symbolic value and enhance
the symbolic authority of the demonstrators. As Zick (2006b, p. 588) notes, “Speakers
and listeners do not merely occupy places; they connect with and speak through them.”
By manipulating collective memories, demonstrators can change the balance of symbolic
power between themselves and the political leadership. To this end, demonstrators in
South Korea and elsewhere visit places where victims of political oppression died or
where democratization movements scored victories (Kim, 1994; Missingham, 2002). The
Plaza de Mayo as the gathering place for mothers of victims became the symbolic center
for mobilizing around the issue of the torture and killings taking place in detention centers
around Argentina during the military dictatorship (Bosco, 2001). In this way, resistance
can change the meaning of a place (Routledge, 1997), and a place can become an integral,
symbolic, part of the demonstrators’ message (Zick, 2006a). Naturally, places that some
protest organizers use to convey a symbolic message, may to others be only the custom-
ary sites of demonstrations Sewell (2001) shows.
Demonstrations also play a role in the making of spatial meaning (Auyero, 2006). For
instance, after Heo Sae-uk immolated himself in protest outside the Hyatt Hotel Seoul,
where the free trade agreement between the U.S. and Korea was being negotiated, his
funeral procession on April 18, 2007 became a ritual that visited visited politically mean-
ingful places in his life and charged them with new symbolic meaning. A procession
began at the hospital where he died, proceeded to his trade union headquarters, and then
to his workplace. Next it visited the place of his self-immolation, where the tragic act was
recreated by a dancer. The next spot for a rally was at the gate of the Yongsan Garrison
following Heo’s wish to continue his resistance to the U.S. bases even as a spirit. Then
came City Hall, which was chosen as a central and accessible place where a great number
of people were able to bid their farewell to Heo. Finally, after burial in Maseok Cemetery
for democratization and labor movement heroes outside of Seoul, participants returned to
Seoul to join a candlelight vigil in the city center.
Demonstrators communicate not only to outsiders but also to participants, and both
these audiences influence places of protest. Because demonstrations are a form of politi-
cal speech, this largely explains the popularity of buildings of political authority as dem-
onstration sites. Places related to the grievance and symbolic spaces speak to the
protesters themselves. They emphasize the message and enhance emotional commitment
to the movement. For example, gatherings in the Plaza de Mayo to celebrate the anniver-
sary of the popular uprising that overthrew the government in 2001 have value as political
demand-making, as encouragement to strengthen protesters’ belief in their own powers,
and as a ritual.
 252 TARU SALMENKARI

Buenos Aires has several places dedicated to protests. In the Plaza de Mayo, a circle
drawn on the ground marks the place where the Madres de Plaza de Mayo have demon-
strated against the disappearance of their relatives on every Thursday since 1977. Rela-
tives of victims of the devastating 2004 Cromañon disco fire remember them outside the
nearby Once station at a memorial site containing murals, personal belongings, and
photographs of the dead. Both of these spaces are dedicated to ongoing protests.
In Seoul, all places permanently dedicated to protests are memorials. The Cemetery
and Memorial Library for the 4/19 Revolution, dedicated to popular protests that over-
threw the authoritarian regime in 1960, have strong official backing. Today, after the
Downloaded by [University of California, Berkeley] at 08:00 04 August 2014

official ceremony on April 19, discontented groups still gather at the 4/19 Cemetery. In
2007, these groups included leftist participants in the 1960 protests and Buddhist monks
praying for world peace, at the time when South Korean troops were involved in military
operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition, Seoul celebrates anniversaries of some
historical protests, such as the independence movement in 1919 and the June Revolution
of 1987, in their authentic places. Nonetheless, Seoul has not cultivated its geography of
protest in the systematic way of another South Korean city, Kwangju in the far southwest.
Here people gather every May at the key sites of the 1980 Kwangju Uprising and at the
cemetery where victims of its military suppression were buried, and the city organizes
plays, cultural fairs, and parades in authentic places to keep this history alive.

