Introduction: Repression and the Social Control of Protest

Abstract

Of the phenomena studied by social scientists, few are as potent and moving as scenes of collective action under threats of repression. For instance, the commitment to political and social change that civil rights activists showed by day, with full knowledge that the wrath of the KKK might befall them by night, is a moving testament to their courage and perseverance. And yet, prior to the last decade, research on repression had been somewhat slower to develop when compared with other areas of social movement scholarship. Fortunately, the tide has dramatically shifted over the last decade. A large amount of research has been published recently on repression and the social control of protest: Davenport, Johnston, and Mueller (2005) published the proceedings of a 2001 conference on repression; della Porta and Reiter’s (1998) edited volume introduced a number of important claims and findings about protest policing; and a number of important articles have appeared in peer-reviewed journals (e.g., Earl 2003, 2004; Earl, Soule, and McCarthy 2003; Francisco 2004; Loveman 1998; Rasler 1996). In fact, this special issue stems, in part, from papers delivered at a session on repression at the 2004 Annual Meetings of the American Sociological Association. In this introduction, I assess the fruits of this boom in repression-related research with an eye toward what theories and findings have been supported, what new research trajectories are particularly important, and what areas are still relatively underdeveloped. At the same time, I introduce the seven original research articles that comprise this special issue, pointing to the themes in the existing literature that they productively speak to or question. I will also point out the common themes within the articles that make the special issue more than the sum of its parts by collectively pointing to emergent issues in repressionrelated research.