• Skip to content
  • Skip to footer
  • Accessibility options
University of Brighton
  • About us
  • Business and
    employers
  • Alumni and
    supporters
  • For
    students
  • For
    staff
  • Accessibility
    options
Open menu
Home
Home
  • Close
  • Study here
    • Courses and subjects
    • Find a course
    • A-Z course list
    • Explore our subjects
    • Academic departments
    • Visiting the university
    • Explore: get to know us
    • Upcoming events
    • Virtual tours
    • Chat to our students and staff
    • Open days
    • Applicant days
    • Order a prospectus
    • Ask a question
    • Studying here
    • Accommodation and locations
    • Applying
    • Undergraduate
    • Postgraduate
    • Transferring from another university
    • The Student Contract
    • Clearing
    • International students
    • Fees and finance
    • Advice and help
    • Advice for students
    • Advice for parents and carers
    • Advice for schools and teachers
    • Managing your application
    • Undergraduate
    • Postgraduate
    • Apprenticeships
  • Research
    • Research and knowledge exchange
    • Research and knowledge exchange organisation
    • The Global Challenges
    • Centres of Research Excellence (COREs)
    • Research Excellence Groups (REGs)
    • Our research database
    • Information for business
    • Community University Partnership Programme (CUPP)
    • Postgraduate research degrees
    • PhD research disciplines and programmes
    • PhD funding opportunities and studentships
    • How to apply for your PhD
    • Research environment
    • Investing in research careers
    • Strategic plan
    • Research concordat
    • News, events, publications and films
    • Featured research and knowledge exchange projects
    • Research and knowledge exchange news
    • Inaugural lectures
    • Research and knowledge exchange publications and films
    • Academic staff search
  • About us
  • Business and employers
  • Alumni, supporters and giving
  • Current students
  • Staff
  • Accessibility
Search our site
Baboshka-banner
Centre for Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics
  • What we do
  • Join us for study, work or visit
  • Who we are
  • What we do
    • What we do
    • Research and enterprise projects
  • Research and enterprise projects
    • Research and enterprise projects
    • Protest camps and climate activism
    • Cityscapes of Violence in Karachi
    • Migrant Journeymen from Afghanistan: Taxis, Life and Making Tracks in Britain
    • Mental Disorder: Anthropological Insights
    • On Kandahar Street: Afghan migration to Singapore and the British Straits Settlements in the mid to late nineteenth century
    • Outer space as environment
    • Peasant Resistance, Food Sovereignty, and Human Rights
    • Homer in the laboratory
    • cli-MATES
    • Growing Heritage: The politics of heritage vegetables
    • Evaluation cultures in the political risk industry
    • FutureCoast Youth
    • IKETIS The mediation of climate change induced migration
    • Indebted-entanglements
    • The Isimila stone age project
    • Babochka
    • Ecological crisis, sustainability and the psychosocial subject
    • YOUR world research - Insecurity and uncertainty
    • The People's Pier
    • Emergent Authorities
    • Formulating implicity: contemporary feminist activism and critique in a neoliberal context
    • Here today: moving images of climate change
    • Mediating climate change
    • Power in outer space
    • Problems of participation
    • Landscapes of authority, affect and public memory
    • Race, Place and the Seaside: Postcards from the Edge
    • social-ecological resilience of a waterside community in changing water conditions
    • The happiness project
  • Protest camps and climate activism

Protest camps and climate activism

Environmental protest and activism has been a mainstay of environmental politics in the UK for some years. Between 2006 and 2011 the Camp for Climate Action played a central role in connecting radical political action, climate change education and sustainable lifestyles. Ethnographic and scholar-activist research carried out during this period analysed the Climate Camp as a contested space where different emphases on environmental and social priorities were negotiated, democratic ways of decision-making were popularised and new forms of political activism were developed.

Project timeframe

2006 - 2011

Project aims

To study the emergence of a new cycle of radical environmental activism.

To examine the form, content and debates of this new protest cycle.

Project findings and impact

This research contributed to our understanding of climate activism in Britain and highlighted some of its features that distinguish it from earlier environmental protest cycles. In particular it highlighted an epistemological shift that had arisen with the arrival of climate change as a dominant frame of environmental protest in Britain.


After the exposure of undercover police officers who had infiltrated the activist spaces of British environmental protest during the period that this research was carried out, the emphasis shifted towards studying the policing of climate activism. A new project focusing on undercover policing and political protest is currently under way: Protest Networks and the Pitchford Inquiry.

Project team

Raphael Schlembach

Output

Russell, Bertie, Schlembach, Raphael and Lear, Ben (2017) Carry on camping? The British Camp for Climate Action as a political refrain In: Brown, G., Feigenbaum, A., Frenzel, F. and McCurdy, P., eds. Protest camps in international context: spaces, infrastructures and media of resistance. Policy Press, Bristol, UK, pp. 147-162. ISBN 9781447329411

Schlembach, Raphael, Lear, Ben and Bowman, Andrew (2012) Science and ethics in the post-political era: strategies within the Camp for Climate Action Environmental Politics, 21 (5). pp. 811-828. ISSN 0964-4016

Schlembach, Raphael (2011) How do radical climate movements negotiate their environmental and their social agendas? A study of debates within the Camp for Climate Action (UK) Critical Social Policy, 31 (2). pp. 194-215. ISSN 0261-0183


 

Back to top
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • TikTok
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn icon

Contact us

University of Brighton
Mithras House
Lewes Road
Brighton
BN2 4AT

Main switchboard 01273 600900

Course enquiries

Sign up for updates

University contacts

Report a problem with this page

Quick links Quick links

  • Courses
  • Open days
  • Order a prospectus
  • Academic departments
  • Academic staff
  • Professional services departments
  • Jobs
  • Privacy and cookie policy
  • Accessibility statement
  • Libraries
  • Term dates
  • Maps
  • Graduation
  • Site information
  • Online shop
  • COVID-19

Information for Information for

  • Current students
  • International students
  • Media/press
  • Careers advisers/teachers
  • Parents/carers
  • Business/employers
  • Alumni/supporters
  • Suppliers
  • Local residents