THE URBAN GEOGRAPHY OF DEMONSTRATION SITES

In both Buenos Aires and Seoul, areas where the majority of demonstrations occur
constitute only a small portion of the city. In Buenos Aires, this is due the concentration
of protests in the monumental political center in the eastern part of the city. In Seoul, the
area is much larger because of the dispersion of administrative buildings and the tradition
of holding protests in university districts and certain politically neutral but highly visible
places. Nevertheless, all major centers of protest activity except for the National Assembly
in Yeouido and the Grand National Party8 office as well as ministries in Gwacheon out-
side the Seoul administrative areas, are located on the northern side of the Han River and
mainly within the city limits of premodern Seoul.
Demonstrations sometimes take place outside the usual protest areas. Buenos Aires is
a highly politicized city and its inhabitants frequently demonstrate to seek political inter-
vention to resolve a wide array of grievances. Thus demonstrations can occur anywhere
in the urban area: in places of accidents or crimes, outside of businesses or schools, and
where the informal economy of piquetero-run services, slums, or worker-run enterprises
challenge the established municipal authority. Local protests can even form networks.
After residents of the Caballito neighborhood demonstrated against a development plan,
residents in other communities elsewhere began to complain about similar kinds of proj-
ects. Consequently, more than 70 neighborhood associations staged simultaneous street
demonstrations in their local districts (Clarin, November 23, 2006). In Seoul, where most

8
The GNP is a major target of protests because it was founded by military presidents and has the backing of
conglomerates.
 GEOGRAPHY OF PROTEST 253

of the city rarely witnesses political activism, street protests in front of businesses, local
government offices, and the homes of politicians can sometimes occur.
In Buenos Aires, two factors tend to disperse demonstrations around the city. First, a
protest location is often chosen for to maximally disrupt the normal functions of society,
often in the form of a street blockade. This also maximizes visibility, and provides incen-
tives for politicians to resolve the issue promptly. In Seoul, demonstrators sometimes
agree to march on the sidewalk, but in Buenos Aires they always take to the streets and
block traffic. The city center is less vulnerable because many parallel streets permit the
rerouting of traffic, but occupations of expressways and bridges are far more effectively
Downloaded by [University of California, Berkeley] at 08:00 04 August 2014

at blocking the flow of traffic. The second factor is that Argentina has a long history of
protests related to housing (Rosenthal, 2000). Accordingly, neighborhood demonstrations
as well as illegal residential construction and protests against evictions are by their nature
local, although demonstrators occasionally bring these conflicts into the city center to put
pressure on government housing policy.
As a demonstration arena, Buenos Aires is also strongly interconnected with its
suburbs, especially when the unemployed piqueteros organize protests. Because these
poor residents of the barrios mostly live at a distance from the expensive city center,
transportation downtown is essential for demonstrating. Such a protest in the city center
is both preceded and followed by a series of gatherings starting in the suburbs. In the city
center, individual groups of demonstrators congregate outside railway stations and all
participating groups come together at the Obelisco—a landmark near the midpoint of the
Avenída de Mayo that connects the Presidential Palace at one end with the Congress at
the other. In this way, the geography of protest centers on the east–west axis between the
Congress and Plaza de Mayo, the north–south axis between the Retiro and Constitución
railway stations, webs of transportation routes from various suburbs to these stations, and
points of local gathering in different suburbs (Fig. 2). The mobilization route thus links
the city center and suburbs and cross boundaries of geographic distance and social
distinction. Suburban mobilization brings the poor, the unemployed, and an ethnically
more indigenous population to the middle-class environment dominated by the White
population.
In both Buenos Aires and Seoul, the logistics of protest rely on public transportation.
Within metropolitan Buenos Aires, piqueteros arrange for the movement of people from
suburbs to demonstrate in the city center without an extra economic burden on the poor
members: the train companies let them travel free of charge in order to avoid more serious
disruptions that piquetero groups are capable of instigating (Massetti, 2004, p. 104). In
Seoul, demonstrators mainly rely on the private use of public transportation and charter
buses, although when people move from one demonstration spot to another organizers
sometimes open subway gates and let demonstrators travel free. If demonstration venues
are dispersed, South Korean demonstrators often take the subway between them. Clan-
destine mobilizations for forbidden demonstrations may also utilize the subway network
to move demonstrators among protest sites, hoping to evade tracking by the police.
Capital cities like Seoul and Buenos Aires attract demonstrators from the entire coun-
try. At the national scale, the urban–rural divide plays a role in deciding who is permitted
to demonstrate: police halted demonstrating farmers on roads and airports before they
reached anti-FTA demonstrations in Seoul (Kang, 2007). This differentiation also reflects
the perception of farmers, in contrast to urbanites, as being less civilized, more violent,
 254 TARU SALMENKARI
Downloaded by [University of California, Berkeley] at 08:00 04 August 2014

