Forthcoming in Antipode 45(4), and available online now, Veronica Crossa’s ‘Play for Protest, Protest for Play: Artisan and Vendors’ Resistance to Displacement in Mexico City’ focuses on the playful techniques of resistance deployed by displaced street vendors and artisans in Mexico City.

Through a case study of Coyoacan, a tourist-oriented neighbourhood known for its historical richness and aesthetic qualities, Veronica explores how street vendors and artisans who were removed from plazas in the area engaged in a number of playful resistance strategies which drew on the symbolic and material importance of place. Her paper demonstrates how play helped develop emotions that were crucial for the sustainability of the movement, and how playful strategies of resistance were practiced because of the symbolic importance of Coyoacan as a place of creativity, performance and art.

Veronica is a lecturer in University College Dublin’s School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Policy. As well as Antipode, her work has appeared in International Journal of Urban and Regional Research and ACME, among other places.

Her paper is one of a number which have recently dealt with emotion, politics, protest and play in the pages of Antipode: Paul Routledge’s ‘Sensuous Solidarities: Emotion, Politics and Performance in the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army‘ examines the role of emotion and play in the production and maintenance of solidarity and the performance of relations among protesters, and with the police and public; and Nathan Clough’s ‘Emotion at the Center of Radical Politics: On the Affective Structures of Rebellion and Control‘ considers how emotional connections play a part not only in a movement’s strategies for growth but also in the police’s strategies for control.