All Contentious Politics is Local: Studying the Occupy Movement from Below, in Oakland and Atlanta

International audienceThis article draws from a comparative study of the Occupy movement in two cities, Oakland and Atlanta, drawing from observation notes, interviews with local activists, the local press, and online materials from both Occupy branches. We highlight how transnational, national and local forces intersected to produce different, at times similar trajectories of mobilization in Oakland and Atlanta. To what extent do Occupy’s local chapters in these two cities represent movements for the right to the city? Building upon Walter Nicholls (2008) among others, we aim to bridge the gap between urban sociology and social movement theory to understand how place, scale and space affect experiences of mobilization. We characterize Occupy as a collection of local experiments whose respective trajectories were partly shaped by the history and culture, place and space, in which urban protests erupted. We seek to contribute to an emerging subfield of studies on the vernacular politics and culture of Occupy sister branches, while connecting these empirical findings with broader theoretical claims