Book Review: Carles Feixa and Jordi Nofre (eds) (2013) #Generación Indignada. Topías y Utopías del 15M (Indignant Generation. Topias and Utopias of the 15M). Lleida: Milenio.

2011 was a year of protests. In several countries of the world the young and the not so young occupied streets, squares and Facebook timelines in order to make their indignation visible and to initiate a change. Two years later Turkey and Brazil have become the main scenes of the protests and it seems that the indignation has turned into a global phenomenon with continuities connecting the different local movements beyond the diverse contexts and topics. But what are the origins and consequences of these movements? What characterizes them and why do they happen now and did not before? With their book #GeneraciónIndignada (Indignant Generation) (2013) Carles Feixa and Jordi Nofre, together with Ariadna Fernández-Planells, Mauricio Perondi, Vanesa Toscano, José Sanchez-García and Joana Soto, offer an analysis of the 15M movement, the so called Spanish revolution that started on 15 May 2011. The book, written in Spanish and published by Milenio, aims, according to its editors at a multidisciplinary, interpretative and comprehensive analysis of the 15M and the indignant generation, contributing to the creation of a space for discussions, reflections and propositions between university and society in the process of transformation towards more social equality and justice.

A special merit lies in the publication’s composition: Firstly, each chapter offers a self-contained analysis, employing different theoretical and methodological perspectives. Secondly, several chapters directly complement each other, illuminating events from different angles, offering detailed narrations or introducing the reader to social movements in other parts of the world. Finally, the publication as a whole creates a background for the lecture of each chapter, giving an idea of the complex contexts of the social movements, the different connotations and linkages. Through the dialogue between the chapters arise questions that otherwise might not have been perceived and that encourage further investigation of the topic.

The first two chapters are complementary when it comes to their analytical perspectives and opposed in means of their evaluations of the movement. Nofre focuses in the first chapter on social class and territory, arguing that 15M was an urban movement of the middle class youth. He employs a critical perspective on the previous academic production on 15M and on the movement itself, questioning its spontaneous character—an interrogative that is resumed in the epilog. Furthermore, comparing welfare states and political systems, he perceives the 15M not as an attempted revolution, but as mourning about lost securities, that can no longer be offered by the chronically weak and recently disappearing South European welfare states and exhausted family budgets.

In the second chapter, Feixa compares the 15M to other historic and recent social movements in Spain and other parts of the world, mainly France and England. Recapitulating the events of 15M, he reflects on the transitions between virtual–physical and local–global, identifying new ‘glocal’ spaces and practices. He highlights the achievement of the 15M to have brought social problems into the visible sphere and hopes that the movement might give the necessary impulses to overcome the current problems and to return the future to the young generation. Through the confrontation of theoretical concepts and terminologies with illustrative metaphors, alternative ways of thinking are presented and discussion is encouraged.

The chapters 3, 4, 5 and partly 6 empower the participants of the 15M, giving space to their voices. Toscano (chapter 3) and Feixa and Perondi (chapter 5) reproduce the narrations of activists from Madrid and the middle-sized town Lleida, respectively. The vivid descriptions enable the reader to slip into the interviewee’s shoes and to walk the occupied squares, witnessing ideals but also problems and conflicts that accompanied the movement. Fernandez (chapter 4) describes similar elements for Barcelona, analyzing her field observations, interviews and a questionnaire survey she conducted as a participating researcher on the occupied square. Focusing especially on online and offline practices, she identifies profiles of activists and media uses. Another repeated notion, apart from the importance of the internet, is the conflict among activists, which is sometimes explained with different priorities or the number of participants and sometimes stated without any attempt of explanation. For example the decision to abandon the squares provoked controversial discussions both in Madrid and Barcelona, but only for a decisive argument is presented: the lack of participants. The personal narrations present the reader with individual perspectives on a collectively lived event, showing the repercussions the related experiences have for the individuals—analytical perspective is pursued in the following chapter by Perondi.

