Towards a Method for studying Affect in (micro)Politics: The Campfire Chats Project and the Occupy Movement

This paper begins with a brief review of existing social movement scholarship on the study of affect that can be applied to protest camps. We then introduce our Campfire Chats methodology and describe its operationalisation through pilot runs in Ottawa and Montreal. Following from this, we move into a discussion of findings arising from this first set of Campfire Chats to explore the roles affect plays in specific acts of ‘building together’ at Occupy protest camps. We conclude by looking at the possibilities for expanding this methodological framework more broadly to study protest camps and related, place-based political groups, organisations and movements [Taken from Introduction]