Stickin’ it to the man: The geographies of protest stickers

Abstract

Stickers are a frequent sight on city streets, adorning street furniture and walls around the world. They serve a range of purposes, including advertising, graffiti, and street art. Many stickers, however, are dedicated to resistance; they promote protest marches or rallies, radical or subversive opinions, and protest groups and social movements. Small, self-adhesive pieces of paper, vinyl, or plastic, protest stickers range from the hand drawn to the professionally printed. Cheap to produce and easy to distribute, they are a common tactic in the repertoires of activists across the Global North. Despite their ubiquity, protest stickers have been overlooked by academics from across the social sciences and humanities. Using methodologies connected to both material and visual cultures, this paper utilises analysis of an archive of more than 5,000 photographs of protest stickers taken over six years in 53 locations to argue that protest stickers should be significant tools in attempts to understand the geographies of resistance, public space, and the right to the city. This paper explores what protest stickers are, the purposes they serve, how they communicate their messages, where they are located, and how they circulate. Finally, I propose a future research agenda including four key areas that should be pursued in order to better understand the relationships between protest stickers, public space, and the geographies of resistance.