The victims' shoes trope and emerging solidarity in political protest

Abstract

By providing an overview of the rich and surprising ways in which the victims' shoes trope becomes utilised in political protests as the focus of interaction ritual chains, this article elaborates on the three distinct ways through which moral communities of solidarity position themselves. Firstly, moral communities are often formed around aspects of large-scale atrocities such as commemoration, victimhood and past injustices that, I argue, strengthen nationalist sentiments. The second type of moral communities of solidarity are those that demand ‘rights’ and claim ‘duties’ for promoting particular sectoral agendas. In the third type, the shoes serve to build solidarities that are future-oriented and aim at promoting universal human rights. By using Goffman's Frame Theory and Collins' Interaction Ritual Chain Theory, this article analyses protests from around the world in which the victims' shoes trope has been utilised to tackle a wide range of subjects—gun and domestic violence, unemployment, Covid-19 policies, institutional abuse, road safety, commemorations, antiwar and climate protests and more.