The chapters 6 and 7 add the analysis of other social movements, the AJI in Porto Alegre (Brazil) and the occupation of the main square of Cairo (Egypt). In chapter 6 Perondi describes the development, realization and context of the AJI (Acampada Intercontinental de la Juventud), an intercontinental youth camp that took place in the course of the WSF (World Social Forum) in 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2005 in Porto Alegre (Brazil). Following the chapter’s headline that asks if the 15M was born in Porto Alegre, Perondi analyzes similarities between both movements, building on interviews with participants from both sites. He highlights the political interest and participation of the young people and the impact their experiences had and have for their lives. Sanchez offers in chapter 7 an analysis of the changes before, throughout and after the occupation of Tahrir, Cairo’s main square, in the Egyptian society. Parting from the concept of counterculture according to Marcuse (1968), he describes the fight for political hegemony, the social structures and the dominant understanding of youth, analyzing the resulting subordinated position of young people in society and their protagonism in countercultures. Again, and despite all the differences between dictatorial and democratic countries, we see continuities, like the importance of new media, conflict and the empowerment of the participating young. Another commonality lies in the long-term consequences: None of the 2011 movements led to a sudden, deep going and lasting change in the political systems of their geographic regions. However, certain things are different, like the use of public spaces in Egypt, or the new connectedness and repeated activation of like-minded for solidary actions in Spain.

Chapter 8 presents examples for the movements’ cultural production: Four documentaries narrating the Egyptian and the Spanish occupations are analyzed for representations, aims and target audience, as well as the contexts of production. Setting the cultural circuit described by Hall (1997) into the context of new media and the web 2.0, the authors argue that the activists become potential protagonists of all five stages: production, consumption, regulation, representation and identity.

Feixa presents in chapter 9, named as the book itself Indignant Generation, further reflections about the context of the 15M movement, mainly the economic and social crisis and the resulting abolition of the welfare state. Comparing different social movements, he identifies a main similarity in the aim to (re)generate a democratic culture. Coming from a categorization of youth concepts proposed in his previous publications, he identifies analogue concepts for democracy, for example, the Replicant Democracy in which the young generation is better prepared than the leading elders and proposes a political participation which is not (yet) established.

The epilogue offers further comments by the authors, pursuing the critical perspective that already appeared in several chapters. Facing a certain deactivation of the movements in the public spaces in 2012, the authors ask if the different nation states were able to assimilate the social resistance or if the deactivation is a consequence of a collective resignation among the activists. Hereby, the authors offer four main reflections meant to initiate further discussion and investigation: First of all they reflect on the difference between virtual and physical participation, asking for those who do not participate visibly: the working class and immigrants. Secondly, they employ a critical perspective on the academic research itself, reproaching a tendency to consider the participants of social movements as guinea pigs. A similar hierarchical thinking, understood as a colonial perspective, is identified for academics who hardly consider the Mediterranean countries when analyzing the occupy movements in Great Britain and the US. After reflecting on neoliberalism, institutional violence and resilience, the authors ask with Marcuse (1968) if every revolution has to end with the establishment of a new system of domination. The book ends reflecting which are or will be the new channels of indignation after the deactivation of the protests, offering a detailed list of bibliography, web and filmography in the annex.

In summary, the publication achieves to present the complex relations of the social movements of 2011 and to encourage further discussion and investigation. Hereby the authors do not commit the errors they identify in their critical reflections on the academic world, empowering the activists by giving visibility to their narrations. Apart from their various disciplines of origin, the authors belong to different generations of researchers and employ different methodologies, achieving like this the composition of an especially rich analysis. The initiated comparisons to other movements, the unanswered provocative questions and the unsolved contradictions between the different perspectives invite the reader to use the offered material for further analysis and to contribute to the comprehension of a social phenomenon in course, which might have the potential to provoke a deep going change in our society.

Tanja Strecker PhD Student Dep. Geografia i Sociologia Universitat de Lleida, Spain