Fig. 2. The main demonstration sites in Buenos Aires and the explanation: Plaza de Mayo and the presi-
dential palace Casa de Gobierno (an open space with authority and audience, historical and symbolic protest
site); Congress (an open space with authority); Town Hall (a place with authority and audience); City Legisla-
ture (an open space with authority); Tribunales (courthouse, an open space with authority); Obelisco (open
space, the main gathering place for demonstrations); Retiro railway station (open space, a gathering place);
Constitución railway station (open space, a gathering place). In addition, the political center around these
central buildings accommodates many ministries and embassies attracting demonstrations.

and thus a greater threat to urban-based order. This is a totally different symbolic geogra-
phy than that of FTA opponents. For them, farmers represented an authentically Korean
lifestyle crucial for the continuity of Korean culture (Korean Alliance Against the Korea-
US FTA, 2007).
 GEOGRAPHY OF PROTEST 255

This study mainly deals with demonstrations that make claims on the government or
seek public recognition. Other types of demonstrations might produce a different
geographic expression in the city. Direct actions might cover wider areas than traditional
demonstrations do, although certain North American evidence (Brown, 1997) suggests
that some direct actions systematically aim at attacking the state in public spaces in the
city center. In the same manner, the first Reclaim the Streets event in Buenos Aires, redec-
orating the statues in a park and making the audience of Teatro Colon in their evening
dress pass punks and rappers and their music, was successful in questioning the custom-
ary cultural codes, but this was possible precisely because the event occurred in the city
Downloaded by [University of California, Berkeley] at 08:00 04 August 2014

center. Direct action is rare in Seoul, but common in Buenos Aires, where it focuses on
autonomous welfare provision. Homeless people squat, the poor establish community
kitchens, the workers take over bankrupt enterprises they used to work in, but these
actions do not concentrate in any particular place on the city map.

HOW PUBLIC IS A POLITICIZED PLACE?

The word public has several meanings. A place can be public because it is publicly
owned. Alternatively, the distinction between private and public can refer to access:
places people can freely go to are public, whereas places with restricted entry are not.
Further, a building can be called public because it is the seat of a public authority; none-
theless, citizens often have only very restricted access to these buildings, although their
ownership is public. Places classified as public according to one criterion are not always
so according to another. Usually, only two of these criteria, access and the presence of a
public authority, influence the choice of a demonstration location.
The character of public space becomes even more complex when a fourth element is
added to it. Many philosophers define public as the sphere of free contention of opinions
about the public good without restrictions imposed by the state or economic power
(Arendt, 1959; Habermas, 1996). If a place is public when it provides space for a public
sphere, ownership becomes unimportant while public authority appears as a nonpublic
bureaucratic structure. Access, however, remains important and in this sense demonstra-
tions voicing one opinion in a public debate are parts of the public sphere.
In an ideal public sphere, proponents of all sides of a debate can articulate their views.
Accordingly, places politicized by demonstrations fulfill the Habermasian ideal of a
public sphere open to all views. The Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires clearly fits this
conception, because it simultaneously accommodates tourists, local residents feeding
pigeons, the homeless, demonstrators, the police, white-collar workers heading to their
offices, and key buildings of political authorities and the church. Neither élites nor dem-
onstrators dominate the opinions expressed here. In many cases, demonstrations create a
much more limited public sphere accommodating only a dialogue between the protesters
and political authorities or their symbols. Some demonstrations are not particularly
welcoming to outsiders, either because the police surround the protest space, as is com-
mon in Seoul, or because exclusive group identities, radical messages, and the threat of
violence turn away sympathizers, as with some piquetero groups in Argentina using
masked security guards. When police encircle a protest, South Korean demonstrators
fight visual exclusion with loudspeakers that convey their message far from the gathering
itself. Likewise, the media may communicate demonstrators’ acts and demands to wider
 256 TARU SALMENKARI

