Ley N° 29867 que crea los delitos contra la seguridad pública en los centros de

This study of the Occupy Nova Scotia encampment was concerned to show that the use of organizational dramaturgy helps to create personal and organizational space, recognizing that the term space implies movement and displacement. ‘At the centre of the home, the territory, is not a singular rational subject, picking and choosing milieu, arranging one’s space like flowers in a vase’ (Wise, 2000: 301). The movement feeds on public and dramatic performances of occupation. Therefore, this paper theorized occupation in terms of organizational being, and provided a theatre-based understanding as to how societal actors produce meaning in context of the territories they claim. This paper introduced a small encampment that has mostly been ignored in the academic literature and this exemplar showed what is at stake when ‘cooperative occupation’ is in play. This occurred in Halifax when territorial traditions of war veterans of the Royal Canadian Legion competed with the home site of Occupy Nova Scotia.

This paper focussed on a case study of Occupy Nova Scotia to elucidate a dramatic organizational contest, showing that space intersects with dramaturgical concepts of performing regions, performance/audience, and stigma. Dramaturgy helps to provide a deeper understanding of how societal actors produce meaning in the context of the territories that they claim. The maintenance of a thing such as ‘the organization’ or ‘the movement’ relies in part on the performance of territory. As such, performance is important for understanding the achievement of organizing.

Dramaturgy makes methodological demands on researchers, fostering a display of reflexivity. In keeping with critical dramaturgy, the authors of this paper acknowledge that many alternative renderings could have been written into this paper. We chose from a wealth of ‘evidence’ collected, including observations on site which by their nature are partial representations of reality. We confess that alternative storylines were available in our describing of Occupy Nova Scotia, but offer that selecting from collected data is not unlike occupation. The authors chose what will be represented as truth and much of the story remains untold. The Occupy Nova Scotia movement’s struggle for control of the Grand Parade enabled discussion of the concept of space and its juxtaposition to organizational components of the politics of war symbolism and public administration. We propose that it is in the liminal space that dramatic action occurs, i.e., where activists interact with bureaucrat and with other actors and where they attempt to enrol one another with their scripts and props. Dramaturgy’s explicit recognition that an audience is present makes us realize that organizations have to make decisions while others are watching over what may be considered their home territory. Social movements challenge bureaucracy by inviting others to critically examine disputed physical and symbolic space. Over time a number of social movements have been analysed in terms of losing their way because their mode of acting was out of line with their performance which often reinforced the things they were opposed to. The classic study here is Michels (1949) who examined how socialist parties had the tendency to become bureaucratic and, in the process, lose their focus on social change and substitute it with maintenance of the party bureaucracy. Arguably, Occupy Nova Scotia may have lost its way by giving in to the prescription demanded by its cooperative occupier, the Canadian Legion, and the bureaucratic solutions of the Halifax municipality. By the date of the Solidarity Rally of Solidarity May 19, 2012, displayed interest in Occupy Nova Scotia was minimal, as shown in the following picture. Occupy Nova Scotia, the loose and morphing organizational entity, continues to reinvent its home territory.

Exhibit 4: Symbolic encampment. Photo taken by L. Corrigan

Core members of Occupy Nova Scotia pitch a miniature tent to remember the encampment in the Grand Parade Square. Unfortunately, members of the news media outnumbered the reprise of the Occupiers.

The movement seems to be trying to unlock its own Iron Cage by starting to work with more established entities such a non-governmental organizations and union groups. However, it may need to reflect on the more profound dangers of organizational life associated with the ‘hard steel shell’ (Weber, 2002) which speaks more to territory of the mind as an even greater challenge than imprisoned ideas.

Smucker (2013: 223) asks if Occupy is simply a name fixed to a flashpoint: he encourages us to treat Occupy as a larger expression: the movement should not be ‘about a certain kind of tactic or, worse, a certain kind of person – one that many people see as fitting into a stereotyped “other” category that they have difficulty relating to (e.g., protester, occupier, and hippie – rather than a popular response to a common crisis’. The arguments of Barry, Berg and Chandler (2012) promote a view that social movements are not something entirely separate from the established processes of organizing in society but have ways of engaging through direct and indirect political contests and forms of dissent. Occupy movements are not easily dismissed as fringe organizations but have ways of holding traditional modes of organizing (e.g., bureaucracy) and decision making (e.g., hierarchy) up to scrutiny. The dramaturgy of Occupy Nova Scotia provided a framework for thinking about social justice, responsible organizing, avoiding stigmatization, and understanding competing claims in cooperative occupation. Even though the encampment ended, the movement continues. ‘The occupations were like a crack in the sidewalk through which blades of grass could sprout’ (Jaffe, 2013: 199). Perhaps the Occupy movement will contribute to building a new world out of the different pieces of this one. Certainly, Occupy Nova Scotia

succeeded in changing the hegemonic narrative of the local political establishment.

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the authors

Lawrence T. Corrigan is Associate Professor at the Sobey School of Business in Halifax, Canada. Lawrence has 25 years of management experience in the not-for-profit sector and is Associate Editor of Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management. His research interest is to investigate the usefulness of qualitative research methodologies, with a focus on management and accounting systems. These are often thought of as mundane administration but instead are relational, theatrical and historically situated. Email: [email protected]

Albert J. Mills is Professor of Innovation at the University of Eastern Finland and Professor of Management at Saint Mary’s University in Canada. He started his academic career studying worker occupations, sit ins and cooperatives for his PhD. He is former Co-Divisional Chair of the AoM CMS Division, and current Co-Chair of the International Board of CMS. His research continues to focus on the relationship between management, organizing and human liberation.

ISSN 2052-1499 (Print) www.ephemerajournal.org volume 18.3: 505-526

New media and the Egyptian revolution: The