Introduction

Convergence and assembly in physical space provides a protest camp's foundation. Yet a protest is not only comprised of bodies together in space. The dynamics and political trajectories of a protest camp are formed from the entanglements and interactions of material objects (canvas tents, city roads, bicycles, wooden pallets, tarps and tables), physical geographies (environments, built architectures, climate), mediated representations (from mainstream newspapers to twitter feeds), as well as local, provincial and national laws that shape how protesters navigate all of these conditions at once. It is these entanglements and adaptations that give rise to the emblematic symbols of protest camps – from the beach umbrella that first marked the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Australia, to Occupy Wall Street's people's mic (Cowan, 2002; Costanza-Chock, 2012).

Drawing on a range of empirical cases across a wide geography of protest camps sites in cities including Athens, Berlin, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Jerusalem, Madrid, New York, Oslo and Ramallah, contributions in this section consider how the different elements assembled to create a protest camp are brought together in their specific temporal, social, cultural and political context to create the material and social infrastructures of protest camps. In what follows, this section's themes are discussed by way of Occupy Melbourne's ‘tent monsters’ phenomenon, which embodies, problematises and captures the limits of protest camps’ processes of assembling and materialising. This is followed by a thematic and chapter-by-chapter review of this section.

Tent monsters

Section 2.11 of the Melbourne City Council Activities Local Law 2009 reads, ‘Unless in accordance with a permit, a person must not camp in or on any public place in a vehicle, tent, caravan or any type of temporary or provisional form of accommodation’ (City of Melbourne, 2009). While such laws may lie dormant, unnoticed by the public, in times of protest they may act as a legal wedge to intervene and shut down political contention. Occupy Melbourne protesters camped in Melbourne's city squares and parks between October and late December 2011. During this time the city issued approximately 150 ‘notices to comply’ with the local law that prohibited camping in public places without a permit (Hunt and Hunt Lawyers, 2016). However, on 5 December 2011 a small collective of self-identified Occupy Melbourne activists assembled in Flagstaff Gardens in west Melbourne to playfully test the boundaries of the camping ban.