audiences. Sometimes demonstrators rely exclusively on the media to overcome dis-

tances, as when two hunger-striking, former Korean ministers protested the FTA inside
the National Assembly, which was widely reported in the media from a spot that was
inaccessible to ordinary citizens.
The manner in which demonstrations construct a public sphere must be viewed not
only at the demonstration site but also in terms of the demonstration’s contribution to the
public sphere as a whole. In this sense demonstrations have an important equalizing
effect. Although public space ideally is accessible to all, access for some social groups in
fact is limited (Mitchell, 2003b). Demonstrations provide a chance to address the public
Downloaded by [University of California, Berkeley] at 08:00 04 August 2014

and the élites without having to pay for a forum and in ways that make short-term engage-
ment possible. This opens the way not only for disadvantaged groups like workers or
opponents of the free trade agreement when the Korean government professes neoliberal
labor-hostile and market-friendly principles, but also for socially marginalized groups.
Movements of the unemployed in Argentina and the disabled in Korea not only articulate
group demands but also literally make these groups socially and politically visible.
Therefore, demonstrations are an important means for maintaining a more inclusive
public sphere.
To contribute to deliberations in the public sphere, socially heterogeneous, or even
socially contested, places draw demonstrations. Protesters want political and economic
élites as well as the public to catch a glimpse of their plight and needs. By becoming
collectively visible, groups can challenge stereotypical images of themselves (Goheen,
1998; Missingham, 2002). Historically, working-class demonstrations have taken place
in parks (Roberts, 2001) or at museums (MacLeod, 2006) that are recreational places for
the well-to-do; farmers have come to cities to protest (Abelmann, 1996; Missingham,
2002); and racial minorities have entered dominantly White areas to make their points
(McCann, 1999; Foster, 2003). In other words, these groups “transgress the spatial order
of the city” (MacLeod, 2006, p. 52).

FINAL REMARKS

In this article, we have encountered various types of places where demonstrations

occur: places of authority, places related to a particular grievance, places with audiences,
places where social contrasts become visible, places with high disruptive potential, his-
torical places, symbolic places, customary protest sites, and convenient places. Of these,
the majority of protests take place at sites of political authority, places that appeal to the
public, places connected with a grievance, and symbolically meaningful places. These
categories often overlap. For example, the Plaza de Mayo shares all of these characteris-
tics if the demonstrators block the traffic, as they often do.
This study has shown that the protest message, the urban layout, and local histories all
influence the places where demonstrators choose to act upon their grievances. Although
local culture and history matters, the types of protest sites are generally the same in Seoul
and Buenos Aires, and many other capitals as well. This suggests that demonstrating
itself involves notions about suitable sites. As Tilly (1978) established, protest culture
prescribes a limited number of repertories that protesters apply. Contemporary protesters,
even without direct links or common cause, adopt similar modes of collective action
(Tarrow, 1993). Therefore, it is not surprising that public demonstration, one common
 GEOGRAPHY OF PROTEST 257

