Disruptive and adaptive methods in activist tourism studies: Socio-spatial imaginaries of dissent

Around the world the twenty-first century has seen growth in the number and scale of protest events, mobilising substantial numbers of people to gather in acts of dissent. Central to understanding participation in such large-scale activist mobilities is an examination of those imaginaries of dissent, space and place associated with them. However, attempts to examine such imaginaries are hampered by traditional social science approaches that depoliticise participation and are often treated with suspicion by the protesters and those tasked with mitigating the impact of their activism. The disrUPt project confronted those issues by exploring disruptive and adaptive methods that could bring those imaginaries to the fore. The theoretical foundations of the project were rooted in those ideas in contemporary European thought around the philosophy of the event that conceptualise ‘events’ as sites of multiplicity and contestation (Badiou; Deleuze), articulated through the emerging field of critical event studies (Spracklen and Lamond) and the literature of activist tourism (Pezzullo). Four methodological approaches are explored, these are: the creation of a bicycle based mobile film projector, used to make visible spaces hidden by developments in the contemporary city; the presentation of augmented film screenings, which combine film presentation with non-traditional elements in non-traditional venues; activist film making with a group of female asylum seekers; and a series of conversations that brought together participants more commonly in opposition during events of dissent. The paper concludes that whilst the methods deployed were successful in facilitating the articulation of imaginaries of dissent, space and place, attached to protest and activist tourism, much more needs to be done to both draw such research approaches together and in the development of a deeper understanding of the use of disruptive and adaptive approaches to participatory data analysis.