A Political Economy of Protest: Ethical and Ethnographic Sensibilities of Contemporary Anti-Capitalism

Abstract

<p> This work explores the importance anti-capitalist protest in the contemporary international system. In doing so, I address some of the practical, philosophical and ethical considerations of academic depictions of protest through examples in Toronto, Canada and Seoul, South Korea. Drawing on fieldwork at protest sites in both places, I focus on forms of contemporary anti-capitalism through a political economy of 'Capital' and the inherent contestation of contemporary political decision making. I outline how it is important to develop subjective accounts of political protest that utilize ethical and psychoanalytic insights to come to terms with the tension between conformity and resistance. Contrasting what I call 'militant masculinties' of protest with 'alternative masculinities' of anticapitalism, I problematize some of the commonly held assumptions about the distinction between activism and academic efforts. Instead, I demonstrate how the methodological insights of an 'ethnographic sensibility' can benefit International Relations scholarship by discussing the possibilities and limits of political participation in the contemporary capitalist system. This research seeks to contribute to debates about political subjectivity and political activism through an examination of the efforts to challenge economic decision making power that rests in the hand of a few supposed experts. This thesis is an effort to democratize the way we think about participation in the site of protest, in order to encourage popular and academic engagement with the local and global struggles taking place across the world.</p>