and globally known protest repertory of our times, in itself dictates not only what to do
but also where to do it.
Protest culture is widely shared, even within a single city. Different protesting groups
demonstrate in surprisingly similar places. Groups from the Left and the Right, and even
nonideological protests related to victimization or a conflict, gather at the Plaza de Mayo,
Seoul City Hall, national legislatures, or local seats of political authority. However,
because interpretations of history and symbolic power are often contested, historical and
symbolic sites do not have the same meanings for all. Often histories and symbols
invested in places refer to a movement history that is meaningful exclusively to group
Downloaded by [University of California, Berkeley] at 08:00 04 August 2014

members.
Demonstrators alone do not determine protest sites. Four elements—demonstrators’
demands, protest cultures, state power, and élite norms—shape the geography of protest.
The state and economic élites affect protest geography indirectly as targets of protest, but
state policies and business interests impact both the decision to demonstrate and the
selection of the location for a demonstration when a place related to an authority or a
grievance is chosen. In addition, the state and socioeconomic élites can directly attempt
to control or even prevent challenging uses of city space. The economic élites privatize
space to prevent its unauthorized use; the state uses licensing and policing to control the
use of urban space. In some cities, the state uses licensing to keep challengers out of sight,
but in both Seoul and Buenos Aires demonstrators can reserve visible places in city
centers, although in Seoul some targets are defined as protest-free. According to Korean
activists, the three most inaccessible places for protests are the presidential palace, the
U.S. Embassy, and the Samsung headquarters. The fact that the state activity supports the
monopoly of determining the use of space outside these buildings tells much about the
distribution of power in Korea in general.
The layout of a city, especially its city center that draws the majority of demonstra-
tions, is shaped by efforts of the state and economic élites to express ideas about political
and economic power. Demonstrations are short-term incursions into city space by groups
that have little say about the the city’s configuration. In other words, the temporary nature
of protests underlines asymmetries of power between demonstrators and the political and
economic powers that be concerning the layout and use of the urban landscape.
Along with the contrast between permanent and temporary, the uneven division of
power is further seen in the divide between inside and outside. Demonstrations are a
means to express demands by people who are outside the physical walls of power.
Although there is considerable symbolic power in being outside, especially en masse, this
exclusion from or rejection of inside channels makes claims expressed through alterna-
tive channels threatening. During the 19th century, street demonstrations were a lower-
class activity subject to policing and legal restrictions when wealthier people could afford
to gather indoors (Tilly, 1978; Harrison, 1988). Even today when lower classes have their
own political centers, such as trade union buildings, and democracies bring citizens and
politicians together in public spaces, demonstrations continue to be one of the most con-
troversial forms of opinion expression because they seek representation collectively,
agressively, and sometimes even violently. This appears disorderly to the dominant élites,
who make themselves heard through “orderly,” “rational” discourse (Mitchell, 2003b).
Thus, political protest is still often defined not as a citizen’s right but as a disturbance of
 258 TARU SALMENKARI

public order (della Porta, 1996, p. 65; Herbert, 2007)—and controversial acts, demands,
and uses of space can underscore why demonstrations seem to pose a threat to élites.
Demonstrators use a city’s geography to open public spheres for exchanging ideas.
The Habermasian ideal regards public spheres as abstract domains of power-free rational
discussion (Habermas, 1989), but demonstrations create real-world sites where public
deliberations take place in the context of displays of power by protesters and the state
alike. The power of demonstrators lies is in their numbers and in their ability to occupy
physical space. Because of this power, demonstrations can pry open public spheres for the
excluded and/or the powerless. The fact that so many demands and groups are taken seri-
Downloaded by [University of California, Berkeley] at 08:00 04 August 2014

ously only after such displays of threat (if even then) points out that all too often public
spheres are dominated by élites and are far from power-free. Habermas correctly saw the
existing public spheres as imperfect, but it might be that any public sphere remains
unequal because it reflects existing social inequalities that the demand for civil and ratio-
nal discussion itself reinforces. Frequently, more inclusive public spheres cannot emerge
without concrete oppositional power to open access for the interests and demands of the
excluded. Demonstrations, which hijack the hegemonic environment and invest it with
oppositional meanings, can be effective tools for inclusion precisely because they com-
bine acts of rational speech with potential threat in the physical spatial environment.

