Social Movements

Political geography traditionally focused on the state, but there has been a broadening of what counts as “doing politics” that includes the work of social movements. However, much of this work uses analytical categories other than the social movement, and these are reviewed and included in this chapter. Geographers have brought space into thinking about social movements, analyzing how various spatialities shape and are shaped by movements, the spatialities of solidarity, and the geographies of emotion that movements use and generate. Many do this work as academic activists and collaborate with movements. Across different methods, approaches, and languages, geographers have contributed to building the power of movements to make a better world.