REFERENCES

Abelmann, N., 1996, Echoes of the Past, Epics of Dissent: A South Korean social move-
ment. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Arendt, H., 1959, The Human Condition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Auyero, J., 2003, The geography of popular contention: An urban protest in Argentina.
Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Vol. 28, 37–70.
Auyero, J., 2006, Spaces and places as sites and objects of politics. In R. Goodin and C.
Tilly, editors, Oxford Handbook of Contextual Political Analysis. Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press.
Baydar, G. and Ivegen, B., 2006, Territories, identities, and thresholds: The Saturday
mothers phenomenon in Istanbul. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society,
Vol. 31, 689–715.
Bosco, F., 2001, Place, space, networks, and the sustainability of collective action. Global
Networks, Vol. 1, 307–329.
Brown, M., 1997, Radical politics out of place? In S. Pile and M. Keith, editors, Geogra-
phies of Resistance. London, UK: Routledge, 152–167.
Burk, A. L., 2003, Private griefs, public places. Political Geography, Vol. 22, 317–333.
Cho, J. S., 2007, 1st Demonstration Held at Samsung Headquarters. Korea Times,
January 19.
Clarin, 2006, Vecinos porteños realizaron un “ruidazo” contra la construcción de torres.
Clarin, November 23.
Crocker, T. P., 2007, Displacing dissent: The role of “place” in first amendment jurispru-
dence. Fordham Law Review, Vol. 75, 2587–2640.
della Porta, D., 1996, Social movements and the state: Thoughts on the policing of
protest. In D. McAdam, J. McCarthy, and M. Zald, editors, Comparative Perspectives
on Social Movements. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 62–92.
 GEOGRAPHY OF PROTEST 259

Escobar, A., 2001, Culture sits in places: Reflections on globalism and subaltern strate-
gies of localization. Political Geography, Vol. 20, 139–174.
Foster, S. L., 2003, Choreographies of protest. Theatre Journal, Vol. 55, 395–412.
Foucault, M., 1986, Of other spaces. Diacritics, Vol. 16, 22–27.
Goheen, P. G., 1998, Public space and the geography of the modern city. Progress in
Human Geography 22, 479–496.
Habermas, J., 1989, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cambridge,
UK: Polity Press.
Habermas, J., 1996, Between Facts and Norms. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Downloaded by [University of California, Berkeley] at 08:00 04 August 2014

Han, P., 2001, Struttura Urbana Duale e Città dell’Estremo Oriente [Dual urban structure
of the Far East]. Construzioni Due, Vol. 6, 20–24.
Harrison, M., 1988, Symbolism, “ritualism” and the location of crowds in early
nineteenth-century English towns. In D. Cosgrove and S. Daniels, editors, The Iconog-
raphy of Landscape. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 194–213.
Heaney, M. T. and Rojas, F., 2006, The place of framing: Multiple audiences and antiwar
protests near Fort Bragg. Qualitative Sociology, Vol. 29, 485–505.
Herbert, S., 2007, The “Battle of Seattle” revisited: Or, seven views of a protest-zoning
state. Political Geography, Vol. 26, 601–619.
Hosey, L., 2000, Slumming in utopia: Protest construction and the iconography of urban
America. Journal of Architectural Education, Vol. 53, 146–158.
James, D., 1988, October 17th and 18th, 1945: Mass protest, peronism and the Argentine
working class, Journal of Social History, Vol. 22, 441–461.
Kang, S. W., 2007, Anti-FTA rallies clog traffic. Korea Times, January 16.
Kim, K. O., 1994, Rituals of resistance. In C. Keyes, L. Kendall, and H. Hardacre, editors,
Asian Visions of Authority. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 195–219.
Kim, H. S., 2005, State rituals, symbolic space, and Korean national identity. The Review
of Korean Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2, 91–110.
Kim, R., 2007, Rallies at Kwanghwamun Plaza could snarl traffic. Korea Times, January
2.
Kim, S. H., 2002, The Spatial and the Transpatial: Two Spatial Paradigms of Chongno
Street. Paper presented at the Seoul International Conference on East Asian Architec-
tural History.
Korean Alliance Against the Korea–U.S. FTA, 2007, The deterioration of agricultural
life. No FTA Newsletter, Vol. 1, No. 2.
Malone, K., 2002, Street life: Youth, culture and competing uses of public space. Envi-
ronment & Urbanization, Vol. 14, 157–168.
MacLeod, S., 2006, Civil disobedience and political agitation: The art museum as a site
of protest in the early twentieth century. Museum and Society, Vol. 5, 44–57.
Martin, D. G. and Miller, B., 2003, Space and contentious politics. Mobilization: An
International Quarterly, Vol. 8, 143–156.
Massetti, A., 2004, Piqueteros. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Editorial de las Ciencias.
McAdam, D., 1996, The framing function of movement tactics. In D. McAdam, J.
McCarthy, and M. Zald, editors, Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 338–355.
McCann, E. J., 1999, Race, protest, and public space. Antipode, Vol. 31, 163–184.
 260 TARU SALMENKARI

McCarthy, J. D. and McPhail, C., 2006, Places of protest: The public forum in principle
and practice. Mobilization: An International Quarterly, Vol. 11, 229–247.
Missingham, B., 2002, The village of the poor confronts the state: A geography of protest
in the assembly of the poor. Urban Studies, Vol. 39, 1647–1663.
Mitchell, D., 2003a, The liberalization of free speech: Or how protest is silenced in public
space. Stanford Agora, Vol. 4, 1–64.
Mitchell, D., 2003b, The Right to the City. Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space.
New York, NY: The Guildford Press.
Mitchell, K., 2000, The culture of urban space. Urban Geography, Vol. 21, 443–449.
Downloaded by [University of California, Berkeley] at 08:00 04 August 2014

Moon, K., 2003, Korean nationalism, anti-Americanism, and democratic consolidation.

In S. Kim, editor, Korea’s Democratization. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 135–157.
Roberts, J. M., 2001, Spatial governance and the working class public spheres: The case
of a Chartist demonstration in Hyde Park. Journal of Historical Sociology, Vol. 14,
308–336.
Rosenthal, A., 2000, Spectacle, fear, and protest. A guide to the history of urban public
space in Latin America. Social Science History, Vol. 24, 33–73.
Routledge, P., 1997, A spatiality of resistances. Theory and practice in Nepal’s revolution
of 1990. In S. Pile and M. Keith, editors, Geographies of Resistance. London, UK:
Routledge, 68–86.
Sewell, Jr., W. H., 2001, Space in contentious politics. In R. R. Aminzade, J. A. Goldstone,
D. McAdam, E. J. Perry, W. H. Sewell, Jr., S. Tarrow, and C. Tilly, editors, Silence and
Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 51–88.
Shin, H. I., 2006, Anti-FTA protesters defy police ban. Korea Herald, November 30.
Tarrow, S., 1993, Modular collective action and the rise of the social movement. Politics
& Society, Vol. 1, 69–90.
Tilly, C., 1978, From Mobilization to Revolution. New York, NY: Random House.
Tilly, C., 2005, Invention, diffusion, and transformation of the social movement reper-
toire. European Review of History—Revue Européenne d’Histoire, Vol. 12, 307–320.
Waddington, P. A. J., 1995, Both Arms of the Law. Paper presented at the British Crimi-
nology Conference, Loughborough University.
Waisbord, S., 1996, Farewell to public spaces? Studies in Latin American Popular
Culture, Vol. 15, 279–301.
Yea, S., 2000, Maps of resistance and geographies of dissent in the Cholla region of South
Korea. Korean Studies, Vol 24, 69–93.
Zick, T., 2006a, Property, place, and public discourse. Journal of Law & Policy, Vol. 21,
173–223.
Zick, T., 2006b, Speech and spatial tactics. Texas Law Review, Vol. 84, 581–651.